My directors are constantly pulled into daily operational fires because they do not trust our middle managers to handle customer issues, leaving them with no time to work on their quarterly Rocks. How do we get the leadership team to stop rescuing their direct reports and actually empower them to solve their own problems?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your leadership team spends their time fighting fires in the weeds, it is a sign of poor delegation and a lack of trust. By constantly stepping in to rescue their direct reports, your directors are preventing their middle managers from growing, which keeps your leadership team stuck in tactical firefighting instead of strategic execution.

To break this cycle, you must train your directors to use the Delegate and Elevate tool. This tool forces them to identify the tasks they are doing that should be handled by their team, freeing up their capacity to focus on high-value, strategic work.

Next, implement a strict rule for communication: the next level of management must present solutions, not just problems. When a middle manager brings an issue to a director, the director must refuse to solve it for them. Instead, they should ask, what do you think we should do? This forces the middle manager to take ownership and develop their problem-solving skills.

Make sure your middle managers have clear GWC for their seats and understand their own accountability. If your directors are rescuing them because the managers genuinely lack the capability, you have a people issue that needs to be resolved. But if the managers are capable and are simply being micmanaged, your directors must learn to let go of control. Empowering your middle managers is the only way to free up your leadership team to focus on their Rocks and drive the company forward.