Rob Maloney: Learning to Lead Without Being Needed
Rob Maloney, CEO, Hemophilia of Georgia, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“At 52, I’m working on a skill nobody ever rewarded me for:
Not being needed.
Most of my professional life trained me in the opposite direction.
Solve the problem.
Make the decision.
Know the answer.
Be the person people call when something isn’t working.
Do that well enough and you advance. Do it long enough and you eventually become the CEO. Then something strange happens. The behaviors that got you there can become the behaviors that keep everyone around you from growing.
I’m living in that tension right now.
I’ve been intentionally stepping out of day to day operations at Hemophilia of Georgia. I have good people. People I trust. And I still feel the pull to jump in.
Part of that is the operator in me.
Part of it is less flattering.
Being needed feels good.
There’s affirmation in being the person with the solution. There’s identity in being useful. There’s even a little ego in having everyone come to you.
I’m trying to pay more attention to that.
Because stewardship isn’t making yourself indispensable.
If God has entrusted this organization to me for a season, my responsibility isn’t to build something that needs Rob Maloney forever.
It’s to leave behind people, systems and a culture capable of carrying the work forward without me.
That changes what a good day looks like.
Sometimes a good day is solving the problem.
More and more, a good day is finding out somebody else solved it and never needed to call me.
I’m not completely comfortable with that yet.
Which is probably why I need to keep practicing.”
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