Every time your phone rings, each question or problem that comes your way, ask yourself, "how can I empower someone else to answer that question / solve that problem in the future?" Then do it ─ empower someone else.
The real test, of course, is after you leave, and . . . everyone eventually leaves: did the organization, which you left behind, flourish? Great leaders who are confident in themselves will be proud to see their former team continue to achieve increasing success. However, there is a selfish goal to this as well: when a leader continues to empower others, hand over increasing responsibility, their job gets easier and easier. This leader can spend their time on providing well-deserved recognition, challenging the status quo, and looking for new and creative ways to achieve better results. This leader has time ─ they are not overwhelmed with firefighting ─ dealing with the urgent and unimportant activities.
A wise mentor once said to me, "your job is to empower everyone in your organization to the point where you have nothing to do yourself, except drink coffee and relax all day." So that is what I do . . . empower others so that I can become irrelevant.
Have you ever drunk coffee all day? Hard to sleep at night.
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