I led a small engineering team for two years. We shipped on time, the code was clean, and the standups were short. By every metric I cared about, the team looked fine. Then three of my best engineers quit within a month. None of them had a single conversation with me before they handed in their notice.
The exit interviews told me what I should have seen earlier. They were not burned out by the work. They were burned out by the way I gave it to them.
I spent the next six months rebuilding how I delegated. I read four books on engineering management. I ran a one-on-one feedback survey every Friday for twelve weeks. I shipped a working team again, and the difference was not subtle.
Here are the five delegation habits I had to kill. If you are a tech lead and any of these feel familiar, the exit interview pattern will too.