Three weeks in fact. No new edition, no explanation. If you’re one of the people who’ve read the other ones, perhaps you noticed. I’ll tell you why, because the why turns out to be the point.

Something I’ve been building hasn’t moved as fast as I hoped it would. The pressure stacked up, and when it did, I did exactly what my DISC profile told me I would do years ago. I didn’t get louder or move faster. I got quieter. I became more careful. I began pulling back from the one place where people could actually see me and interact.

This is the exact pattern I wrote about in the second edition of this series. Then I lived it, right in front of you.

I also went back and read all four editions. And, I noticed something else. Four times I’ve told you and written about the very discipline I haven’t done yet. Doing this a fifth wouldn’t be honesty anymore. It would be the habit.

So this one will bedifferent. I’m writing it the night before I do something, and finishing it the morning after.

Recently, I’ve been working through Andy Stanley’s What Great Leaders Do this fall, and one idea in his first chapter has landed hard. When you lie to yourself about yourself, you aren’t hiding anything from the people around you. You’re only hiding it from you. They can already see it.

From the stakeholder survey I had my team complete, they could see it. I was the one editing it out.

When I was a special education teacher, I used to tell people my goal was to work myself out of a job. If I did it right, my students wouldn’t need me anymore. That was the win.

Somewhere between that classroom and this office, I lost track of that philosophy.

Reading Stanley’s chapter on developing other leaders, I wrote a note in the margin that really resonates and represents where I find myself continually wrestling with. When you do it yourself, you’re multiplying by one. That’s the ceiling. The most that will ever get done is whatever you can personally do. And if it’s an area where you aren’t strong, you’re multiplying by something less than one. Maybe zero. Maybe a negative number.

I know this. I teach it. I’m trained to coach it. And I still find myself in the middle of decisions that belong to someone else.

So why?

Here’s what I wrote a few pages earlier, exactly as I wrote it: doing less, for this leader, feels like slowing down. Lazy. Not right.

And later, a harder one. Am I reverting back to doing these things out of insecurity? If I do it, I make sure I get the credit. If someone else does it, will they, and everyone else, still see me as having value?

There it is. The belief I wrote about last time, the one older than my career.

It isn’t that I don’t trust my people. I’ve helped hired them for strengths I knew they had. It’s two forces stacked on top of each other. The weight of being responsible for every outcome, which is real, and any superintendent reading this knows it. And underneath it, a quiet need to keep proving I belong in the room. Together they steal time, energy, and focus. Mine, and the people who should be doing the work.

Stanley names a commitment every leader has to make to themselves: “I will not attempt to lead myself by myself.”

So at 9:00 Monday morning this week, I’m sitting down with my leadership team. We’ll talk about this and the review that area where I am committed to change for them. Empower them, involve them in the meaningful creation of the delegation they told me I needed. In order to be the leader they need, the leader our district needs.

Then I’ll ask for two things. Ideas, not grades on the past, for how I can do this better. And permission to check in with each of them every month and ask how I’m doing., and how I can connect them with the resources they need.

As a leader I own the results, but they own the process in your area. And once we decide, it stays decided.

If you want to try a version of this yourself, you don’t need a coach or a certification to start. Pick three people who work for you. Ask them one question: what’s one thing I could stop doing that would help you own your work? Then do the hard part. Don’t explain. Don’t defend. Say thank you. Pick one thing, tell them you’re working on it, and ask again in a month.

If you’d like the one-page survey I used, reply ONE and I’ll send it your way.

Getting from HERE to THERE was never going to be about doing more. For leaders like us, doing more has always been the easy part.

So here’s a question to carry into this week:

What are you still doing yourself that you hired someone else to do?

— Kris

Kris Evje is superintendent of Ortonville Public Schools and founder of Play Tall Leadership. He is a Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coach and a certified DISC practitioner.