Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Most business leaders believe their team is the problem.
[00:00:03] That if team engagement was higher, if accountability was stronger, if team performance improved, everything would work. But that's not the problem. The problem is how you've designed decision making. And more specifically, your leadership system is training your team to wait for you.
[00:00:23] Welcome to the High Impact Leader Podcast, a leadership podcast for business owners and leaders who want self managing teams, stronger accountability and scalable performance without carrying everything themselves. If you're ready to focus on leadership design, not just effort, you're in the right place. Hey, I'm Brendan Rogers. Let's set the scene. You've built a team, you've hired capable people, you've trained them, and yet they keep coming back to you.
[00:00:53] What should I do?
[00:00:55] Can you approve this? Should I wait for you? And the assumption starts forming. My team isn't ready.
[00:01:03] They don't take ownership.
[00:01:05] But that's not what's happening. Your team is responding exactly as they've been trained to respond.
[00:01:12] And when ownership and accountability aren't consistent, team engagement starts to drop with it.
[00:01:18] Behind the scenes, your team has learned three things.
[00:01:23] Some decisions are theirs, some decisions need you, and some decisions you'll override anyway. So they choose the safest option. They ask you. And not because they're incapable, because your system makes that the lowest risk move. These aren't random behaviors. These are leadership patterns. And your team is responding to them.
[00:01:47] There's a hidden cost to all this, and this is where it compounds.
[00:01:51] Decision making slows you become the bottleneck. Team performance drops, your team stops thinking ahead and innovation disappears. And over time, this doesn't just affect team performance, it increases your leadership load.
[00:02:08] Everything starts flowing through you. And eventually you can't step away without things stalling. And it's not because your team can't decide. It's because your leadership design taught them not to.
[00:02:21] So here's an assumption we need to break.
[00:02:24] You don't have a capability problem, you have a leadership design problem.
[00:02:30] Let's make this practical. These are the leadership patterns that quietly destroy accountability and create dependency.
[00:02:38] Pattern one is the reversal.
[00:02:41] You ask someone to make a decision, they make it, then you change it. That moment teaches. Don't decide. Wait.
[00:02:50] Pattern two is escalation by default.
[00:02:54] Bring me solutions, not just problems. It sounds strong, but it often creates more work and more risk for them. So instead of building ownership, they escalate early.
[00:03:05] Pattern three is a classic the open door trap.
[00:03:09] My door is always open.
[00:03:11] What your team hears come to me first. And over time, you stop leading through people and Start leading around them.
[00:03:19] Pattern four is inconsistency.
[00:03:22] Sometimes you support their decision and sometimes you don't. There's no consistency, no clarity. So your team stops trying to interpret and just ask instead.
[00:03:35] Now none of this is intentional, but it is structural. And structure always wins over intention. Because scalable leadership isn't about doing more. It's about designing how decisions get made without you.
[00:03:50] If you want self managing teams, stronger accountability and consistent team performance, you have to design where decisions sit.
[00:04:00] Lets break this into four levels. The first level is the team decides so they own the decision you support and not direct.
[00:04:09] Use this for day to day operations.
[00:04:12] Level 2 is recommend you approve so they bring options. You make the final call.
[00:04:19] You can use this for financial or client risk decisions.
[00:04:23] Level three is decide together so there's shared thinking, collaborative decision making and you can use this for strategic or more complex areas.
[00:04:34] And level four, this is where the leader decides you own it. Use this for vision, hiring, firing and direction of the team and business.
[00:04:44] In my experience, most teams operate between level two and level three. And that's where confusion lives.
[00:04:51] That's where accountability breaks down.
[00:04:54] Now this is what leadership design looks like in practice. It creates leadership clarity, it reduces leadership load and it improves how you lead through people and not around them.
[00:05:06] Now here's an audit you can do yourself. Look at your last week.
[00:05:10] Every time someone came to you with a decision, ask this question, should this have been theirs? If yes, what made them bring it to you?
[00:05:20] What was unclear and what risk were they avoiding?
[00:05:25] Because without clarity, your team defaults to managing up instead of owning outcomes.
[00:05:31] Here's a couple of objections that I hear quite often. The first one is what if they make bad decisions? Well the answer is they will. That's part of building ownership and accountability.
[00:05:43] A controlled mistake inside a clear structure builds far more capability than constant approval ever will.
[00:05:51] And the second objection? I don't have time to explain all this.
[00:05:55] Well you don't have time not to because right now you're carrying the leadership load for every unclear decision. And this isn't a one off fix, it's a leadership rhythm that you build over time.
[00:06:08] Now you can start here with this practical reset.
[00:06:12] Answer these three questions. What decisions should my team fully own?
[00:06:18] What decisions require recommendation and approval and what decisions do I keep?
[00:06:24] Then take one decision area and move it down one level. Test it, refine it and build from there.
[00:06:32] And if you're recognizing this leadership pattern in your business right now, here's what I want you to understand.
[00:06:38] This isn't a team problem.
[00:06:40] It's not a motivation problem and it's not a capability problem. It's a leadership design problem.
[00:06:48] And leadership design problems have leadership design solutions.
[00:06:52] Because when decision making isn't clear, ownership and accountability don't happen, team engagement drops and team performance becomes inconsistent.
[00:07:04] If you want help unpacking this properly and reducing your leadership load so you can build self managing teams with stronger accountability, higher team engagement, and more consistent team performance, this is exactly what we work through inside the high impact leader club. It's where business owners and leaders build scalable leadership through structure, not pressure.
[00:07:26] Inside, we unpack leadership patterns, create leadership clarity, improve decision making and install a leadership rhythm that supports real ownership across your team. If that's the shift you're ready to make, go to LeaderByDesign AUClub and take a look.
[00:07:43] So in summary, your team isn't waiting because they lack capability.
[00:07:48] They're waiting because your decision making structure hasn't given them clarity. And without clarity, ownership and accountability don't happen and team performance will always rely on you.
[00:08:01] So the question isn't how do I get my team to step up, it's how do I design decision making so they can design the decision rights?
[00:08:10] Create clarity and reduce your leadership load. And watch what happens when your team starts owning decisions without you in the middle. That's what high impact leadership looks like.
[00:08:22] If this resonated, share it with another leader who's carrying too much decision making. And remember, design your leadership, build your team, lead with impact.
