You’re really good at your job.
That might be part of the problem.
You catch the mistake. Rescue the deadline. Fix the client issue. Rewrite the deck. Everyone trusts you because you can handle it.
And somewhere along the way, “she can handle it” becomes the operating model.
You become more indispensable while getting further away from the work only you should be doing.
The Competence Trap
This isn’t another episode telling you to “delegate more.”
Because sometimes we’re holding onto work for a reason that has very little to do with whether someone else is capable of doing it.
Competence feels safe.
You know exactly what you can accomplish there. Leadership is murkier. You’re developing people, making decisions with incomplete information, letting someone do something differently than you would, and hoping the thing you built is strong enough to survive it.
That’s a very different kind of work.
In this episode, we get into:
- How competence quietly turns into availability, and availability into dependence
- Why being needed and being powerful are not the same thing
- How to tell whether you’re jumping in because the business genuinely needs you or because not jumping in feels uncomfortable
The Competence Audit
Pick something you’re still doing that you probably shouldn’t be and ask:
1. Am I doing this because only I can do it, or because I’m currently the best at it?
2. What happens every time I rescue this?
Am I building someone else’s capability, or teaching everyone that I’ll catch it?
3. What higher-value work am I sacrificing to keep doing this?
4. What would have to become true for someone else to own this successfully?
Training? Context? Standards? Decision criteria? Practice? Authority? Access?
That last question changes everything.
Because “nobody can do it like me” becomes:
What haven’t I built yet that would make it possible for someone else to own this?
Now we have a solvable problem.
Try this this week
Choose one thing you promoted yourself past a while ago and run the four questions.
Then finish this sentence:
For someone else to fully own this, ______ would have to become true.
Start there.
If this is bigger than you
If you’re reading this thinking, this isn’t just me, this pattern is happening across our leadership team, this is exactly the kind of work I do through executive coaching, leadership development and custom programs for organizations.
Resources & Links
- Join AI for Founders Community on LinkedIn
Related Episode
- 132 | How Female Founders Delegate High-Stakes Tasks Without Losing Sleep (Using DiSC + AI Pattern Recognition)
- 165 | The System Your Business NEEDS to Stop the Bottleneck Before You Add Any Other System
- 187 | The CEO Trap: How AI Ends Your Decision Fatigue and Frees You to Lead
- 207 | Why Trying to Be a “Good Leader” Won’t Help You Lead Better and the 4 Questions That Will
