Article 6
I have used those words often because they capture something I have come to believe very deeply about leadership.
Every leadership position is temporary.
No matter how senior the role, how long we hold it, how much authority we have, or how closely our identity becomes tied to an organisation, someone else will eventually sit in our chair.
That reality should influence how we lead while we are there.
Because if leadership is temporary, then perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask is not simply:
“What did I accomplish?”
But:
“What did I leave stronger than I found it?”
Leadership Is Something We Hold in Trust
When we become leaders, we are entrusted with much more than targets, budgets, projects and performance indicators.
We are entrusted with people.
With culture.
With relationships.
With decisions that may affect an organisation long after we have left it.
And, importantly, with people whose own leadership potential may still be developing.
That is why I think of leadership as stewardship.
A steward understands that what has been entrusted to them is not theirs to possess indefinitely. Their responsibility is to care for it, strengthen it, and eventually hand it forward.
Leadership should be no different.
What Happens When You Are Not There?
There is a question I believe every leader should occasionally ask:
“What happens when I am not in the room?”
Can people make decisions?
Can they challenge ideas respectfully?
Can they solve problems without waiting for me?
Can they have difficult conversations?
Can they lead one another?
Or does everything still have to come back to me?
For many years, being indispensable was almost worn as a badge of honour.
We celebrated the leader who knew everything, approved everything and could solve every problem.
But I have come to see indispensability differently.
If everything stops when I am absent, I may have demonstrated my value.
But I may not have developed enough capability around me.
Strong leadership should not create dependence. It should build capacity.
Developing Leaders Before They Have the Title
Earlier in this series, I wrote about the accidental leader: the technically excellent employee who is promoted and suddenly expected to know how to lead people.
I have seen this repeatedly throughout my career.
And I believe organisations have a responsibility to do better.
We should not wait until someone receives a leadership title to begin developing their leadership capability.
Development begins much earlier.
It happens when we invite someone into a conversation rather than simply giving instructions.
When we ask, “What do you think?”
When we allow someone to lead a project.
When we expose people to decisions beyond their immediate responsibilities.
When we give thoughtful feedback.
When we let people make mistakes, reflect, and try again.
When we help someone understand not only what they achieved, but how their behaviour affected others.
These may seem like small moments.
They are not.
This is how tomorrow’s leaders are developed.
Stewardship Requires Us to Make Room
Another part of developing people can be difficult for experienced leaders.
We have to make room.
Sometimes that means letting someone approach a problem differently than we would.
Sometimes it means resisting the urge to take over because we can do it faster.
Sometimes it means accepting that the next generation of leaders may not lead exactly as we did.
And perhaps they shouldn’t.
The world they will lead will not be exactly the world we led.
Our responsibility is not to reproduce ourselves.
It is to help people develop the judgment, confidence, self-awareness and capability to lead well in the circumstances they will inherit.
That requires trust.
And sometimes, it requires humility.
What Will People Carry Forward?
When we talk about leadership legacy, it is easy to think about the visible things.
The strategy we implemented.
The transformation we led.
The financial results we achieved.
The systems we introduced.
The problems we solved.
Those things matter.
But another legacy may never appear in an annual report.
It is found in the person who became more confident because we trusted them.
The emerging leader who learned to think because we did not always give the answer.
The employee who learned to have a difficult conversation because we coached rather than rescued them.
The person who eventually became a leader and carried something they learned from us into the way they led others.
I know that some of what I carry into my leadership and coaching today came from people who invested in me long before I fully understood what they were doing.
Their influence continued after the working relationship ended.
That, too, is leadership legacy.
The Leadership Question Changes
Perhaps, then, the question is not:
“How much does this organisation need me?”
Maybe it is:
“What am I building that will remain strong without me?”
That changes how we think about developing people.
It changes how we delegate.
How we coach.
How we share knowledge.
How we make decisions.
How we prepare others for responsibilities they do not yet hold.
And ultimately, how we understand our role as leaders.
Because stewardship asks us to look beyond our tenure.
To the people who will come after us.
To the culture they will inherit.
To the organisation they will be asked to lead.
And to whether we prepared them well enough for that responsibility.
After more than three decades in leadership, I no longer believe leadership is primarily about having the answers.
It is about what we enable in others.
What we strengthen.
What we protect.
What we develop.
And what we are prepared, eventually, to hand forward.
Leadership is not about permanence.
It is about stewardship.
