Ben MortonLeadership Trainer, Coach and Speaker

Overcoming worry to empower your team

16 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt Ben Morton and Speaker A discuss how leaders’ worry about things going wrong—such as being held accountable for mistakes or missing details—can dominate decision‑making, leading to paralysis and stifling team development. They explain that this fear is not merely a personality quirk but is rooted in the brain’s negativity bias, which makes potential threats feel more salient than possible benefits. The conversation highlights that when worry drives delegation choices, leaders stay over‑extended, limit their team’s growth, and still risk missing issues because they are spread too thin.

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Worry that things will go wrong, worry that we'll be accountable for something that goes sideways on our watch, or worried that something will get missed. And that worry is totally understandable. But so long as worry drives the decision, we'll stay stuck and we'll limit our team's ability to grow and develop. And you know what? There's still a chance that something could get missed. Because we are spread too thinly ourselves.
There's a good reason why this happens, and it's rooted in how our brains are wired. You see, we're naturally inclined to give more weight to what might go wrong than what might go right. Psychologists call it our negativity bias. It means if you're trying to decide whether to delegate something or step out of a particular meeting, your brain is naturally working against you. It's scanning the world out there for all of the threats, the risks, and the downsides.