I had lunch with my good friend Jimmy TenBrink the other day, and as often happens when two people who have spent a lot of time leading organizations get together, the conversation eventually turned to leadership.
We were talking about what strong leadership actually looks like, and one idea kept surfacing:
A good employee should eventually make their boss less necessary.
At first, that can sound backwards.
Most leaders want to feel needed. We want to believe our experience, judgment, and involvement are important. And they are.
But if we lead people well, they should gradually need less of our day-to-day involvement.
They should become more confident.
They should make more decisions on their own.
They should solve problems before those problems ever reach us.
They should understand the mission well enough that they no longer need constant approval.
That is not a loss of leadership.
It is evidence that leadership is working.
The Goal Is Not to Be Needed
Many leaders measure their importance by how often people come to them.
Their phone rings constantly.
Their inbox is full.
Employees stop by their office all day asking questions.
Every important decision eventually finds its way to their desk.
That can feel like leadership because you are involved in everything.
It can also feel good.
Being needed creates a sense of importance.
But there is a difference between being valuable and being indispensable.
If nothing significant can happen without you, you may not have built a strong organization.
You may have built a bottleneck.
A leader’s job is not to become the smartest person everyone depends on.
It is to build an environment where good decisions can happen without them.
The strongest leader in the room should not necessarily be the person answering every question.
Sometimes it is the person who has taught everyone else how to answer the question themselves.
Every Question Is a Training Opportunity
When an employee comes to a manager with a problem, the easiest response is often simply to give them the answer.
“Do this.”
“Call this person.”
“Handle it this way.”
“Send me the email before you send it.”
The problem gets solved quickly.
But nothing was necessarily learned.
If that becomes the normal pattern, the employee eventually becomes very efficient at asking the boss what to do.
That is not the employee’s failure alone.
Leaders train people through the way they respond.
If every question receives an immediate answer, people learn to ask questions.
If every question is met with, “What do you think we should do?” people begin learning to think.
That simple shift is one of the most powerful leadership tools available.
Instead of immediately solving the problem, ask:
What do you think is happening?
What options do you see?
What would you recommend?
What risk are you most concerned about?
What would you do if I were not available?
Those questions take longer at first.
But they create something far more valuable than a quick answer.
They create judgment.
Judgment Is Built Through Repetition
Experience is not simply the number of years someone has worked somewhere.
Experience is the accumulation of decisions.
People become strong operators by making decisions, seeing the consequences, learning from mistakes, and adjusting the next time.
You cannot develop judgment in someone while making every important decision for them.
At some point, leaders have to let people exercise the muscles they want them to develop.
That does not mean abandoning oversight.
A new employee may need significant direction.
Someone learning a new responsibility may need checkpoints.
A high-risk decision may still require approval.
But good leadership gradually changes the level of supervision as someone’s capability grows.
Early on, the conversation may be:
“Here is exactly what I want you to do.”
Later it becomes:
“Here is the outcome I need. Tell me how you plan to accomplish it.”
Eventually, it becomes:
“You understand the objective. Make the decision and keep me informed.”
That progression matters.
Responsibility should expand as judgment improves.
The mistake is keeping capable people permanently stuck at the first stage.
Constant Approval Creates Weak Organizations
Organizations often complain that employees do not take initiative while simultaneously creating systems where initiative is punished.
Someone makes a reasonable decision without permission and hears:
“Why didn’t you check with me first?”
Someone tries something that does not work and hears:
“You should have asked.”
Someone takes ownership of a customer issue and is later criticized because the manager would have handled it slightly differently.
After enough of those experiences, employees learn the lesson.
Do nothing without approval.
Ask before acting.
Protect yourself.
Push decisions upward.
Eventually, the leader becomes overwhelmed by the very dependency they created.
Then they complain:
“Why can’t anyone make a decision around here?”
Because the organization taught them not to.
Leadership Requires Tolerating Different Decisions
One of the hardest parts of empowering capable people is accepting that they will occasionally do things differently than you would have.
Different does not automatically mean wrong.
A leader who delegates only when the employee will execute the task exactly as the leader would is not really delegating.
They are extending their own hands.
True delegation requires giving someone enough room to think.
Sometimes their solution will be better than yours.
Sometimes it will be worse.
Often it will simply be different.
The important question is not:
“Did they do it exactly the way I would have?”
The better questions are:
Did they understand the objective?
Did they exercise reasonable judgment?
Did they consider the risks?
Did they protect the customer, team, or organization?
Did they learn something from the outcome?
If the answer is yes, leadership should reinforce the decision-making process, not punish the employee for failing to imitate the boss.
The Best Employees Create Capacity
A truly valuable employee does more than complete tasks.
They create capacity around them.
They remove decisions from their manager’s plate.
They notice problems before being asked.
They understand the larger goal rather than waiting for a detailed instruction sheet.
They know when they have enough information to move forward and when something genuinely needs escalation.
Over time, their manager spends less time supervising their work and more time focusing on problems only the manager can solve.
That is what strong employees should do.
And strong leaders should want it.
Every time a capable person takes ownership of an area that previously required leadership attention, the organization gains leverage.
The leader gains time.
The employee gains responsibility.
The organization becomes less fragile.
That is growth.
The Leadership Test
There is a revealing question every manager should occasionally ask:
What would stop functioning if I disappeared for two weeks?
Not because you should disappear.
But because the answer tells you something about your leadership.
If every decision stops, there is a problem.
If employees cannot move without approval, there is a problem.
If customers cannot be served because only one person has the authority or knowledge to respond, there is a problem.
A healthy organization should be able to continue operating when a leader is unavailable.
Maybe not perfectly.
Maybe not indefinitely.
But it should continue.
Good leaders should be able to leave the room without everything becoming uncertain.
That requires documented processes.
Clear expectations.
Defined authority.
Strong communication.
And, most importantly, trusted people who have been given enough opportunities to develop judgment.
Your Successor Should Already Be Developing
One of the greatest compliments a leader can receive is that someone they developed is capable of doing much of what they once did.
Some leaders find that threatening.
Good leaders find it rewarding.
Because leadership is not about protecting territory.
It is about increasing the capability of the organization.
If you are still doing the same things you were doing five years ago because nobody else can be trusted with them, you have probably limited both yourself and your team.
Someone should be learning your responsibilities.
Someone should be gaining exposure to your decisions.
Someone should understand why you make the choices you make.
Not because you are planning to leave tomorrow.
Because organizations become stronger when knowledge, authority, and judgment are distributed rather than concentrated.
Make Yourself Less Necessary
The phrase can sound uncomfortable:
A good employee should eventually make their boss less necessary.
But that does not mean the boss becomes irrelevant.
It means the boss gets to lead at a higher level.
When employees can handle yesterday’s problems, leaders gain the capacity to think about tomorrow’s.
When supervisors stop answering every operational question, they can improve systems.
When managers stop controlling every decision, they can develop new leaders.
When executives stop inserting themselves into every detail, they can focus on strategy, culture, customers, and the future.
Everyone moves upward.
That is what healthy leadership development should look like.
The best employee is not the person who needs the boss most.
And the best boss is not the person everyone needs for everything.
The best leaders create people who can think without them, decide without them, and operate confidently without waiting for permission.
Eventually, those people may even become leaders themselves.
That should not be viewed as a threat.
It should be viewed as evidence that the leadership worked.