That probably isn’t the most promising opening to an article about leadership, but stick with me.

We’re away camping as a family, and tonight was the first home match of the new rugby season in Béziers. I wanted to go, my son wanted to come with me, and my friend Justin was able to join us tonight but won’t be able to make the next few matches. Karissa and our daughter were happy to stay behind at the campsite, so the three of us headed off to Béziers.

It wasn’t a particularly momentous decision. Families make choices like this all the time. But it did get me thinking on the way to the match about how we decide where we need to be when there are several places, and several people, that matter to us.

When everything matters

We often talk about prioritisation as though it should be relatively straightforward. Work out what matters, put everything in order and start at the top. It sounds perfectly sensible until real life gets involved.

Most of the difficult decisions I’ve encountered haven’t been choices between something important and something unimportant. Those are generally quite easy. The difficult choices come when both things matter.

Your team needs you, but so does a customer. A colleague wants some time to talk through a problem, but there’s another commitment you’ve already made. An opportunity comes along that genuinely deserves your attention, but accepting it means taking time away from something else that matters. And, of course, work itself constantly competes with family, friendships and all the other parts of our lives that don’t conveniently disappear when we become leaders.

The hardest priorities aren’t important versus unimportant. They’re important versus important.

That changes the question.

If everything competing for our attention has some legitimate claim on us, then trying to be there for everyone isn’t really an option. We simply can’t. Being present in one place inevitably means being absent from another.

Perhaps a more useful question is: Where does my presence matter most right now?

Every yes contains a no

I think this is one of the realities of leadership that becomes more apparent as responsibility grows. There are more people you could help, more conversations you could join, more decisions you could contribute to and more opportunities you could pursue. The temptation is to think that good leadership means somehow finding enough time for all of them.

Rarely does it. Every yes contains a no…somewhere.

Saying yes to one meeting means that time can’t be spent somewhere else. Giving an hour to one person probably means asking someone else to wait. Travelling to meet a client or pursue an opportunity means being away from home. Protecting time with your family may mean saying no to something at work that is genuinely worthwhile.

None of that necessarily tells us which choice is right. That’s what makes prioritisation so very hard.

Last night, choosing to go to the rugby didn’t mean that Karissa and our daughter mattered less than the people I went with. It meant that, taking everything surrounding this particular evening into account, this was the choice we made. On another evening, with different circumstances, I might have stayed camping.

And I think that’s an important distinction.

Priorities aren’t always a ranking of what matters most. Sometimes they’re a judgement about what matters most right now.

Sometimes we get it wrong

Of course, calling something a priority doesn’t automatically make our decision a good one. I’ve certainly made choices about where to spend my time and later realised I got them wrong.

In the past, I’ve attended a meeting and realised afterwards that I really wasn’t needed. Sometimes something has felt urgent in the moment but, with the benefit of hindsight, wasn’t especially important. Sometimes the person making the most noise gets the attention while someone quieter, who perhaps needs it more, waits — the squeaky wheel gets the most grease.

Leadership involves making judgements with incomplete information. We won’t always get them right. What matters, I think, is remaining conscious that a choice is actually being made.

Because there’s a danger in becoming so accustomed to being needed that we stop noticing what our choices are costing.

Who has been paying for your priorities?

There’s always another reason for a leader to be somewhere else. Another customer needs something. Another deadline is approaching. Another problem has appeared. Another opportunity won’t wait. There’s another meeting where it would be useful to have you in the room.

All of those things can be legitimate.

But I’ve started to think there’s another question that needs to sit alongside Where does my presence matter most right now?

It’s this:

Who has been paying for my priorities lately?

That’s a bit more of an uncomfortable question.

Who keeps getting the no? Who keeps waiting because something else came up? Which relationship, project or responsibility repeatedly gets pushed down the list because something louder or more urgent gets in front of it?

And perhaps most importantly: are the people who are most understanding about our absence, becoming the people we’re absent from most often?

That can happen remarkably easily. Someone understands that you’re busy, so you ask them to understand again. A capable member of the team doesn’t demand much attention, so your time goes to the person who does. Your family understands the pressure you’re under, so work wins another evening.

Individually, every decision can be justified. It’s only when we stand back and look at the pattern that we sometimes see something different.

Tonight, the answer was rugby

Tonight, my answer to Where do I need to be? was at the rugby with my son and Justin.

It was the first home match of the season, and there were reasons why this particular evening mattered. So we left the campsite, drove to Béziers and watched the match while Karissa and our daughter stayed behind.

There was nothing particularly heroic or profound about the decision. In fact, it was completely ordinary. But perhaps that’s why it made me think.

Leadership isn’t only expressed through the big decisions we make. A great deal of it is revealed in the accumulation of much smaller choices about where we put our attention, our energy and our presence. We make those choices at work, at home and everywhere in between, often without really noticing we’re making them.

We can’t be everywhere, and trying to be everything to everyone isn’t leadership. Eventually, it just makes us ineffective everywhere.

What we can do is become more intentional about choosing where we need to be, while remembering that every choice has another side to it.

So perhaps every now and then it’s worth asking ourselves two questions.

Where does my presence matter most right now?

And, just as importantly:

Who has been paying for my priorities lately?

The answer to the first will keep changing.

We should probably make sure the answer to the second does too.

Tonight, they faced a different challenge.

Leicester Tigers came to Béziers.

On the surface, the obvious leadership lesson seemed to be about international experience.

Béziers already have players from different countries and cultures, as do most professional rugby teams. But playing an international opponent brings another dimension. You’re no longer simply bringing different people into your environment.

You’re encountering someone else’s.

A different system. Different habits. Different expectations. A different way of playing the game.

And that raises a question I’ve encountered many times outside rugby too:

How much of what we call “the right way” is really just “our way”?

When another world arrives

One of the great benefits of working internationally is discovering that things you once considered obvious aren’t necessarily obvious at all.

Different cultures communicate differently.

They approach hierarchy differently.

They build relationships differently.

They make decisions differently.

They disagree differently.

Even concepts like urgency, punctuality, commitment and trust can be expressed differently.

I’ve spent much of my career working internationally, and one of the things it has taught me is that encountering another way of doing something forces you to examine your own.

Not necessarily abandon it.

Not necessarily copy theirs.

But examine it.

Because sometimes we don’t even recognise our assumptions as assumptions until we meet someone who doesn’t share them.

Tonight, Béziers encountered something different.

And for the first half, it was difficult.

At halftime, Leicester led 28–5.

But the score wasn’t what interested me most.

It was what happened next.

Adapt

Béziers came out for the second half looking different.

They were stronger.

More organised.

And, perhaps most importantly, they looked better together.

They had just spent 40 minutes experiencing Leicester rather than preparing for Leicester.

There is a difference.

Preparation is based on what we think we’re going to encounter.

Experience gives us information.

And then we have a choice about what we do with it.

Béziers adapted.

The score began to change, but the adaptation was visible before the scoreboard reflected it.

And that’s often true in organisations too.

Adaptation becomes visible in the results, but it begins long before the numbers change.

An 11-year-old spotted something I hadn’t

Sitting beside me was my 11-year-old son, Declan, who plays rugby himself.

He noticed something.

“Béziers are never in line. Leicester are.”

He explained what he’d been taught.

When he was younger, his coaches talked about escalier — literally, a staircase — as a way of teaching the players how to position themselves.

Now they talk about profondeur: maintaining depth in the attacking line.

He kept watching Leicester.

Again and again, when play moved and players had to reset, they seemed to instinctively return to that shape.

Béziers didn’t seem to have that same collective discipline yet.

And suddenly I wasn’t watching the ball anymore.

I was watching the players who didn’t have it.

There was a leadership lesson happening away from the action.

Every professional player on that pitch knows how to play rugby.

The difference wasn’t simply knowledge.

It was what had become instinctive.

Leicester appeared to have a shared structure they could repeatedly return to without needing someone to tell everyone where to stand.

Béziers, with so many new players still learning how to function together, don’t appear to have developed that same collective instinct yet.

Perhaps that’s one of the differences between knowing a system and becoming a system.

Discipline makes adaptation possible

We sometimes talk about discipline and adaptability as though they’re opposites.

Structure sounds rigid.

Adaptability sounds flexible.

But watching Leicester tonight made me wonder whether we’ve got that wrong.

Perhaps strong foundations are precisely what allow a team to adapt quickly.

If everyone understands the principles, knows their role and trusts the people around them, they don’t need to abandon the system every time circumstances change.

They can adapt within it.

That’s true in organisations too.

A strong culture shouldn’t mean, “This is how we’ve always done it.”

It should give people enough shared understanding that when something unexpected happens, they don’t have to wait for the leader to tell them what to do.

They know where to go.

They know what matters.

They know what the team is trying to achieve.

Perhaps culture is most visible in what people do when nobody has time to tell them what to do.

And then Leicester changed

But the most interesting part of the evening was still to come.

Béziers’ second-half response began working.

They became more organised. They started playing better together. They scored.

And Leicester responded.

They raised their game again.

That matters.

Because the world doesn’t politely stand still while we adapt to it.

Competitors respond.

Customers change.

Markets evolve.

Technology moves.

People learn.

The solution that worked yesterday changes the environment in which tomorrow’s problem will appear.

You adapt.

Someone else responds.

And suddenly the thing you adapted to has changed again.

The moment you adapt isn’t the moment you’ve arrived. It’s the moment the next adaptation begins.

Adapt and change

Leicester eventually won 35–19.

But this isn’t really a story about the final score.

It’s about what happened between the first whistle and the last.

Two teams encountered one another.

One initially appeared considerably more settled and disciplined.

The other adjusted.

The first responded.

Both changed because of what the other was doing.

That’s international experience at its best.

Not simply collecting different nationalities around a table.

Not assuming another country’s way is better.

And certainly not abandoning everything that makes your own organisation distinctive.

It’s allowing exposure to another way of doing things to challenge the assumption that yours is the only one.

Observe.

Learn.

Adapt.

And then keep watching.

Because the other side is learning too.

The best teams — and perhaps the best leaders — aren’t those who find the perfect way of doing something and protect it forever.

They’re the ones with foundations strong enough to know who they are, and the curiosity and humility to change when the game demands it.

Adapt and change.

Because the moment you adapt, the game changes again.

Tonight I’m sitting in the stands in Béziers, watching ASBH take on Narbonne in the traditional pre-season derby that helps kick off the Béziers Feria.

Technically, it’s a friendly.

Anyone familiar with the rivalry between Béziers and Narbonne might question how much the word friendly really applies.

But there’s something else beginning tonight too.

A new season. A new team. New combinations. New expectations.

Béziers go into this season with an almost completely rebuilt squad. There are new faces everywhere. Individually, many of them will be talented rugby players. They know how to pass, tackle, kick, run lines and read a game.

But knowing how to play rugby isn’t the same as knowing how to play together.

That takes time.

And watching them tonight got me thinking about how we build teams — and something I learned about leadership many years ago.

Leadership begins before everything is ready

We sometimes imagine leadership beginning at the point when someone is ready for it.

When they receive the promotion.

When they’re given responsibility.

When somebody hands them the captain’s armband.

But leadership usually starts much earlier.

It starts in childhood. On sports fields. In classrooms. In friendships. In families. In those moments when somebody chooses to step forward, encourage someone else, take responsibility, challenge something that doesn’t seem right, or help a group move forward.

Most of us probably began learning how to lead long before we knew that was what we were doing.

And none of us began as the finished article.

I certainly didn’t.

“I’ll staff to my weaknesses”

Many years ago, I approached my father-in-law, Dieter, about eventually succeeding him at Agronomix.

Dieter had founded the company and had spent decades working in plant breeding. Agronomix built specialist software for plant breeders and variety testers around the world.

I wasn’t a plant breeder.

Unsurprisingly, that concerned him.

How could someone who wasn’t a plant breeder eventually lead a company so deeply rooted in plant breeding?

My answer was fairly simple:

“I’ll staff to my weaknesses.”

I knew I couldn’t replace Dieter by becoming Dieter.

Nor did I need to pretend that I possessed knowledge and expertise that I didn’t.

What I could do was understand the strengths I brought, be honest about the strengths I didn’t have, and build a team containing them.

Looking back, I think that conversation shaped more of my leadership philosophy than I realised at the time.

Because that is how you build a team.

Fifteen fly-halves wouldn’t make a rugby team

Imagine selecting a rugby team by identifying your most talented player and then finding fourteen more people exactly like them.

It would be ridiculous.

A prop isn’t supposed to play like a winger.

A scrum-half brings something different from a lock. A fly-half sees the game differently from a hooker. Each position requires different strengths, instincts and abilities.

The team works because they are different, not despite it.

And yet in organisations we can sometimes fall into the trap of surrounding ourselves with people who think like us, approach problems like us and possess many of the same strengths we do.

Perhaps it’s comfortable.

But I’m not convinced it creates the strongest teams.

The strongest teams I’ve experienced have contained people who could do things I couldn’t.

People who saw things I missed.

People who challenged my thinking.

People with expertise I didn’t possess.

People whose strengths compensated for my weaknesses — while, hopefully, mine did the same for theirs.

The job of a leader isn’t to be the strongest person in every position. It’s to build a team in which every position has strength.

But assembling the team is only the beginning

And that’s what brings me back to Béziers tonight.

Recruiting the right players isn’t enough.

You can have the perfect combination of individual strengths on paper and still not have a great team.

They have to learn one another.

Who makes the run without being asked?

Who stays calm when they’re under pressure?

Who needs encouragement after making a mistake?

Who challenges everyone else to raise their game?

Who speaks when everyone else goes quiet?

Who can be trusted when the carefully rehearsed plan falls apart?

Those things aren’t discovered on an organisational chart or a team sheet.

They’re discovered through experience.

There will be mistakes.

There will be misunderstandings.

There will probably be moments when things look considerably worse before they look better.

That’s part of becoming a team.

We expect polish when we should expect potential

Perhaps that’s the lesson I’m taking from tonight before the season has even properly started.

We can be too quick to judge beginnings.

A new leader.

A new employee.

A new team.

A new organisation.

Even ourselves when we step into something unfamiliar.

We expect polish when what we should expect is potential.

Nobody should judge Béziers’ season on one pre-season match.

This group needs time to discover not only what each individual can do, but what they can do together.

Leadership needs that same room to develop.

Teams need time to gel.

People need opportunities to discover what they’re capable of. And sometimes they need someone around them who sees what they might become before they’ve proved it themselves.

Years ago, Dieter could have looked at what I lacked and decided I wasn’t the right person to lead Agronomix.

Instead, we began a journey that ultimately lasted many years.

I never did become a plant breeder.

That wasn’t the point.

I learned to build a team containing people who knew things I didn’t, could do things I couldn’t, and brought strengths different from mine.

And perhaps that’s one of the most important lessons leadership has taught me:

You don’t build a great team by finding people without weaknesses.

You build one by bringing together people whose strengths make each other’s weaknesses matter less.

Tonight, Béziers are at the beginning of discovering what kind of team they might become.

And as I look around the pitch at all those new faces, I’m reminded that every great team, every great leader and every worthwhile journey has to start somewhere.

And so it begins.

Perhaps early on, leadership naturally feels quite personal. We want to prove ourselves. We want to make good decisions, deliver results and demonstrate that the person who trusted us with responsibility made the right choice.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. We have to learn. We make mistakes. We develop confidence and discover what kind of leader we want to become.

But somewhere along the way, if we’re fortunate, our perspective begins to shift. We stop asking quite so often, “How am I doing?” And start asking: How are they doing?

That’s the moment leadership starts becoming less about us.

From Proving Yourself to Growing Others

When we’re given responsibility for the first time, it can feel as though we’re supposed to have the answers. After all, we’re the leader; we’re the one people are looking to.

We solve problems, we make decisions, we step in when things aren’t working, we try to demonstrate competence because we assume that’s what leadership requires. For me though, that experience gradually taught me something different:

If I’m always the person with the answer, I’m probably not developing enough people who can find the answer without me.

If every important decision eventually arrives on my desk, I haven’t created leadership. I’ve created dependency.

And if the team only performs well while I’m standing in the middle of it, I’m not sure I’ve built anything particularly strong.

The goal changes.

Instead of demonstrating how capable we are, we begin creating opportunities for other people to discover how capable they are.

That can be surprisingly difficult for leaders.

Being needed feels good. Being the person with the answer feels good. Being included in every decision can even feel like evidence that we’re doing an excellent job. But sometimes the strongest evidence of our leadership is happening in rooms we’re no longer invited into...because people don’t need us there anymore.

Give Away What You Know

I’ve never understood leaders who protect knowledge as though sharing it somehow diminishes their value. If I know something that can help someone else become better at what they do, why wouldn’t I share it? If someone can learn from my mistakes without having to make every one of them themselves, even better and if someone eventually becomes better than me at something I helped them learn, that’s not a threat to my leadership.

That’s evidence of it.

Leadership shouldn’t create a queue of people waiting for the leader to solve their problems. It should create people who are increasingly confident in solving problems themselves—and eventually helping others do the same.

That’s when leadership begins to multiply. One person develops another...who develops another...who sees potential in someone else. Therefore, all of a sudden, the influence of one leader extends far beyond anything they could have achieved personally.

Let Other People Have the Spotlight

There’s another shift that comes with this: you become increasingly comfortable not being the person receiving the credit.

I’ve always believed that when something goes well, the people who did the work should be recognised for it. When something goes wrong, leadership has a responsibility to step forward rather than backwards. That doesn’t mean leaders should become invisible or pretend they haven’t contributed. But there’s a difference between participating in success and needing to own it.

Some of the best moments in leadership come when you watch someone you’ve encouraged succeed without needing anything from you.

They lead the meeting. They solve the problem. They win the client. They make the decision. They challenge an assumption. They help someone else grow. And perhaps you sit quietly at the edge of it and think:

Look at what they’ve become.

There’s something deeply satisfying about that because their success doesn’t make your contribution smaller. In many ways, it makes it bigger.

Leadership Is Borrowed

Titles are temporary. Organisational charts change. Businesses are acquired. Teams evolve. People move on. Eventually every one of us leaves the position we currently occupy.

I’ve experienced enough change in my own career to know how quickly the title beside your name can change while the relationships you’ve built remain. That’s why I increasingly think leadership is something we’re entrusted with rather than something we own. For a period of time, we’re given the opportunity to influence other people’s working lives.

Think about what that means.

For several hours every day, perhaps for years, our behaviour can affect someone’s confidence, development, opportunities and even how they feel when they go home at the end of the day. That’s an enormous responsibility and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. We don’t own the people we lead, nor their successes, and certainly not their ideas. We simply have an opportunity, for however long our paths overlap, to help them become more capable of travelling theirs.

Success or Significance?

I’ve written before about why I favour significance over success, and leadership may be one of the clearest examples of the distinction.

Success asks:

What did I achieve?

What did I build?

What targets did I hit?

How far did I progress?

Those questions matter. Results matter. Businesses cannot survive on good intentions, and leadership that consistently fails to deliver eventually fails the people depending upon it too.

But significance asks different questions.

Who grew because I was there?

Who became more confident?

Who was given an opportunity?

Who discovered something in themselves they hadn’t seen before?

Who became a leader?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who went on to do for someone else what someone once did for them?

That’s a very different kind of legacy.

Becoming the Leader Others Choose to Follow

This week began with a simple idea: leadership begins before the title.

From there, we asked why anyone would choose to follow us at all. We considered the importance of leading ourselves before expecting to lead anyone else, and yesterday we turned the question around and asked what our leadership actually feels like to the people experiencing it.

Perhaps all four questions bring us here.

People don’t choose to follow us so that we can become more important. They choose to follow because they trust us with some part of where they’re going.

Our responsibility is to be worthy of that trust.

To create direction without needing to control every step.

To challenge people without diminishing them.

To share what we know.

To listen when we’re wrong.

To give opportunities before people feel completely ready.

To create room for people to become better than us.

And eventually, to be completely comfortable when they no longer need us.

Because perhaps leadership was never really about creating followers.

Maybe the greatest leaders create more leaders.

And when we understand that, something changes.

We stop measuring leadership by how many people are looking towards us.

We start noticing how many people around us are becoming capable of leading others.

That might be the moment we finally understand what leadership was for.

It was never really about us.

This is the last part of a 5-part series called “Becoming the Leader Others Choose to Follow”. The other parts can be found here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

This article.

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Over the past few days, I’ve been exploring what it means to become a leader others choose to follow (links are at the bottom of this article).

We started with the idea that leadership often begins before the title. Then we asked why anyone would actually choose to follow us, before turning the question inward yesterday and considering whether we can lead ourselves before expecting to lead others.

Today, I want to turn the perspective around completely.

Because we spend a lot of time thinking about leadership from the leader’s point of view. We read books about becoming better leaders. We attend courses. We learn techniques. We think about our communication, our decision-making, our vision and our ability to motivate people.

But the people we lead experience something rather different.

They experience us.

What Is It Like to Be Led by You?

That’s a question I think is worth sitting with.

Not: What kind of leader do I think I am?

Not: What does my leadership profile say about me?

Not even: What leadership style do I use?

But what is it actually like to be led by me?

Do people feel heard when they speak to me? Do they feel trusted to make decisions, or do they feel they need my permission for everything? Do they know that disagreement is welcome, or have they learned that agreeing with the leader is safer?

Do they feel that mistakes are opportunities to learn, or something to hide?

Do they leave conversations with me feeling more capable, or less?

Those questions tell us something a leadership title never can.

We tend to judge our leadership by our intentions. Other people experience it through our actions.

And there can sometimes be quite a gap between the two.

Intentions Aren’t Enough

Most leaders don’t wake up in the morning intending to make someone’s working day miserable.

We don’t normally set out to micromanage, discourage, intimidate or make people feel insignificant. In fact, most of us probably believe we’re doing exactly the opposite.

We think we’re being helpful when we step in.

We think we’re maintaining standards when we correct something.

We think we’re being decisive when we make the decision ourselves.

We think we’re protecting someone when we don’t give them the difficult assignment.

And sometimes we are.

But sometimes our helpfulness feels like a lack of trust. Our high standards feel like nothing is ever good enough. Our decisiveness leaves no room for other people’s ideas, and our protection prevents someone from discovering what they’re capable of.

That’s why I think leadership requires more than good intentions. It requires enough self-awareness to ask how those intentions are actually being experienced by others.

Creating Room for People to Grow

Previously, I’ve written about my belief that one of the greatest responsibilities of leadership is helping other people grow.

But growth needs room.

If I make every decision, I shouldn’t be surprised when people stop making decisions. If I provide every answer, eventually people may stop bringing me ideas. If every mistake is met with criticism, people become very good at hiding mistakes. And if I need to be the smartest person in every room, I’m probably limiting the potential of everyone else in it.

Leadership isn’t about making yourself indispensable. In many ways, I think good leadership should do the opposite. It should create people who are increasingly confident without you. People who can make decisions you once made. People who challenge your thinking. People who bring ideas you hadn’t considered. People who eventually become better at things than you are.

I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to work with people who became far better than me in their particular areas of expertise. I never saw that as threatening. Surely that’s exactly what we should want.

If everyone around us can only ever rise as high as we have, we’ve created a ceiling rather than an opportunity.

Push or Pull?

There’s another way I’ve come to think about this: the difference between push leadership and pull leadership.

Push leadership relies heavily on direction. The leader sets the course, gives the instruction, applies pressure and pushes people towards the desired outcome. And I should acknowledge that this can work. Some people respond well to very directive leadership, and there are certainly situations where a leader simply needs to make a decision and say, “This is what we’re doing.”

But personally, I’ve never responded particularly well to being pushed. And perhaps unsurprisingly, it isn’t how I naturally want to lead others either.

I much prefer the idea of pull leadership.

Rather than pushing people towards an outcome, I want to create something they want to move towards. Give people a reason to care about where we’re going. Help them understand why their contribution matters. Give them enough ownership that it becomes partly their destination rather than simply mine.

For me, that’s where vision becomes important. Vision isn’t just the leader standing at the front pointing towards the horizon. It’s helping other people see something compelling enough that they want to start walking towards it too.

And once people begin moving because they believe in the destination rather than because someone is pushing them from behind, something changes. Ownership grows. Ideas emerge. People begin solving problems rather than waiting for instructions.

That doesn’t mean a pull leader never challenges people. I’ve challenged people throughout my career, and I’ve sometimes pushed people beyond what they believed they were capable of. But there’s an important distinction between challenging someone to grow and pushing someone to comply.

Push leadership says, “Go because I told you to.” Pull leadership says, “Come with me because this is worth pursuing.”

I know which one works better on me.

And I know which kind of leader I’d rather be.

People Remember How Leadership Felt

Think about the leaders you’ve worked with over the years.

You probably don’t remember every decision they made. You almost certainly don’t remember every meeting they chaired, every target they set or every presentation they gave. But you probably remember how it felt to work with them. You remember the leader who believed in you. The one who gave you an opportunity before you were completely ready. The one who listened to an idea that wasn’t fully formed yet. The one who defended the team when things went wrong and shared the credit when things went right.

Unfortunately, we remember the opposite too.

The leader whose mood determined the atmosphere of the room. The one everyone was afraid to disagree with. The one who took the credit but distributed the blame. The one who made talented people question whether they were actually any good.

Those experiences stay with us, sometimes for years. And whether we realise it or not, we’re creating those experiences for other people right now.

Leadership Leaves Something Behind

Perhaps this is why I increasingly think leadership is less about what we accomplish personally and more about what happens to other people while we’re accomplishing it.

Results matter. Targets matter. Strategy matters. Businesses need to perform, and leaders have a responsibility to deliver.

But how we get there matters too.

If we achieve extraordinary results while exhausting, diminishing or driving away everyone around us, I’m not sure we can call that extraordinary leadership.

Equally, caring about people doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations, lowering expectations or accepting poor performance. Some of the most important things a leader can do are challenge someone, tell them something they don’t particularly want to hear, or push them beyond what they currently believe they’re capable of.

The difference is the reason we’re doing it.

Are we trying to demonstrate our authority?

Or are we genuinely trying to help them become better?

People can usually tell.

Perhaps We Should Ask Them

There’s an obvious problem with asking ourselves what it’s like to be led by us.

We’re probably the least objective person available to answer the question. So perhaps part of becoming a better leader is creating relationships in which people can actually tell us.

That requires trust going both ways. It means creating an environment where someone can disagree with us without wondering what it will cost them, where feedback can travel upwards as well as downwards, and where “I think you got this wrong” isn’t treated as an act of disloyalty.

That’s not always comfortable.

But leadership probably shouldn’t always be comfortable.

If we only surround ourselves with people who confirm the leader we already believe ourselves to be, we may never discover the leader everyone else is actually experiencing.

So perhaps today there is a different leadership question worth asking.

What is it like to be led by me?

And perhaps the really courageous part isn’t asking the question. It’s being willing to listen to the answer.

Tomorrow, we’ll finish this series by looking at what I think may be one of the biggest shifts in our understanding of leadership:

The moment we realise it isn’t about us.

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This is part 4 of a 5-part series called “Becoming the Leader Others Choose to Follow”. I will add the other parts below as I post them.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4: This article.

Part 5: Coming Friday

Yesterday (“Why Would Anyone Choose To Follow You?” - above), I asked a difficult question:

If nobody had to follow you, would anyone still choose to?

Today, I’d like to ask another.

Not the version of yourself you hope to become someday, but the person you are today. Because before leadership is tested in public, it’s usually tested in private.

Every Leader Makes Promises

Every one of us makes promises—not just to other people, but to ourselves. We tell ourselves we’ll get up earlier, make time to learn, have the difficult conversation, stop avoiding that decision, be more patient, spend more time with our family, look after our health, or finally finish what we started.

Most leadership isn’t built through dramatic moments. It’s built through quietly keeping the promises that nobody else even knows we made.

Leadership Starts With Self-Leadership

It’s difficult to ask other people to be disciplined if we aren’t. It’s difficult to expect accountability if we avoid it ourselves, or to ask people to embrace change if we’re unwilling to change.

People may hear our words, but they’ll believe our example. That’s why self-leadership matters so much—not because we need to become perfect, but because leadership gains credibility when our actions consistently support our message.

Before We Lead Others, We Lead Ourselves

I don’t think people expect leaders to know everything. I certainly don’t. The best leaders I’ve worked with weren’t perfect; they changed their minds when they learned something new, admitted mistakes, asked questions and apologised when they got something wrong.

Ironically, those moments didn’t weaken their leadership—they strengthened it. Authenticity builds trust far more effectively than pretending to have all the answers.

Character Is Built in the Small Decisions

We often imagine that character is revealed during life’s biggest moments. Perhaps it is, but I suspect it’s mostly built long before those moments arrive.

It’s built when nobody is watching, when it’s easier to cut corners, and when nobody would notice if we did. It’s built when we choose between convenience and conviction, because those small decisions quietly become habits, those habits become character, and eventually our character becomes our leadership.

You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup

Many leaders spend so much time looking after everyone else that they gradually stop looking after themselves. They become exhausted, reactive and impatient—not because they stopped caring, but because they stopped recovering.

Self-leadership isn’t selfish. Looking after your physical health, protecting your mental wellbeing, making time to think, continuing to learn and investing in your relationships aren’t distractions from leadership—they’re what sustain it.

The people we lead deserve the healthiest version of us that we can realistically give them. That doesn’t mean we’re always at our best, but it does mean recognising that our ability to lead others is directly influenced by how well we lead ourselves.

Leadership Is Who You Are Before Anyone Is Watching

Long before other people experience our leadership, we do. We know whether we kept our word, avoided the conversation, blamed someone else or chose the easy option instead of the right one.

That’s why the first person every leader has to earn credibility with is themselves. We can’t hide behind a title or reputation when we’re alone with our own decisions.

If You Can’t Trust Yourself…

…it becomes much harder for others to trust you. Self-leadership isn’t about being flawless; it’s about becoming the sort of person whose words and actions increasingly align.

It’s about continuing to learn, continuing to grow, continuing to show up and continuing to try again after failure. Every time we keep a promise to ourselves, we quietly strengthen something that every leader needs: integrity.

Perhaps that’s where genuine leadership really begins. Not in the boardroom, not on the stage and not when everyone is watching, but in the ordinary decisions that nobody else ever sees.

Tomorrow we’ll turn the question around completely. Instead of asking what leaders do, we’ll ask what leadership actually feels like for the people experiencing it.

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This is part 3 of a 5-part series called “Becoming the Leader Others Choose to Follow”. I will add the other parts below as I post them.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: The First Person You Have to Lead Is Yourself

This article.

Part 4: Coming Thursday

Part 5: Coming Friday

Yesterday (“Leadership Begins Before the Title” - above), I finished with a question.

If leadership isn’t simply about having authority—and if people ultimately choose who they genuinely follow—why would anyone choose to follow you?

It’s an uncomfortable question. Perhaps it should be. Because if we strip away the job titles, reporting structures and organisational charts, we’re left with something much more personal.

Would people still listen?

Would they still trust your judgement?

Would they still want to walk in the direction you’re heading?

Would they still follow if they didn’t have to?

Compliance Isn’t the Same as Followership

If you’re someone’s manager, you have a certain amount of authority.

You can assign work. You can set deadlines. You can make decisions. You may even have influence over someone’s salary, promotion or future within the organisation. And because of that, people will probably do what you ask.

But that’s not necessarily leadership. Sometimes it’s simply compliance.

The distinction matters because compliance can look remarkably similar to followership from the leader’s side of the desk.

People attend your meetings. They complete the work. They nod when you speak. They follow the process. Everything appears to be working.

But what happens when you’re no longer in the room? That’s often where leadership reveals itself.

Do people continue moving in the same direction because they understand and believe in where they’re going?

Do they make good decisions without waiting for your approval?

Do they feel trusted enough to challenge you when they think you’re wrong?

Do they take ownership?

Or do they simply wait for the next instruction?

People Follow People They Trust

Trust is one of those words we use frequently in conversations about leadership.

But trust isn’t created by saying, “Trust me.” It’s accumulated. Slowly. Through hundreds of interactions that may seem insignificant at the time.

Did you do what you said you would do?

Did you listen when someone spoke?

Did you take responsibility when something went wrong?

Did you give credit when something went right?

Did you tell the truth when the truth was uncomfortable?

Did you make the same decision when nobody was watching?

Trust is rarely built in the big leadership moments we imagine we’ll face someday. It’s built in the small ones we face every day. And perhaps that’s why it takes so long to build and so little time to lose.

People Need to Know Where You’re Going

But trust alone isn’t enough. People also need a reason to follow. Leadership requires direction. You don’t need to have every answer. In fact, I think leaders who pretend to have every answer quickly lose credibility. But you do need to help people understand where you’re trying to go—and why getting there matters.

A leader without direction may be well liked. They may be trusted. They may genuinely care about their people.

But leadership also requires movement. There has to be somewhere worth going. Vision isn’t about producing an impressive statement to put on a wall or a website. It’s about helping people see a future they want to help create. And then showing them that their contribution matters in getting there.

People Follow Leaders Who See Them

I’ve come to believe that one of the most powerful things a leader can do is genuinely see people. Not simply as employees. Not as resources. Not as job titles or positions on an organisational chart. As people.

People with ideas. People with ambitions. People with strengths they may not yet recognise. People with things happening in their lives that you may know nothing about. People who sometimes need encouragement. People who sometimes need challenging. People who sometimes need someone else to believe in them before they can believe in themselves.

Some of the people who have influenced me most throughout my career didn’t do it by giving me instructions. They did it by seeing something in me. Sometimes before I saw it myself. And when someone genuinely believes in you, you remember it.

People Watch What You Do

We often think leadership is about what we say. But people are watching what we do. They notice how we treat the person who can do nothing for us. They notice whether our values disappear when they’re inconvenient.

They notice whether we ask people to make sacrifices we’re unwilling to make ourselves. They notice whether we listen. They notice whether we admit mistakes. They notice how we behave under pressure.

And they notice the gap—if there is one—between the leader we claim to be and the person they actually experience.

That’s why leadership can’t simply be performed. Eventually, people see through the performance.

The Choice to Follow

Perhaps genuine followership begins when someone decides:

I trust this person.

I believe they care about where we’re going.

I believe they care about me.

I believe their actions match their words.

I believe that if I walk with them, something worthwhile might happen.

That’s very different from:

They’re my boss, so I have to do what they say.

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And the difference between the two may determine what happens when things become difficult.

Because when everything is going well, almost anyone can appear to lead.

It’s when the path becomes uncertain, the pressure increases and the answers aren’t obvious that we discover whether people were simply following instructions—or whether they were genuinely following us.

So perhaps every leader should occasionally ask themselves the uncomfortable question:

And if the answer gives us pause, perhaps the next question isn’t how we become better at leading others.

Perhaps it’s whether we’ve learned to lead ourselves.

That’s where we’ll go tomorrow.

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This is part 2 of a 5-part series. I will add the other parts below as I repost them.

Part 1:

Part 3: Coming Wednesday

Part 4: Coming Thursday

Part 5: Coming Friday

The wheat and barley were still standing.

Only a few hours from home, where the harvest has already been completed, these fields were still golden, full and waiting. The contrast was striking. They had experienced the same summer, the same intense heatwave that swept across much of Europe, and many of the same long, sunny days.

Yet they weren’t ready for harvest.

As I stood looking across those fields, I realised how often we assume everyone is living through life at the same pace.

We compare ourselves with colleagues, friends, neighbours and even strangers on social media. Someone receives a promotion while we’re still waiting for an opportunity. Someone launches a successful business while we’re trying to find our footing. Someone appears to have reached a destination we’re still working towards.

It’s easy to conclude that we’re behind.

But perhaps we’re asking the wrong question.

Agriculture reminds us that every field has its own conditions. The soil is different. The variety may be different. The amount of sunlight, rainfall and shelter all play a part in determining when the crop is ready.

No farmer would look across at a neighbouring field and decide to harvest simply because someone else had started. Harvest too early and the grain hasn’t reached its full potential. Wait too long and quality can be lost.

The timing matters.

Life and leadership are no different.

We all experience the same seasons, but not in exactly the same way.

Some people seem to discover their calling early in life. Others spend years learning, growing and preparing before stepping into the opportunity that was always meant for them.

Some businesses grow rapidly. Others build steadily over decades.

Some relationships flourish quickly. Others deepen slowly, becoming stronger because of the time invested in them.

None of these journeys are wrong.

They’re simply different.

I wonder how much unnecessary pressure we place on ourselves because we’re measuring our progress against someone else’s timetable.

Perhaps the better question isn’t, “Why haven’t I reached their harvest?”

Perhaps it’s, “Am I being faithful in my own season?”

As I continued walking, I realised those standing fields weren’t late.

They weren’t behind.

They were exactly where they needed to be.

There’s something wonderfully freeing about that thought.

Not every field is ready at the same time.

Not every opportunity arrives in the same season.

Not every life follows the same timetable.

And perhaps that’s exactly how it’s meant to be.

Closing Thought

Don’t compare your season with someone else’s harvest. Your time will come when your field is ready.

When did you become a leader?

It sounds like a simple question.

Perhaps it was the day you were promoted. The day you became a manager. The day someone changed your job title, gave you responsibility for a team, and suddenly expected you to have answers.

But was that really the day your leadership began?

Last week, I explored the question of whether leadership can be learned. We considered the leaders who seem to grow into leadership organically, those who are encouraged by someone who sees potential in them, and those whose leadership develops through experience and circumstance.

And that got me thinking…

Perhaps one of the reasons leadership can be so difficult to define is that, for many of us, there is no single moment when it begins.

Sometimes, we start leading long before anyone gives us permission.

Before Anyone Calls You a Leader

Think back through your own career.

Was there a time when someone came to you for advice, even though you weren’t their manager?

Perhaps a colleague asked what you thought they should do.

Maybe someone trusted you with a problem they weren’t comfortable taking elsewhere.

Perhaps you were the person who stepped forward when something needed doing—or the person who stayed calm when everyone else was looking around wondering what to do next.

Maybe you encouraged someone who was struggling.

Maybe you challenged something because you believed there was a better way.

Maybe you simply noticed someone who needed to be noticed.

There was no announcement.

No promotion.

No new title on LinkedIn.

You just led.

Leadership Doesn’t Always Announce Itself

I think we sometimes imagine leadership as something bestowed upon us.

One day, we’re not a leader.

The next day, someone promotes us and suddenly we are.

Organisations reinforce this idea. We have leadership teams, management structures, organisational charts and job descriptions. These things are necessary. They help establish responsibility, accountability and decision-making authority.

But an organisational chart can tell me who someone reports to.

It can’t necessarily tell me who they follow.

Those are two very different things.

You can give someone authority.

You can give them a team.

You can give them an impressive title.

But you cannot put genuine followership into a job description.

That has to be earned.

The Leaders Without Titles

Most of us have probably encountered people who had very little formal authority but enormous influence.

When they spoke, people listened.

When things became difficult, people looked towards them.

When someone needed help, they were often the person people sought out.

They may not have been the most senior person in the room. They may not even have considered themselves a leader.

But other people did.

And perhaps that’s one of the earliest signs of leadership.

Not when someone above you decides you are ready to lead.

But when the people around you begin to trust you enough to follow.

Sometimes Someone Else Sees It First

As I explored last week, leadership is sometimes encouraged into existence.

Someone sees something in us that we haven’t yet recognised in ourselves.

They give us an opportunity.

They ask our opinion.

They trust us with responsibility slightly beyond what we think we’re ready for.

And slowly, something changes.

We begin to realise that people are watching how we respond.

Our words carry a little more weight.

Our actions influence the actions of others.

The way we behave when things go wrong matters just as much—perhaps more—than the way we behave when everything is going well.

We discover that leadership isn’t something we switch on when we receive a promotion.

It’s something we’ve been practising.

Sometimes without even knowing it.

The Title May Come Later

A title can formalise leadership.

It can give us the authority and responsibility we need to make decisions, allocate resources and create change.

But the title isn’t where leadership begins.

And perhaps the strongest leaders are those whose title eventually catches up with something that was already happening.

They were already encouraging people.

Already taking responsibility.

Already asking questions.

Already listening.

Already helping others grow.

Already creating followers.

The promotion didn’t suddenly make them a leader.

It simply gave a name to something other people had already begun to experience.

So, When Did Your Leadership Begin?

Perhaps it began earlier than you think.

Maybe it was the first time someone asked for your advice.

The first time you stood up for someone.

The first time you took responsibility when it would have been easier to stay quiet.

The first time you said, “I’ll help.”

Or perhaps it was the first time someone followed your lead when they didn’t actually have to.

We may never be able to identify the exact moment.

And maybe that’s the point.

Leadership rarely arrives with an announcement.

Sometimes it grows quietly, through hundreds of small interactions, decisions and moments of trust.

Until one day, someone gives you a title.

And you realise you’ve been leading for quite some time.

But that leaves us with a much bigger question.

If leadership isn’t simply about having authority—and if people ultimately choose who they genuinely follow—why would anyone choose to follow you?

That’s where we’ll go tomorrow.

Yesterday, I watched something remarkable.

Not because of the height of the ropes course or the challenge of the obstacles, but because of the conversations taking place between each platform.

One child was exactly where you’d expect him to be.

Declan charged ahead with confidence, tackling each obstacle without hesitation. He has always been adventurous, curious and willing to try something new.

His younger sister, Shiloh, had a different experience.

Although she’d completed several high ropes courses before, one particular zip line stopped her in her tracks. There were tears. She froze. Fear had taken over.

Karissa didn’t rush her. She didn’t tell her there was nothing to be afraid of. Instead, she gave her one simple sentence to repeat.

“I can do this.”

At every platform she asked the same question.

“What are you telling yourself?”

And each time Shiloh quietly replied,

“I can do this.”

Platform by platform.

Obstacle by obstacle.

She finished the course.

Watching it unfold, I realised something. We often think confidence is something people either have or they don’t.

I’m not convinced that’s true.

I think confidence is often borrowed.

Before we believe in ourselves, someone else believes in us first.

A parent.

A teacher.

A coach.

A mentor.

A leader.

They see something in us that we haven’t yet discovered ourselves. They lend us their confidence until, one day, it becomes our own.

Looking back over my own career, I can think of several people who did exactly that for me.

They trusted me with responsibilities I wasn’t sure I was ready for. They encouraged me when I questioned myself. They saw potential before I could see it.

Without realising it, they were lending me their belief.

I suspect every one of us can think of someone like that.

But the story didn’t end on the ropes course.

Later that day, I watched Declan do exactly the same thing for his sister as they jumped into the lake from a small cliff.

She started with the smallest jump she could find.

Then another.

And another.

With every jump, her confidence grew.

Then something else happened.

Karissa and Declan decided to tackle the more difficult ropes course. There were sections she wasn’t completely comfortable with. Instead of racing ahead, Declan stopped. He waited. He encouraged his mum in exactly the same way he’d seen her encourage his sister earlier that day.

Nobody had told him to do that.

He simply repeated what had first been modelled to him.

That may have been the greatest lesson of the day.

Leadership isn’t merely taught through instruction.

It’s caught through example.

The encouragement we give today becomes the encouragement someone else gives tomorrow.

The belief we invest in another person doesn’t stop with them. It has a way of multiplying as they begin passing it on to others.

Perhaps that’s one of the greatest responsibilities we have as leaders.

Not simply to achieve results.

Not simply to develop skills.

But to leave people believing they are capable of more than they imagined.

Leadership is rarely about having the loudest voice or the biggest title.

More often, it’s about lending someone your belief until they’re able to believe in themselves.

And perhaps the greatest reward of all is seeing that borrowed belief passed on to someone else.

That’s exactly what I witnessed on a mountainside in the French Alps.

A little boy encouraging his sister.

Then quietly encouraging his mum.

The belief that had first been given to him was now becoming a gift he could give to others.

That’s leadership.

And perhaps that’s one of the greatest legacies any of us can leave.

Continue the Journey

Leadership Lessons from the French Alps

This article is part of a series of reflections inspired by our family holiday in the French Alps. If you enjoyed this one, you may also like these:

🌊 The Little Dams We Build
Sometimes leadership is about removing obstacles. Other times, it’s about placing the right challenge in someone’s path to help them grow.

https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisdleonard/p/the-little-dams-we-build?r=6xri9y&utm_medium=ios

🤝 Who Are You Bringing Into the Stream?
The best leaders don’t keep the journey to themselves. They invite others to experience it alongside them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisdleonard/p/who-are-you-bringing-into-the-stream?r=6xri9y&utm_medium=ios

💧 Never Stop Following the Stream
Children never stop asking questions. Perhaps great leaders shouldn’t either. A reflection on curiosity, learning and following problems back to their source.
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisdleonard/p/never-stop-following-the-stream?r=6xri9y&utm_medium=ios

Sometimes they come from a camping trip with your children.

Over the past few days, while exploring the mountains around Lac de Serre-Ponçon in the French Alps, I found myself seeing leadership through a different lens. A simple mountain stream became the backdrop for three reflections I hadn’t planned to write, yet each revealed something important about what it means to lead well.

Rather than writing one long article, the experience naturally unfolded into three connected stories. Each builds on the last, but each also stands on its own.

If you’re new to Seeds of Leadership, I hope you’ll enjoy the journey.

🌊 The Little Dams We Build

It all started with a bike ride.

When my son discovered a small mountain stream, he immediately began building tiny dams with stones, watching the water pool before knocking them down and starting again.

Standing beside him, I realised that leadership isn’t always about removing obstacles. Sometimes it’s about introducing the right challenge at just the right moment. Both have the power to change the direction of someone’s life.

Read the full article here:

The Little Dams We Build
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisdleonard/p/the-little-dams-we-build?r=6xri9y&utm_medium=ios

🤝 Who Are You Bringing Into the Stream?

I thought the lesson had ended.

Then my son disappeared.

A few minutes later, he returned with his little sister. He didn’t need her help. He simply wanted her to experience the moment too.

That simple act became a reflection on collaboration, shared leadership and one of the most important questions every leader can ask:

Who am I inviting into the journey?

Read the full article here:

Who Are You Bringing Into the Stream?
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisdleonard/p/who-are-you-bringing-into-the-stream?r=6xri9y&utm_medium=ios

💧 Never Stop Following the Stream

The following day, we hiked higher into the mountains.

Every time we crossed a stream, my son stopped. He wanted to know where the water came from, how cold it was, why it flowed the way it did, and which stream offered the freshest water.

Watching him reminded me that somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us stop asking questions. We become more concerned with appearing knowledgeable than with becoming knowledgeable.

Perhaps the greatest leaders never lose that childlike curiosity.

Read the full article here:

Never Stop Following the Stream
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisdleonard/p/never-stop-following-the-stream?r=6xri9y&utm_medium=ios

One Stream. Three Lessons.

Looking back, I realised these weren’t really articles about streams at all.

They’re about shaping lives with intentionality.

They’re about inviting others into the journey instead of walking it alone.

They’re about remaining curious enough to keep learning, no matter how much experience we have.

One ordinary holiday in the French Alps unexpectedly became a reminder that leadership isn’t something we switch on when we arrive at work each morning. It’s something we notice, practise and live every day.

Sometimes the most profound lessons are hidden in the most ordinary moments.

We just have to be willing to stop long enough to see them.

I’d love to hear from you.

Which of these three reflections resonated with you the most?

Was it the challenge of The Little Dams We Build, the invitation found in Who Are You Bringing Into the Stream?, or the curiosity explored in Never Stop Following the Stream?

Please leave a comment below. I’d genuinely love to know which lesson stayed with you—and why.

The scenery was breathtaking. Every turn revealed another view that seemed even more spectacular than the last.

But while most of us were taking in the landscape, Declan had something else on his mind.

Every time we crossed a stream, he stopped.

He wanted to know where it came from.

He crouched beside the water, watching it weave its way around rocks and roots. He tested the temperature with his hands, looked for algae, examined how clear the water was and, every now and then, took a cautious sip in search of the freshest mountain water he could find.

He wasn’t satisfied with simply seeing the stream.

He wanted to understand it.

As I watched him, another leadership lesson quietly emerged.

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us stop asking questions.

Perhaps we’ve been told there are no stupid questions, yet we’ve all experienced the fear of asking one. We don’t want to appear inexperienced. We don’t want people to think we should already know the answer. We worry that speaking up might expose what we don’t know.

So we stay quiet.

Ironically, the very thing we’re trying to protect—our reputation—can become the biggest obstacle to our growth.

Children don’t have that problem.

They ask why the sky is blue.

Why birds migrate.

Why rivers flow.

Where streams begin.

They ask because they’re curious. Learning matters more than looking clever.

I wonder how much innovation has been lost because someone chose not to ask the question they were thinking.

Looking back over my own career, I realise curiosity has probably been one of my greatest strengths.

When I joined Agronomix nearly two decades ago, I wasn’t a plant breeder. I wasn’t the expert in genetics, statistics or crop science. I could have spent years trying to look as though I understood everything.

Instead, I asked questions.

Lots of them.

Sometimes Dieter would smile and say, “We’ve tried that before.”

I’d reply, “Yes… but have you tried it this way?”

Not because I thought I knew better, but because I genuinely wanted to understand. Sometimes the answer was, “No, that won’t work.” Other times, those conversations opened the door to a better solution.

I’ve come to believe that’s one of the greatest gifts a leader can bring.

Curiosity.

Not the curiosity that questions everything for the sake of it, but the curiosity that genuinely wants to understand.

Why does this process exist?

Why are our customers frustrated?

Why is this team succeeding?

Why isn’t that one?

What problem are we actually trying to solve?

The best leaders I’ve known aren’t afraid to admit they don’t know something.

In fact, they seem remarkably comfortable saying, “Help me understand.”

That’s not weakness.

That’s confidence.

Secure leaders don’t need to pretend they have all the answers because they know their value isn’t found in knowing everything. It’s found in creating environments where better questions lead to better answers.

As we continued our hike, Declan never stopped looking at the streams.

Each one was different.

Some flowed quickly over smooth rocks. Others meandered quietly through the grass. Some were icy cold. Others had collected tiny fragments of earth or algae. Every stream became another opportunity to learn something new.

Perhaps that’s the mindset we should never lose.

Not just seeing what’s in front of us, but asking where it came from.

Not accepting the obvious answer, but looking upstream.

Not being afraid to ask one more question.

Children instinctively follow the stream to its source.

Maybe great leaders do too.

Then something else happened.

Declan disappeared for a few minutes. When he came back, he wasn’t alone. He’d gone to find his little sister, Shiloh.

He didn’t need her help to build the dams. He wasn’t struggling to move the stones. He simply wanted her to experience it too. We were enjoying ourselves so much that he wanted her to be part of it.

That struck me because nobody had suggested it. There was no prompting from me. His instinct was simply to share the experience.

As I watched the two of them working together, another leadership lesson quietly unfolded before me.

Leadership isn’t meant to be a solo journey. The strongest leaders don’t try to carry every responsibility themselves, nor do they guard every opportunity or protect every success as though it belongs to them alone.

Instead, they invite others into the stream. They share the experience, ask for another perspective, and make room for someone else’s ideas because they understand that the best outcomes are often created together.

As I watched Declan and Shiloh, I noticed something else. The dams became better. One would spot a stone the other hadn’t noticed. One would point to a new place for the water to flow. Occasionally one of them would accidentally knock something over, only for them both to laugh and build something even better.

Neither child was leading the other. They were simply discovering together.

It reminded me how often we convince ourselves that leadership means having all the answers. We put pressure on ourselves to be the smartest person in the room, the one with the vision, the solution, and the plan.

But leadership isn’t about having all the answers. As I’ve said in other articles, it’s about recognising the gifts and skills of those with whom you have surrounded yourself.

Sometimes leadership is having the humility to invite someone else into the journey before you know the answer yourself. It’s trusting other people enough to contribute. It’s recognising that different experiences, different gifts, and different perspectives don’t weaken leadership—they strengthen it.

I’ve seen this throughout my career. Some of the best ideas I’ve ever been part of weren’t mine. They emerged because someone was willing to listen, to ask another question, or to invite one more person into the conversation.

Too many leaders carry unnecessary weight because they believe asking for help somehow diminishes their leadership. In reality, it often does the opposite. People become more committed to a vision when they’ve had the opportunity to help shape it.

That’s true in families. It’s true in businesses. It’s true in churches. It’s true in communities.

As we eventually climbed back onto our bikes, I realised something else.

The stream hadn’t changed because of one child. It had changed because one child thought to invite another into the experience.

Perhaps that’s one of the simplest questions every leader can ask themselves today.

Who am I inviting into the stream?

This morning Declan and I took our bikes for a short ride. We weren’t chasing kilometres or looking for a destination. Before long we came across a small mountain stream.

The bikes were forgotten almost immediately.

Within minutes he was doing what children instinctively do. He began collecting stones, building little dams, watching the water pool behind them, then removing stones again to see where the stream would flow next.

As I watched him, I realised I was watching a lesson in leadership.

Leadership is rarely about controlling people. It’s about influencing the direction of their lives.

Sometimes we remove obstacles.

We help someone overcome self-doubt. We remove unnecessary barriers. We have the difficult conversation that clears the air. We create opportunities that weren’t there before.

Other days, we do the opposite.

We intentionally place something in someone’s path. A challenging question. A new responsibility. An opportunity that stretches them beyond what they think they’re capable of.

Not to stop them, but to help them grow.

Watching the stream was fascinating because the water never stopped moving. Every time Declan changed something, the stream simply found another way.

People often do the same.

When someone believes in them, encourages them, or gently challenges them, they frequently discover strengths they didn’t know they possessed. Sometimes all it takes is one obstacle being removed. Other times, it takes one carefully placed challenge to reveal a new direction.

It reminded me that significance in leadership isn’t usually found in the boardroom, on the conference stage, or during the big announcement.

It’s found in the small moments.

• A conversation.

• A word of encouragement.

• A thoughtful question.

• A difficult challenge.

• A barrier removed.

• A stone carefully placed.

Years later, people may not remember exactly what you said or did. They may not remember the meeting or the project.

But they might remember that something changed.

That they became more confident. That they saw a possibility they hadn’t seen before. That their life took a different direction because someone cared enough to help shape the flow.

Watching my son build tiny dams in a mountain stream reminded me that leadership isn’t about controlling the current.

It’s about helping people discover where they are capable of flowing.

Kelso is our young rescue dog, and one of the unexpected joys of this year has been watching him discover the world. He's growing remarkably quickly. The tiny puppy who approached everything with cautious curiosity has become a confident young dog, full of energy, enthusiasm and just enough mischief to keep every walk interesting.

As we wandered through the countryside near our home in southern France, I noticed something else had changed.

The wheat and barley fields have all been harvested.

Only a couple of weeks ago they were full of life, their golden heads swaying in the breeze beneath an endless blue sky. Today they looked completely different. The combines have finished their work, the grain has been gathered, and only the stubble remains stretching across the landscape.

After the intense heatwave that has affected much of Europe, the cooler morning air felt refreshing. Everything seemed calmer, almost as though the countryside itself was enjoying a well-earned pause.

Standing there, looking across those fields, I found myself thinking about harvest.

For most of us, harvest represents an ending. The crop has been gathered. The field is empty. The work is complete.

But agriculture tells a different story.

A harvested field isn’t a failed field. It’s a successful one.

Everything that happened before—the planting, the waiting, the uncertainty, the care invested throughout the growing season—was leading to this moment. The empty field isn’t evidence that nothing remains. It’s evidence that the purpose has been fulfilled.

I wonder how often leadership follows the same pattern.

Much of leadership is spent investing in things whose value cannot be measured immediately. We encourage people, develop teams, share experience, create opportunities and patiently watch others grow. Often the results are almost invisible while they’re happening.

Then one day someone you’ve mentored steps into a leadership role of their own. A team you’ve helped build succeeds without you. A project you’ve spent years shaping is handed over to someone else.

For a brief moment, it can feel as though something has been taken away.

In reality, it may simply be harvest.

Perhaps one of the greatest tests of leadership is recognising that the goal was never to keep everything for ourselves. Healthy leadership was always intended to produce something that continues beyond our own involvement.

The grain leaves the field.

Some becomes food.

Some becomes seed for another harvest.

Either way, its purpose extends far beyond the place where it first grew.

I suspect our influence is much the same.

Very few of us will ever fully understand the impact we’ve had on other people’s lives. A conversation we barely remember may become someone else’s turning point. A piece of encouragement offered almost in passing might provide the confidence someone needed to take their next step.

Leadership has a remarkable way of multiplying itself long after we’ve moved on.

As Kelso happily explored every new scent the harvested fields had to offer, completely unconcerned with any of these reflections, I smiled at the contrast. Dogs have an extraordinary ability to enjoy the season they’re in. They don’t spend time wishing for spring while standing in summer, or worrying about autumn before it arrives.

There’s wisdom in that.

Every season has its purpose. Some seasons are for planting. Some are for nurturing. Some are for harvesting.

And some are simply for appreciating what has been accomplished before preparing the ground for whatever comes next.

Looking across those fields this morning, I wasn’t looking at an ending.

I was looking at a landscape that had fulfilled its purpose and was quietly preparing for another season of growth.

Perhaps that’s what hope often looks like—not standing in the middle of abundance, but recognising that even after the harvest, the story isn’t over.

A little further on I found another. Then another. Eventually I discovered an entire colony quietly growing beneath the trees.

The remarkable thing wasn’t that they were there. It was that they’d probably been there for years. I’d simply never noticed them.

It reminded me how often we measure growth by what we can see.

• Sales figures.

• Promotions.

• Awards.

• Followers.

• Revenue.

• Titles.

Those things matter. They’re visible. They’re easy to count. But some of the most important growth happens underground.

This plant spends much of the year hidden. It develops quietly beneath the surface before emerging for a brief season with something impossible to ignore. Leadership can be remarkably similar.

• The conversations nobody applauds.

• The mentoring that happens over coffee.

• The difficult decisions made with integrity.

• The lessons learned through failure.

• The character built when no one is watching.

Those moments rarely make headlines. Yet they’re the roots from which everything else grows.

Looking back over my own career, I’ve realised that the moments which shaped me most weren’t the promotions or the milestones. They were the countless conversations with mentors. The questions that challenged my thinking. The opportunities to try something new. The mistakes that taught humility. The people who believed in me long before I believed in myself. Like these plants, their influence remained largely invisible until much later.

Perhaps that’s what stewardship really is. Planting seeds you may never see fully mature. Creating opportunities whose greatest impact will be experienced by someone else. Investing in people without needing recognition.

The world often celebrates visible success.

Nature reminds us that lasting growth usually begins where nobody is looking.

So today, a small wild plant growing unnoticed at the bottom of our garden gave me an unexpected leadership lesson. Maybe there are hidden signs of growth around us every day.

We just need to slow down long enough to notice them.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about company history. I was focused on learning.

Although I brought experience in accountancy and business administration from roles in the UK, Australia, and Canada, Agronomix introduced me to an entirely new world. Plant breeding, crop research, genetics, statistics, software development, customer support, and the seed industry all had their own language, challenges, and opportunities. There was a lot to learn.

Looking back, I often felt like the youngster in the room. I was surrounded by people with deep expertise and decades of experience. Rather than seeing that as intimidating, I came to view it as an opportunity.

One of my favourite sayings is that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you need a new room. Agronomix gave me access to many brilliant people.

Recently, I realised something that surprised me. Agronomix is now 36 years old. I have spent 18 years with the company, meaning I have been part of almost exactly half of its history. I have also spent nine years as President, leading the company for a quarter of its existence.

Those numbers caused me to reflect on a lesson that became increasingly important throughout my career: businesses are not built by one person. They are stewarded by generations of people who contribute, challenge, improve, and eventually pass the responsibility to others.

Learning Through Questions

One of the strengths I brought to Agronomix was a business mindset. I understood finance, operations, and organizational growth. While I had much to learn about plant breeding, I knew how to ask questions. Many of those questions began with a simple phrase:

“What if we tried this?”

Sometimes the answer from Dieter was immediate:

“We’ve tried that.”

His years of experience had already taught him many lessons, but occasionally I would respond with another question.

“Okay, but have you tried it this way?”

Those conversations became a regular feature of our working relationship. Not because either of us believed we had all the answers, but because we both believed there was always room to learn and improve. Sometimes the old way remained the best way. Sometimes a fresh perspective revealed a new opportunity. Innovation often begins with curiosity, and curiosity begins with questions.

Iron Sharpens Iron

One of the greatest privileges of my career was the relationship I developed with Dr. Dieter Mulitze.

I first met Dieter in 2005 while living in Brisbane, Australia. Long before I joined Agronomix, he was already sharing stories about the company, agriculture, and the industry he cared so deeply about. Over the years our relationship evolved from founder and employee to mentor and mentee, colleague and friend.

I am a firm believer in the principle that iron sharpens iron. In Dieter, I found someone who could be my corresponding iron.

For more than sixteen years, we challenged each other’s thinking. He brought expertise in plant breeding, software innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership. I brought perspectives shaped by business, finance, strategy, and a willingness to question assumptions.

We did not always agree.

Some of our best conversations started from opposite viewpoints. Yet many of the decisions that shaped Agronomix emerged from those discussions. Looking back, I consider those conversations one of the greatest gifts of my professional life.

After the acquisition by Cultura Technologies, Dieter would occasionally joke, “I used to be his boss, now he’s mine.” It always made us both smile. Behind the humour was a mutual respect that had been built over many years of working together, learning from one another, and pursuing the same goal: helping Agronomix succeed.

Stewardship Matters

Founders deserve enormous credit for creating something from nothing. But every successful organisation eventually reaches a point where its future depends on more than its founder. The strongest organisations survive because people choose to become stewards.

Stewardship means preserving what matters while having the courage to improve what can be better. It means respecting the past without becoming trapped by it. It means investing in people, developing future leaders, and preparing the organization for opportunities you may never personally see.

During my time at Agronomix, I had the privilege of helping guide the business through significant change. We expanded internationally, launched Genovix, welcomed new team members, strengthened relationships with customers, and joined the Cultura and Volaris families.

Through every change, the mission remained remarkably consistent: helping plant breeders and researchers do their work more effectively.

That purpose is bigger than any individual.

Looking Ahead

As I reflect on almost eighteen years with Agronomix, I feel gratitude more than anything else.

Gratitude for the opportunities.

Gratitude for the friendships.

Gratitude for the customers who trusted us.

Gratitude for the team members whose dedication made every success possible.

Most of all, gratitude for having the opportunity to play a part in a story that began long before I arrived and will continue long after I have gone.

The future of Agronomix will be shaped by new ideas, new leaders, new challenges, and new opportunities.

That is exactly how it should be.

Strong organizations endure because people are willing to build upon the work of those who came before them.

I have spent half of Agronomix’s history with the company and a quarter of its history leading it.

Those numbers matter less than the lesson they taught me.

Leadership is temporary.

Stewardship is what endures.

Too often, leadership is framed as authority, certainty, and expertise. But in my experience, the moments of greatest progress, learning, and innovation have come from recognising what I do not know and deliberately surrounding myself with people who do.

This article reflects on that idea from three perspectives. First, from my own experience stepping into leadership and learning to staff to my weaknesses. Then from how that belief has shaped the way we build teams at Agronomix. And finally, from why this matters so much to our clients, who rely not just on software, but on access to experienced, thoughtful people who understand the realities of modern plant breeding.

Because access to brilliant people is not a threat to leadership. It is one of its greatest strengths.

1. Leadership Without Pretence

Early in my leadership journey, I assumed that being a leader meant having answers. Or at least appearing to. There is a quiet pressure that comes with responsibility, a sense that credibility is tied to expertise and authority comes from being the smartest person in the room.

Over time, I have learned the opposite is true.

One of the most important lessons I have carried with me is this: you should staff to your weaknesses, not your strengths. If you do not, your blind spots do not disappear. They simply become risks.

I remember a conversation around 2010 with Agronomix’s founder, Dieter Mulitze. At one point, he questioned whether I was the right person to succeed him as leader of the company, because I am not a plant breeder. It was a fair challenge. His life’s work was rooted in crop science, and Agronomix existed to serve breeders.

My response was simple and honest. I told him that like any leader, I would staff to my weaknesses. I reminded him that while he led Agronomix exceptionally well, finance and marketing were not his strengths either, and yet the company thrived because he surrounded himself with people who complemented him.

Innovation doesn’t come from having all the answers. It comes from creating the conditions where better answers can emerge.

That moment crystallised something for me. Leadership was never about being the expert in everything. It was about knowing what you are not, and having the humility and confidence to bring others in who are better than you in critical areas.

There is a quote I have returned to many times, often attributed to Jim Rohn:

...if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.

I have found this to be deeply true, not as a criticism of competence, but as a reminder of the importance of continual learning. The moment you stop being stretched by the people around you is often the moment your growth slows.

Leadership, for me, has never been about protecting expertise. It has been about remaining curious. If I am no longer learning from the people around me, then something has gone wrong, either in how I am listening or in how the team has been shaped.

But this is not just about personal growth. It is about purpose.

From the beginning, my view has been that teams should be built around the needs of the customer, not around the preferences of the leader. In our case, that means plant breeders and researchers working under real-world pressure. Time constraints. Complex datasets. Biological uncertainty. Regulatory demands. Long-term consequences.

No single person, leader included, can fully understand all of that.

So instead of trying to master every domain, I have focused on building teams where deep, often highly specialised knowledge exists across disciplines. People who understand breeding, data, statistics, software, workflows, and support, not in isolation, but in conversation with one another.

When leadership shifts from having answers to creating the conditions for better answers to emerge, something fundamental changes. Decisions improve. Blind spots shrink. And this is where innovation actually happens.

Innovation rarely comes from a single insight or a lone expert. It emerges when different perspectives collide, when assumptions are challenged, and when people feel safe to question, explore, and rethink. That kind of environment does not happen by accident. It has to be intentionally created.

2. What This Looks Like at Agronomix

That belief, that access to people smarter than you is a strength, directly shapes how we operate at Agronomix.

We do not build teams around hierarchy or titles. We build them around expertise, curiosity, and proximity to real customer problems. The aim is not agreement for its own sake, but better thinking that stands up to real-world complexity.

In practice, that means encouraging challenge rather than compliance. Good questions are valued as highly as confident answers. Assumptions are tested. Different perspectives are invited into the conversation early, not added later as an afterthought.

Breeding challenges do not arrive neatly categorised. They are not purely software issues, data problems, or support questions. They cut across disciplines. Our teams are deliberately shaped to reflect that reality, bringing together people with deep but different expertise who can think together, not just side by side.

This kind of environment requires trust. It requires leaders who are comfortable not being the final authority on every topic. And it requires a culture where learning is continuous, not something reserved for onboarding or formal training.

At Agronomix, innovation is not a department or a roadmap item. It is the by-product of how people work together every day, focused on helping customers make better decisions in complex, high-stakes breeding programmes.

3. Why This Matters to Our Clients

For our clients, this way of working is not an abstract leadership philosophy. It has very real, practical consequences.

Plant breeding is complex. Decisions are rarely clear-cut. Data is rarely complete. Outcomes often sit years in the future. Breeders must balance scientific rigour, operational constraints, regulatory requirements, and commercial pressure at the same time.

That is why access matters.

When clients work with Agronomix, they are not just using software. They are gaining access to a team of people who think deeply about plant breeding and variety testing every day. People who ask hard questions, challenge assumptions, and care about getting the details right because those details matter in the field.

Our customers do not come to us with neat problems. They come with uncertainty. With data that does not behave as expected. With breeding programmes shaped by decades of decisions. With pressure to move faster and decide with confidence.

The value we bring is not simply in providing answers. It is in helping clients frame the right questions.

Because our teams are built around complementary expertise, breeding knowledge, statistical thinking, data management, software design, and support experience are brought into the same conversation. Issues are viewed from multiple angles at once, not sequentially.

As a result, clients benefit from collective thinking rather than individual opinion. They gain from experience that spans crops, regions, and breeding approaches. And they are supported by people who are comfortable saying, “let’s explore this further,” rather than offering a quick but shallow solution.

This creates resilience. When challenges arise, clients are not dependent on a single point of knowledge. They have access to a broader pool of insight shaped by continuous learning and shared problem-solving.

4. Access Is the Advantage

In an industry that often focuses on features, roadmaps, and technology cycles, it is easy to overlook where real value is created.

Software matters. Tools matter. But in complex environments like plant breeding, access to people and thinking matters more.

Breeding objectives evolve. Data volumes grow. New traits, technologies, and regulations introduce fresh layers of complexity. Long-term value does not come from a static solution. It comes from having a partner that continues to learn and adapt alongside you.

At Agronomix, access means more than availability. It means access to people who are deeply invested in understanding breeding programmes in context. People with deep, first-hand experience of similar challenges across different crops and regions. People who are willing to sit with complexity rather than rush to simplify it.

Trust is central to this. When clients trust that they can bring real problems to the table, not just polished ones, better conversations happen. Assumptions are questioned. Workflows improve. Decisions strengthen.

And this is where innovation continues to emerge. Not as a single breakthrough moment, but as an ongoing process of shared learning.

Leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room. It is about building a room where collective intelligence can thrive.

Conclusion: Strength Through Shared Intelligence

The longer I lead, the more convinced I become that leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about creating the conditions where better answers can emerge.

Being surrounded by people who bring deeper expertise in areas where you are weaker is not a risk to leadership. It is a commitment to learning. It is a signal of confidence. And it is one of the strongest foundations for innovation.

That belief shapes how we lead at Agronomix, how we build teams, and how we work with our clients. Our customers do not need a partner who claims to know everything. They need one who listens, learns, and brings collective experience to the table.

Access to brilliant people is not a threat. It is an advantage.

And when that access is paired with curiosity, humility, and a deep focus on customer needs, it becomes a catalyst for better decisions, stronger partnerships, and meaningful progress in the work of feeding the world.

It’s not about who I am, but about who I am to you.

While success is often measured by material wealth, status (the “who I am“), or achievements, significance transcends these conventional markers. It’s about making a lasting impact on the world starting with your circle of influence, and those you interact with most frequently (”who I am to you“).

In this article, I will explore several reasons why I consider significance to be more important than success.

1. Fulfillment Over Short-term Gains: Success often comes at the expense of personal well-being, as individuals chase after money, power, and recognition. In contrast, significance focuses on personal growth, happiness, and leaving a positive legacy. Achieving significance leads to a sense of fulfillment that success alone can’t provide.

2. Building Meaningful Connections: Significance fosters deeper relationships. When you prioritize significance, you invest time in building meaningful connections with others. These connections can lead to opportunities for success, but more importantly, they enrich your life on a profound level.

3. Resilience and Longevity: Significance endures over time, while success can be fleeting. Building a significant impact in your community, industry, or field ensures that your work continues to make a difference long after you’re gone. It’s a legacy that can inspire future generations.

4. Balancing Success and Significance: Success doesn’t have to be sacrificed for significance. In fact, they can complement each other. Achieving significance often involves setting meaningful goals and working diligently to attain them. Success, therefore, becomes a by-product of your commitment to making a difference.

5. The Happiness Factor: Studies show that people who prioritize significance over success tend to lead happier, more fulfilling lives. They experience a sense of purpose that goes beyond personal achievements.

Conclusion

While success has its merits, significance offers a deeper, more meaningful path in life. It’s about leaving a positive mark on the world and finding happiness through meaningful connections and personal growth. In the end, significance is what truly matters, as it creates a legacy that transcends the pursuit of success.

So, consider what’s truly important to you and focus on what will make your life more significant to those around you.

I’ve spent much of my career in agriculture and technology.

Not the loud, glamorous side of technology that dominates headlines, but the quieter kind. The kind that helps plant breeders develop better crops. The kind that supports food production, research, and long-term agricultural resilience.

For nearly two decades, I’ve helped lead a Canadian AgTech company serving plant breeders and crop researchers around the world. During that time I’ve worked across leadership, strategy, acquisitions, sales, innovation, operations, and business growth. I’ve also lived and worked across several countries including England, Australia, Canada, and now France.

And over the years, I’ve realised something.

Many of the most important conversations in business are not really about business.

They are about people.

Trust.
Responsibility.
Leadership.
Culture.
Change.
Meaning.
Stewardship.
Resilience.
Identity.

Especially during uncertainty.

I’ve seen this during periods of growth.
During acquisitions.
During crises.
During leadership transitions.
And during deeply personal moments where business and humanity unexpectedly collide.

Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned did not come from textbooks, MBA lectures, or boardrooms. They came from conversations. Failures. Difficult decisions. Long seasons of responsibility. Watching brilliant people work together. Watching trust grow. Watching trust break.

This Substack is a place to explore those ideas.

I’ll write about:

• leadership

• entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship

• acquisitions and integration

• innovation

• company culture

• agriculture and AgTech

• strategy and growth

• faith and significance

• the human side of business

Agriculture will appear often because I genuinely believe it is the world’s most important industry. Every society depends on it. Every person depends on it. Yet many of the people building the future of agriculture do their work quietly, without much attention.

That deserves more conversation.

I’m not writing because I think I have everything figured out.

I’m writing because after years of leadership, I’ve learned that thoughtful reflection matters. And because some ideas are worth exploring in public.

Thanks for being here.