Being needed can feel like proof that you are doing an excellent job.
Every question reaches you.
Every decision requires your approval.
Every problem waits for your solution.
People call when you are away, stop when you are unavailable and hesitate whenever you have not told them exactly what to do.
It can look like authority.
It can feel like importance.
Very often, it is neither.
It is dependence.
And dependence should never be confused with leadership.
If everything works only when you are present, you have not built a strong structure.
You have built a bottleneck with your name on it.
This does not necessarily happen because a leader wants power.
Sometimes, they simply answer too quickly.
They solve every problem because they can.
They correct every detail because doing it themselves seems faster.
They make every decision because explaining how to think takes more time than providing the answer.
And, initially, it does take more time.
Developing judgement is slower than giving instructions.
Teaching someone how to evaluate a situation is more demanding than saying yes or no.
Allowing people to think means accepting that they may not immediately choose exactly what you would have chosen.
But if you answer every question, you may complete today’s work while quietly guaranteeing that the same question will return tomorrow.
Leadership is not measured by how many decisions you make.
It is also measured by the quality of the decisions people can make because they have worked with you.
That requires more than delegating tasks.
A task tells someone what to do.
Judgement helps them understand what matters when the situation changes.
People need to know the standards.
The boundaries.
What must be protected.
Where they have freedom.
When they can proceed independently—and when the consequences are serious enough to require another conversation.
Without that structure, autonomy becomes abandonment.
With it, autonomy becomes competence.
This does not mean the leader disappears.
Responsibility does not disappear either.
A leader remains responsible for the environment they create, the standards they establish and the people they choose to trust.
But responsibility is not the same as inserting yourself into every movement.
When someone asks, “What should I do?” the most useful answer is not always an instruction.
Sometimes it is another question.
What are the facts?
What options do you see?
What are the possible consequences?
What would you choose—and why?
The objective is not to make people guess what is inside the leader’s head.
It is to strengthen their ability to use their own.
That process may be uncomfortable.
For them, because making decisions creates responsibility.
For the leader, because being needed is flattering.
There is a certain satisfaction in being the person nobody can function without.
But indispensability is a dangerous ambition.
It makes the organisation fragile.
It slows decisions.
It prevents people from developing.
And eventually, the leader becomes trapped inside the importance they worked so hard to create.
The real test arrives when they are not in the room.
Do people still understand the objective?
Can they distinguish an inconvenience from a real problem?
Can they adapt without abandoning the principles?
Can they act without waiting for permission simply because the original plan no longer fits?
If they can, the leader’s absence does not weaken the structure.
It reveals its strength.
The purpose of leadership is not to become irrelevant.
It is to make your presence valuable without making everyone else incapable in your absence.
Because if everything collapses the moment you leave, being indispensable is not evidence that your work is complete.
It is evidence that the most important part of it has not yet been done.
Silvia
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