What would you say should be a leader’s primary goal? To serve their organization? To always be improving? To develop their people? Of course, all of these are important. A leader’s foremost responsibility is to their people, and to better serve their people, a leader must always be growing themselves. And at the end of the day, the organization benefits when everyone improves. But I believe a leader’s primary goal should be to become completely dispensable. To me, that is the mark of leadership well done. Business leadership is a bit funny that way. It is backwards to how many people approach their role. Often, people focus on becoming so good at their job that they are completely irreplaceable. After all, if the company would be lost without you, you have great job security – or at the very least, great leverage. But this is not how authentic leadership is measured. How can we say we have equipped anyone if we were to leave and the day-to-day falls apart? Leadership well-effected...

We live in a world of 8-second attention spans and next-day delivery. Almost any question can be answered with a few quick swipes of your finger. “Fast-paced” hardly covers it, and it is getting faster every passing day. In this world of lightning speed, it is easy to see “slow” as a setback. Waiting even a short time for something simple can seem tedious at best, and maddening at worst. And all the more in leadership. Years ago, I described leading the way many people do: authoritative and active. And it is both of those things, to a point. But I thought that being authoritative meant taking people to task, and being active meant hurrying the stragglers forward. I wanted everyone right behind me so we could keep moving, and I was quick to chide anyone too far behind. That is how I saw “slow”… until one day, in the Rocky Mountains. You know the saying, “How you do anything is how you do everything?” Well, just like I was impatient with my team in the office, I was impatient with them...