Career progression should come from enabling others

The positive way to move forward in one’s life and career is to enable others to fulfil their potential.

How do we do that?

Well it comes from being generous - working hard to make it possible to share one’s own expertise. That’s my whole job. I succeed when I figure how to build systems which enable my team to be successful. In my opinion this is what leadership should be about.

It’s not an easy journey.

To enable other people means working a little harder to figure out how to do things in the simplest way possible. It means applying ideas like separation of concerns, doing one’s best to eliminate unnecessary complexity. Finding ways to develop good patterns of organization to make it simple for everyone in the team understand how things are organized. And of course teaching people concepts.

It’s about instead of hiding behind jargon to make yourself feel safe to being able to embrace simple language to describe things in manner that everyone can understand.

In this type of environment everyone learns, everyone grows and becomes more knowledgeable and more capable.

What is the opposite strategy?