Most leaders talk like heroes.
The best ones speak like teammates.

At the Governors Awards, Tom Cruise spent most of his speech thanking grips, camera operators, and crew members that most people never see.

His words: “Cinema is built by communities, by craftsmen, by artists who pass knowledge hand to hand, set to set, generation to generation.”

That wasn’t modesty.
It was intentional leadership.

Language doesn’t just describe culture.
It creates it.

Leaders who default to “we” build teams rooted in shared ownership.
They signal that contributions matter, that success and failure are collective.

Leaders who default to “I,” even unintentionally, position themselves as the hero and the team as the supporting cast.“

When you make that shift, team members stop waiting for permission and start proposing solutions.
They lean into problems instead of deflecting them up the chain.

Most founders don’t plan to become the bottleneck.
It happens slowly.

A decision here. A quick approval there. Stepping in because it’s faster than explaining it.

Over time, something subtle changes.

Your leadership team stops owning decisions and starts routing them.

Not because they can’t. Because the system trained them to.

Example: One founder I coached spent three hours approving a minor social post every week. Mapping decision ownership cut approvals in half and gave her team confidence to act.

The cost if you don’t intervene: execution slows, senior leaders hesitate, and you become the exception handler for everything important.

Execution slows, even with strong people.
Senior leaders hesitate instead of deciding.
You become the exception handler for everything that matters.
Headcount grows, but leverage doesn’t.

Nothing is broken enough to trigger alarm bells.
But nothing moves without you.
That drag compounds as friction, not crisis.

Most founders try to fix this by being clearer, aligning more, or improving communication.
Those help.
But they don’t fix the root cause.

This is a decision architecture problem, not a motivation problem.

Until ownership is structurally explicit, who decides what, at what threshold, without escalation, the system will keep pulling decisions back to you.

That’s why stepping away feels risky.
And why growth feels heavier than it should.

If decisions above a certain level still require your approval
you don’t have empowered leaders.
You have delegated execution with authority centralized in your hands.

Most founders don’t see this until frustration spikes or momentum stalls.
By then, the pattern is already expensive.

A few other newsletters I pay attention to when I want sharp thinking on work, leadership, and decision-making:

HubSpot helps service-based teams grow without losing clarity or control.

From marketing to CRM to customer operations, their platform helps leaders scale processes, empower teams, and maintain visibility across the business while keeping human judgment central.

For founders navigating growth, HubSpot makes scaling less about hero work and more about structured ownership.

ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.

Discover how HubSpot's guide to AI can elevate both your productivity and creativity to get more things done.

Learn to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation with the power of AI.

Download the free guide

Your words shape ownership.
“I” signals hero, “we” signals team.

Audit your last three emails, messages, or team updates today.

Count the “I”s vs the “we”s. That ratio is your leadership fingerprint, revealing who really drives decisions in your company.

With appreciation,
Chris

P.S. Thoughts on this? Reply and let me know. I welcome feedback and read every email.