You’ve probably had a moment on your team where someone brings you a piece of work, and as soon as you look at it, you know it’s not right.
You’ve talked about this with them a million times. You’ve repeatedly given feedback. Maybe this is someone you trust and genuinely believe is capable of doing good work.
And yet here you are again.
You fix it or clarify what you were expecting. Then you go back to work and are left wondering why they still don’t seem to get it.
That can get frustrating fast.
But before you decide the person isn’t taking ownership, I think there’s another question worth asking: Do they have enough of what’s in your head to make the decision the way you would?
You know more than you realize
When you’ve been leading a business for a while, you develop an instinct for it.
You know when a client needs a phone call instead of another email. You can look at a draft and immediately see what feels off. You know which details matter and when something needs more attention before it goes out the door.
Most of that didn’t come from a handbook. You learned it by being in the business.
Over time, those decisions become so familiar that you may forget how much context sits underneath them.
Your team doesn’t automatically have that context.
They may know the task. They may have heard your feedback. They may even understand the outcome you want. But if they don’t understand how you’re evaluating the work, why certain decisions matter, or where they have the authority to use their own judgment, they’re going to keep coming back to you.
And eventually, both sides get frustrated.
You’re wondering why they still need so much from you.
They’re trying to figure out what you’re seeing that they keep missing.
Handing off work isn’t the same as creating ownership
This is one of the places where delegation can get confusing.
You can give someone responsibility for a task and still hold most of the information they need to truly own it.
Maybe they know what to do but not how you define done well. Maybe they’re responsible for the outcome but don’t know which decisions they’re allowed to make without checking with you. Maybe they’ve heard your feedback on individual situations, but no one has helped them understand the pattern underneath it.
So the work technically belongs to someone else, while the thinking still belongs to you.
That arrangement can work for a while. As the business grows, it gets harder.
You become the person everyone needs before something can move. Your team starts second-guessing decisions because they don’t want to get it wrong. Projects slow down while people wait for your input, and you keep stepping back into work you thought you had already handed off.
At some point, the question becomes less about how much you’ve delegated and more about how much of the business your team can understand and move forward without you.
Pay attention to where you keep getting pulled back in
This is where I’d get curious.
Think about the places where you keep saying some version of, “I thought we already talked about this.”
What kind of work keeps coming back for another round of clarification? Where are you still making the final decision because no one else seems comfortable doing it? What do you continue reviewing because you don’t quite trust that it will be handled the way you expect?
Those patterns may be showing you where more clarity is needed.
Sometimes the answer is a clearer process. Sometimes someone needs more context around the business or the client. Sometimes ownership hasn’t been defined well enough. And sometimes you need to explain the thinking behind your decisions rather than correcting the decision after it’s already been made.
That takes more time on the front end, but it gives your team a much better chance of growing into real ownership.
Your business gets stronger when the thinking can move too
As the leader, there will always be work that belongs to you.
There are decisions only you should make. There are relationships you need to lead and parts of the vision that your team needs you to hold.
But the business shouldn’t require you to interpret every situation before anyone else can move.
When more of the context, expectations, and decision-making becomes shared, your team gets stronger. They can use better judgment because they understand more of the whole picture. Work moves without waiting on you, and your attention can go toward the parts of the business that genuinely require your leadership.
That’s also how you create more options for yourself over time.
You can step away without wondering what will stall. You can spend more time thinking about what’s next instead of answering every question about what’s happening today. And your team gets the chance to become more capable because they’re trusted with more than a task.
They’re trusted with the thinking that goes with it.
If this is showing up in your business, it’s worth working on
If you keep finding yourself frustrated that capable people still need more from you than you think they should, there may be more underneath it than a delegation problem.
This is the kind of work I spend a lot of time on with leaders in coaching. We look at where the business still depends too heavily on you, where ownership isn’t as clear as you thought it was, and what your team may still need from you in order to move with more confidence.
Sometimes that work happens over time through ongoing coaching. And sometimes a team needs dedicated space away from the normal week to work through it together. I also lead private offsites for leaders and teams who need room to look at how the business is working, what keeps getting stuck, and what needs to become clearer next.
Either way, I’d start with the same question: Before you assume someone “still doesn’t get it,” ask yourself what they may still need from you in order to truly own it.
Because when the thinking can move beyond you, the work can too.
If this is something you’re seeing in your business, let’s talk. →
