Leadership Fallacy Week 1: “If I’m Not Doing It, It Won’t Get Done”

A colleague and friend recently suggested I write a series on leadership fallacies - those assumptions we make as leaders that end up limiting our growth, our team’s development, and the long-term health of our organizations.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share a handful of these fallacies that I’ve encountered in real teams (and wrestled with myself!)

Let’s start with one I see all the time:

“If I’m not doing it, it won’t get done.”

In my book (Audible version just released this week!), I tell the story of an I.T. team that had earned a strong reputation for excellent customer service. But under the surface, there was very little structure. The entire team was stuck in reactive mode - responding to fires as they came up, juggling the same responsibilities across the department with no defined roles or ownership.

When I sat down with their I.T. Manager, it became clear that he was more burned out than anyone. Despite having capable staff, he was personally involved in every little detail - jumping in on helpdesk tickets, answering walk-up requests, running cable, ordering equipment, chasing vendors, and more.

When I asked why, he answered immediately:

“I need to stay involved in everything to make sure it’s getting done right.”

I’ve heard some version of that line too many times to count (and have lived it myself!).

It sounds noble. It feels responsible. In some ways, it even feels like good leadership - being helpful, staying close to the work, leading by example. But the reality is that this approach creates bottlenecks. It builds unhealthy dependency. And it quietly stunts your team’s ability to grow.

If you're the one solving every problem for your users, will they accept help from anyone else? And what happens when you’re unavailable - when your team is ready to step in, but everyone has been conditioned to wait on you?

Here’s the truth:

Your value as a leader is in empowering, not executing.

Delegation isn’t laziness. It’s leadership.

When you hand off ownership, you don’t disappear - you multiply. You create more space for others to step up and more margin for yourself to lead strategically.

This doesn’t mean stepping away from the work entirely - but it does mean building a team that can operate without you having to carry the weight of every decision or every task.

Trusting and empowering your staff isn’t just good for you - it’s essential for them. It builds confidence. It expands their capacity. And it helps shift the culture from “do what the boss says” to “we take ownership of our mission.”

Your team can’t grow if you’re doing all the growing yourself.

So here’s the challenge:

This week, identify just one task you’re holding onto that someone else could own - and take a step to transfer it. Not just the task itself, but the trust in that other person to complete it.

Because if you're leading right, the best work doesn’t just come from you - it also comes through others.