I tried not to micromanage. I gave my team room to operate while keeping the critical decisions close.
The output of my department reflected on me. So I rode the line—trying to give them freedom while making sure nothing slipped through without oversight.
But I wasn't putting enough trust in them. And they felt it.
How Dependency Quietly Forms
The questions never stopped. "How should I approach this?" "What do you think about this direction?" "Can you review this before I move forward?"
I answered every one. I wanted them to succeed. But the more I helped, the more dependent they became—not on my strategy or vision, but on me as the structure holding their work together.
I'd become the foundation they built on instead of the authority they executed under.
And somewhere along the way, the dynamic shifted.
When I did give direction, they questioned it. When I made a decision, they worked around it.
They needed me constantly, but they didn't respect my authority.
I was exhausted from holding everyone up. And they were resentful that I wouldn't just let them go.
The Authority Breakdown
- The relationship shifted from leadership to caretaking dependency. They needed me but resented needing me.
- When I gave them room to operate, they still came back with questions that felt like hand-holding.
- The more available I made myself, the more dependent they became.
- Over time, when I did assert direction, they started questioning it or finding ways to work around it.
- My authority was challenged when they made decisions without me, but then they still needed me for everything else.
This is an authority problem rooted in structure.
Becoming the System Instead of Governing It
I gave up authority without realizing it.
Not through big moments of failure, but through a thousand small acts of being too available, solving too many problems, holding too much of the structure myself.
When you become the foundation people need to get work done, you stop being the authority they execute under.
The dependency wasn't malicious. I created it by not trusting them fully, keeping critical work close, answering every question instead of making them figure it out, staying involved when I should have been governing from a distance.
The issue wasn't that I didn't have good people.
The issue was that I didn't have the structure to enable their independence—clear onboarding, well-defined expectations, documented processes that let them operate without me.
What This Looks Like for Tech Leaders
For tech leaders, this looks like: you still own every architectural decision, but you're also answering every ticket-level question and debugging every interpersonal conflict in the team.
So they leaned on me.
And the more they leaned, the more I felt like I had to hold them up.
And the more I held them up, the less they respected my direction.
Over time, I wasn't leading. I was compensating.
Overexplaining to make up for lost confidence. Trying to convince instead of direct.
Authority Is Established Through Structure
Authority isn't granted.
It's established—internally first, then confirmed externally and then maintained through structure.
I lost it internally by not trusting my ability to systemize.
And everything I did systemize, I still babysat.
The real way to build structure is to put systems in place and stop protecting them from feedback.
Unfavorable outcomes give you data.
You use that data to make incremental improvements over time instead of trying to fix everything at once.
Letting Systems Fail to Actually Lead
You have to let go of the expectation that everything will be perfect and allow consistency to stack so that favorable outcomes begin to happen more reliably.
I didn't do that. I held on.
And by holding on, I became the system instead of governing it.
I finally saw the pattern when I realized I was more exhausted from managing my team than from doing the actual work.
The Shift Back to Authority
The shift didn't happen overnight.
But I started doing one thing differently: when someone came to me with a question, I stopped giving them the full explanation.
I answered what they asked—nothing more.
If they needed more context, they had to dig for it. I stopped volunteering information.
At first, it felt wrong. Like I was withholding help.
But what actually happened was they started figuring things out on their own.
They asked better questions.
They came to me less, but when they did, it was for the right reasons.
Governing Systems Instead of Babysitting Them
I also stopped babysitting the systems I'd put in place.
I documented the process, set the expectation, and let it run.
When something failed, I didn't jump in immediately.
I let the data come back first, then made adjustments.
Some things broke. Some outcomes were unfavorable.
But those failures gave me the information I needed to improve the system incrementally instead of trying to perfect it upfront.
The team started operating with more independence.
And I started getting my authority back—not by demanding it, but by stepping back and letting the structure do the work I'd been doing manually.
The Real Reason Teams Can’t Execute
When your team can't execute what you know needs to be done, it's rarely because they don't understand the strategy.
It's because you've given up authority without realizing it.
By being too available. By solving their problems for them. By becoming the structure they need instead of the authority they execute under.
Authority is established internally first—by trusting your ability to build systems and letting those systems do the work you've been doing manually.
When you hold on too tightly, you don't protect the outcome. You become the bottleneck. And the team stops seeing you as the leader and starts seeing you as the dependency.
