Busting common leadership myths, part 3: Leaders need to be the … of the team

I want to tackle some common leadership myths, but instead of hitting you with thousands of words all at once, I’m going to tackle them one at a time. In part 1, I talked about how you don’t need a title to lead, and in part 2, I talked about how you don’t need to be an extrovert to be a leader.

Part 3, this myth, was inspired by a question and answer in Spartan Founder Joe DeSena’s newsletter. The original question was:

How can I continue to be a leader when I can no longer maintain my position at the front?

Myth: In order to lead, you need to be the best/smartest/most successful member of the team

The short version

tldr; No.

The Long Answer

To be clear, leader’s DO need specific skills, and they need to be good at those skills. Hell, they may be GREAT at the leadery skills, but when it comes to the day-to-day work of their team, the hard-core technical stuff, they do NOT need to be that person anymore, even if they once were the best developer to ever grace the world of software development.

A leader’s job is NOT to be the best/smartest/most successful person on the team; they should be doing everything they can to enable those around them to be the best. A leader’s job is to provide a supportive environment for others to succeed. A leader’s job is to influence and inspire and help others grow. A leader’s job is to help others learn from both their failures and their successes.

When I worked for FinTech and considered moving into a leadership role, I thought long and hard about it. By that time, I had spent the better part of 20 years writing code and solving problems. Granted, I wasn’t the best developer on the team - average at best. What I realized is that I could do more for the team as their leader, protecting, supporting, and enabling them, than I could ever do as a peer developer, helping them knock out features.

Final Thoughts

I’ve always believed that leaders should lead from the front, BUT when we’re talking about more technical things, it’s ok to step back a bit and let others be the “best.” Keep the axe sharp, and be able to talk the talk and walk the walk with your team, but understand your role as a leader and enable others to be the best they can be.

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