How to Reduce Work Stress by Trusting Your Team—Without Lowering Your Standards

If you’ve ever gone home and realised your mind is still “on shift,” you’ll relate to Ella. She’s a lead electrician on construction sites, responsible for ensuring safe and compliant work, and she has a strong team around her. However, she keeps finding reasons to double-check, answer one more question, and verify what her deputies have already confirmed.

 While this may seem like dedication, it gradually transforms her into a human fuse box through which every decision must pass. That’s where work stress and anxiety begin to take their toll.

We explore a common leadership trap that appears in both construction and corporate environments: confusing high standards with high involvement. High standards represent the goals we strive to achieve, while high involvement reflects the personal control we exert to ensure those goals are met.

 When these two concepts become tangled, delegation can feel risky, leading the team to rely on the leader’s confidence rather than developing their own. As team members hesitate, the leader intervenes more frequently, and both sides gather “proof” that this pattern is necessary.

We then propose a practical alternative: structured trust.

Instead of simply suggesting leaders “trust more,” we outline a system that makes trust tangible and measurable through clear standards, evidence of competence, defined decision-making rights, established review points, and transparent escalation procedures.

 We also introduce the ABGW method (Awareness, Balance, Growth, Well-being) to help leaders remain accountable without being constantly on call. We conclude with a simple three-question exercise for you to try this week.

If you find this helpful, please subscribe, share it with a colleague who might be feeling overwhelmed, and leave a review so that more people can discover the show. What’s one decision you could delegate to a capable team member today?

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:21

This great story teaches us something about being human. I'm Cheryl Parris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Hi and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety. I'm Cheryl Paris. Welcome if this is your first episode. Great that you're here. If it's not, I'm really glad that you're here. And I particularly would like to say thank you to a new listener from Austin, Texas, in the USA. So thank you for listening. Now, in this episode, I'd like to introduce you to Ella. Ella is 40. She likes swimming. She likes learning about ancient civilizations. And she's doing a job that will probably be fine. And it's not

Meet Ella On The Building Site

SPEAKER_01 1:27

generally considered a quality standard. What am I talking about? She is a lead electrician on building sites. Once the construction reaches the right stage, Ella and her deputies and her team of electricians come in and wire all the houses across the site. And the work, as you know, because we're dealing with electricity here, has to be safe, compliant, and properly checked. So Ella is responsible for that standard. But let's face it, she can't physically stand beside every electrician while they put in every cable circuit and make sure the connection is complete. And that is where responsibility can begin to feel rather complicated for Ella. Now, Ella's really lucky she's got loads of experienced electricians, she has deputies whose role it is to do all the quality checks. She knows logically that the whole operation can't depend upon her seeing everything herself, yet she keeps finding reasons to look one more time. She checks work that the deputies have already checked. She answers questions that somebody else is authorized to answer. And she often finds herself walking back across the site because one small data is still tapping inside her head. And what's interesting, every check looks sensible on its own, but put them together, and Ella has quietly become the human fuse box through which every decision must pass. You know, this is why, you know, it kind of makes me think about uh Captain Picard, you know, in that famous film. Um what was it called? Hmm. One that I really like. I'm trying to think of the name. I think it was called First Contact. Um, those wonderful words that he always says, make it so. He carries responsibility for the enterprise, but he does not say make it so, and I shall hover over your shoulder while you're doing it. Does he? He gives direction within a structure which trained people have roles, authority, and expertise. Now, uh I appreciate a building site is not the same as the enterprise, and Ella is unlikely to encounter the Borg during her tea break. But the point I'm trying to make is that leadership tension is kind of the same. How do you remain accountable without behaving as though accountability requires your fingerprints on every decision? And from Ella's side, the extra check-in feels like care, caution, and high standards. But from the team's side, it may communicate something else. You know, a deputy thinks if Ella will inspect it again anyway, was that decision ever really mine? I mean, an experienced electrician pauses over an ordinary judgment and asks, because being corrected afterwards is more exhausting than seeking permission in the first place. So gradually, capable people begin borrowing Ella's certainty instead of using their own. Then Ella sees this hesitation and thinks, This is exactly why I need to stay involved all the time. Everybody now has evidence for the pattern they are helping to create. And the work doesn't always remain neatly behind the sight gates. Ella may physically leave when she leaves at the end of the day, but part of her is still running those checks. Was that issue followed up? Did the deputy inspect the right section? Should she look at the photographs again? Swimming is supposed to give her mind some space, but apparently anxiety is willing to do the lemps as well with her. Even when she's reading about the ancient civilizations, like I think she was reading um Homer in and the other day in anticipation of going and seeing it in the cinema. Um, you know, she's got this modern housing development that she still needs to be rewired, but it's still being rewired somewhere behind her eyes as well. She's not only carrying the responsibility, she's carrying what I think is the illusion that constant vigilance is what makes her responsible. Now, this is an assumption worth questioning, I think.

High Standards Versus High Involvement

SPEAKER_01 7:00

If my standards are high, I must remain closely involved. It sounds responsible, and I suppose in safety critical work, like you know, messing about what electricity is, it can sound absolutely um unarguable. I I get that, but high standards and high involvement aren't the same thing. One describes the quality of the work and what it must meet, and the other describes how much Ella is consuming trying to guarantee that. Now, if the system only feels safe when the lead electrician personally checks everything, then the system may not be demonstrating excellent control. It may be demonstrating one very competent woman being used as the control. Now, what does this sort of kind of tell us? You know, this false thing, I think, between blind trust and micromanagement. Of course, of course, the alternative can't be blind faith. I'm not suggesting that for one minute. Ella can't wave cheerfully at all the newly, you know, wired houses and say, Oh, I trust my vibes. There must be competency, inspection, documentation, and a way to raise um any risk. But managers are often, I think, offering a lot of managers, I should say, are often offering two ridiculous extremes to their subordinates. They either supervise everything or they let ever they let go of everything completely. No wonder stepping back feels dangerous when it's described as abandoning standards. Perhaps to me the real question is not whether Ella should care less, but whether care has been almost become confused with personal control. So the way I say if Ella's team is competent, her deputies are competent, and they're there to check quality and make sure everything's up to standard, and everybody understands that safety matters and what is required, because they've all had their training. Why does stepping back still feel so unsafe to her? And if Picard's make it so is more than just a confident catchphrase, what sits underneath it that allows responsibility and autonomy to exist in the same space-time? The usual explanation, I think, is that Ella simply needs to trust more. But to me, that's like that's just it's too thin. Before she can respond differently, we need, I think, to understand what all this check-in might be trying

What Constant Checking Really Protects

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to protect her from, which gets us where. So we've got Ella knowing that just trusting people more isn't a sufficient um answer. Um, but repeatedly checking is gonna be really about the work. Um, I suppose for Ella, it may also be an attempt to settle the feeling that she doesn't personally see everything, she can't be certain it's all safe. The behavior may be saying to her, I am checking the installation, but underneath, another part of her may be saying, I'm checking whether I am still a responsible leader. And I kind of think that makes sense, but it also means the reassurance from one inspection never really lasts that long. You know, Elm is not imagining the consequences. Electrical work carries, of course, um real risk in real life. If something serious is missed, somebody could be, you know, could be hurt. Um nobody will be terribly impressed by a speech about positive thinking. And she may be thinking about her clients, the site managers, regulators, and all the future residents somewhere along that chain of accountability, but a real responsibility can acquire an additional emotional meaning. So what I mean by that is if some maybe she's saying to say if somebody on my team gets it wrong, it proves that I should have been watching them. And to me, at that point, accountability is no longer a professional duty, has started to feel like some sort of personal exposure. I mean, what about her deputies? They may be carrying their own version of that same fear, right? They can expect inspect the work, interpret the standards and make decisions, but do they know which decisions Ella genuinely considers theirs? You know, if a deputy approves a reasonable solution that Ella would have approved differently, will Ella come back and judge it or quietly redo it? You know, when to me, when the answer is uncertain, permission becomes safer than authority. That is not necessarily a lack of competency. I just think sometimes it is when capable people learn, when autonomy is offered in words, but then withdrawn in the moment, it becomes visible. So Ella might move closer because of uncertainty or that feeling of risk, while her deputies move closer to Ella because they feel that their judgment is unsupported. So they begin to do it. It's almost like they begin to be doing the opposite things, yet both might be trying to avoid blame. What a mess. You know, the nervous system, as far as I can see, liked clear instructions, a clear map. What is mine, what is yours, what happens if something changes. And without that map, it it's still in surveillance mode, it still continues to scan, it's still scanning for dangers. It's rather like an over-insuused it um alarm that's not been told the difference between um smoke, genuine smoke, and someone making, you know, leaving the toaster on too long. The response is protective, but the thing is you're not a toaster, it's exhausting. Then the loot begins to train everyone. Ella checks because people keep asking. People keep asking because Ella checks. Every question looks like proof that the team lacks confidence, every intervention looks like proof that their authority is conditional, and then Ella becomes more indispensable and then more depleted at exactly the same time. And then we also then have the problem with the deputies because the deputies lose opportunities to build their visit to build the visible evidence that they're making the right judgments, and the team then becomes increasingly careful about doing anything that hasn't travelled through Ella first. Nobody planned this system, they simply keep choosing that option because that felt the safest. What's gonna be feel the safest in the next five minutes? Well, we need to defer to Ella, right? Now, beneath this, um, I think may sit a punishing limited belief. A good leader prevents mistakes. And not creating sensible safeguards, not developing competent people, preventing mistakes, you know, it to me is because if Ella's competency is measured by whether nothing ever escapes her attention, rest will feel uh negligent, delegation will feel risky, and another person's different method will feel like some sort of threat. And the real problem is not that Ella cares too much. I think what it is is that care has become tied to an impossible promise of total prevention, and I can understand why, because everyone is in uh maybe in a situation where they don't want to get anything wrong or be possibly sued later on, and I get that. I think a totally um a different understanding is possible. I mean, I understand Ella's vigilance, um, and it may not mean that she's naturally controlled, and her team's hesitation may not mean that they're not capable. These behaviours to me may be grown in the gap, the gap between responsibility and clearly defined authority. Now, that doesn't mean that Ella should ignore risk or lower her standard. What I'm talking about here, it means more check-in is not the only way to honour them. A response can make complete sense if it's in context and still have have outloosed its usefulness in the moment. Understanding that that's not an excuse, it's the point where choice becomes possible. And perhaps Ella doesn't need to become a more carefree person. Frankly, carefree is not the first quality that I would want in an electrician. I think she may need a better structure of carrying the care that she feels, one that makes competency visible, authority specific, reviews predictable, and a clear escalation route. Trust may not be a feeling that she has to manufacture before she steps back, it may be something the working relationship can support through more clarity and evidence, you know. If that is true, then how does Ellen let go? How does she let go? What can she put in place so that letting other people lead their part no longer feel like letting her standards go? So where does that get us? Um I suppose for Ella, she might have a genuine um fear of blame, you know, the fact that she wants to do a good job. And I think that is if constant check-in has grown around unclear authority and fear of blame, forcing herself to relax will not solve very much. What may happen is replacing anxious involvement with a system that tells everyone how trust is meant to work. You know, one of the things I think is a healthy alternative is what I would call structured trust. Yeah? It's not blind faith and it's not management by disappearance. It's kind of bringing together five things: clarity about the required standards,

Structured Trust As The Third Option

SPEAKER_01 20:10

evidence of competency, authority to make defined decisions, a truly agreed review process, and clear reasons to escalate. Ella remains accountable for the whole system. She simply stops making her own constant presence needed in the system. That to me, that is much more closer to what kind of sits behind uh what uh Captain Picard does that make it so thing. Direction, capable people, and a command structure that doesn't require him to operate every single console. Imagine if he did. You know, the first um ABGW method pillar is awareness, which simply means this is where I am, not this is who I am, you know. Ella might begin by noticing where checking is genuinely required and

ABGW Method For Sustainable Leadership

SPEAKER_01 21:20

where it mainly lowers her anxiety for a few moments, yeah. So that that clear difference, that distinction matters because not every check is micromanagement, some are legal, um, technical, and absolutely um essential. Awareness, I think, will help her stop treating every uncomfortable feeling that she has as evidence that another inspection is needed. And then we have balance. In the ABGW method, balance is not one of those beautiful scented candles. No. It's it means creating enough boundaries and recovery that one person's nervous system is not permanently on call. So for Ella, balance might mean allowing her deputies to complete the quality checks already established. To them while she reviews the higher risk stuff or agrees to do a you know take a sample, you know, or recheck a sample of the work. The standards remain high, the responsibility is carried then at the right level. Now, this may help because everybody then receives the same, I think, useful map of how we're all going to work. The electrician knows which decisions belong to them, Ella knows what belongs to her. The deputies know what she can approve, and I knows which information will return to her and which uh changes may require some sort of immediate escalation. Nobody has to then try and read Ella's mood or wait for a surprise inspection or guess which boundary will be moving afterwards because there's a clear structure, and that clear structure doesn't remove the risk, it just makes risk easier to see and manage and gives them the team a way to respond before anxiety approves itself in the site manager, right? So Ellen might experiment with one recurring um area of work, not the whole site, but certainly not every single safety critical decision that's required. She could choose, I suppose, a type of quality check that a

Small Delegation Experiments That Stick

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competent deputy is already expected to perform. And the experiment stays small because the aim is not to uh create evidence um or make some sort of grand gesture. It's contained, it's a contained trial that gives Ella and the deputy something real to review. They can look at what's worked, what was unclear, and where the structure that they've built needs adjusting. So Ella might say, this is the standard we all need to be working to, and this is the evidence that you must be uh you must be reporting on. You have the authority to prove the work within these conditions and bring it back to me if there's a safety risk or a specific, you know, site concern, and we can review it together and we'll do that for the first three. What do you say? And then that allows everyone to know where they are, and then maybe she wants to make the autonomy credible, right? By saying something like, I don't know, if if you make a reasonable evidence decision inside what we've agreed, I will back your judgment, even if I may have chosen to do to it a different way, because difference is not an automatic defect, even though I know some people, just because you don't do it the same way they do it, they automatically assume you've done it wrong. I don't agree with that way of thinking at all. So, where does this get us? I suppose a planned review point matters because it allows Ella to remain appropriately informed without having all these anxiety spikes. And it also protects the deputy from being handed responsibility and then being abandoned with the consequences, right? Um, and if the first arrangement exposes a gap, then that's useful information too, because then the agreement between Ella and her deputies can be refined. That structured trust is meant to be responsive, it's not supposed to be carved out in stone, like in one of Ella's ancient civilization things. And this is where the ABGW method pillar of growth really earns its place. Because to me, growth is not pressure to become fearless, it's about capacity building through experimentation and small wins. Ella watches the evidence. Was the check completed properly? Was judgment applied correctly? Did the deputy escalate anything that was, you know, that was agreed in the plan? Did Ella allow the review point to arrive without intervening? To me, confidence comes often after experiences like this, not before. One successful cycle gives the next cycle somewhere firmer to stand on. And that leads us towards well-being, the win-win part of the ABGW method. Ella's well-being should not require um unsafe work. And excellent work should not require Ella to be mentally present for every single hour on the plot, okay? A healthier system protects the residents, the quality of the insulation, the learning development of the deputies, and not only that, Ella's cap capability or capacity to actually lead. You know, perhaps she can finish a swim without mentally inspecting every single bit of the consumer units in her mind. Perhaps her team can make a sound decision without drafting the apology they would normally have to make first. And of course, clarity cannot compensate for everything if the organization is understaffed or they ignore reported risks. That's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about here is structured trust will help Ella identify what belongs to her and is within her influence and what needs documentation, challenging, or escalating. It reduces all the unnecessary pressure in the system, and it it's not asking her to pretend that necessary pressure is imaginary, it's trying to make it proportional. So, what what does that mean? I think what that means is it creates clearer a clearer standards for everybody, it places authority with the competent people, and it review it adds reviews in the right places and responds when risks change. Now, Picard doesn't demonstrate trust by caring less about the enterprise, he demonstrates it by allowing capable people of carrying the responsibilities of their role. And I think Ella can do exactly the same thing without becoming uh someone else or without becoming careless. So for today, you might choose one recurring task if you're up to this, and write down just three things. Who is competent to own this? Which decision could safely belong to them, and what specific change would bring it back

Three Questions To Try This Week

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to you. You know, you don't have to redesign your whole team in one day. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm asking you to do is start building that useful um trust, that competent trust, that safety, structured trust that you should have in your team. Simply make one boundary visible enough to begin. So that replaces the anxiety of everyone trying to guess what it is that you want. Now, remember this. If nothing else, high standards do not require your constant presence, they require a structure everyone in the team can trust. So, with that in mind, every step you take, no matter how small, is a small step towards a brighter, more balanced future. So you can trust in your journey and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Bye for now. I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week. Now finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time, bye for now.