Knowing when to take the lead and when to back off is crucial

The first time I learned that leading isn’t always about being in front, I was sitting in a cramped co-working space in Kuala Lumpur, staring at a cash flow forecast that looked more like a countdown clock. We had six months of runway left. My instinct was to push harder, take the reins on every project, and be everywhere at once. It felt like the only responsible thing to do — to lead by sheer visibility and energy. But what I didn’t realise then was that leadership is as much about stepping aside at the right moment as it is about charging ahead.

It’s a truth most founders don’t discover until the first crisis hits. In the early days, you’re told to hustle, to keep your team inspired by showing them you’re in the trenches. Investors want to see decisive action. Your co-founder expects you to have answers. And your own sense of self-worth becomes tethered to how visibly “in control” you appear. It’s intoxicating — and dangerous. Because the very drive that gets you off the ground can become the weight that drags the business under if you never learn to modulate it.

When I look back at that period, I can see why I believed more action was always better. We were fighting to close a major client, negotiating a seed round, and trying to hold the team together through product delays. I thought my presence in every meeting and every decision would show commitment. Instead, what I was really doing was slowing the team down. Developers waited for my approval before committing code. The marketing lead second-guessed every campaign angle because she was trying to predict my reaction. My co-founder — usually the calm, systems-minded one — started avoiding tough calls because I was already “handling” them.

The breakdown didn’t come with a single big blow-up. It happened through small, invisible fractures. Deadlines slipped. The mood in the office turned brittle. People stopped bringing me bad news until it was too late to fix. We lost the client we’d been courting for months, partly because our response times had slowed and partly because the team seemed unaligned in meetings. It wasn’t that they didn’t know what to say — it was that they were looking at me to say it first.

The moment of clarity came on a Tuesday morning when our product manager, usually reserved, told me point-blank that I was “holding the ball too long.” He didn’t mean it as an insult. He meant it literally. Decisions were getting stuck with me, piling up like cars in a bottleneck. By trying to lead from the front on everything, I had become the single point of failure.

It was a hard thing to hear, and an even harder thing to accept. In founder culture, there’s a subtle but constant pressure to be the one with the vision, the energy, the answers. Stepping back feels like weakness, like you’re admitting you’re not essential. But here’s what I’ve learned: knowing when not to lead is one of the most powerful leadership skills you can develop.

There’s a rhythm to a growing business. In some seasons, the team needs you to set the tone, take the hard calls, and absorb the uncertainty. In others, the most valuable thing you can do is create the space for them to act without you — to let them find their own footing. Both are leadership. Both require presence. But they are not the same posture, and confusing the two can quietly stall your company’s growth.

I started experimenting with what I now think of as “active withdrawal.” It’s not disengagement. It’s choosing where your presence will accelerate outcomes, and where it will quietly distort them. In practice, that meant walking into fewer stand-ups and letting the department leads run them without my commentary. It meant telling the marketing lead, “I trust your call,” and not adding “but here’s what I’d do” afterward. It meant stepping back from product reviews unless there was a strategic decision on the table.

The shift was uncomfortable. For the first few weeks, I felt like I was abandoning my team. I worried they’d think I’d lost interest or was distracted by fundraising. But what actually happened was the opposite. Without me hovering over their work, they moved faster. They debated more openly. They brought me sharper, more fully formed proposals instead of half-finished ideas. They stopped waiting for my green light and started owning their results.

Timing this balance is not a science. You can’t lead with a fixed formula like “be present 60 percent of the time and absent 40 percent.” It’s a read you develop from watching your team, your market, and your own bandwidth. If your absence creates chaos, you’ve stepped back too soon. If your presence creates dependency, you’ve stayed in front too long.

In my own journey, I learned to read three signals that helped me decide. First, when decisions started queuing up on my desk, I knew I was leading too much from the center. Second, when I found myself correcting more than creating, it was time to step aside. Third, when my calendar was full but my thinking was shallow, I knew I’d traded strategic leadership for busywork visibility.

It’s also worth saying that holding back is not the same as being invisible. The team still needs to know you’re there, even when you’re not driving. That’s where intentional check-ins matter — not to micromanage, but to reinforce priorities and offer support. When my head of product hit a roadblock with a vendor, I didn’t step in to take over negotiations. I simply asked her what she needed to move forward, and offered connections she could use if she chose to. She owned the outcome, but she didn’t feel abandoned.

This kind of leadership also changes how you show up in crises. In the past, I would have been the first to grab the mic, to reassure investors and customers that I was “on it.” Now, I think about who on the team is best positioned to own that moment — not for their ego, but for the company’s resilience. Sometimes it’s still me. But other times, letting a department head lead externally sends a stronger signal of depth and stability.

In one later chapter of my career, we faced a sudden regulatory change in a market we were about to enter. My instinct was to convene a war room and run it myself. But our COO had been tracking the issue for months and had relationships with the regulators. This was her moment, not mine. I stayed in the background, offering support and unblocking resources. She navigated the changes so effectively that what could have been a six-month delay turned into a two-week adjustment. That wouldn’t have happened if I had insisted on leading from the front.

For founders in Southeast Asia and the Gulf — markets where hierarchy is often culturally embedded — this balance can feel even trickier. Teams may be conditioned to defer to the founder by default. In these contexts, stepping back requires deliberate communication so the team understands it’s a strategic choice, not neglect. It also means holding the line when they try to pull you back into operational decisions out of habit. The first few times you resist, they’ll be uneasy. Over time, they’ll adapt — and so will you.

The real test of knowing when to lead and when to hold back is whether your absence strengthens or weakens the system you’ve built. If stepping away causes a dip in performance that never recovers, you may have a structural gap. If stepping in causes capable people to shrink back, you may have a cultural one. Both are signals to redesign, not to default to constant presence.

I’m not suggesting you vanish into strategy mode the moment your team can run a meeting without you. Founders still need to be visible in the moments that anchor culture — celebrating wins, marking turning points, owning mistakes. But visibility without necessity is just noise. Your presence should be a multiplier, not a crutch.

The irony is that by learning when to hold back, you often gain more authority, not less. Your team begins to associate your involvement with decisive shifts, not routine oversight. Investors see you as a leader who can build independent operators, not just loyal executors. And you, as the founder, get back the mental space to think beyond the next deadline.

When I think about that version of myself in the co-working space — the one who thought leadership meant being everywhere at once — I feel a mix of empathy and relief. Empathy, because I understand the fear that drives that behaviour. Relief, because I’ve learned that leadership is not measured in hours visible, meetings attended, or approvals given. It’s measured in the system’s ability to move forward with or without you.

If you’re reading this in the middle of your own sprint, ask yourself: is your presence creating momentum, or is it creating a queue? Are you the accelerator, or the bottleneck? The answer will change over time, and your job as a founder is to keep listening for that shift.

In the end, timing really is power. Not just in market entry or fundraising, but in the quiet calibration of when to lead from the front and when to lead from the side. Both require courage. Both can change the trajectory of your company. And the sooner you master that rhythm, the more your business — and your people — will grow without you having to push every step of the way.