Most executives think that being the go-to person is a competitive advantage.
It’s not.
The truth is, being the “always available” leader creates dependency.
People stop thinking because you always steps in.
In the beginning, this appears as high performance.
But as pressure builds:
- Everything flows through one person
- Ownership disappears
- Energy drains
This is why countless leaders burn out.
They created reliance.
You can see this clearly in this article by :contentReference[oaicite:3]index=3:
???? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-hero-leaders-burn-out-teams-arnaldo-jara-45tmc/
In this breakdown, he shows that:
- Hero leaders weaken teams
- Collapse is not random
- The goal is independence, not control
What makes this valuable is its honesty.
Leadership is not here about being needed.
It’s about building people who don’t need you.
This idea is reinforced in :contentReference[oaicite:4]index=4, where the same pattern is broken down.
The leaders who scale don’t create dependence.
They step back.
So the better question is:
“How can I do more?”
Shift to this:
“How can my team do more without me?”
Because:
If you are the bottleneck, you are the constraint.
That’s dependency.