S02E09 - Letting Go Is Part of Leadership

One of the hardest lessons in leadership is learning to let go.

After years of solving problems, holding key relationships and being the person everyone relies on, being needed can become closely tied to a leader’s sense of value.

In this episode, I explore the indispensable leader playbook: holding onto knowledge, decisions and influence while wondering why everyone remains dependent on you. I also look at selective letting go, what happens when the business performs perfectly well in your absence, and why that success can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.

Letting go isn’t disappearing or abandoning responsibility. It’s creating enough space for other people to develop confidence, capability and judgement.

Because becoming less necessary doesn’t mean your leadership mattered less. It may be the clearest evidence that it worked.

This podcast is recorded on Wadjuk Noongar Country. I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this land and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to No One Told Me This. I'm Paul, and this is a podcast about leadership, teams, and workplace culture. Explored as they're actually experienced. We talk about the stuff no one really prepares you for. The assumptions we make, the tensions we avoid, and all of the mess in between. One of the hardest lessons in leadership is learning to let go. Not because leaders don't understand delegation, most do. It's difficult because after years of solving problems, building relationships, making decisions, and becoming the person everyone relies on, being needed can become part of your identity. And you become the person with the answers. The one who knows the history, who understands why things are the way they are, who people call when something goes wrong. And over time that can become deeply connected to how you understand your own value inside of the business. And so when the time comes to share your knowledge, to hand over authority or step back and allow somebody else to lead, the challenge is not always whether that person is capable or in fact the right person. Sometimes the challenge is actually getting out of their way. I'm Paul, and today I want to talk about something that can be surprisingly difficult for leaders. Letting go. Not leaving the business, not necessarily retiring, and not simply delegating a few tasks. I'm talking about the deeper version of letting go, allowing other people to know what you know, allowing them to build relationships that you traditionally owned, and allowing them to make decisions without checking every detail with you first. And perhaps most difficult of all, allowing them to prove that the business can function without your constant involvement. Because in theory, most leaders want that. They want capable people around them. And they want a team that can make decisions. And they want fewer things landing on their desk or in their inbox. And they want to take leave without checking their phone every 15 minutes. And they want a business, they want their business to keep moving when they're not there. But there can be a considerable gap between wanting those things and being emotionally comfortable when they actually happen. Leadership often begins with capability. You might know how to solve a problem, or you understand the customer, or you know the technical detail. Perhaps you can make that difficult call. And because you're capable, more things start to come your way. People seek your advice, they'll ask for your approval, they'll often bring you the difficult issues, and you become useful, then important, and then central, and eventually perhaps indispensable. Or at least that's how it can feel. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with being highly capable or widely trusted. But problems begin when a leader starts to believe that my value comes from being the person nobody else can do without. That belief can shape behavior in ways the leader may not even notice. So that can be holding on to important relationships or staying involved in decisions that no longer require them. Retaining knowledge that should have been shared years ago. Stepping in when someone else encounters a challenging or difficult task. They continue to act as the final checkpoint for work that other people are supposedly responsible for. And it's often not malicious. In fact, it may not even be conscious. And the leader may genuinely believe that they are helping, and they may think that they're maintaining quality or protecting the customer or reducing the risk to the business, making things easier for everyone. But the result is often the same. The business remains dependent on them, and the people around them never quite get the chance to become fully capable. There's a particular pattern that I've seen in businesses over the years. A leader will become frustrated that nobody else is taking enough responsibility. They feel overloaded. Everything comes back to them. They feel that they're constantly being interrupted or that they cannot take proper leave. They'll often complain that the team needs too much direction. But when someone does step up, the leader intervenes. They'll correct an approach, reopen a decision, take back a client relationship, or even redo or reissue work, or provide so many instructions that the other person is not really making the decision at all. And then the leader says, see, this is why I have to stay involved. And that is the indispensable playbook. The leader becomes overwhelmed by a dependency that they have helped create. And the dependency becomes proof that they are indispensable. It's a difficult cycle to break because it can feel like evidence of value. You know, the phone keeps ringing because you matter, or decisions keep coming to you because people trust you. The business needs you because you are important. But there's another way of interpreting that same situation. Perhaps too much knowledge sits with one person. Perhaps decision making has never truly been shared. Perhaps people have learnt that taking initiative carries more risk than waiting for approval. And perhaps the leader has become the bottleneck. Being valuable and being permanently necessary are not the same thing. Now sometimes leaders do let go, but only selectively. They release the burden while holding on to the parts that carry, you know, status or influence, identity. They may happily hand over administrative tasks, you know, routine operational problems or difficult staffing issues, reporting, follow-up, you know, the jobs that just consume time and energy. But they'll retain the important clients or the strategic conversations, the visible work, or final decisions. And the relationship, that, and the relationships that demonstrate their own importance. So the workload moves, but the authority to direct it does not. The inconvenience is delegated while the significance is retained. And that raises a useful question. What are you actually willing to let go of? Because handing over low-value work is not necessarily leadership development. Sometimes it's simply workload distribution. Real letting go usually involves something more powerful and far more meaningful. You know, that'll be a decision that matters, or a client relationship that actually carries influence. Knowledge that has traditionally made you the expert. A responsibility that allows another person to develop genuine judgment. And that can feel uncomfortable because it changes where the leader's value comes from. They are no longer the only person who knows, or the only person who decides, or the only person that the client trusts, or the only person who can fix it. There's actually another moment that can be even more revealing. And that is when a leader takes some time away from a business. Perhaps it's a long overdue holiday, perhaps they're unwell, maybe they're dealing with something outside of work, or perhaps they've simply made a deliberate decision to step back for a while. And interestingly, the business performs flawlessly. Decisions get made, problems get resolved, customers get looked after, and work continues. Nobody calls for hours or days. And that should feel like success. And it should be evidence that the leader has built great capability around them. And it should be proof that people understand their roles and they have enough confidence to act. But for some leaders, it can create a very different feeling. You know, well, why did the business not miss me? Nobody needed me. Perhaps I'm not in as important as I thought. And that can be surprisingly confronting, especially when being needed has become part of a leader's identity. But it can be what happens next that actually really matters. Now a leader may return and begin looking for problems. They might reopen discussions or decisions that were made in their absence, question how something might have been handled, bring themselves back into relationships, or you know, restore approval points that the team managed perfectly well when they weren't there. Sometimes they changed things simply because they were done differently. Not necessarily wrongly, just differently. You know, the team might have stepped up, the leader feels less necessary. So the leader steps back in. And the team learns not to step up again. I do want to make an important distinction here. Letting go does not mean disappearing. And it does not mean dumping responsibility onto someone else and hoping for the best outcome. It does not mean becoming unavailable. And it certainly does not mean blaming employees when things go wrong after they've been given insufficient context, support, or authority. I have seen leaders hold on to everything until they become completely overwhelmed. Then because they can no longer carry it all, they just abruptly push responsibility onto other people. And the handover is rushed if it exists at all. You know, expectations are unclear, that person may not have the information or authority to support that they or support that they need. And then if something goes wrong, the employee becomes the scapegoat, and the leader concludes that no one else is capable, so they take back control again. That is not letting go, that is abdication, closely followed by blame. Healthy letting go involves leadership, and it means setting clear expectations, sharing the context behind the work, and giving people genuine authority and being available for support. Allowing enough room for someone else to exercise judgment and allowing enough room for someone else to exercise judgment. The leader does not disappear. They simply stop making themselves the center of every outcome. I don't think the answer is a perfect delegation framework. This is not really a process problem, at least not entirely. It begins with being honest about what you fear losing. Is it control, status, relevance, connection, certainty? The sense that you are the person who matters most. And that may sound uncomfortable, but it is worth asking. Because it is difficult to change your behavior, a behaviour, when you've not acknowledged what that behavior is actually protecting. And the next step is to let go of something meaningful, not only the jobs you dislike or routine work. Choose something that gives another person a genuine opportunity to grow. And that could be a relationship, you know, decisions, a piece of organizational knowledge, or responsibility with visible consequences. But then it's important to be clear about what is being handed over. You know, what outcome actually matters? What authority does the person have? Where are the boundaries when they can or should seek support? And what decisions are genuinely theirs to make. Then comes the difficult part. Stay available without taking it all back. Someone will approach the work differently. They may take longer, they may ask questions, and they may make choices that you would not have. And there will be moments when stepping in feels faster or safer. But if you reclaim the work every time that there is discomfort, you're not developing another leader. You're just reinforcing the idea that difficult work eventually returns to you. So support them, coach them, share your experience, and genuinely ask useful questions. But resist the urge to stop turning support into control. And when someone handles something well without you, treat that as success. Not as evidence that you are no longer valuable. Not as proof that you've become irrelevant. But as evidence that your leadership has created capability beyond yourself. Letting go does not mean you stop contributing. It just means that the nature of your contribution changes. Perhaps your value was once in having the answers. Now it may be in helping someone else think through a problem. Perhaps it was once in protecting every client relationship. Now it may be creating the conditions for others to earn that trust. Perhaps it was once making every decision. Whereas now it may be about building the judgment of people who will make those decisions without you. Leadership value should not come from being the only person capable of doing something. It should come from making more people capable of doing it well. And yes, there may come a time when the phone rings less often, or when fewer decisions require your approval, or when the team can solve problems without involving you. When you take leave and the business runs perfectly well. And that does not mean that your contribution matters any less. So perhaps the real test of letting go is this. When the people around you prove they can succeed without your constant involvement, can you feel proud of what you've built? Or do you feel threatened by how little they appeared to need you? Because letting go is not only about transferring responsibility, it's about becoming comfortable with no longer being at the centre of everything. And that is part of leadership too. Okay, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening to No One Tell Me This. If it landed, send it to someone else trying to lead without completely losing the play. You can follow the show for more on its conversations around leadership and some more let's go.