When growth slows, most leaders look outside for answers—market conditions, competition, talent shortages. But in my coaching work with executive teams, I see a different pattern. More often than not, the bottleneck isn’t out there. It’s in the leadership team itself.

This can be a tough realization. High-performing leaders don’t mean to slow things down. But it happens: decisions pile up at the top, habits that worked in the past don’t scale, or team dynamics go unaddressed.

The good news? Bottlenecks can be cleared. Here are three powerful shifts I work on with leadership teams:

1. Push decisions down.
If everything waits on you, progress crawls. Ask yourself: What decisions am I making that someone else could own? Then clearly delegate, set guardrails, and let go.

2. Replace old habits.
What got you here won’t get you there. Maybe jumping into the weeds worked in the early days, but now it stifles growth. Regularly audit your routines: Which habits are adding value, and which are keeping me in the way?

3. Tackle the people issues.
Momentum dies when teams avoid conflict or withhold honesty. Build trust by modeling it: invite dissent, surface tensions, and reward candor. Alignment comes from working through the tough conversations, not around them.

How can we turn these insights into action? Awareness is the first step. But to truly break a bottleneck, leaders need to pause and reflect honestly on their own behavior. Here are five quick questions I often pose to executives as a starting point:

Am I holding on to decisions that could be made without me?
Do projects slow down when I’m unavailable?
Am I still spending time on work that my team should own?
Have I updated my leadership habits to match the scale of the business?
Do people feel safe challenging me—or are they staying silent?

These aren’t easy questions, but they’re powerful ones. Even noticing a single “yes” can reveal where to start making change.

External challenges will always exist, but the greater risk is when leadership gets in its own way. The fastest way forward may be to step back, clear the path, and let your team run.