If every decision needs your approval, you’re not empowering your team.

How well-intentioned leaders create dependency—and what it takes to develop genuine decision-making ownership.

Inspired by Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet

When everything comes back to you

It’s 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon. A manager is trying to finish an important report when another message arrives. “Can you approve the supplier’s proposal?”

Earlier that day, someone asked which candidate should move to the next interview. Another colleague needed confirmation before contacting a customer. None of these decisions was particularly complex. Yet they all ended up on the manager’s desk.

By the end of the week, the frustration is familiar. Why can’t people just take more initiative?

The manager genuinely wants an empowered team. They encourage ownership, talk about accountability, and regularly tell people they trust them. But when decisions arise, they’re quick to step in. They provide an answer. Adjust a recommendation. Offer reassurance. Sometimes, they take over because it’s simply faster.

Each response feels helpful. And perhaps that’s precisely the problem.

The leader wants people to take ownership, but their behavior may be teaching them to wait for permission.

When being helpful creates dependency

Leaders often become successful because they’re good at solving problems. They make decisions under pressure, find solutions quickly, and know how to move things forward. Those strengths don’t disappear when they become managers. But their impact can change.

An experienced leader may answer a question in thirty seconds that would take a colleague considerably longer to work through. In the moment, providing the answer seems efficient.

The problem arises when the same pattern repeats. The team learns that difficult questions go upward. The leader learns that responding quickly keeps things moving. Both sides reinforce an arrangement that makes the leader increasingly necessary.

Eventually, the leader becomes overwhelmed by decisions that others might be capable of making. And the team has fewer opportunities to develop confidence in its own judgment.

Sometimes, what looks like a lack of initiative is partly a system of dependency that leadership has helped create.

That doesn’t mean every request for approval is unnecessary. Some decisions genuinely require senior authority, specialist expertise, or oversight. But others reach the leader simply because nobody has challenged the habit.

What Turn the Ship Around! teaches us

In Turn the Ship Around!, former US Navy submarine commander L. David Marquet describes his experience challenging a traditional leadership model built around giving orders and expecting compliance. His central realization was that a crew trained primarily to follow instructions wasn’t necessarily being encouraged to exercise its full judgment.

Marquet began moving toward what he calls a leader–leader model, where leadership and responsibility are developed throughout the organization rather than concentrated at the top.

One of the best-known practices associated with his approach is communicating intent. Instead of repeatedly asking a superior what to do, people develop the habit of explaining what they intend to do—and why.

It’s a subtle shift in language with a potentially significant implication. The conversation moves from seeking an answer to demonstrating judgment.

But the principle isn’t simply to replace “May I?” with “I intend to.” People need clarity about the mission, sufficient competence, and an understanding of the boundaries within which they can act.

Empowerment isn’t giving people responsibility while keeping all the authority. It’s creating the conditions for them to exercise responsibility meaningfully.

Autonomy needs more than encouragement

Research on empowering leadership provides additional perspective. A meta-analysis drawing on 105 research samples found positive relationships between empowering leadership and outcomes including performance, creativity, and organizational citizenship behavior.

Another meta-analysis, covering 72 studies and more than 32,000 participants, found that perceived autonomy-supportive leadership was positively associated with autonomous motivation, well-being, and positive workplace behaviors.

These findings don’t mean that transferring decisions automatically improves performance. They do suggest that how leaders support autonomy matters. And effective autonomy requires more than repeatedly telling people to take initiative.

Imagine asking a relatively inexperienced employee to make an important commercial decision without clarifying the acceptable financial exposure. What looks like empowerment to the manager may feel like abandonment to the employee.

Similarly, giving someone responsibility for an outcome while requiring approval for every meaningful choice creates a contradiction. The leader has transferred accountability without transferring enough control.

True empowerment requires both freedom to act and clarity about the limits of that freedom.

From approval to ownership

Consider a familiar exchange. An employee approaches their manager. “Should I proceed with the supplier’s proposal?”

The manager replies: “Send it to me. I’ll review it and let you know.” The question has been answered. Work continues. But the decision remains with the leader.

Now imagine a different response. “What’s your recommendation?”

The employee explains that the proposal meets the agreed budget and delivery requirements. The manager asks: “What would make you reconsider?”

“If the delivery date changes or the price exceeds the agreed limit.”

The manager responds: “Good. You can make the decision within those boundaries. Let me know if either condition changes.”

The second conversation may take longer. But something important has changed. The leader hasn’t simply offered reassurance. They’ve explored the employee’s reasoning, clarified decision boundaries, and made room for independent action.

This doesn’t remove accountability. It places decision-making closer to the person with the relevant information, while preserving a clear path for escalation.

Over time, these conversations can help people develop the confidence and judgment to act without constantly seeking permission.

A final thought

Leadership creates a paradox. The expertise that once made you successful can become the very thing that limits your team’s independence.

Being the person with the answers may feel valuable. But if everyone must come to you before acting, your availability becomes a condition for progress.

The question isn’t whether your team needs your leadership. Of course it does. The question is what kind of leadership helps people become more capable over time.

Every time you make a decision someone else could reasonably make, you may be teaching them to wait for you.

And sometimes, the most valuable decision a leader can make is deciding not to make the next one.