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TABLE OF CONTENTS
How to Stop Micromanaging and Learn to Trust Your Team
I never wanted to be a leader.
Not when I was young. Not when I was in the military. I was perfectly happy letting someone else carry the burden of responsibility.
Funny how things turn out.
Today, at 49, leadership is probably the skill I'm most proud of. It's become a big part of how I define myself.
But it took me a long time to figure out what leadership actually meant.
And for a good portion of that time, I was doing it wrong.
I Thought Leadership Meant Doing Everything
My military training taught me to lead from the front.
Set the example. Work harder than everyone else. Never ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself.
There's a lot of value in that philosophy, and I still believe in it.
But I misunderstood something.
I thought leading from the front meant I needed to do everything. That I needed to know every answer, solve every problem, and be the best at every task.
Not exactly a sustainable business model.
Or a particularly enjoyable way to live.
Looking back, I realize I was confusing responsibility with capability. Just because I was responsible for the outcome didn't mean I needed to be personally capable of producing every part of it.
That took a while to sink in.
My First Leadership Lesson Was Learning to Listen
My first real opportunity to lead came in a contracting job after leaving the military.
I was put in charge of a team, and something surprised me.
I liked it.
Not the authority. Not telling people what to do.
I liked talking with people.
I enjoyed learning about their lives, understanding what interested them, and hearing their perspectives. I'd always been comfortable talking with people, but I hadn't recognized how valuable that skill could be.
I wasn't a particularly sophisticated leader yet. I just liked the people I worked with.
Becoming a business owner forced me to develop the rest.
Now I had employees depending on me. Decisions had consequences. I couldn't simply be the friendly guy who enjoyed conversations.
I started reading more about leadership, particularly Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
I began to understand that listening wasn't just a social skill. It was a leadership skill.
And that people were much more likely to commit themselves to something when they felt heard, respected, and appreciated.
I've since learned that giving meaningful praise can be far more powerful than telling someone what to do. When you recognize someone's judgment and effort, you're helping them develop confidence in their own abilities.
That's when my leadership philosophy began to change.
How to Stop Micromanaging and Help Your Team Grow
Over the years, I've developed a simpler way to think about leadership.
Lead from the front when people need you to show them the way. Then create the conditions for them to succeed without you.
Here's what that looks like.
1. Show people how to do something.
When someone is new or doesn't understand the task, get involved. Demonstrate the standard. Explain why it matters.
There's nothing wrong with rolling up your sleeves and working alongside your team.
2. Create a path they can follow.
Once you've established the standard, build a process that makes success repeatable.
That means communicating expectations clearly, providing the right tools, and making sure everyone understands the goal.
3. Step aside and let people take ownership.
This was the hardest part for me.
Once people know what they're doing, I have to resist the urge to keep doing it for them.
They might approach something differently than I would.
Good.
They might discover a better way.
Even better.
4. Let people bring strengths you don't have.
I don't need to be the best cook, the best salesperson, or the best manager of every detail in my catering business.
I need people who are better than me at those things.
My responsibility is to bring those individual strengths together into a functioning organization.
And I need enough humility to recognize that my team can produce solutions I never would have imagined myself.
5. Celebrate growth, not just results.
This is where leadership becomes genuinely rewarding.
People don't develop overnight. Neither do organizations.
I've learned that motivating a team when the results aren't there yet means recognizing the habits, improvements, and small victories that eventually produce success.
You have to notice when people are growing.
And let them know you see it.
What Coaching Baseball Taught Me About Trusting People
I see the same lessons when I coach youth baseball.
At practice, we coach hard.
We teach the fundamentals, explain situations, and help the kids understand what they're supposed to do.
But during games, we've learned to step back.
The kids have to make decisions themselves.
We even started letting the players lead our postgame discussions. Something remarkable happened.
They began taking greater ownership of the team.
I wrote about this in teaching youth baseball players to think for themselves.
When coaches do all the talking, the kids listen.
When the kids lead, they lean in.
That's precisely what I want from my employees, too.
Not people constantly looking to me for answers.
People who understand the mission, trust themselves and each other, and can solve problems together.
There's something wonderful about watching a team gel. Whether it's baseball players turning into a cohesive unit or employees working together to pull off a difficult catering event, I love seeing people accomplish something they didn't believe they could.
Especially when I didn't have much to do with the actual execution.
Leadership Is More Like Gardening Than Commanding
I've started thinking about leadership as gardening.
You prepare the soil. You plant the seeds. You water, tend, prune, and pay attention.
Different plants need different things. Some need more sunlight. Some need more support. Some need to be left alone.
You can't pull on a plant to make it grow faster.
And you certainly can't grow it yourself.
You can only create the conditions that allow it to flourish.
That's how I see my role now.
I want to develop people who are confident, capable, and willing to contribute their own ideas.
I want to build teams where people complement one another, help each other improve, and take pride in what they accomplish together.
And I want to create organizations that can continue to thrive without my constant involvement.
I still believe in leading from the front.
But I've learned that leading from the front doesn't mean staying there forever.
Sometimes you need to show people the way. Sometimes you need to clear the path. And sometimes you need to get out of the way and let them discover something better.
I spent the early part of my life avoiding responsibility. Then I spent years believing responsibility meant carrying everything myself.
Now I find my greatest satisfaction in helping other people carry something together.
I used to think leadership meant being the strongest person on the team.
Now I think it means building a team that doesn't need you to be.
“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”
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