I have a VP I coach who put it perfectly:

“My people can’t move without asking me what to do.”

It didn’t used to be so bad. Back in the office, a five-minute hallway chat kept things rolling.

Now? Remote. Distributed. Those “quick” clarifications are 30-minute Zoom calls with 5–10 people. His calendar is a solid wall of meetings, Slack messages ping all day.

And the only way he gets his work done?

Early mornings. Late nights. Weekends.

He’s exhausted. Frustrated. And stuck in the same cycle every week.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the truth:

You’re not a leader.

You’re a hub.

Everything goes through you. Every decision, every approval, every answer.

And I don’t care how much you deliver—it's killing your career.

🎭 The Superhero Trap

At first, it probably felt noble.

You thought you were protecting your team from failure.
You didn’t want them to be overworked or stuck.
You wanted to make sure things got done right, fast, your way.

So you threw on your Superhero Cape.

You made yourself essential.

And it worked—sort of.

The team learned to come to you for everything.

Now? They can’t move without you.

If people can’t move without you, they’ll thank you.
If they move better because of you, they’ll promote you.

(That’s from my upcoming book, Be the CEO of Your Area. Let it sink in.)

You being the bottleneck doesn’t make you valuable.
It makes you irreplaceable in all the worst ways.

Because while you’re busy micromanaging every detail, you’re not building leaders. You’re managing dependencies.

You trained them to check with you.
You trained them to wait for you.
You trained them to need you.

🔥 The Cost of Being Essential

And guess what?

Your VP doesn't want to see you burning the midnight oil.

They want to see you build a team that runs without you.

They want to know you can think strategically, solve bigger problems, and lead at the level you’re paid for.

If you’re buried in execution, if you’re the human router for your team’s every question, you’re not leading.

You’re firefighting.

🛠️ 3 Ways to Break the Hub Habit

If you want to stop being the hub—and start leading—try these:

✅ 1. Define Decision Rights.
Don’t just delegate tasks. Delegate decisions. Spell out what your team owns, where they have autonomy, and when they truly need you. It’ll be uncomfortable at first. That’s the point.

✅ 2. Build Clarity, Not Control.
They don’t keep asking you because they love your insights. They’re asking because they’re unclear. Clarify outcomes, priorities, and constraints up front. Then let them figure out how.

✅ 3. Stop Rewarding Dependency.
If you praise the ones who always check with you, you’re training them to stay dependent. Start celebrating initiative—even if it’s imperfect. Coach them to own solutions, not just execute instructions.

You don’t scale leadership by doing more.
You scale it by making others better.

If you want to be seen as the CEO of your area, you can’t be the hub everything spins around.

You have to be the one who makes the whole team move better.

👉 Ready to make that shift?
I help leaders go from stuck in execution to thinking and leading strategically.

📞 Book Your Free Leadership Clarity Call

(Based on insights from my upcoming book, Be the CEO of Your Area—built on the foundation of The Six-Step Leadership Challenge.)