- When you’re absent from the office, does productivity and decision-making continue at the same pace or does everything slow down?
- When was the last time someone on your team respectfully disagreed with you in a meeting?
- Do people tend to come to you with solutions or just problems, and what might that reveal about the culture you’ve created?
- How often do you find yourself being the one with all the solutions versus facilitating others to problem-solve?
- Do your direct reports tend to wait for your opinion before sharing theirs?
- When projects fail or fall short, do team members primarily blame external factors or take personal responsibility?
- If your team members were completely honest about your leadership behind closed doors, what would surprise you most? What three words would they use to describe your leadership style—would those align with how you see yourself?
If you haven’t read part I, you can catch up here.
Sam’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t work hard enough. It’s that his identity depends on being needed.
- Worked his way through college → “I earned everything through personal effort”
- First one in, last to leave → “My value equals my visible sacrifice”
- Worked his way up to Senior VP → “I proved myself through output”
But those same strategies are now destroying his leadership.
Every dysfunction flows from the same source: Sam needs to be needed.
Not consciously. He’d never say this out loud. But his entire sense of value depends on being the hardest worker, the problem-solver, the indispensable one.
The terrifying shifts leadership requires:
- Your team succeeds without you in the room → You’re winning
- You become less involved in day-to-day → You’re growing
- People stop coming to you with problems → You’ve built capability
For Sam, these all feel like loss of value, loss of identity, loss of control.
Why Everyone Stays Silent
Here’s the most insidious part: Sam’s dysfunction looks like virtue.
- Micromanaging looks like “attention to detail”
- Not delegating looks like “taking ownership”
- Working 12-hour days looks like “dedication”
- Doing it himself looks like “leading by example”
How do you give someone feedback when their problem masquerades as their greatest strength?
His boss sees dedicated and reliable. His peers see committed and selfless. His direct reports see always available. He sees proof he cares.
Everyone is celebrating the symptom while ignoring the disease.
And so:
- Subordinates don’t speak up (power dynamics, fear, learned helplessness)
- Peers don’t speak up (not their problem, political risk)
- Superiors don’t speak up (Sam delivers results, leadership development is hard)
The organization doesn’t just allow Sam’s blind spot. It rewards it.
The Questions That Expose the Fear
If you’re wondering whether you might be Sam, these seven questions will reveal what everyone else already knows.
But fair warning: These aren’t just diagnostic questions. They’re existential threats to your identity. If you can’t answer them honestly, that’s your answer.
1. When you’re absent from the office, does productivity and decision-making continue at the same pace, or does everything slow down?
Translation: Are you needed, or are you the bottleneck?
2. When was the last time someone on your team respectfully disagreed with you in a meeting?
Translation: Have you created psychological safety, or have you created dependence?
3. Do people tend to come to you with solutions or just problems—and what might that reveal about the culture you’ve created?
Translation: Are you developing leaders, or are you perpetuating your own necessity?
4. How often do you find yourself being the one with all the solutions versus facilitating others to problem-solve?
Translation: Are you leading, or are you performing?
5. Do your direct reports tend to wait for your opinion before sharing theirs?
Translation: Have you built a team, or have you built an audience?
6. When projects fail or fall short, do team members primarily blame external factors or take personal responsibility?
Translation: What does your response to failure teach them about accountability?
7. If your team functioned at a high level without you for a month—solving problems, making decisions, crushing goals—would you feel proud… or secretly worried that you’re not needed?
This is the one that matters most. Because your honest answer reveals whether you’re leading or just afraid.
The Choice Sam Can’t See
To recognize he’s a poor leader, Sam would have to confront a question he’s spent his entire career avoiding:
“If I’m not the one producing results, who am I?”
That question is so threatening that his brain will do anything to avoid it:
- Rationalize the dysfunction
- Blame circumstances or others
- Stay frantically busy
- Focus on “working hard” as proof of worth
He can’t see his leadership failures because seeing them would require dismantling his entire sense of self.
The deepest irony? Sam works this hard because he cares. He’s not lazy or malicious.
He’s terrified.
Terrified that if he’s not essential, he’s expendable. Terrified that if he delegates, things will fail. Terrified that if he develops others, he’ll be exposed. Terrified that if he slows down, someone will realize he doesn’t know what real leadership actually looks like.
He’s running from his own irrelevance by making himself indispensable—which guarantees he’ll never actually lead.
What This Means
The hardest thing a leader can do isn’t work harder.
It’s confront the question: What if my value isn’t in being needed, but in building something that doesn’t need me?
For leaders like Sam, that’s not a leadership development issue. It’s an identity crisis disguised as a management problem.
And until someone has the courage to name it—or until the consequences become unbearable—Sam will keep showing up first and leaving last, convinced he’s doing the right thing.
While everything around him slowly falls apart.
Meet Sam.
Father. Good husband. Volunteer coach for his son’s basketball team. Works hard. Most days, one of the first in the office and last to leave. Worked his way through college. Now he’s a Senior VP of Corporate Affairs at a financial institution, been there five years, leads a team of six direct reports.
Here’s the thing: _____
But Sam isn’t a good leader.
I suspect Sam is not alone.
The problem is that_______ . He doesn’t hold people accountable. He unclear with his expectations. He’s tries to do everything himself. People around him—peers, leaders above, even his direct reports—see and perhaps experience some of the wreckage. But no one, it seems, is speaking up.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I keep running into versions of Sam:
- Leader of a non-profit board. To say the least, signicant areas of improvement board engagement, everyone know it…just seems stuck!
- Pastor at a prominent church in the area….recently exeprience health set back, things came to a grinding halt.
- sean – newly appointment leader to take over family business-
7 Brutal Self-Awareness Questions Every Leader Needs to Answer
- When you’re absent from the office, does productivity and decision-making continue at the same pace or does everything slow down?
- When was the last time someone on your team respectfully disagreed with you in a meeting?
- Do people tend to come to you with solutions or just problems, and what might that reveal about the culture you’ve created?
- How often do you find yourself being the one with all the solutions versus facilitating others to problem-solve?
- Do your direct reports tend to wait for your opinion before sharing theirs?
- When projects fail or fall short, do team members primarily blame external factors or take personal responsibility?
- If your team members were completely honest about your leadership behind closed doors, what would surprise you most? What three words would they use to describe your leadership style—would those align with how you see yourself?
