Why your drive for excellence might be sabotaging your team's potential

Many leadership teams wear their controlling tendencies like a badge of honour. And it’s easy to see how that happens. In a world that celebrates hustle culture and relentless achievement, it's easy to mistake control addiction for high performance.

I regularly hear leaders defend their approach with questions like:

• "Why wouldn't we be addicted to performance?"

• "What's wrong with being overly ambitious?"

• "Our drive is what gets results. Isn't that what matters?"

Here's the thing: Goal-direction isn't the same as control addiction.

One of the most fascinating dimensions I work with in the Collective Leadership Assessment is what The Leadership Circle calls CONTROLLING. This reactive dimension measures the extent to which leaders push themselves and others too hard, often using aggressive or overly pushy tactics to achieve results.

When this dimension scores high, it typically signals a team operating in overdrive - driven by perfectionism, performance addiction, and a dangerous equation where self-worth equals accomplishment.

The challenge? Most leadership teams don't see this as a problem. They see it as their competitive advantage.

When leaders operate from a highly controlling stance, they're often driven by deeper, unconscious beliefs that seem logical on the surface but create significant blind spots:

• "If we want it done right, we have to do it ourselves" This belief assumes that delegation equals compromise on quality or standards.

• "We can't show any weakness" The fear that vulnerability or admitting uncertainty will undermine authority and credibility.

• "We can't afford to fail" A zero-tolerance approach to mistakes that creates paralysis and risk-aversion throughout the organization.

• "No one else can be fully trusted" The assumption that others lack the capability, commitment, or judgment to handle critical decisions.

Here's where it gets interesting - and frustrating. Leaders operating from high control often complain about the very behaviors their approach creates:

• "My team isn't being proactive enough"

• "They're not taking initiative or making decisions"

• "I wish they would step up and take ownership"

Meanwhile, they're systematically removing every opportunity for their people to develop these exact capabilities.

It's like complaining that your garden isn't growing while simultaneously blocking out all the sunlight.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for passive leadership or lowering standards. We absolutely want leaders who are goal-directed, decisive, focused, and purposeful. We want teams that deliver results that matter.

The difference lies in how we achieve those results.

True high-performance leadership isn't about being indispensable. It's about making yourself dispensable by building a team that can drive, deliver, and execute brilliantly – with or without you in the room.

This requires a fundamental shift from control to cultivation. From micromanagement to development. From protection to preparation.

The Path Forward: 3 things you can try right away

1. Audit Your Decision-Making

Look at your last ten significant decisions. How many could have been delegated as development opportunities? What prevented you from doing so?  Legitimate business risk or your own discomfort with letting go?

2. Create Safe-to-Fail Experiments

Identify low-risk situations where team members can practice decision-making and leadership. Build in reflection and learning rather than just evaluation and judgment.

3. Examine Your Motivations

Before stepping in to "help" or take over, pause and ask: Am I serving the business need or my own need to maintain control? Am I developing capability or just getting the task done faster?

The Bottom Line?

Your drive for excellence isn't the problem.  It's likely one of your greatest strengths. The challenge is ensuring that drive serves the long-term development of your organisation, not just the short-term completion of tasks.

The most successful leaders I work with have learned to channel their high standards and ambitious goals into building others' capacity rather than just demonstrating their own.

The question isn't whether you should care about performance. It's whether your approach to performance is creating the leadership pipeline your organisation will need to thrive long after you're gone.