There are a few different ways to look at this.

If the crew is inexperienced, I understand the foreman wanting them to come to him before they cut it, drill it, fasten it, energize it, or make a decision they don’t yet have the judgment to make. In that situation, tighter control makes sense.

The same thing can happen if the foreman has been burned before. Maybe past mistakes created rework, cost, safety problems, or complete chaos. That can make someone cautious.

And sometimes the work itself justifies it. Maybe it’s highly technical. Maybe there are no spare parts. Maybe something has to be right the first time because there is no easy recovery if it goes wrong.

So I don’t immediately call that bad leadership.

What I would watch is the pattern over time.

Are the employees learning? Are they developing judgment? Are they being trusted with more decisions as their experience grows? Or is every decision still flowing through one person?

Because once the entire crew depends on the foreman for every answer, the foreman becomes the bottleneck.

Now production can only move as fast as one person can think, answer questions, and make decisions.

The foreman still owns the outcome. That doesn’t mean he has to personally own every decision.

Part of leadership is teaching people how to think through the work, recognize what they can handle themselves, and understand when something actually needs to be escalated.

If I’m watching that crew over time, I want to see fewer routine questions coming back to the foreman, not because people have stopped communicating, but because they’ve developed the judgment to handle more on their own.

The goal isn’t to make yourself necessary for every decision. The goal is to make the crew more capable because you were there.