Reaping Great Results

Here's something I say to leadership teams that makes some of them uncomfortable at first:

That's not an insult — it's a freeing observation. Because the flip side is equally true: you're also not as limited as your circumstances suggest. The gap between where you are and where you could be is usually not a talent gap. It's a humility gap.

When the Leader Is the Obstacle

I worked with a company recently where the frontline staff were incredibly candid in our sessions together. They had skill. They had drive. They wanted to succeed. But when I asked what was getting in the way, the answer kept pointing in the same direction: management.

Not maliciously. Not intentionally. But the leaders — despite possessing significant experience and expertise — were unintentionally blocking their own teams. They were making decisions that should have been delegated. They were solving problems that their people could have solved. They were occupying space that their team needed to grow into.

The leaders had become the bottleneck.

What True Humility Looks Like

There's a common misunderstanding about humility — that it means thinking less of yourself. It doesn't. C.S. Lewis captured it well: humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. It's redirecting your attention — from your own capabilities toward your people and their circumstances.

Humble leaders ask questions instead of providing answers. They review processes with their teams to understand where the system is failing, rather than assuming the people are. They bring Stephen Covey's principle into every difficult conversation: seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Recognizing What's Working

One of the simplest and most underused leadership tools is explicit recognition. When people do good work, say so — specifically and genuinely. Not a generic "great job." Name the behavior, name the outcome, name the impact. People need to know that their effort is visible and that it matters.

Combine that with genuine clarity about desired outcomes, and real trust in your people's ability to contribute creatively — and you've built the conditions where great results become inevitable.

The results you reap tomorrow are determined by the seeds you choose to plant today. Plant deliberately.