Three steps to get them back on the road to independence.
Emily stepped into the VP of Finance role ready to overhaul the company's financial and billing systems. A year in, she was still walking experienced team members through routine processes and approving decisions that should never have reached her desk — like a $500 invoice credit.
Meanwhile, the new systems she'd promised senior leadership had barely moved. She simply didn't have the bandwidth to be the strategic, forward-looking executive she knew she could be.
I've seen this pattern again and again while coaching executives. Companies bring in outside leaders to drive change, and those leaders are then blindsided when the long-tenured teams they inherit seem to expect to be micromanaged.
The instinct is to either pull back or take over. Neither works. Teams rarely want to be micromanaged — more often, they have little incentive to take on risk, or they lack the skills to operate at the level the new leader expects. Your job is to figure out what's driving the dependence, align incentives and resources, and build autonomy gradually.
1. Diagnose why the work keeps coming back to you
If you're giving step-by-step direction or signing off on minor details for work that's long-established and repetitive, get curious about what's driving that reliance. It could be conditioning from a previous boss who hovered closely, a gap in skill or confidence, or simply your own habit of stepping in.
Map one or two key workflows with your team. Ask them to walk you through the process, why each approval step exists, and what's happened in the past when someone skipped one. If a step can't be justified, it may not be needed at all.
When Emily ran this exercise, she learned that her predecessor had run things "his way or the highway," which made the team afraid to speak up. Their dependence wasn't about capability — it was a learned response to how they'd been managed.
2. Secure support for working differently
If your team has learned that taking initiative isn't worth the risk, you need to change the system before asking them to change their behavior. Align with your own boss on what the team should now own — and why — then get them the resources to do it. That might mean updating job expectations, performance goals, or how people are recognized. Give peers who rely on your team a heads-up too, especially if lead times will grow in the short term.
Emily was direct with her CFO: "Having been here for a year, I'm spending 80% of my time off my core job. The team, operating as it does today, won't get us where we need to go." She set up a weekly check-in with her leader to manage expectations and flag what would be deprioritized during the transition.
It's tempting to just work longer hours and close the gap yourself — but that only deepens the team's dependence on you. And without explicit backing from leadership, the first complaint that comes in may undo all your progress. With that support in place, you can show the team the rules have genuinely changed.
3. Sell the change
How you frame the shift will determine whether it sticks. People want to feel heard, so tie the change directly to feedback they've given you, and spell out what it means for them and for the organization. Own your part in creating the problem — that honesty makes it safer for your team to be candid in return. People support change more readily when they see their own input reflected in it, rather than feeling it's being imposed on them.
Emily told her team plainly: "I've heard that I can be the bottleneck, and it's frustrating. I'd like to align on a process so you don't have to wait for me."
Then make it personal. For an ambitious employee, more ownership might mean career growth. For someone happy where they are, it might just mean fewer delays or more say in how they work. And if there's no obvious individual upside, be honest about what happens if nothing changes — and what the organization loses.
4. Start small and hold the line
Start with one discrete, repeatable process, and build the solution with your team rather than handing it to them. Ownership only transfers if people help design it. Try something like: "I have an idea of what this could look like, but let's shape it together, so you don't have to come back to me for the next step."
Work will inevitably bounce back to you at some point — resist the urge to catch it "just this once." Leave it with the team. Ask what they'd recommend, or offer coaching if they need it. That one rescue is the exact dependency you're trying to break.
A team that's learned initiative is risky will keep waiting for permission. Change the incentives, reward ownership, and the team will start to lead itself.