I want to share a short story from a few years ago that’s stuck with me since. I found myself reflecting on it recently while writing my book.

In 2019, I had surgery that required me to be completely offline for seven days. And I mean literally offline, I was not even on Slack. I was on heavy pain meds and physically couldn’t be available (unless someone wanted a very drugged-up answer).

Leading up to it, I was anxious as heck. But I wasn’t anxious about the surgery; I was anxious about the business.

At that point in my career, I had never truly been unavailable. I responded at all hours and stepped in constantly. I believed that being accessible and fast made me a good leader. Honestly it was core to my identity (and if I’m being real, a part of me probably still feels that way).

The idea of being gone for a full week scared the crap out of me. I assumed things would break. I almost canceled the surgery multiple times, I actually postponed it twice. (Embarrassing, I know).

But I finally did it! Seven days passed… When I returned, I hopped on a call with our operator. I asked her, “So… what happened?”

She told me everything was fine. Then she casually listed a few things that had happened while I was out:

– Our Head of Product quit.

– Our Facebook account got shut down.

– A major client issue surfaced.

Any one of those things would have previously pulled me into immediate "firefighting mode." But the team handled them, and they handled them exceptionally well.

I was baffled. That week forced me to confront something uncomfortable but vital: If a leader being unavailable causes everything to break, that isn’t leadership; that’s dependency.

Being constantly needed is not the goal. Building people and systems that can operate without you is. If a basketball team couldn’t pass the ball because the coach wasn’t on the sidelines, we wouldn’t call that a win; we’d call it irresponsible.

Since then, I’ve been much more intentional about not jumping in too fast, not being the first answer, and not positioning myself as the bottleneck. Not because I don’t care, but because I care enough to let others own, decide, and lead. We do not create leaders by doing the work for them; in fact, we disempower our teams when we "helicopter parent" their tasks. It is incredibly de-incentivizing to have a boss who constantly grabs the work back.

As we keep growing, I want to make this practical so that if this resonates you can start becoming aware (the first step) but also implement some small practices that help.

1. Pause before answering.

When someone brings you a question, resist the instinct to solve it. Ask one of these instead:

– What do you think the right move is?

– What options have you considered?

– If I weren’t here, what would you do?

If they can’t answer, that is a signal that clarity or training is missing, it is not a reason for you to take over.

2. Identify one "Default Task" to hand off.

Look at your week and ask:

– What decision am I making by default?

– What problem keeps coming back to me?

– What am I involved in simply because I’ve always been involved?

Pick one and intentionally hand it off, even if it feels slower at first.

3. Notice where you’re rewarded for being needed.

Pay attention to moments where being indispensable feels good: saving the day, fixing something fast, being the hero. Those moments are traps. Ask yourself:

– Does this build capability downstream, or does it reinforce dependency?

– Am I optimizing for today’s relief or long-term scale?

As a leader, your job is not to prove how essential you are. Your job is to make yourself less necessary over time.

I hope this helps!

Leila Hormozi

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