Your team is busy—dealing with deadlines, new projects, and endless demands. At times, they seem stressed, and they may even admit to it.

Yet as a leader, you still need to delegate more to focus on higher priorities. That’s where the dilemma lies. You empathize with their workload—you’ve been there yourself. But the challenge for leaders is not to slip into sympathy. Unless people are stretched and tested, we never truly know their capacity.

I’m living this in real time with a client, a high-performing executive at a large company. Like her team, she is extremely busy. When I suggested delegating more, her immediate response was: “I can’t give them more—they’re already overloaded.”

My reply was simple: “How do you know for sure?” Were her team members complaining? She admitted they weren’t—it was just her perception. Meanwhile, she was taking on their work and venting her frustration to me. Something was clearly off.

So I asked her: “What would it take for you to test their capacity instead of assuming they can’t handle more?” After all, no one was actually pushing back. People need to be challenged if they’re ever going to grow.

As leaders, one of our most important responsibilities is to build more leaders. I reminded her of that truth, and she committed to delegating more over the next month. I look forward to sharing how it unfolds in a future post.

In the meantime, I encourage you to do the same: keep stretching your team, keep testing their capacity. You may just discover the next great leader in your organization.