Do you know which essential leadership secret comes up most often in coaching sessions? In my experience as a coach, it is trust.
For many clients, the leadership challenge boils down to striking the right balance between “control” and “delegation”. In reality, every management technique rests on trust. Learning to trust your teams while keeping a degree of oversight is also an opportunity for a leader to grow in their own posture.
Table of contents
- Comfort zone vs. need for control
- The leader’s dilemma
- How to learn to trust and to delegate
- Creating a culture of trust without laxity
1 | Comfort zone vs. need for control
For most leaders, “doing everything yourself” is a refuge—a psychological comfort zone—especially among highly skilled, perfection-oriented people. Letting go of control therefore feels even harder.
Back in the days of empires, rulers often exploited one another’s weaknesses in order to keep a firm grip, ending up in a bubble of isolated decisions. Today’s management models value co-construction, diversity and collaborative work. That is why passing on knowledge, managing processes and resources, and helping one’s team grow are now core responsibilities of any modern leader.
2 | The leader’s dilemma
Many leaders feel permanently torn between “control” and “delegation”. In coaching sessions my clients frequently voice this tension: they want everything to unfold exactly as they envision, yet they also crave an engaged team that puts ideas on the table and joins discussions actively.
Before you even refine your management techniques, ask yourself: have you granted your team enough trust already? This often-overlooked aspect is the real key. Endlessly double-checking every detail might in fact signal that something is amiss. Instead, reflect on what you wish to exchange or share with your collaborators—and which levers you already hold to build mutual trust.
3 | How to learn to trust and to delegate
If delegation feels tough, it is because we are usually unsure how much trust to give. Yet walking that tightrope also offers a tremendous opportunity for personal development.
Trusting your team can be learned. When you give them credit, they often deliver outstanding work—sometimes beyond what you imagined. Even if early results are imperfect, they improve. As a leader, it is precisely this faith in their potential that should drive you.
The starting point is to recall a moment when you were fully supported and believed in. As a coach, my role is to provide a safe, caring framework where clients can test new actions and mindsets, certain they enjoy the coach’s total confidence.
After experiencing this unconditional trust, a client becomes better able to pass it on to their own team—resulting in higher performance for everyone.
💡 Further reading:
– How to delegate and empower? The manager cannot control everything—become a pro at delegation!
– What makes a good manager? A practical overview of leadership from junior to senior level
4 | Creating a culture of trust without laxity
Inside a company, does anyone truly enjoy unconditional support and trust? While we often label this as a reflection of “corporate culture”, genuine change actually starts with you.
You can become the engine of this transformation by building, for your team, an environment grounded in trust—one where everyone feels the strength of being backed. Once launched, this virtuous circle of confidence will shape even more future leaders.
Beware: trusting does not mean abandoning all control.
As a leader you must set milestones, schedule checkpoints and establish clear boundaries so that your team has freedom to act inside a secure framework. This form of “quiet monitoring” offers them a safe space to experiment and grow, while you maintain the necessary oversight. They, in turn, gain maturity and confidence.
During my own career I was fortunate to work with managers who placed full trust in me. In hindsight I see how that freedom spurred my development. This “see but don’t constantly point out” approach is also part of the techniques I apply in coaching.
Want to boost your leadership, learn to build trust and delegate effectively?
Book a free discovery session and let’s tackle your professional challenges together!
- Format: ~40-minute video call
- You will receive:
— An initial analysis of your context
— An assessment of the coaching format best suited to your goals
— Clarification of priorities and expected outcomes
— A first breakthrough to spotlight blind spots and open new perspectives
— Answers to your questions about coaching, my philosophy and my professional methods