By Jennifer Rockwell – February 2026
When my family went skiing recently, my youngest daughter was learning for the first time. She was determined, enthusiastic, and falling constantly.
One thing I noticed right away was that she was using her poles for everything. Balancing. Turning. Stopping. Every wobble was met with a tighter grip and more effort.
But the extra tools were dividing her attention. Instead of learning how her skis worked, she was trying to manage too many inputs at once.
So I told her, gently, “I’m taking your poles.”
She was horrified.
But without them, something shifted. With fewer things to manage, she could finally focus on what mattered, feeling what her skis were doing beneath her. Within minutes, she was steadier. More confident. More in control.
Not because she added something new, but because she removed what was getting in the way.
Leaders Carry Their Own Version of Poles
Leaders do a version of this all the time, just with metaphorical poles, those behaviors that once helped them succeed. Stepping in quickly to fix problems. Answering questions before the team has time to wrestle with them. Saying yes to keep momentum going. Staying closely involved in every decision, so nothing slips.
Each behavior makes sense on its own, and lead to our success as leaders. The problem is what happens when they stack. They feel supportive in the moment, the way poles did on the slope, but they divide attention in ways that are easy to miss.
If you recognize yourself in any of these, you are not alone.
A Quick Self-Check:
Behavior: Running decisions through you for approval
Short-term effect: Things move quickly and alignment feels tight
Long-term cost: People check with you on decisions they used to be empowered to make on their own, and more work flows back to your desk. Over time, the team becomes less confident making decisions independently, and ownership gradually shifts upward instead of staying distributed
Behavior: Stepping in to solve problems yourself
Short-term effect: Pressure drops and progress feels faster
Long-term cost: The same problems keep coming back to you, and the team waits for you to step in instead of confidently trying first to solve them
Behavior: Staying close to every important decision
Short-term effect: The system feels stable and controlled
Long-term cost: You become a bottleneck without intending to, and important work slows while it waits for your input
At home, too…
Behavior: Doing something yourself instead of waiting for someone else to figure it out
Short-term effect: The evening runs more smoothly
Long-term cost: The same small tasks keep landing back on you, because others expect you to handle them
Putting a Pole Down in Real Time
Steve, a VP of Strategy at a tech company I coached, found himself in this pattern.
He was leading an acquisition, onboarding a new team, and fielding constant questions from business partners. He was exhausted, not because the work was unclear, but because everything seemed to run through him. As the work piled up, he held on stronger to his beliefs around leadership.
He believed that strong leadership required immediate action from the top. If something needed to move, he moved it. If a decision was stuck, he made it.
When we slowed down, he saw the cost. By saying yes to every request and answering every question, he was teaching the team to route decisions upward. What felt like support was quietly making the team more dependent on him, taking away from his ability to strategically lead his team and their work.
So he tried one small rule.
Once a day, he would intentionally say no,
and delegate something he normally would have absorbed.
That was the entire experiment.
At first, it felt uncomfortable. But within weeks, the shift was visible. His team started stepping in earlier. Work that used to land automatically on his desk started getting resolved closer to where it began.
And like my daughter on the slopes, everything got easier.
Over time, the team moved from reporting work to shaping it. The adjustment was small, but it changed how the system around him operated. As a result, he shaped this new leadership style with confidence, adapting it to each business challenge that hit his desk.
Why Small Shifts Work
Big change sounds decisive. The problem is that most leaders do not get to pause the day to rebuild how they lead. Decisions still need to be made. Teams still need direction.
Small shifts survive real work because they fit inside the day you already have. When repeated, they start changing what people expect from you and what they try on their own.
That is the whole point of “less.” Not less leadership. Less noise. Less automatic yes. Less rescuing. Less being the place everything must pass through.
The Work of Putting Something Down
If you carry one question out of this, let it be this:
What am I holding onto that my team is ready to carry?
You do not need a full overhaul to answer it. Start with one small adjustment. Say no where you usually say yes. Delegate something you would normally absorb. Notice what shifts.
That kind of work is at the center of what we do at Stop At Nothing. We partner with leaders to identify small behaviors that create bigger change than you would expect, and to practice them long enough for the shift to stick.
Most meaningful progress starts there. With one decision to put something down.
