My corporate life grew up in sales.
And truth be told... I quite liked it.
I liked the competition. I liked the targets. I liked the scoreboard. I liked the feeling of closing a sale and knowing that I had done it well.
So much so that, over the years, I spent a lot of time studying the psychology of selling. Why people buy. How they make decisions. How trust is built. How questions can uncover what someone really needs.
I wanted to get better at it.
And I did.
Then I became a leader.
When Your Scoreboard Changes
When I transitioned into leading a sales team, that same drive didn't disappear.
It just found a new target.
I wanted us to be the top sales team in the contact centre.
Then the state.
And, of course, the national network.
Why stop there?
But I quickly discovered something that many new leaders eventually learn:
Being personally good at something and leading other people to become good at it are two very different skills.
If you've read some of my other stories, you'll know I've written about the shift from doing to leading before.
But that's not really the point of this story.
Because there was another lesson I needed to learn.
One that went much deeper than sales performance.
A Piece of Advice I Never Forgot
A mentor of mine dropped a huge nugget into a conversation one day.
It was just a few words.
But those words have stayed with me ever since and have become one of the pillars of the servant leadership I try to live and now coach.
He said:
"Bask in the glory of your people."
I remember being a little taken aback by it.
Bask in their glory?
What exactly did that mean?
At that stage of my leadership journey, success still had a lot to do with me.
My team.
My results.
My numbers.
My reputation.
My performance as a leader.
Even when I was celebrating the team's success, somewhere underneath it could still be tempting to see their results as evidence that I was doing a good job.
Over time, I began to understand that my mentor was asking me to turn that thinking around completely.
Their Success Doesn't Need Your Name on It
Leadership isn't about creating successful people so that they make you look successful.
It's about creating an environment where people can become successful whether you get the credit or not.
That distinction matters.
I had to learn to celebrate, encourage and empower the success of the people I led without needing to attach myself to every achievement.
When someone in my team smashed their target, that was their achievement.
When someone earned a promotion, that was their moment.
When someone I'd coached became better at something than I was, that wasn't a threat.
That was the goal.
And when someone eventually outgrew my team and went on to bigger things, I didn't lose a great employee.
I got to watch someone become more of what they were capable of becoming.
That became a very different definition of leadership success.
Stop Standing in the Photo
There can be a temptation in leadership to stand in every photo.
Not literally.
We do it in the stories we tell.
"I developed them."
"I turned that team around."
"I coached them into that role."
"My team achieved..."
And sometimes those statements may even be true.
Leadership matters. Coaching matters. The environment we create matters.
But great leaders don't need to insert themselves into every success story.
Sometimes our job is simply to stand behind someone, give them what they need, challenge them when they need challenging, believe in them before they completely believe in themselves...
and then get out of the way.
Let them own the moment.
Let them receive the applause.
Let them tell the story.
Bask in their glory.
The Leader's New Scoreboard
Eventually, I realised my scoreboard had changed.
My numbers still mattered. Targets still mattered. Performance still mattered.
But I began measuring leadership differently.
Who was growing?
Who was becoming more confident?
Who was taking on something they couldn't have handled six months earlier?
Who no longer needed me in the room?
Who was ready for my job?
Who was ready for a job bigger than mine?
Those became some of the numbers that mattered most.
And there's an interesting paradox in all of this.
When you stop chasing the credit for your people's success, you often become a better leader.
Because your decisions stop being about protecting your position and start being about expanding their potential.
You give people opportunities.
You let them speak.
You allow them to make decisions.
You let them occasionally fail.
You advocate for them when they're not in the room.
And when the spotlight arrives...
you point it towards them.
Bask in the Glory of Your People
Years later, I can look back across my career and think of plenty of things I achieved personally.
Targets hit.
Teams turned around.
Numbers improved.
Problems solved.
But those aren't necessarily the things that give me the greatest sense of pride.
It's the people.
People I once led who went on to lead teams of their own.
People who stepped into senior leadership and executive roles.
People who discovered capabilities they weren't sure they had.
And people who eventually became far better at things than I ever was.
I don't need to own any of their success.
I was simply fortunate enough to play a small part in some of their stories.
And perhaps that's one of the greatest privileges leadership gives us.
For a period of someone's career, we are trusted with a little bit of their potential.
We can suppress it.
We can use it to build our own reputation.
Or we can nurture it, challenge it, create opportunities for it and eventually watch it flourish beyond us.
So if you're leading people today, perhaps there's another scoreboard worth looking at.
Don't just ask:
"How successful is my team?"
Ask:
"How successful are the people in my team becoming?"
And when one of them succeeds...
don't rush to stand beside them in the spotlight.
Stand back.
Smile.
And bask in the glory of your people.