Your expertise helps you deliver good work. Sharing the judgement behind it helps your team do the same.
The report arrives late on Thursday. It is due with the client on Friday morning. Your colleague has gathered the information, updated the figures and covered the requested sections. But the recommendation is difficult to find. Two numbers contradict each other. A risk you discussed last week has disappeared from the analysis. You could explain what needs to change. At this hour, though, it feels quicker to fix it yourself. So you do. The report goes out, the client is pleased, and you thank your colleague for the groundwork.
A month later, the next report arrives. Different figures. Familiar problems. You begin to wonder why the work keeps coming back to you.There is another question worth asking: what did your colleague learn from the last time you improved it? They saw the finished version. They may never have understood the decisions that made it better.
Your Expertise Has a Second Job
Being able to spot a problem and resolve it quickly may be part of what earned you the responsibility in the first place. You know what matters, anticipate the questions and hold a standard others have come to rely on. When you begin managing people, that expertise takes on a second job: helping others develop the judgement to produce good work themselves. The transition can be uncomfortable. Correcting the report solves this month’s problem. Explaining your reasoning, then giving your colleague a chance to apply it, can improve next month’s. That investment takes time, and the next attempt may still need work.
If your own manager rewards flawless delivery and barely notices staff development, taking over can feel like the safest way to meet expectations. The immediate reward is visible; the growing dependence on you is easier to overlook. Call it the quiet rescue. You may recognise it from both sides: as the person making the corrections and as the colleague whose work someone else quietly improved. Each rescue can protect the deadline while leaving the arrangement intact. You keep carrying the difficult decisions. Your colleague keeps completing the parts they already understand. Everyone stays busy, and the team’s capacity barely moves.
Caring about someone’s development is a valuable starting point. Helping them understand and practise the judgement behind your corrections is how that care becomes useful.
Understand What Will Help the Person Succeed
Before concluding that someone needs to “take more ownership”, establish what happened.
Return to the report. Did your colleague know its purpose was to help the client choose between options, or did they understand the assignment as an update? Did they have the latest figures? Were they waiting for someone more senior to confirm the risk? Had another urgent task taken the time you thought they had?
A useful opening is:
“Talk me through how you approached this, what you understood the report needed to achieve, and where you got stuck.”
Then listen before you give your assessment.
The answer helps you identify which problem you are solving. An unclear brief calls for clearer expectations. A skill gap calls for demonstration and practice. Missing information or competing priorities call for coordination. Responsibility without authority calls for a decision about what the person is allowed to do. Where expectations, resources and support were adequate, a missed commitment calls for a direct conversation about accountability: what was agreed, what prevented delivery and what needs to change. Several of these conditions can exist together. Separating them makes your response more precise and gives your colleague a fair chance to improve.
A Good Brief Makes Success Clear
“Please prepare the monthly report” describes an activity. It leaves a great deal to interpretation. A stronger brief explains what the work must enable:
“The client needs to decide whether to continue the current approach or adjust it. Please recommend a course of action, support it with reconciled figures, and set out the main risk. Let’s look at your proposed recommendation on Wednesday, before you build the full draft.” Now your colleague has a purpose, a standard and an early chance to test their thinking.
For a recurring assignment, agree five things:
- Outcome: What should the work enable someone to understand, decide or do?
- Standard: What must be accurate, complete or well reasoned for it to be ready?
- Authority: What can the person decide independently, and what needs approval?
- Support: What information, access, time or guidance will they need?
- Review point: When will you check progress while there is still time to make useful changes?
Keep this proportionate. A short conversation and a few written lines may be enough. Be equally clear about where different approaches are welcome. Accurate figures and a defensible recommendation may be essential. Your preferred sentence structure may simply be a preference. People need room to meet the standard in their own way.
Give Ownership the Authority It Needs
Responsibility becomes meaningful when someone can make the decisions needed to fulfil it. If your colleague owns the report but must come to you to request every missing figure, settle every discrepancy and contact every stakeholder, the work still runs through your calendar. Responsibility without authority becomes a longer route back to your desk. Agree the boundaries. Your colleague might be free to request corrections directly, challenge inconsistent data and propose a revised recommendation, while any change to what was promised to the client still needs your approval.
Make sure the relevant colleagues understand those boundaries too. Permission to request information is of limited use if everyone still waits for your confirmation before responding. When your colleague brings you a question, invite their reasoning:
“What do you recommend, and what leads you there?”
That gives you something specific to develop. You can test the assumption, talk through the consequence or identify the missing evidence together. Where the person is still learning, work through an example with them so they have a basis for their next recommendation. How you receive early warnings matters too. If uncertainty is met with irritation, people may wait until they have something polished, or until the deadline leaves you little room to respond. Acknowledge early warnings and help agree the next step. People need to see that raising a concern leads to a useful response.
Make Feedback Useful for the Next Attempt
“This needs to be more strategic” leaves the recipient to work out what you mean. Useful feedback connects what you noticed to its consequence and to a specific change:
“The report describes what happened, but the client still has to work out what to do. Open with your recommendation, then show the evidence and the trade-off behind it.” Where time allows, ask your colleague to make the revision. Applying the feedback gives them practice and shows you whether your explanation was clear. Sometimes you will still need to step in. A deadline, a serious error or a client commitment may call for immediate correction, and protecting the outcome is part of your job.
What matters is what happens afterwards. Go back to the work together. Explain what you changed and why. Ask what they would look for next time, and agree one improvement they will own on the next comparable piece of work. That follow-through turns a quiet rescue into something the team can learn from.
Watch the Questions Change
Progress often arrives quietly. A recommendation comes with its reasoning already explained. A discrepancy is resolved before you see the draft. A colleague flags a risk while there is still time to respond. Start with one recurring piece of work this week. Agree the outcome, standard, authority, support and review point with the person who owns it. At the next cycle, check whether the work meets the agreed standard with less corrective intervention from you.
Pay attention to the kind of questions you are asked, as well as how often they come. A colleague who approaches you earlier, with a considered recommendation, may be developing exactly the judgement you hoped for. The next report may still need your attention. But if your colleague can explain the recommendation, defend the figures and recognise when to bring you in, something important has changed. You have another person you can trust with more.
