Is Your Team Unable to Make Decisions Without You?
If your direct reports constantly seek your guidance or approval, you’re not alone — many managers face the same challenge. While it’s important for teams to know they can rely on you when needed, high performing teams know how to empower team decision making so that individuals are empowered to act confidently without checking in on every decision.
What Needs to Change to Empower Team Decision Making
Beyond fostering a culture of accountability and focused attention, leaders must coach and empower their teams to take on greater decision-making responsibility. Studies estimate that up to 70% of a manager’s time is spent making decisions — an approach that is unsustainable over the long term. To build autonomy, you need to identify what behaviors, processes, and mindsets must shift to allow your team to act confidently and responsibly.
- Distinguish Between Being Available and Being Accessible
In our customized new manager training, emerging leaders learn that their success is inseparable from the success of their team. Part of that success comes from being accessible, but not constantly available.
At our clients, most managers act as player-coaches, balancing their own project responsibilities with setting the team’s direction and leading effectively. This requires time to reflect, plan, and anticipate future needs. Your team must understand that you are there for them when it truly matters — accessible for urgent or important matters — but not available for every interruption.
Clearly define your “open for business” hours and stick to them. Train your team to respect these boundaries, and encourage them to create focused, distraction-free time for themselves — whether that means silencing notifications, closing email, or politely deflecting nonessential interruptions. This balance protects both your effectiveness and helps to develop theirs.
- Create Team Clarity
Our organizational alignment research shows that strategic team clarity accounts for 31% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing teams. To truly empower your team, ensure there is a clear line of sight connecting their work to the priorities of the business, the team, and their peers.
You’ll know clarity is achieved when goals and accountabilities, roles and responsibilities, success metrics, team norms, and interdependencies are well-defined, meaningful, and achievable.
Ambiguity is the enemy of empowerment. Clear expectations provide the context your team needs to make informed decisions independently — reducing unnecessary questions, escalations, and delays while keeping the team aligned and accountable.
- Clearly Delegate
Start by identifying which decisions can be delegated and to whom. Establish clear boundaries so team members understand their responsibilities and the types of decisions they are empowered — and expected — to make independently. Clarify the decision-making roles of each team member and define accountability at every step of the process.
For example, one client recently granted front-line managers the authority to approve decisions costing up to $50,000, provided the expenses were within their budget. Clear delegation like this reduces bottlenecks and builds both autonomy and accountability.
- Encourage Problem Solving and Build Decision Making Capabilities
To empower your team to solve problems independently and make confident decisions, you must be willing to relinquish some control while intentionally developing their skills.
Providing targeted decision-making training can build both competence and confidence, helping employees make well-defined decisions efficiently and communicate them in ways that secure lasting commitment. Over time, this approach strengthens autonomy, accountability, and overall team performance.
- Allow for Mistakes
Recognize that mistakes are inevitable as employees learn, experiment, and stretch beyond their comfort zones. Each misstep should be treated as a learning opportunity rather than a reason for punishment. By fostering a culture of open communication, continuous learning, and mutual trust, you promote growth, build self-sufficiency, and strengthen the team’s long-term decision-making capability.
The Bottom Line
High-performing leaders manage their own time effectively while empowering their teams to make the right decisions independently. This approach accelerates decision-making, boosts employee engagement, and strengthens overall team cohesion.
To learn more about how to empower team decision making, download 3 Steps to Set Your Team Up to Make Better Decisions
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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