If Everything Needs Your Approval, You're Actually The Problem

There’s a strange trap that good leaders can fall into.

You care about the quality of the work. You want things done properly. You feel accountable for the outcome.

So naturally, you stay close to what’s happening. You review the document. Approve the email. Check the presentation. Make the final decision. Get copied into the conversation. Ask to be kept in the loop. It feels responsible.

Until suddenly, everything is waiting for you. Your team is chasing approvals.

Decisions slow down when you’re in meetings. People stop taking initiative because they know you’ll probably change something anyway. And your calendar becomes so overloaded with operational decisions that you have no time left to actually lead.

Congratulations and well done! You’ve become the bottleneck.

And the uncomfortable part? You probably created it.

Control Can Look a Lot Like Good Leadership

Most leaders don’t wake up in the morning thinking, How can I micromanage my team today? It usually starts with good intentions. You want to help. You want to protect your team from mistakes. You know the organisation, the stakeholders or the work better than they do. And sometimes, yes, it genuinely is quicker to just do something yourself.

But quicker today can create dependency tomorrow.

Every time you unnecessarily step in, make the decision, rewrite the work or solve the problem, you potentially teach your team something you never intended:

Wait for me!

Over time, capable people start checking rather than deciding. They ask permission rather than using judgement. They bring problems rather than recommendations.

And then leaders complain that their people “aren’t taking enough ownership”.

But ownership is difficult when someone else keeps holding the steering wheel.

Ask Yourself: What Actually Needs Me?

One of the most useful questions a leader can ask is:

Does this genuinely need my involvement?

Not: Could I add value? Because if you’re experienced, you probably could.

Not: Would I do it differently? Of course you would.

The question is whether your involvement is actually necessary.

There will always be decisions that need to sit with you.

High-risk issues, strategic choices, sensitive people matters, significant financial commitments and decisions that carry broader organisational consequences may absolutely require your involvement. But the colour of a slide? The wording of an internal email? How someone structures a meeting? A relatively low-risk decision that sits comfortably within someone’s role? Probably not.

If your team has to climb three levels of approval to make a decision they are perfectly capable of making themselves, you don’t have good governance.

You have very expensive adults waiting for permission.

Stop Creating Approval Junkies

If you want people to think for themselves, you have to give them opportunities to actually do it. That means getting comfortable with decisions being made differently from how you would make them. This can be surprisingly difficult.

A team member might produce something that’s 90% of what you would have done. I get it, your instinct may be to jump in and “improve” the final 10%.

But ask yourself what that improvement actually achieves. Does it materially change the outcome? Or does it simply make the work look more like yours? Because there’s a big difference.

If the outcome is good, the risk is appropriate and the person can explain their thinking, sometimes the best leadership decision is to leave it alone. Not because you don’t care about quality. Because you care about capability.

Give People Guardrails, Not Handcuffs

Empowerment doesn’t mean telling your team, “Do whatever you want.” People need clarity. They need to understand the outcome you’re trying to achieve, what good looks like, the boundaries they’re operating within and when something genuinely needs to be escalated. Then give them room to move.

Try replacing: “Run it past me before you send it.”

With:

“You know what we’re trying to achieve. Use your judgement and send it when you’re comfortable.”

Replace : “What do you want me to do?”

With:

“What do you recommend?”

And instead of immediately solving every problem someone brings you, ask:

“If I wasn’t here, what would you do?”

That one question can tell you a lot. Sometimes your team already knows the answer.

They’ve simply become conditioned to ask you for it.

Your Job Is to Build Capability, Not Dependency

Leadership shouldn’t be measured by how indispensable you are. In fact, the opposite is often true. A strong leader can step away for a week and the team continues making good decisions. People know their responsibilities. They understand the priorities.

They have confidence in their judgement. And they know which decisions they can make themselves and which genuinely need escalation.

That doesn’t make the leader less valuable. It means they’ve done their job. Your value as a leader isn’t in being involved in everything. It’s in creating an environment where you don’t need to be. So this week, take a look at what’s coming across your desk.

What are you approving that someone else could own? What decisions are people unnecessarily waiting for you to make? Where are you stepping in because it genuinely adds value and where are you stepping in simply because that’s what you’ve always done? Then hand something back. Give someone the context, the boundaries and the authority to make the call. They might not do it exactly the way you would. That’s the point. Because if everything still needs you, you haven’t built a capable team. You’ve built a queue.

Want to know what your leadership habits might be telling your team? Complete the Leadership Reality Check and get a clearer picture of where you’re having an impact and where you might be getting in your own way. Click here - https://melissaboyd.scoreapp.com/

And if you’re ready to go deeper, How Not To Be A Shit Leader is packed with practical, real-world leadership lessons designed to help you become the kind of leader people genuinely want to work for https://www.melissaboyd.com.au/thebook