- 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.
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.
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?
- 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)
If you’re wondering whether you might be Sam, these seven questions will reveal what everyone else already knows. If you can’t answer them honestly, that’s your answer.
“If I’m not the one producing results, who am I?”
Sam works this hard because he cares. He’s not lazy or malicious.
He can’t see his leadership failures because seeing them would require dismantling his entire sense of self.
“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 issue 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.
