High Performers Want a Leader
Good people don't want to be micromanaged. They also don't want to be led by nobody. On the pressure of hiring people better than yourself.
High performers want to be led. They just want to be led by a high-performing leader.
What that means
Nobody good wants a manager breathing down their neck. That part everyone agrees on. The other half gets forgotten: nobody good wants to be led by someone who is slower than they are, either. They can tell. They always can.
Which puts the pressure where it belongs. If you hire great people, you have to become great yourself. There is no way around it. Hiring up is not a shortcut to a strong team, it is a commitment to keep up with one.
The failure mode
The trap is shying away from that challenge. Dragging your feet. Playing the humble "aw shucks, I don't know, what do you all think?" card until it becomes a leadership style. Total humility as a way of never having to decide anything.
That is not modesty. It is a vacuum. And a vacuum in a strong team does not stay empty. Either the good people leave, or they call you out, or someone else quietly takes the wheel. The role of leader gets filled one way or another. The only question is whether you filled it.
What they actually want
Someone with a hand on the steering wheel and a foot on the gas pedal. Someone who makes sure everyone points in the same direction and moves there as fast as possible. Not a boss who tells them how to do their work. A leader who tells them where the work is going.
That holds for any group that builds something together, paid or not. What the people need from whoever started it is a direction. Not permission for every step, not a vote on every detail. A direction, and the willingness to say "this way" and be wrong sometimes.
The moment that person retreats into "I don't know, what do you think?", the thing stalls. Not because the people are bad. Because nobody is holding the wheel.