Chris March’s Post

You think being the go-to person makes you valuable. It doesn't. It makes you a bottleneck. Your calendar is packed with back-to-back meetings. That proposal you promised yourself you'd finish three weeks ago? Still sitting in your drafts folder. Your best people leave because high performers don't want a micromanager hovering over their shoulder. They want autonomy. You're bleeding talent while you approve expense reports. Your health tanks from constant context switching. You haven't slept a full night in months. Your body's running on cortisol and cold brew. You took one afternoon off last month and came back to 47 Slack messages and a minor crisis. That's not leadership. That's dependency. Their mistakes are cheaper than your burnout. The uncomfortable truth? You're not protecting the business by being everywhere. You're protecting your identity as the person who has all the answers. Every time you step in to fix something, you're training your team that they can't be trusted. That they should wait for you. That their judgment isn't good enough. You're not just creating dependency. You're teaching it. Real leadership isn't about being the answer to everything. It's about building a team that doesn't need you for every decision. It's about becoming obsolete in the day-to-day so you can finally focus on what actually moves the needle. So what decision are you making this week that you'll still be making a year from now because you're too scared to let someone else own it? P.S. If you're stuck in this cycle and want help breaking out, send me a DM. I work with leaders to build systems that let them lead rather than just react.