My daughter once asked me if she could walk her friend home from school. The catch? She was a brand new driver and we lived in California – where this was not allowed.

I quickly realized how difficult the situation was. If I had given her permission, I would have taken responsibility for any problems that would have occurred as a result of her actions. But if I had just laid down the law and told her no, she wouldn't have learned to think critically about her own actions.

Instead of giving my daughter a straight answer, I told her to consider the potential consequences and make the decision yourself. I also explained that this would make her fully responsible for the outcome and whatever she decided, I would support her decision.

Although I will never share the decision she made that day, she left with a higher awareness and a better ability to assess risks. The key lesson here applies to business as well: people become more successful when you encourage them to own the outcome of their decisions.

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Why you should remove the approval safety net

As a leader, you can feel safer for everyone when you make the big decisions yourself. But when you give easy answers to employee questions like “Is it OK?” you also take something away from them: their freedom.

Imagine you have one WORKER working on a press release. Once it's turned off, there's no way to get it back. They may ask if you want to review it beforehand. But if you respond in any way, the decision is no longer theirs – you will be held responsible for any delays caused by the review process OR any matter not noted.

Abstaining someone from responsibility for their actions is not doing them a favor. At best, it teaches them that failure has no consequences—and at worst, it can teach them that nothing they do matters at all.

Employees also tend to look for this type aPPROVAL as a kind of safety net, even if they don't realize they're doing it. But your business will grow much faster and with much more stability if you trust them to own the results of their choices.

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Failure Costs vs. Attrition Costs

Of course, by letting your employees make their own decisions and own the result it means that failure becomes a real risk. But in many cases, the costs that come from depriving your team of agency are far greater.

The truth of this became apparent to me years ago when I planned to take a sabbatical from work. We had a decision to make about one of our products while I was away, so my boss suggested I give my engineering manager some guidance on what to do. I refused and decided to let them make the decision themselves.

I explained to my boss that the logic was simple: if they did it the right way, we would learn that they were more capable than we previously thought and could make better use of their talents. If they made the wrong decision, I would have a coaching opportunity when I returned to help them understand what they should have done and how.

But if I just told them what to do, the person in question would learn to come to me whenever decisions needed to be made. This would slow down our decision-making, stunt our growth and likely impact future revenues.

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Balancing risk with responsibility as a leader

Critically, this was a project that would only cost us a few days of lost work if the wrong decision was made and we had to undo it. If it were a larger enterprise with more at stake, leadership from the top might have been more appropriate.

But as a leader, your job is not to do everything yourself. It is balancing the risks of a given situation with the opportunities it presents and then providing an appropriate level of guidance.

In most cases, the rule of thumb is simple: the more you have to lose in a situation, the more practical you should probably be. By saving learning opportunities for situations that likely won't cause catastrophic damage even if they happen to go off the rails, you offer your team a way to grow that doesn't require you to take existential risks with the business.

still, letting people fail it's a necessary part of helping them thrive. It helps them build confidence, make better decisions and increase the scope of their responsibilities over time. Ultimately, it also prepares them to take on leadership roles in the future. Whether you're a parent or a mentor in a professional setting, this is the kind of modeling that sets people up for success.