Learning to Let Go: How I Stopped Getting in My Own Way

Hi, I'm Hira — a technology leader, product marketer, writer, and entrepreneur with over 11 years of experience building and marketing tech products.

Currently, I lead marketing at WrangleWorks, a SaaS platform that automates data work.

I've also founded and led two companies: CaterpillHERs and Koi.work. This newsletter helps me stay connected with the incredible network I've built over the years.

Thank you to 2,300+ of you who read this!

More about me here and here.

As leaders, we all face the challenge of finding the right balance between control and autonomy. How much freedom should we give our employees? If we give too much too soon, things might slip through the cracks.

But if we stay too hands-on, we risk micromanaging and stifling the very growth and creativity we want to encourage.

This was a challenge I personally wrestled with for a long time.

For me, the problem wasn’t just about finding balance—it was about letting go. I had this constant urge to control everything, double-check every detail, and make the final call on every decision. I thought I was being thorough, but what I was really doing was slowing down progress.

I was getting in my own way. This need for control prevented my team from taking ownership, and it kept me buried in work that could have been delegated. As a result, nothing got done as fast as I needed it to.

Letting go of that control was hard. I worried that things wouldn’t be done the way I wanted, or worse, that mistakes would be made. But over time, I realized that by holding on too tightly, I wasn’t allowing my team to grow or take responsibility. The more I trusted them, the faster things moved and the better the results.

In today's work environment, we need to empower our teams to take initiative and make decisions.

But how do we, as leaders, know how much autonomy to give? How can we gauge how much trust to extend while still ensuring the work gets done?