She didn’t plan to become the only one who knew how everything worked. It just kind of happened.
One project turned into two. A few shortcuts lived in her head instead of anywhere written down. People started coming to her because it was faster. Easier.
And after a while, when someone asked, “Who should we go to for this?” the answer was just… her.
It felt a little reassuring for her, like job security. For everyone else, things were under control.
Until the day that someone left: Went on sabbatical, shifted roles, or got pulled into something new. Suddenly, everyone realized how much of the work wasn’t actually in the system. It was in a person.
In this episode, you’ll get one small experiment to help you step out of being “the only one,” without blowing up your whole way of working.
Why Being the Go-To Person Feels Safer Than It Is
There’s a certain comfort in being the one people rely on. You know the answers. You know the history. You know where things might break before anyone else sees it.
But the risk doesn’t show up while everything’s running smoothly. It shows up when something shifts. Someone leaves. You take a vacation.
And suddenly, what looked stable starts to feel shaky. Not because your team isn’t capable, but because too much of the context has been sitting in one place.
I worked with a leader who hit this wall a while back. A key manager left mid-project, and with them went a huge amount of unspoken knowledge. Not documented, not shared—just vanished.
That’s when she started to see that same pattern in herself. At first, she thought she had a time management problem. But when we slowed it down, something else was underneath. Being the one who knew had quietly become how she measured her value. She wouldn’t have said it that way before. But once we named it, she felt it immediately.
So instead of trying to fix everything at once, we tried something smaller.
What Letting Go Actually Brings Up
She picked one routine responsibility. Something she would normally just handle herself without thinking.
And she asked someone else to take it on.
Not permanently. Not with some big announcement. Just as a short experiment. Then she paid attention. Not just to whether it got done. But to what happened for her when she wasn’t the one doing it.
There was a moment in a meeting where she almost jumped in to correct something. Her hand was already moving toward unmute when she stopped. Then someone asked a question she’d always answered before. And this time, she just… didn’t. She wondered if it would be done ‘right.’ She waited.
And then something she didn’t expect. Someone else answered it. There was a little more space than she’d imagined. A little less weight on her shoulders.
The One Small Shift to Try
So this week, maybe try experimenting with something small. Pick one thing you usually own and let someone else run with it.
If you try this, the interesting part might not be the outcome. It’s what comes up for you internally. You might notice the urge to step back in quickly. Or a little anxiety about how it reflects on you. Maybe even some relief you didn’t see coming.
All of that tells you something. And it gives you a chance to pivot, even just a little, toward building others into that role with you.
If you’re nodding along and thinking, ‘Yeah, but I’m also the person everything has to run through,’ you’ll want to listen to Episode 120: ‘Stop Being Your Ops Team’s Bottleneck.’ It’s the perfect follow-up to this one. You can find it at YourFutureRealized.com/120.
You can’t stop the chaos, but you don’t have to be the only one holding it together.