Why can't I get my team to hit the number I used to hit alone?
You were the best at the thing. That is why they gave you this chair. Now you sit in meetings while someone worse than you were tries to do what you did, and you feel the number slipping, and your hands itch to take the call yourself. This is not failure. This is a different job wearing the same title. The skill that made you excellent — closing, persuading, executing — is not the skill this chair requires. This chair requires you to see what is missing in another person and supply it, patiently, again and again, without doing their job for them. No one taught you this. Fine. No one taught most of us the things we most needed to know. That is not an excuse to keep swinging the old tool at a new task. Look plainly at what the work now is, and begin it.
Because you are still doing the old job. Your hands built the number before; now other hands must build it. Your work is to make them capable, not to make the sale yourself. Stop grading yourself by the old measure. Choose to coach, or step aside for someone who will.
What changes unlock by starting
- You stop measuring yourself by a number that is no longer yours alone to hit.
- You can name, specifically, what each person on your team needs from you.
- You catch yourself reaching for the old tool and choose the new one instead.
- Your team closes deals without you in the room — which was always the point.