Your Leadership Team Should Not Need You to Finish Its Work

Find the dependency before approving the plan

As 2027 budgets move toward approval, examine an assumption that rarely appears in the numbers: how much executive intervention does the plan require?

A commercial leader needs you to settle pricing disputes. An operations leader brings recurring resource conflicts without a recommendation. Two peers wait for you to negotiate their trade-off. Each intervention may look reasonable. Together, they create a business that cannot move at the pace its plan assumes.

This is a useful focus for executive coaching. Not whether you should delegate more in general. Whether your behavior repeatedly moves responsibility away from the person who should carry it.

The classic Harvard Business Review article “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” describes how a manager can take ownership of a subordinate’s problem during an apparently helpful exchange. Its enduring distinction is between helping someone address a problem and accepting responsibility for the next move.^[1]

Before signing off on additional headcount or a more demanding growth target, ask where your calendar is compensating for an unresolved operating problem. More resources will not necessarily remove that dependency.

Separate necessary intervention from habitual rescue

Some decisions belong with you. Material capital commitments, significant legal exposure, and enterprise-wide trade-offs may require your authority. Coaching should not encourage you to step away from accountability.

The issue is what happens before and after you intervene.

Consider a division leader who asks you to resolve a delivery failure. You contact the customer, negotiate a revised commitment, and direct the recovery. The immediate risk falls. But who now owns the relationship? Who must explain the missed commitment? Who will handle the next failure?

If those answers remain unclear, the rescue has created another dependency.

For two weeks, keep a brief record of your own interventions. Note the issue, its accountable owner, why it reached you, what you did, and who held the next action afterward. Use existing work examples. Do not create a monitoring exercise for the team.

Review that record with your coach. Distinguish among decisions requiring your authority, temporary support during a genuine capability gap, and work you took over because doing it yourself felt faster or safer.

The distinction matters. The first needs clear governance. The second needs development or a staffing decision. The third requires a change in your behavior.

Change the terms of escalation

Telling executives to “bring solutions, not problems” can discourage early warnings. That is not the objective. People should raise material risks promptly, even when they do not yet have an answer.

Instead, define what different escalations require.

An urgent risk may need immediate attention with incomplete information. A routine commercial disagreement should normally arrive with a named owner, viable options, a recommendation, and the specific decision needed from you. A cross-functional dispute should make the enterprise trade-off explicit rather than ask you to referee competing preferences.

Research and practice described in “Who’s Got the D?” emphasize the value of distinguishing roles in decisions, including who recommends, provides input, decides, and executes.^[2] Apply that discipline to the few recurring decisions consuming disproportionate executive time. Avoid turning every interaction into a procedure.

Then rehearse a different response with your coach: “I will make the investment decision. You retain responsibility for the recommendation and implementation. What input do you need from me before returning on Thursday?”

That response provides support without taking over. It also makes the next action and its owner visible.

Test whether the business needs less rescuing

A coaching engagement should produce evidence beyond your feeling less overloaded.

Choose one recurring decision category for a four-week test. Clarify authority, financial boundaries, escalation triggers, and the accountable owner. Tell the team what you will stop doing and where you remain available. Keep required approvals intact.

Review whether decisions reached closure without being reopened by you. Check whether risks surfaced early enough. Examine whether the accountable executive followed through after receiving advice. Treat mistakes within agreed boundaries as material for review, not automatic grounds for taking the work back.

“In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” argues that effective leadership involves recognizing personal limits and drawing on others’ strengths.^[3] Here, that means resisting the temptation to prove your value by being the best problem-solver in every situation.

If the same work still returns to you, investigate the cause. Authority may be unclear. Incentives may conflict. The role may exceed someone’s current capability. Your own reversals may have taught people to wait.

The goal is not fewer conversations with you. It is clearer accountability and a leadership team that can carry the plan without relying on your repeated rescue.