The Leader They No Longer Need

There's something gratifying about being the person everyone turns to.

You have the answers. You make the decisions. People trust your judgment, and when something important happens, they want you involved.

For a while, that can feel like evidence that you're doing a good job as a leader.

But I've come to believe that one of the most important measures of leadership is almost the opposite.

What happens when you're not there?

I spent much of my career leading creative and communications teams. One of the things I enjoyed most was bringing talented people together, helping them develop their abilities, and watching them accomplish things they might not have believed possible when they started.

Early on, I was involved in almost everything. Not necessarily because I wanted to control the work, but because I felt responsible for making sure it was done well. I reviewed projects, offered direction, helped solve problems, and made decisions when the team needed them.

Over time, something interesting happened.

People began making decisions without asking me first. They solved problems before I knew there was a problem. They developed ideas I wouldn't have thought of, challenged one another constructively, and produced work that was often better than anything I could have directed myself.

And I found that enormously satisfying.

I had come to understand that my job wasn't to make every decision. It was to develop people who could make good decisions themselves.

That sounds simple, but it requires something that doesn't always come naturally to leaders.

You have to be willing to give up a certain amount of control.

You have to accept that someone may approach a problem differently than you would. You have to resist the temptation to step in simply because you can. And occasionally, you have to allow someone to make a mistake you might have prevented, because the experience will help them develop judgment they couldn't gain any other way.

That doesn't mean abandoning people or leaving them without guidance.

It means understanding the difference between helping someone succeed and making yourself necessary to their success.

I also learned that people don't develop confidence simply because a leader tells them they're capable. Confidence grows when they're trusted with real responsibility, when their judgment is respected, and when they discover they can handle situations that once seemed beyond them.

Some of my proudest moments as a leader came when I watched someone on my team handle a difficult situation exceptionally well and realized I hadn't been involved at all.

Not because I wasn't paying attention.

Because I no longer needed to be.

There's a temptation in leadership to equate being indispensable with being valuable. If every important decision requires your approval, if every problem eventually lands on your desk, and if everything slows down when you're away, it's easy to believe the organization depends on you because you're doing something right.

But it may also mean you haven't given other people enough room to grow.

A strong team shouldn't become helpless when its leader leaves the room.

It should become increasingly capable of doing excellent work whether that leader is present or not.

And perhaps that's one of the harder lessons of leadership: your success isn't measured by how many people need you.

It's measured, in part, by how many people become more capable because of you.

Eventually, every leader leaves. The organization moves forward, new people assume responsibility, and the work continues.

The question isn't whether people will remember you.

It's whether they'll be stronger because you were there.

Perhaps the greatest measure of leadership is what continues to work when you no longer do.