# Eliminating Backdelegation: Frameworks for Scalable Leadership

**Podcast:** LEITWOLF Podcast - Leadership, Führung & Management
**Published:** 2026-04-23

## Transcript

If you see that decisions keep coming back, it's rarely an individual problem.
You can avoid backdelegation if decision-making frameworks are clear.
The courage to take responsibility outweighs the fear of making occasional mistakes and trust outweighs control.
Hello and a warm welcome to today's Lightwolf podcast.
Your podcast for leading with impact.
Today we talk about a...
pattern that I think is familiar to many leaders.
You delegate a decision and shortly afterwards that very decision that you just delegated the day before is back on your own table.
On your own desk.
Often accompanied by comments like this is a great project and I have a first idea.
I just wanted to check in with you.
Or You know, I have a couple of first suggestions for you, but I'd be curious to understand, how would you decide, dear boss?
And suddenly, you're back in the nitty-gritty of day-to-day operations, what you wanted to get out of.
If that's a problem that occurs in your daily life, the problem is rarely a lack of competence on behalf of the others.
Back delegation.
is usually due to two structural causes that I repeatedly observed over my 35 years of practical leadership experience.
Here they are.
Problem one.
The decision is delegated, but the authority to take it is not.
Right?
People are supposed to decide, but they are not responsible and not authorized.
Many leaders say, you know, you make the decision.
But they don't clarify.
Exactly which decision?
And according to what criteria?
Or up to what limit?
These open questions create uncertainty and often lead to decisions being delegated back to you.
Problem two.
Managers unconsciously send signals of control.
Sometimes the issue of back delegation isn't within the team.
But it's with the leader's behavior.
For example, decisions are corrected.
Details are changed retroactively.
Or managers intervene in operational matters.
Or even change the decision altogether.
Whatever it is.
The signal is then as clear as it is fatal.
In the end, the boss always decides anyway.
These are the two most frequent problems I've seen occur, I've seen at play, when decisions are delegated back.
Before we go into solutions, I'd like to kindly ask you now for about 10 seconds of your time, please participate in a quick poll.
Do decisions come back to you in your day-to-day work?
You'll see four answers in the poll, all the way from yes all the time to actually no, they never come back.
Go into the poll now, if you can, invest those 10 seconds, give your answer.
And the benefit for you, it increases your own awareness of your own decision-making behavior.
It might help you recognize your own decision-making patterns and also to further improve it.
So that's what's in for you.
Thank you for helping us with that one quick answer.
Now, what can you do?
What are my three best tips for you?
From more than three decades, from working as a manager and leader in three different big companies, as well as from my time now 14 years of being an entrepreneur, having founded two successful healthy startups myself.
I've made many mistakes.
I share...
Every single one here in the Lightwolf Podcast so that you don't repeat my mistakes.
And maybe that helps you become even stronger faster.
And here, my three tips for you.
What can you do to avoid that decisions you delegated end up back on your table?
Number one, define the goal and a clear decision-making framework.
Instead of saying, you decide, you could say, you take the decision.
Please make sure you maximize customer value and strictly stay within financial budget and the timeline that we agreed.
So don't spend more money, don't invest more time than we agreed.
And within these frames, maximize customer value.
You could even go further and define decision-making parameters or even categories like And you could say, in this particular instance and in any instance that we work together, please remember those three categories of decision-making authority.
Category B.
Any decision between €10,000 and €50,000 of budget impact.
Please feel expected and encouraged to take that decision yourself.
But please inform me about that decision.
I just want to know what you decided so that I can help answer questions should they reach me.
And three, decisions above €50,000 of budget impact.
I kindly ask you to please align with me before you take them.
because they might have quite massive impact on my own performance, and I'd like to make sure that you and I are aligned like this in bigger decisions, right?
So A, B, C, categorization.
That reduces uncertainty, that increases clarity, and that helps avoid that decisions end up back on your own table by you defining the goal and setting a clear decision-making framework.
Tip number two, return the decision.
If you delegated a decision and someone tries to give it back to you, don't accept it.
Ask for their recommendation.
So when someone comes and says, I'm not clear yet and I feel a bit uneasy and, you know, what would you suggest?
You don't.
Do not answer, please.
Just say, what is your recommendation?
This keeps responsibility for making the decision where it belongs, on the other side.
And it's often all it takes is you giving it back and encouraging people.
Oftentimes our people have much more potential than they themselves are aware of.
And all we as leaders need to do is to give them courage.
So encourage them to take the decision themselves.
Please also tolerate silence.
When someone asks, dear boss, what would you do?
And your answer is, well, how would you decide?
And the next thing is silence.
for a few seconds.
Then please, as a leader, accept the silence.
Tolerate the silence.
Sustain the silence.
Silence means someone else is thinking.
Thinking takes a bit of time.
And thinking helps.
So please, don't interrupt the thinking.
Just tolerate the silence and wait until they are finished with their thinking.
So tolerate the silence.
And don't correct decisions immediately if you don't like them.
If someone decides differently than you would, or perhaps even makes a slightly bad decision, then don't correct them immediately.
Just ask, how did you arrive at this decision?
This allows them to explain.
This allows you Tipp Nummer 3.
Reward good decisions, not only strong results.
Delegate a decision.
And you only accept strong results.
Then that might increase the fear of making mistakes.
Because people learn, hmm, I'm supposed to take a decision, but I see that only excellent results are rewarded and recognized.
Oh shit, will I take the right one?
It just increases their fear.
The tendency to delegate decisions back So delegate using decision-making logic and reward good decision-making.
And when you also share a decision-making logic or ask people to share their decision-making logic with you, they learn, right?
You could, for example, either explain or ask what the person should decide.
And how you evaluate decisions.
Not in terms of the decision outcome, but also in the decision making process.
For example, whether the decision was made according to clear principles.
And what these principles are.
Or whether the decision was taken based on multiple options being evaluated.
And to what criteria the evaluation has been done.
Praise the courage to make decisions.
Maybe you also praise the speed to decision making.
I agree that some particular decisions need time.
Still today.
They need time to mature.
They need time to be right, to be taken.
Particularly when you think about M&A decisions, whether you buy or sell a company.
Sometimes it's recruitment decisions.
We've just taken one fast and clear and well because we were very well prepared and found a superstar who just joined our team.
But typically, there are a few that need time.
But most of our decisions in daily life, particularly when we are early in a project or in a process, good enough should be the benchmark, not perfection.
And then maybe the speed of decision-making is one of your criteria that you'd like to share with the people.
The more your people learn that they should and are allowed to make their own decisions, the more confident they become and the more they want to do so.
This prevents decisions from being passed back to you.
You will have more time for other topics, for other matters, and your employees grow.
And because of your people growing, as a result, your business grows.
So it's worth it.
Tip number three, reward good decisions, not just strong results.
So these would be my three tips for you, no matter whether you are a first-time leader, a middle manager or the CEO.
These tips apply to all levels of leadership.
I say this with so strong conviction, because occasionally I see the most senior people making mistakes in the simplest of fundamentals.
Maybe because they are under pressure, and that's understandable.
Maybe because they never receive feedback from anyone, because people just don't dare to give feedback because of the power of your role.
But the power of these three tips gets bigger and bigger the higher up you are in the organization.
Because your leverage, your lever is bigger on culture, on people, on results.
So here are my three tips.
How do you avoid decisions you delegated coming back to you?
One, define the goal and a clear decision-making framework.
Two, return the decision.
And three, reward good decision-making.
Not just...
When decisions come back to you, it is rarely an individual problem.
The more your people learn that they are good and they improve at decision-making, they will get better at it.
And if you see the symptom that decisions keep coming back, it's rarely an individual problem.
It's usually a problem with the leadership system.
the entire culture of leadership.
And you can avoid backdelegation if decision-making frameworks are clear, the courage to take responsibility and to make decisions outweighs the fear of making occasional mistakes, and trust outweighs control.
By the way, if you too observe backdelegation in your organization, And if you want to stop back delegation in your company, if you want to systemically and systematically strengthen effective leadership in your company, then reach out to us, please.
That's what we do on a daily basis.
And that's what we love doing.
And more and more clients work with us over more than 10 years.
We'd be happy to connect.
We'd be happy to connect virtually and listen to you first.
Where are you?
Maybe even in this first conversation we might already be able to share one or the other tip with you that helps you and your company move forward.
We'd be happy and I invite you to please go into the show notes and book a free initial consultation call right away.
We look forward to listening to you.
Good leadership doesn't mean making decisions all the time.
It also means developing decision-making capabilities in your organization.
Because an organization only becomes truly strong, healthy and scalable when decisions are made where the expertise lies, not where hierarchy ends.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I'm glad you were here.
And I look forward to welcoming you again soon, maybe already next Monday, here in the Lightwolf Podcast.
Have a fantastic week and see you soon.