Are You a Micro-Doer, Versus a Macro-Delegator?

If you’re a leader, here’s a question worth sitting with for a moment: Are you spending your days as a Micro-Doer when you should be showing up as a Macro-Delegator?

At Groove Management, I’ve seen this pattern time and time again. Well-intentioned leaders, especially those who rose through the ranks by being the go-to “fixer,” find themselves stuck in the weeds. They’re answering every question, solving every small problem, and “just doing it myself” because it feels faster in the moment.

It’s what I call the Micro-Doer Trap — and it’s incredibly costly.

Micro-Doing: The Comfort of Control

Micro-Doers believe they’re being helpful. In fact, it often starts with good intentions: wanting to make sure things are done right, protecting the customer experience, showing your team you’re willing to roll up your sleeves. But the problem is, when you’re caught in this cycle, you become the single point of success — and inevitably, the single point of failure.

I talk about this idea in my blogpost, Are You a Single Point of Success?. When you’re the bottleneck for decisions, approvals, or execution, you’re not just creating a drag on your team — you’re stunting their growth.

Your people don’t learn to think critically, make mistakes, or stretch into new responsibilities, because you’ve trained them to look to you for answers. Worse yet, you stay buried in the day-to-day, leaving no capacity for the strategic work that actually moves your business forward.

Macro-Delegation: The Art of Leading at Scale

So what’s the alternative? It’s shifting from Micro-Doing to Macro-Delegating.

Macro-Delegators don’t delegate just tasks — they delegate outcomes. They trust their team enough to hand off entire work streams, with clear expectations and the authority to make decisions along the way.

They resist the temptation to swoop in and fix every issue. Instead, they coach their people through challenges, hold them accountable, and celebrate the wins that come when others step up and succeed.

This shift isn’t about doing less — it’s about focusing your energy where it has the greatest impact: clarifying vision, removing roadblocks, and creating an environment where your people can thrive and grow.

How to Make the Shift

If you suspect you’re operating as a Micro-Doer more than you’d like, ask yourself:

• What work am I doing right now that someone else on my team could own, even if they wouldn’t do it exactly my way?

• Where am I jumping in because it feels easier or faster — but I’m actually slowing everyone down in the long run?

• Am I coaching my team to think and decide for themselves, or am I making all the calls?

Leadership is a game of leverage. The best leaders I coach don’t just build great strategies — they build great teams that can execute those strategies independently.

So today, take a look in the mirror: Are you ready to step back from being the hero and become the builder of heroes instead?

That’s the essence of being a Macro-Delegator — and it’s how you create an organization that doesn’t just depend on you, but grows beyond you.