Don’t Be the Bottleneck

One difficult aspect of leadership is realizing you might be the reason things aren’t moving. As teams grow and responsibilities expand, more questions, approvals, and decisions begin to land on your desk. People are waiting on you, sometimes for clarity, sometimes for permission, sometimes just for a two-sentence email.

Over time I’ve learned that the slowdown usually isn’t a sign of inefficiency in the team. More often, it’s me. The email I haven’t sent. The decision I’ve delayed. The approval I’ve ignored. Their work stalls when I fail to clear the path for them to move forward.

Healthy leadership pays attention to that dynamic. The people who report to you are trying to do their jobs well. What they’re asking for may not be your top priority, but it’s often the thing keeping them from doing what they need to do next. When I neglect that, I’m not just slowing down a process. I’m making their work harder than it has to be.

Creating Rhythms to Respond

A practice that has helped me stay attentive to my team is building structure into how I respond. Every person who reports to me has a standard weekly one-on-one. If something can wait, it gets addressed during that meeting. Most questions can wait until then, but if they can’t, my team knows they can message or stop by anytime. That clarity helps both of us. They don’t sit in limbo wondering when they’ll get direction, and I’m not buried under a constant stream of Slack messages that fracture my focus.

During our one-on-ones, I’ve learned to act immediately rather than add to a list. If a question requires me to send an email, I send it right there in the meeting. It can feel a bit awkward sitting in silence while I type, but waiting only delays progress.

Other times, I ask them to draft the message for me. If it needs to come from my account but they have the context, their draft lowers the barrier of getting started. They hand me the raw material, I edit it, and we send it. That small adjustment has made a significant difference.

Building Capacity Through Delegation

Reducing bottlenecks is not only about faster responses. It’s also about developing others so that fewer things depend on you in the first place. Delegation used to feel like extra work, but it has become one of the best ways to build capacity. It requires foresight and trust. The temptation is to think that explaining how to do something will take longer than doing it yourself. That might be true once, but not twice. Every time I take the time to show someone how to handle a recurring task, whether it’s updating the website, drafting an agreement, or responding to a common inquiry, I’m freeing future time and strengthening the team.

I’ve had to remind myself often that I can be a bottleneck to progress when something depends too much on me. I don’t want to be the reason things slow down, so when I notice that happening, on my good days, I try find someone else who can take ownership and move it forward. That posture has changed the way I lead. The goal is to identify where I am the stop point, hand responsibility to a capable person, and keep the work moving.

Delegation is not a loss of control. It is an act of equipping. It gives others the authority and clarity to act with confidence. When you delegate well, you multiply effectiveness and strengthen those around you.

Managing What Comes from the Outside

Another place bottlenecks appear is in external communication. Requests from students, churches, or partners can pile up quickly. If I’m not intentional, they become a backlog that delays other people’s work. I try to take time twice a week, I block focused time to process them. The goal of that time is to move things forward, not simply clear my inbox. Sometimes I send an answer. Other times I pass the request to the right person. Nothing should wait longer than necessary.

Leadership as Clearing the Path

Whenever you become the bottleneck, it can stem from a lack of awareness that you are holding up your team or from a need to control decisions. Leadership within an organization is not about control. It is about clearing the path so others can do their best work. People are often more equipped and ready to handle tasks than we think they are. Leadership requires trusting that growth happens even when mistakes happen. Delegating and empowering others will introduce mistakes, but that is part of how people develop. Every leader has made plenty of mistakes, including me, and part of our job is to create an environment where others can do the same and grow from it. High expectations and high standards create a strong culture when paired with that kind of trust.

Influence is measured by how easy or difficult you make it for people to do their work. Each time you remove a bottleneck, you make progress possible. You dignify the work of others and help the mission move forward without unnecessary barriers.