If your team pauses every time they need an answer from you, you don’t have a team — you have a crowd of assistants. The hard truth is that many founders unintentionally train their teams to depend on them for every decision. At first, it feels good to be needed. Over time, it becomes exhausting. The very people you hired to lighten your load end up multiplying it.
The problem usually starts small. A new hire asks you a question, you answer immediately. It happens again, and again. Soon, a habit forms: the fastest way to move forward is to run everything past the founder. The more responsive you are, the deeper the dependency grows. Before you know it, your team won’t move without you.
The fix isn’t working longer hours to keep up with decisions. It’s restructuring how decisions get made. The most effective method is what I call the Delegation Ladder. Instead of answering every question, you give your team four rungs to climb before it reaches you:
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Check the SOP – Is there already a documented process?
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Ask a peer – Can someone else on the team answer this?
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Propose a solution – If it’s new, what do they think should happen?
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Escalate only if stuck – If all else fails, then bring it to you.
This ladder shifts responsibility back where it belongs: onto the team. Instead of serving as the only brain in the room, you become the fallback option. Over time, your team builds problem-solving muscles, and you regain time to focus on strategy.
A founder I worked with was drowning in Slack pings and approval requests. We introduced the Delegation Ladder with one rule: don’t come to me without a proposed solution. At first, the team resisted. But within weeks, the volume of requests dropped by half. And the quality of solutions went up, because the team started thinking like owners instead of employees.
The key to making this work is reinforcement. When your team brings you a proposed solution, even if it’s imperfect, acknowledge the effort. If you always shoot it down, they’ll stop trying. Encourage them to own decisions within their lane, and correct gently when needed.
Founders often dream of more freedom but unintentionally chain themselves to their teams by holding onto every decision. When you teach your team how to climb the Delegation Ladder, you don’t just free yourself — you create leaders who can drive the business forward without waiting for your green light. That’s when leadership stops being about control and starts being about trust.
