You’re on holiday and something breaks at work. You drive back, you fix it, everyone applauds. And you feel it too: you were needed, and it worked.
That applause is where it goes wrong. Praise is a signal: it tells the whole organisation what actually gets rewarded. You learn that you’re the one who always shows up. Your team learns that the call is yours, not theirs. Your own boss learns that you’ll handle it.
This isn’t ego, or hardly ever. It’s identity. If you’ve been the reliable one for years, stepping back doesn’t feel modest. It feels irresponsible. Which is why deciding to delegate more isn’t enough on its own: you can tell your team to take more ownership and still sit on the context they’d need to act on it.
So prove your commitment some other way. Share context before there’s a crisis. Say out loud who gets to decide what. And next time, before you get in the car, ask your colleagues one question: what do you need to handle this without me?
