Removing yourself is what trust looks like.

A document sat on my desk for three days. The team finished it on Monday. I signed it on Thursday. Nobody called the wait a cost.

I had kept myself in the chain because it felt like leadership. It was not. It was cover.

Approval chains grow in one direction. Each time a decision goes wrong, another sign-off gets added. The list of approvers never shrinks.

The team absorbs the wait in silence. The client sees an agency that is slow. Inside the process, everyone calls it quality control.

Removing yourself is what trust in the team looks like. That trust only holds when they own the outcome, not just the task.

The leaders who fix approval chains are the ones who leave them first.