One of the best decisions I’ve made as a leader is refusing to become the middleman for conversations that people on our team are perfectly capable of having themselves.

If someone notices a problem, needs something from a coworker, or is struggling to work with another person, I want them to develop the ability to communicate that directly.

I’m happy to mentor them through the conversation. I just have no interest in becoming responsible for having it on their behalf.

Making this decision has done a couple of things:

What I love about being a founder is getting to build and create. And whether you’re building a company or leading a part of one, I imagine that’s something we have in common.

But there’s a big difference between building something and taking responsibility for managing every relationship inside it.

Leaders create that problem themselves when they repeatedly step in to handle conversations their team could have had directly.

Every time you take over a conversation that doesn’t require your involvement, you teach people to bring the next one to you, too.

I have absolutely no interest in spending years building a company only to become the person everyone needs to resolve basic human interactions.

And if that’s the only way to successfully build and lead a company, count me out. I’d rather sell all my shit and disappear into the mountains. Thankfully, it isn’t.

The tricky part is that this dependency usually develops through decisions that seem perfectly reasonable at the time.

Someone comes to you because their coworker isn’t following through on their responsibilities.

You could encourage them to address it directly, but you know you could probably resolve it yourself in five minutes.

So you do.

The problem gets solved, everyone moves on, and the next time something similar happens, they come back to you.

Multiply that across an entire team and suddenly you’re spending half your afternoon facilitating conversations that could’ve happened without you.

Meanwhile, the decisions that actually require your leadership sit there, waiting for your attention.

There’s a difference between helping someone figure out how to have a difficult conversation and becoming responsible for having it on their behalf.

One develops their ability to communicate.

The other teaches them that resolving the problem requires your involvement.

When you repeatedly choose the latter, you’re not just creating more work for yourself.

You’re also removing opportunities for your team to develop skills they’ll need throughout their careers.

People get better at communicating when they’re expected to communicate.

They learn to address concerns before resentment builds, ask for what they need instead of hoping someone notices, and work through disagreements without automatically involving a third person.

If someone’s work affects theirs, they learn to communicate the impact and what needs to change.

If an expectation is unclear, they learn to ask for clarification rather than waiting until something goes wrong.

These are ordinary responsibilities that come with working on a team.

Being willing to have those conversations is part of becoming someone others can rely on.

Of course, there are situations that require leadership involvement.

Harassment, retaliation, serious misconduct, significant power imbalances, and unresolved performance issues aren’t things you simply send people away to figure out themselves.

But someone being uncomfortable with a conversation doesn’t automatically mean their manager needs to have it for them.

Sometimes the most useful thing a leader can do is help someone figure out what they need to say, encourage them to say it directly, and hold them accountable for following through.

You can support someone without taking ownership of the responsibility that belongs to them.

This has implications that extend well beyond communication.

When you’re responsible for leading people and driving outcomes in a business, your time, attention, and energy are finite.

Every hour spent unnecessarily mediating interpersonal friction is an hour that can’t be spent developing people, improving the business, making decisions, or solving problems that genuinely require your involvement.

There will always be more things demanding your attention than you have the capacity to address.

The more your team depends on you to resolve problems they’re capable of handling themselves, the less capacity you have to fulfill the responsibilities that actually belong to you.

That’s a terrible way to scale a business.

Especially when the alternative is developing a team that can communicate directly, resolve ordinary problems together, and take responsibility for the relationships their work depends on.

The goal isn’t to become less available to your team. It’s to build a team that needs less of your involvement to function well.

Because you cannot build an organization that operates independently of you while repeatedly teaching everyone that they need you to operate.