Janet Rajan

A few years ago, I set myself an uncomfortable goal:
To stop being the smartest person in the room.

Not because I couldn’t be.
But because I started to notice what it was doing to my team.

Early in our careers, we grow by making good decisions.

At some point, that stops being the job.

Your value is no longer in the decisions you make.
It’s in how your team thinks, decides, and moves without you.

And this is where a lot of leaders (myself included) get caught.

Because involvement feels like ownership.
Staying close feels like quality.
And stepping back… feels risky.

So we review more.
We step in more.
We “just take a quick look.”

And slowly, we become the bottleneck we never intended to be.

The shift isn’t about doing less.
It’s about leading differently.

Less control. More clarity.
Less approval. More context.
Less dependency. More ownership.

Because autonomy isn’t the absence of leadership.
It’s the outcome of good leadership.

So, here is the question to keep coming back to:

Where might you still be holding on…
to decisions your team is already ready to own?