One Reason Your Team Is Not Growing: You Could Be Doing Their Jobs
Let me describe a pattern I see in my executive coaching work that is showing up in all industries, different-sized companies, and at all levels of leadership.
I see strong, reliable managers who deliver, are promotable, trustworthy, and are the go-to person when something needs to get done right. Their team is pretty good, and the results are generally meeting expectations.
However, morale is just okay, effort is average, and the department could use more energy. When I looked closer, what I see is concerning.
Things slow down when the leader is out of the building, significant decisions wait for their return, the team asks permission for things they should be handling independently. And no one below them is ready to step up if that manager leaves, gets promoted, or simply takes a two-week vacation.
Mostly, the manager has no idea there is any problem. The leader just thinks they are being helpful, responsive, and available. They genuinely are, but what they are actually doing is preventing the people around them from growing, learning, taking on more responsibility, or reaching their potential.
I have been coaching leaders through this transition for more than 35 years, and I can tell you it is a difficult shift for a lot of managers: letting go, giving up control, and delegating. Not because they are unwilling, but because nobody ever taught them how to let go, delegate, and be the coach and leader their team needs.
The Pattern: Promoted For Doing, But Not Taught To Develop
Here is how it usually starts. Someone is excellent at their job, so they get promoted. On day one of their new management and leadership role, they face a problem nobody warned them about: the skills that got them promoted are not the same kills that will make them an effective leader.
They were promoted for great execution, and now their job is developing people and getting work done through a team. Since they weren’t given a playbook on delegation, management, or leadership, they default to what they know: doing the work themselves. So effectively, the promotion has weakened both the position they came from and the new leadership position.
This is one of the most fundamental leadership development gaps I see in organizations. While it can be a lack of leadership training in the traditional sense, it is also an identity problem. The leader has not yet made the mental shift from "I am the person who does the work" to "I am the person who builds the people who do the work."
Sign 1: The Leader Has Become A Bottleneck
The first sign that a leader is still doing instead of developing the team is when projects stall, work is delayed, decisions wait for approval, and things don’t move as expected, unless the leader is personally involved.
For example, I coached a VP of operations a few years back who was proud of how involved he was with his team. He knew every project, client, timeline, and was copied on every email. His calendar was full with wall-to-wall meetings, and he thought he was being a great leader who was indispensable.
Then he took a week off for a family emergency, and everything stopped moving forward. Not because his people were incompetent, but because they had been trained over months and years of this pattern to wait for him. They did not trust their own judgment, because he had never given them the space to exercise it.
That is not leadership, it’s a dependency on the leader. When a leader becomes the single point of failure for their department, the business is one resignation, illness, or vacation away from a serious problem, and at risk.
Sign 2: Your Team Asks Permission For Things They Should Own
The team is coming to the leader for decisions they should be making on their own. These are often small calls, routine judgment, and things in which they really don’t need you.
This should be a red flag for any leader. It means the team has the capability but not the confidence. And the reason they lack confidence is that they aren’t allowed to own the outcome. Decisions have been made for them, and their judgement and experience apparently wasn’t enough.
Rebuilding confidence takes time and means letting people make calls you might have made differently. It means tolerating imperfection in the short term, so they build the confidence for better decisions in the long term.
Sign 3: Nobody On Your Team Is Ready For Your Job
This is the sign that should keep leaders up at night: no succession plan. Could any of them step into the leadership role tomorrow?
If the answer is no, the leader may have been building followers and not leaders.
Developing your replacement is one of the most important responsibilities a leader has, and it is often overlooked. When I engage with a leader and look at their team, I always ask, “What’s your succession plan, and who are you investing in to take your job?” If nobody below you can step up, your leadership development strategy has a hole in it, because the leader is not building bench strength.
This is also where reducing turnover and developing leaders intersect in a practical way. High-potential employees leave organizations where they are not growing and don’t see it in their future. If your best people are stuck in a holding pattern because you are still doing the work they should be learning, they will eventually find somewhere else that gives them room to stretch.
The Shift: From Contributor To Developer
The hardest leadership transition for some is from individual contributor to developer of people. From doing the work yourself to building the people who do the work.
That shift requires a leader to get comfortable with something unnatural at first: watching someone struggle with a task you could do in half the time and not jumping in and taking control.
This is where coaching makes a real difference; it’s better than a workshop, book, or podcast. From what I have seen in many cases, it’s not an information gap, because most leaders know they should delegate and develop their people. The problem is behavior and changing the behavior to something uncomfortable and different than what has gotten their them here.
In our work at One On One HR, we help leaders see this pattern clearly through our 360-review process. When people disclose feedback confidentially and anonymously like, they feel micromanaged, or they do not feel trusted to make decisions, or they have stopped bringing ideas because they are dismissed, they will bring less discretionary effort, energy, and ownership.
From the 360 feedback, our executive coaching gives a leader the structure and accountability to practice new behaviors, delegate, coach, and sometimes let their team fail in small ways.
Why This Matters Right Now
With most businesses keeping headcount flat, you are not going to hire your way to growth, and the real opportunity is getting more out of your team. The work we do with leaders helps them learn how to effectively lead, get work done through others, delegate, and coach through to accountability.
Organizations that invest in leadership development for their managers are the ones that will create leaders who know how to improve workflow, deal with conflict, and influence performance to better financial results. When your managers know how to develop their people instead of doing the work for them, the compound effect on performance, engagement, and retention is significant.
Ready To Make The Shift?
If any of this sounds familiar, or you recognized yourself or one of your managers in this pattern, I would welcome a conversation. At One On One HR, we work with CEOs, presidents, directors, and managers at every level to make this transition. Through leadership assessments, executive coaching, and practical development programs, we help leaders stop doing and start developing people.
One On One Human Resource Consulting
Phone: (413) 237-9891
Learn more at oneononehr.com/developing-leaders