The Acid Test of a Leader

True leadership is about replacing yourself. When the work that you are doing  can be done whether you are there or not, then you've truly developed leaders. Most of the world thinks of leaders as the ones responsible to produce results. Although it's true that this is one of the responsibilities of a leader, a true leader has the ability to multiply productivity by developing others to take on the load. 

 When I was a new leader, I measured the success of my leadership by my performance.  My nature is one that likes to be involved in every aspect of whatever project I am working on with my team.  I have a natural ability to drive results with a team because of how involved I am in different aspects of my organization.  I remember the day when I realized that I had no leaders on my team because the performance in a certain area of my organization dramatically dropped when I was no longer focused on it. That was a very revealing day in my leadership journey. It was also a turning point for me. From that day on, I made a decision to focus not only on performance but on identifying, nurturing, and developing leaders who could take ownership. Essentially, I had to change my mindset from being a THE guy to developing someone else to be THE guy. 

 Since then, I have started to see others surpass me in certain areas of my leadership. At first I had a reaction of competitiveness.  I felt a little bit threatened that I might be losing my leadership when I wasn't the best in certain areas. But I quickly realized that should be exactly the goal of every true leader - to duplicate yourself in as many areas of the organization as possible. I look forward to the day when I will no longer be needed to run anything in my organization. It will be a day of true success!

Cho Lim, Founder of E-Nation

Cho is a leader and mentor at E-Nation dedicated to building an army of role models.