For more than 20 years I’ve managed staff teams both in my own business and for others. One thing I learned the hard way in the early years was that most of the frustration I had with my people was really frustration I had set myself up for.

I’d come back from a few days away and find the consequences of decisions I never would have made just lying in wait for my return. The kind of decisions that make you scratch your head and wonder, “What were they thinking?”

It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize that it wasn’t my staff who were to blame; it was my failure to set out the lampposts to help guide good decisions when I wasn’t around.

As the leader of any organization, it can be all too easy to become the traffic cop for every decision, because you care and you want everything to be as perfect as it can be.

The problem with being the traffic cop for every decision is that if you ever stop standing in the middle of the intersection directing traffic, chaos is quickly the result.No one knows when to go or when to stop, let alone where to go once they get through the intersection.

What I learned was that in order to solve the problem, I needed to stop being a traffic cop myself and build guiding rules that let others make good decisions on my behalf.

What are the guiding rules? They are clear goals and operating standards.

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “My people won’t make decisions without me,” consider this: nine times out of ten, the people aren’t the problem. They’re guessing, because nobody has given them a clear picture of what “good” looks like.

Goals tell people where. Standards tell them how well.

A clear goal gives your team a direction. A clear standard gives them a yardstick. Put the two together and something powerful happens: people can make good decisions without running every one past you.

As an example, let’s say we run a parts distributor. Think about the difference between these two ways of giving guidance to our team:

The first way: “Make sure to take good care of every customer.”

This gives our team a pretty wide margin to interpret what “good care” looks like. This could mean anything from giving away free coffee to working overtime to deliver a $50 part 40 miles out of town.

But what if we were a little more specific? What if we said:

“Every customer leaves with one of three things: the part, a firm date the part will arrive, or the name and number of someone who can solve their problem today.”

“Take good care of every customer” seems easy for everyone to agrees with, but it helps almost nobody make a good decision in the end.

The second answers the question “What does good care look like?” before it’s ever asked. Your employee doesn’t need to track you down. They know what the standard is, so they know what a good decision looks like, and they can make it on the spot.

That’s what clear communication really is in a business. It isn’t more meetings or longer emails. It’s giving people enough clarity that they can act on your behalf when you’re not in the room. When it’s your reputation walking out the door with every customer, whether you’re there or not, preparing your team to make good decisions for you matters more than almost anything.

Leading a team well isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about making sure your people know the questions you’d ask, the standard you’d hold, and how they’ll know they’ve hit it.

So here’s my question for you: if you left for two weeks tomorrow, would your team know what a good decision looks like — and how would either of you know if they made one?