Leaders who position themselves as the sole problem-solver create a passive team and become a bottleneck. Instead of answering every question, ask "What does the process say?" and "What would you recommend?" to shift the team toward ownership and decision-making.
Stop being the smartest person in your office. It's not a flex, it's the reason your profit has slowed. If your team needs your permission for every tiny decision, you don't have a business, you've got a high-stress job. You've built a rescue culture where you're the hero and they're just the spectators. This question came from someone who joined our group, so we fixed it quickly. We replaced the open-door interruptions with a structured communication cadence. That's a posh way of saying we coached him how to speak proper, innit? He stopped answering his team's questions, and he started asking just two things: what does the process say? Or what would you recommend? Stop being the bottleneck, start being the owner.
