Look at your inbox. How many of those decisions could someone else make?
If the honest answer is «a lot», you have a problem that productivity won't fix. Development will. Theirs.
Growing others is the capacity to develop people: to mentor, to sustain relationships that make others grow, to help people unfold professionally and personally. It's the competency that decides whether your growth frees up capacity or concentrates it even further in you.
What covers it is familiar: «I can handle everything» and its autocratic cousin. You do it yourself because you do it better, faster, safer. And it's true. Today. The cost arrives tomorrow: a team that escalates everything, waits for your validation and doesn't take risks, because it has learned that in the end you'll step in. The more you solve, the less they grow. The less they grow, the more you have to solve. It's the rescuer's wheel, and you don't get off it by working harder.
The exception exists in your history too. Think of someone who's flying today and grew up with you. What did you do with that person? It probably wasn't giving them answers. It was handing them a whole decision before they were entirely ready, holding the risk, and resisting the urge to correct the details. That is this competency in action.
This week's experiment: pick one decision you'd normally make and hand it over whole to someone on your team. Whole means whole: with the context, with the criteria, and with your commitment to stand behind whatever they decide. Then watch what happens inside you. That's the other half of the work.
When this competency grows, your calendar changes its nature: less operation, more direction. And something appears that no bonus will ever match: people who stay because with you, they grow.
My job is for them not to need me. Write that sentence where you can see it. It's counterintuitive, it's uncomfortable, and it's exactly the work.