I remember the day each of my children left home for college. The day they accepted their first full-time jobs. The day they moved into their own places.
Those milestones brought up a mix of emotions: pride, excitement, and yes, also fear and uncertainty.
Will they be okay? Will they find their people? Will they thrive at work? Will they be able to navigate life’s inevitable hard stuff?
Letting go was (and is!) not easy. Our children will not always make the decisions we would. They will stumble sometimes. They will face hard seasons that we can’t shield them from. And yet, our job is not to clear every obstacle from their path; we should trust that we have helped them develop the roots, resilience, judgement, and confidence to find their own footing.
While our team members are not our children, the best leadership shares something with the best parenting; both are ultimately in service of someone else’s growth—not our own comfort, pride, or need for control.
Great leaders are genuinely excited when others shine.
They create space for people to make their own decisions, to take ownership, and yes, sometimes to make mistakes.
They coach rather than rescue.
They champion professional growth, even if it eventually leads a team member to a promotion or opportunity beyond their current team.
Letting go in leadership requires us to pause, look inward, and consider our motives before we act.
It means resisting the urge to step in before someone has a chance to wrestle with a challenge.
It means recognizing that our way is not the only way.
It means accepting that growth is often messy, inefficient, and uncomfortable.
And most of all, it means measuring our success not by how indispensable we’ve become but by how capable, confident, and independent we’ve helped others become.
The leaders who do that well don’t just build strong teams. They develop people who go on to successfully lead teams of their own.
And that’s a legacy worth leaving.