You delegated the task. You kept the decision.

You handed it over. You wrote it up, you walked them through it, you told them it was theirs. And it still arrives back on your desk as a question, as an approval, as a version you end up rewriting at ten at night. The conclusion you have drawn is that they are not ready yet, or that it is simply faster to do it yourself.

None of that is a character flaw, theirs or yours. You transferred the task and kept the decision. Responsibility went out, authority stayed in, and the person now holding the work cannot finish it without coming back to you. They are not checking in because they lack confidence. They are checking in because the structure requires them to.

The cost is not the hours you spend re-deciding things you already handed over. It is what those hours displace. The work only you can do, the vision and the relationships and the judgment calls nobody else in the building can make, gets whatever is left once everyone else's decisions have been processed. You are busy. You are not doing your best work.

The honest objection is that they will get it wrong. Some of them will. Handing over a decision means handing over the right to make it differently from the way you would have, and sometimes worse. That is the real price and it is worth naming rather than pretending. Control feels like the thing keeping the business safe. It is usually the thing keeping it small.