Dear Reader
In my last note, I wrote about clarity over consensus and the courage it takes to make the call.
The next challenge leaders face is often -
How do you create space for that clarity without becoming the bottleneck.
For me, decision making frameworks (like RAPID) were an important turning point.
At first, they felt slow. Roles had to be clarified. Responsibility named. Decisions closed deliberately. For teams used to informal back and forth, this felt bureaucratic.
Then the results started to show.
Decisions were better thought through with better recommendations.
Ownership increased.
Implementation improved.
And importantly, not everything came back to me.
Efficiency does not come from speed. It comes from clarity.
But frameworks alone are not enough.
Delegation requires leaders to accept uncertainty. You will not have perfect information. You will not control every outcome.
That is where vulnerability shows up again.
Letting others recommend and decide means living with decisions you would not have made yourself. Standing behind those decisions means resisting the urge to step back in when things feel uncomfortable.
Delegation only works where trust exists.
When delegation falters, I learned to ask myself a few hard questions.
- Where am I saying I trust the system, but behaving as if I do not
- What am I still holding onto because it feels safer for me, not because it serves the organisation
- What would speed up if I stopped acting as the informal safety net
More often than not, the issue was not the framework.
It was trust.
Trust is not soft. It is operational.
During Covid, I invested in my executive team undertaking The Speed of Trust. We were fully remote, under intense pressure, and delivering public health work where speed and judgement mattered daily.
What became clear very quickly was this.
Trust directly affects pace, quality, and decisions.
Trust is not a personality trait. It is a set of behaviours. You can strengthen it. You can weaken it. And you can rebuild it.
When things feel off now, whether in a leadership team or an advisory relationship, I come back to the trust equation and ask where the imbalance sits.
Trust problems rarely announce themselves. They show up as
• Slower decisions
• Over checking
• More people pulled into meetings
• Hesitation to take ownership
• Polite agreement without commitment
These are trust signals, not process failures.
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This is also why leadership retreats became one of the highest return investments I made as a CEO.
They created deliberate space to pause, reflect, and rebuild trust. To surface tensions early. To strengthen judgement before it was tested under pressure.
Not all were in person. Many were remote. But the intent was always the same.
To step out of reporting mode and into leadership mode.
We looked honestly at where we were against plan. What was working. What was not. What needed to change next quarter. And what we needed from each other to succeed.
In person was always easier. Virtual was effective. In person had the potential to be great.
That is where trust deepened. Where shared language formed. Where leadership teams became faster, not because they agreed more, but because they understood each other better.
Leadership visibility is not about control. It is about stewardship.
Staying informed enough to connect dots and spot risk.
Stepping back enough to let others lead.
What I see now, advising others, is how tightly connected these elements are.
Clarity requires courage.
Delegation requires vulnerability.
Trust requires deliberate investment.
You cannot strengthen one without attending to the others.
Warm Regards,
Liz
Strategic Advisor | Former CEO | Founder, Volante
Based in Kenya, available globally
