The big calls are yours to make. When the small ones keep coming back to you too, your leadership team stops thinking for itself.
I just wrapped up nine workshops in two weeks across three MNCs and organisations.
One of the leaders put up her hand with a problem I hear in almost every room.
“My team keeps coming to me for instructions. How to do this, how to do that. All the time.”
I asked her what she does when that happens.
“I just tell them what to do.”
Half the room nodded. I see the same habit at the top, in more polished words. Issues get escalated “for alignment.” Leadership teams bring problems to the CEO without a recommendation attached. The boss decides, everyone moves on, and next week it happens again.
Why we keep answering
Let’s be honest about why we do it. Answering works in the short term. It’s faster than coaching someone through the problem. It feels helpful. And for most senior leaders, having the answer is what got them promoted in the first place.
So the habit gets rewarded every day. That said, there is a cost to every behaviour. And in this case, the cost will show up later, and it rarely gets traced back to the leader.
What each answer costs
- The first cost is thinking. When the answer always comes from you, your team stops working things out, and over time, you build a team that waits.
- The second is accountability. If you made the call and it goes wrong, whose fault is it? Yours. They were only following what you said.
- The third lands on you. Your calendar fills with decisions that belong two levels down, and strategy waits while you approve things.
- The fourth is the most expensive. The people you’re meant to be growing into your successors never get the practice.
In another session, a leader told me what happened when her high-performing boss left. The team had relied on her for every number. When she left, the whole team crippled.
Some decisions are yours and should stay yours: where the business is going, and the big bets that get it there. The cost comes from everything else that reaches you.
Why it spreads
Only 14% of people in Singapore are engaged at work, against 25% across Southeast Asia and 20% globally. A recent Gallup and Singapore Institute of Directors report puts the cost at around S$95 billion a year in lost productivity, and finds that 70% of the difference in team engagement comes down to the direct manager.
Managers learn how to lead by watching the people above them. If the top of the organisation answers every question, everyone below learns to do the same. What you get is a business running at five out of ten, doing the bare minimum because the thinking belongs to someone else.
The behaviour shift
Leadership development comes down to behaviour. Most leaders already know they should ask more and tell less. The hard part is doing it at 9am on a Monday, when someone walks in with a problem and you already know the answer.
The first shift is from answering to asking. When an issue comes to you, your first response is a question. “What do you recommend?” Make it the standard way issues are raised in your leadership meetings, so people arrive with a view as well as the problem.
The second is from deciding everything to agreeing who decides. Sit down with your leadership team and agree which decisions sit where. Direction and the big bets stay with you. Most of the rest moves down a level.
The third is from rescuing to letting them own it. When someone makes a call you wouldn’t have made, hold back unless the risk is real. Ownership includes the mistakes, and that’s how judgment gets built.
It is slower at the start. You will feel the urge to jump in. That’s the habit talking.
There’s a related conversation about standards and capability: whether your team knows what good looks like and has the skills to get there. That deserves its own issue. This one is about what you do when the question lands on you.
What you get back
I learned this the hard way. When I was Managing Director of a music business, I built a team almost from scratch in the middle of COVID. The first year was rough. My team kept checking with me, and I kept answering.
Change took time. And it's both ways, my team and myself as a leader. Every day, I asked more questions and gave fewer answers.
A few years in, a global artist came to town for a five-day brand shoot. Then his management kept adding things: an album announcement, then a regional press conference with media flown in from across Asia. We had a team of about 15.
Fewer moments when the team waited for instructions. People told me the truth when things weren’t okay. Everyone was out on ground duty. And in the four, five years I truly had a solid team who worked with strong accountability and ownership.
That’s the return on every answer you hold back: a team that tells you the truth and takes ownership without being asked. A business running at eight out of ten, with the leader’s time spent on the big calls.
One question for your leadership team
If you were away for a month, which decisions would wait for you, and which of those should?
If this is happening in your organisation, I’d like to hear what you’re seeing.
I work with senior leaders and leadership teams across Asia to build stronger leaders and better-performing teams, through strengths-based coaching, executive coaching and leadership workshops. If you’re thinking about what’s next for your leaders, let’s talk.
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