Steve LowiszFounder of Guide, Don’t Drive™ Leadership | Keynote Speaker |

They Weren’t Incapable. They Were Trained to Wait

31 Jul 2026 · 2 min

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1:41

In this monologue, the speaker recounts a recent incident where his team, despite having all necessary information and experience, delayed action for three days while waiting for his return to make a decision. He explains that the delay was not due to lack of capability but because he had previously trained the team to defer to him, creating a dependency and a habit of second‑guessing. He identifies this as a control problem masquerading as a quality concern, acknowledging that the team likely could have resolved the issue more effectively on their own. The speaker calls for reflection on how leaders unintentionally foster such waiting behavior and emphasizes the need to empower teams to make autonomous decisions.

Chapters

I was away when a client issue came up, and this isn't too long ago, so this is relevant, this is recent. And again, I see this all the time. My team had all the information. I wasn't involved in with the client, I wasn't involved with the project with the client. They had all the facts, they had the, the day-to-day operational relationship with the client. They actually knew the options we could take to solve for the issue that had come up. They had more than enough experience with the client, with the situation, with what we needed to achieve in that situation. They had all of that. And yet, yet they waited 3 days for me to return to make the call on what they should do. Now, here's the truth that I want you to really contemplate, even for you. They were not incapable. They were trained. To wait. I trained them to wait based on the environment and the way in which I created the dependency of second-guessing their decisions in previous times while I was gone that were similar to that. They remember that stuff. This is real. And really what it came down to in that particular situation, I had a control problem. That was guised or disguised as a quality issue. I wanted it done a certain way. I think they would have probably solved it with a better outcome than even the way I ended up solving that situation, and then learned from that to try not to do that again, right? So we've got to be reflective on