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Have you ever noticed that moment after you step out of a meeting, when progress seems to pause until you return? Decisions wait, conversations stall, and capable people hesitate. That’s often the first flicker of awareness that decision-making has reorganized itself around you.
I’ve lived this pattern, and I think we’ve all experienced it in some way in our lives. I see it repeatedly in the leaders I coach, too. These are not weak or inexperienced leaders; they are trusted, competent, and deeply conscientious. But how does this pattern form in the first place?
It's typically not through a single misstep, but through a series of small, reasonable choices that accumulate over time: that extra check-in; the decision you tidy up; one risk you absorb so no one else has to; that moment where stepping in feels safer than stepping back. It becomes “the way we do the work,” and over time, that solidifies into your team’s unspoken operating system.
No one sets out with the intention to disempower anyone, or to become an indispensable bottleneck. Yet many leaders become the place where everyone’s fear comes to rest. This isn’t a delegation failure. It’s a signal that fear is moving through your system, and you’ve become the reliable container for it.
The Story We Don’t Realize We’re Telling
Years ago, I worked with a senior leader who prided herself on being the calm port in the storm. In meetings, she leaned forward, listened closely, and asked sharp questions. When something felt unresolved, she stepped in, often with a sentence that began, “Why don’t we just…”
Her team adored her, and they brought her everything, not because they were incapable, but because over time, they’d learned that clarity would certainly come from her if they waited. She would synthesize, decide, and make it feel safer to wait for her input. They weren’t avoiding responsibility; they were responding to a well-worn pattern.
She came to our first executive coaching meeting frustrated. “I know I’m not supposed to own all of this,” she said, “and yet, when I don’t step in, I feel like I'm being negligent.”
That word matters more than it first appears.
When Identity Overrides Role
Most leaders understand their role intellectually. They can describe it clearly and can point to job descriptions, mandates, and governance structures. But what often runs the show isn’t found in these leadership toolkits, structures, models, and frameworks that are meant to distribute responsibility. What does run the show? Identity. Or more specifically, a certain limiting belief about what leadership is.
For example, if somewhere along the way you learned that being seen as valuable meant being the helpful person who steps in early, or the one who sees risks before others do, then this pattern makes sense. Some might call it jumping to solution, people-pleasing, over-functioning, or carrying the emotional and decision-making load for others. But whatever label you use, it isn’t a flaw; it’s a protective strategy that once worked beautifully for you. And now that the game has changed, along with the leadership context, this strategy has become a liability.
High-performance leadership asks for something different. It asks you to tolerate the unresolved space; to let others struggle a little and learn along the way, while you try your best to remain present without absorbing or overriding.
To be clear, this isn’t a delegation issue; it’s an identity negotiation. When fear pulls decisions upward, authority and accountability drift out of alignment. Decision-making isn't happening at the right level, so leaders end up holding calls that should sit closer to the work, robbing their employees of the chance to build judgment, confidence, and accountability muscles.
The Signals We Send
Our teams are highly perceptive. They interpret posture, tone, pacing, non-verbals, and micro-expressions, and react to the unspoken trans-contextual information that lives between the cold, hard facts. Then they use it to make sense of their own roles and objectives.
When you lean in too fast, finish sentences, rescue awkward pauses, or offer solutions before the problem has been fully unfolded, you aren’t being inefficient. From your point of view, you may feel that you’re being generous. But this kind of generosity, left unexamined, does more than shape behaviour; it erodes confidence. Over time, people begin to doubt their own judgment, second-guess their instincts, or disengage altogether. Individual initiative gives way to collective caution, and responsibility is deferred upward, not because people don’t care, but because they can no longer trust themselves to get it right.
Over time, the message received is unmistakable: "Bring it to me. I’ve got this."
When Competence Creates Dependence
No one becomes a bottleneck intentionally. You deliver under pressure, respond quickly, and steady things when they wobble. Each time you do, your organization learns something important about you; not just that you are capable, but that they can safely hand things off to you. Over time, decisions, risks, and unresolved issues begin to gravitate in your direction. Eventually, more and more gets routed to you, not because others can't carry it, but because you have consistently shown that you will. What began as reliability slowly turns into dependence.
The cost is not only the additional workload that should be done by those under you. It's also relational. When leaders hold too much, teams stay smaller than they need to be, confidence weakens, initiative dulls, and people look upward rather than outward or inward.
This is not really about being dependable, having a good work ethic, or wanting to be in control for its own sake; those are downstream effects. At its core, the pattern is driven by the need to regulate fear and identity, which is why it persists, even in highly capable teams.
Here are the typical drivers I see in the leaders I coach. It's common for a few to overlap, and you may recognise more than one in play for you:
Self-soothing through intervention
Jumping in reduces uncertainty and can help settle the nervous system. You feel calmer once you’ve checked, clarified, or corrected. That relief is real and immediate, which makes the behaviour sticky.Fear-based verification
“I’ll just take a look.” “Let me sanity-check that.” “I want to make sure this won’t blow back on us.” This is less about mistrust of others and more about mistrust of outcomes in a system where consequences feel personal.Identity reinforcement
Stepping in confirms a deeply held belief that you add value by being sharp, early, and right. Not stepping in can feel like abdication of responsibility, unnecessary exposure, or even downright negligence.Contextual threat amplification
In many organisations, risk is personalised. Bonuses, reputations, and roles feel precarious, so leaders absorb responsibility because the system rewards those who do. Over time, the costs show up clearly in slower decisions, thinner benches, and leaders who can’t step away without work stalling.
A Different Way to Hold Your Leadership Role
The shift isn’t about doing less, it’s about holding your role differently. It starts with noticing the moment just before you step in: the breath you take; the urge to tidy things up; the familiar sense that it would be easier if you just handled it yourself.
That moment is where the work actually lives. Stay with it. Letting the room feel unfinished. Ask a question instead of offering an answer. Sit back in your chair, literally and metaphorically. This is leadership presence, not leadership absence, even if it may feel counterintuitive at first.
Your Coaching Challenge
For the next five working days, treat this as an observation practice, not a behaviour change exercise. Each day, deliberately observe yourself in action as you move through your workday. Watch for one moment where work, decisions, or emotional weight start to move toward you by default. When it happens, slow the moment down and make note of the following:
What specifically is being handed to me right now, a decision, a risk, reassurance, or responsibility?
What belief or fear gets activated in me that makes stepping in feel necessary or safer?
What signal might I be sending, intentionally or not, that draws this toward me?
What is the smallest possible way I could stay present here without absorbing or resolving this for them?
Where does this decision or judgment properly belong in the system, and what would help it exist at a lower level, instead of with me?
Do not intervene or do anything differently yet; just notice. The goal is to build your awareness about how fear, identity, and habit shape your leadership posture in real time.
At the end of the week, reflect on this question: Where have I been acting as the container for other people’s uncertainty, and what is that costing my team, and me?
You are not being asked to let go of care or standards. You are being invited to decide more consciously what is truly yours to carry.
If this pattern feels familiar and you’re curious about how to shift it without losing your sense of care and accountability, reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.