The Signal

When things start to wobble, founders instinctively reach for control.

​

You tell yourself: If I stay closer to the work, we’ll grow faster.

So you review more, approve more and reinsert yourself

in decisions you thought you’d already delegated.

It feels responsible. It feels like leadership.

​

But here’s the paradox:

The more you grip, the slower it goes.

​

Every extra checkpoint, every “just to be sure” correction

quietly communicates to your team that progress depends on you.

​

And that message, repeated over time, turns you from a leader into a limiter.

​

The Pattern

Early on, control was the reason you succeeded.

​

Your ability to hold every detail in your head

kept things moving when there was

no one else to carry it.

​

But scaling changes the equation.

​

What used to be a strength becomes a liability when your company’s complexity outpaces your individual capacity.

​

Here’s the trap:

You don’t feel controlling, you feel protective.

Protective of the vision, the quality, the brand, the client experience.

​

But underneath that is a deeper need: certainty.

​

Certainty that it will still work without you.

Certainty that if you loosen your grip, it won’t all come undone.

Certainty that your identity as builder still matters when you’re not in the weeds.

​

That’s the friction point most founders never name... and it’s the real reason “letting go” feels so unsafe.

​

The Tool: The Control Triggers Tracker

Control isn’t always loud.

​

Sometimes it’s subtle (and, fwiw, slightly passive-aggressive)…

the extra Slack message,

the double-check on a delegated task,

the meeting you “sit in on” just to “stay close.”

​

You think you’re low-key supporting your team, but the team is getting a very different message.

​

Your death grip on their output is not just slowing them down, it’s demotivating them.

​

You need to back off so your team can step up and so your business can grow.

And it’s a lot to ask for your team to be the messenger on this one,

so you need to learn to identify your own patterns and triggers.

​

The Control Triggers Tracker does just that.

​

Use it to track those instances where you feel the impulse

to step in, fix, override or otherwise control.

​

Example:

• Observation: I reworked a proposal my team already submitted.
• Emotion: Anxiety, frustration.
• Thought or Story: “It wasn’t client-ready.”
• Reframe: “My role is to build the review process, not redo the work.”

​

You’re not tracking behavior to judge yourself.

You’re collecting data to understand your own patterns of control.

​

The Fix

1. Notice the impulse.

The moment you feel that familiar pull to jump in, pause.

Ideally, write it down before you act.

Awareness intercepts the default to control.

​

2. Label the feeling, then the story.

Skip the rationalization.

What emotion showed up and what story did it try to tell?

(“If I don’t do it, it won’t get done right.” “I’m the only one who sees the full picture.”)

This separates what’s real from what’s reactive.

​

3. Audit the story.

Ask: What am I afraid will happen if I don’t step in?

Often, the risk you’re trying to avoid isn’t failure, it’s discomfort --

discomfort with uncertainty, imperfection or release of control.

​

4. Reframe the story.

Move from fear to function.

Use the last column of your tracker to write a more useful interpretation:

• “Different doesn’t mean wrong.”
• “My role is to define standards, not re-do the work.”
• “Letting go here creates space for growth elsewhere.”

This is where self-awareness turns into leadership leverage.

​

5. Define the guardrails.

Replace “I need to be involved” with structure and signals. Define the:

• Success Signal: How you’ll know the structure or process is working without you.
• Safety Signal: When and how you’ll re-engage if standards slip.

​

These guardrails protect outcomes without reattaching ownership to you.

​

6. Debrief weekly.

Review your Triggers Tracker at the end of each week, at least until the frequency of your “step-in” moments starts to taper.

(And yes, it will taper, if you commit to the process.)

​

Look for patterns.

Are your triggers clustering around certain people, projects, or outcomes?

​

That’s signal, not noise.

​

The data tells you where control is compensating for

a missing system, unclear role or unspoken expectation.

​

Use that insight to decide what needs to be clarified, documented or delegated differently.

​

Why It Works

Letting go feels risky because your brain equates control with safety.

It’s wired to believe that a tighter grip leads to fewer surprises.

But at scale, that wiring backfires.

​

Every time you step in, you send a subtle signal to your team and to yourself:

“Progress depends on me.”

​

In that reality, your business capacity will always be constrained by your personal capacity.

​

When you use the Control Triggers Tracker, you retrain that reflex.

​

You'll start noticing control impulses before acting on them,

creating a pause between stimulus and response.

​

Neuroscientists call that “response flexibility.”

​

In plain terms: you’re teaching your brain that

safety can come from structure, not just supervision.

​

That small shift has an outsized effect:

• You'll reclaim energy and mental bandwidth that were trapped in monitoring and micromanaging.
• Your team will build judgment, autonomy, and confidence because you’ve created clarity instead of control.
• You'll stop being the system’s fail-safe and start being its designer.

That’s how growth happens, not by gripping harder, but by architecting systems that are strong enough to hold what you’ve built.

​

The Ask / Invitation

Where do you feel that tug to stay involved because “no one can do it like you”?

What's a control trigger you're already aware of?

​

Hit reply and let me know (I read and respond to every email)

and then make that the first entry in your Control Trigger Tracker.

And if you’re ready to fully untangle identity from execution, let’s chat.