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A leader who can't be replaced becomes a bottleneck. The speaker argues executives should build systems and people, not do all the work themselves. Ask what breaks if you're gone 30 to 90 days to find where you're stuck.
A leader who can't be replaced becomes a bottleneck. The speaker argues executives should build systems and people, not do all the work themselves. Ask what breaks if you're gone 30 to 90 days to find where you're stuck.
If your team can't function without you, that's not leadership. It's a bottleneck. Some leaders actually take pride in this. They'll say things like, "If I took a week off, the whole place would fall apart." And they mean that as a compliment. They mean it as proof of how valuable they are. But it's actually a warning sign. Because when an organization can't move without the leader in the room, the organization can only move as fast as that one person can operate. Every decision needs their approval. Every problem comes back to their desk. Every important issue waits for them to weigh in on. And over time, the organization quietly slows down. Earlier in your career, being indispensable might have been exactly what made you successful. When you're an individual contributor or even a manager, your value often comes from the work you personally produce. But the executive role is different. Executives don't create value primarily through their own effort. They create value through systems, people, and leverage. That means the job shifts from doing the work to building the capacity of others to do the work. If you disappeared for 30, 60, or 90 days, what would break? That question tells you exactly where the organization still depends on you too much. And the gaps that question exposes are the places where real executive leadership work needs to happen. Because the goal of an executive isn't to be indispensable. The goal is to build an organization that works even when you're not there. Now, it's hard to see this stuff from the inside, and that's why we built the Executive Readiness Index. It's an assessment for leaders who are serious about operating at the executive level. It's built by my team at Leadership IQ, and you can take it free at executive readiness index dot com. And to go even deeper, you can take the Executive Shift course, which is a 5-week program focused on the specific behaviors that determine whether executives scale or stall. And others work with me directly through my executive coaching, where we apply these ideas to the real leadership challenges you're facing right now. You can find both of those at leadershipiq.com.
