Free Up Senior Leaders to Plan and Guide

Senior leaders need to look up and out, not down and in. Their job is to create space and provide direction, not to micromanage. One of the most valuable things they can give their junior leaders is time. Time to think. Time to act. Time to win. Think of time like ammunition. If you give junior leaders clear objectives and a little room, they’ll make the right calls and often exceed your expectations. They’ll appreciate the trust, and they’ll operate faster and smarter than a system bogged down by approvals.

This shift is hard for some senior leaders. They fear letting go and losing control. I’ve been there myself. As a construction superintendent, I was passionate about the exterior of our buildings—the part of the project that felt like my signature. On one project with uncommon materials and methods, I hesitated to delegate oversight to my assistant. The stakes felt too high, and I worried he wouldn’t capture my vision. But I took a step back and focused on communicating my intent—what I wanted the exterior to achieve in terms of quality and impact. We discussed it thoroughly, aligning on the bigger picture. Over the next six months, he performed brilliantly, coming back only to clarify intent, never asking, “What do I do now?” His success freed me to focus on broader project strategy, and the exterior turned out better than I could have managed alone.

Stepping back can also unlock strategic wins that wouldn’t happen otherwise. As a director of facilities in the sports industry, I wanted to reduce game-day incident response times without disrupting other critical operations. Instead of dictating a solution, I shared my intent with my direct report and her engineers, two levels down: cut response times by five minutes over a series of games. I didn’t care how they did it, as long as it preserved game-day flow. I let them experiment, even fail, over a few games. When results fell short, I held the manager accountable—not by micromanaging, but by reviewing our intent and offering direction while encouraging creativity. They embraced a Plan, Do, Check, Adjust rhythm, refining their approach until they nailed it. The outcome? A lasting reduction in response times that the team continues to improve, driven by a shared sense of purpose.

Another time, as a Troop Commander in the Army, I seized an unexpected strategic opportunity by stepping back. I tasked four lieutenants with developing a Close Quarters Combat training regimen, culminating in a squad-versus-squad competition to boost the Troop’s close-range lethality. My guidance was simple: make it happen in 10 weeks. I didn’t dictate the details—just the intent. Each week, we reviewed progress, refining their plans while keeping my hands off. Working from my vision, they created smaller training events to build proficiency, preparing the Troop for the final competition. The result was a sharper, more lethal unit. But the real win was unplanned: those lieutenants learned to plan and resource their own training events, skills that made them far stronger commanders. By giving them space, I enabled junior leader empowerment that paid dividends beyond the original goal, proving that effective leadership skills grow when senior leaders trust their teams to deliver.

The truth is, trying to control everything limits growth. Stepping back doesn’t mean checking out—it means investing time in strategic thinking, in developing people, and in steering the long-term direction. By letting go, you’re building a decentralized leadership culture where everyone thrives.

**Actionable Practices**:
- Stop approving things someone else can own.
- Block time for strategic planning every week.
- Model intent-based leadership: share what matters, then let your team run with it.
- When delegating, discuss your intent upfront and encourage questions to clarify the vision.
- Set a clear goal tied to intent, allow room for failure, and use feedback to guide innovation.
- Assign a high-impact project to junior leaders with minimal guidance, reviewing progress to foster their strategic skills.