Control is a Comfort Zone
Control is leadership’s favorite drug.
It’s cheap, fast, and always within reach. One dose and the room snaps to attention, one decision and the noise quiets down, the leader feels useful, necessary, in charge. And like any drug, the more you use it, the more you need it.
The rush is real. You get order, you get compliance, you get to look in the mirror and think, “I saved the day.” But here’s the truth: that rush doesn’t build anything worth keeping. Control is a comfort zone, and comfort zones kill velocity.
I’ve watched leaders in billion-dollar boardrooms and scrappy startups alike fall into the same pattern. They call it “protecting the standard,” “maintaining quality,” or “making sure it gets done right.” But peel it back and you’ll see the same thing: a reflex to step in, take over, and run the play themselves.
Control looks like commitment, but it’s self-protection. It shields the leader from uncertainty, from risk, from the possibility that someone else might do it differently and better.
Control is a Slow Poison
On the surface, control feels productive. The leader makes the call, moves the pieces, and the work advances. The dopamine hit lands, but underneath, the team starts rewiring itself around the leader’s preferences instead of the mission.
They stop reading the situation and start reading you; they don’t anticipate what the work needs; they anticipate what you’ll want. They learn to manage your mood, not the mission.
That’s when you’ve crossed the line from leading to bottlenecking. And the thing about bottlenecks is they don’t just slow the work, they shrink it. Ideas get smaller, initiative dries up, and the very people you hired for their creativity and judgment start vanishing in front of you, still sitting in the chair but absent in every other way.
Excellence or Ego?
Here’s the uncomfortable question: Is your control about excellence? Or is it about your ego?
Quality is important. Standards matter. But too often, “quality control” is code for “I want it my way.” Leaders convince themselves that if they’re not in every decision, the outcome will suffer, but in reality, what suffers is ownership.
Micromanagement masquerades as excellence, dressed up in the language of caring deeply about the work, but it’s really about caring deeply about being the one who decides. That may protect your comfort zone, but it kills the team’s ability to lead themselves.
The Real Cost of Your Comfort Zone
When you live in control, you pay for it in three currencies:
Speed: Everything waits for you. Even when you’re fast, you’re still the choke point.
Capacity: You burn time and energy on things others could do, leaving less of you for strategy, vision, and relationships.
Culture: You train people to play small, to wait, to bring you safe, predictable work instead of their boldest thinking.
Control feels safe, but safe isn’t the same as sustainable.
How to Break the Habit
You don’t quit control cold turkey; you release it through deliberate practice:
Delegate without a leash: Hand over the decision and stay out of the room.
Stay curious when you want to correct: Ask, “What’s your thinking here?” before you give an answer.
Teach judgment, not just rules: When you do intervene, explain the “why,” not just the “what.”
Name your impulse: Tell your team when you’re tempted to step in and let them call you out on it.
Each act of release builds your tolerance for uncertainty and their leadership capacity.
The Question That Changes Everything
Before you step in, pause and ask:
Am I doing this because the work truly needs me or because I’m chasing that hit of certainty?
If you’re honest, you’ll know the answer, and the answer will tell you whether you’re leading for comfort or growth.
Reciprocating Authority: The On-Ramp to Excellence
In Reciprocating Authority, control gets replaced with something more complex and infinitely more valuable: trust in motion.
You stop asking, “How do I keep this in my hands?” and start asking, “Whose hands should this be in for the mission to move faster?” You distribute authority so decisions live closer to the work, creating a feedback loop where trust extended becomes ownership activated, and ownership activated becomes velocity.
That’s the long game, and it works. But only if you can get past your addiction to control’s quick fix.
Leadership That Outgrows You
Control-based cultures need you to be present to function; trust-based cultures don’t. One burns you out, the other frees you to lead at the altitude where you belong.
The leaders who make this shift discover a different kind of high; one that comes from watching their team take the reins, steer with confidence, and accelerate without them. Feeling the culture move on trust instead of tension, seeing the mission gain momentum without every step running through you.
That’s the real performance enhancer, and it lasts.
So here’s the challenge: step out of the comfort zone of control, let the team take the play, and watch them run it better than you would have. That’s leadership worth getting hooked on.
The Long Shadow of Leadership is my straight-talking, practical, and insightful conversation about power, presence, and the ripple effect of authority. Available as a keynote, executive briefing, or workshop.https://www.alanprushan.com/speaker-page