“Plant the seeds of a tree you’ll never sit under…”
Andrew and I explore this mantra and what it means for leaders in today’s world. We discuss a leadership approach where the ultimate goal is for the leader to become redundant. This means cultivating a team so capable that it functions better in the leader’s absence.
What if the best thing a leader could do for their team was to disappear? Not to abandon, but to empower. To cultivate an environment where operations run smoothly, even flawlessly, in the leader’s absence.
A major challenge for many leaders lies in detaching their ego from their work. For most organizational cultures, a leader’s identity is often intertwined with their output and ability to deliver results. This ego-driven system rewards constant doing, making it difficult to step back and move from a “must fix it” mentality to allowing people to find their own brilliance. Leaders often mistakenly believe that by staying busy, they become indispensable, but this actually limits their growth and the growth of those around them. As Ai challenges leadership identity more and more it is important to uderstand this phenomenon and intentionally intercept it.
AI not as a threat, but more of a tool to create new horizons and solutions, such as helping people leave behind their legacies through stories. When discussing the impact of AI on loyalty, particularly with the rise of AI agents and distributed teams, Andrew Brummer offers us a different perspective : AI as a utility, akin to tools in a woodworking shop. Just as exquisite wood and advanced machinery are useless without understanding the desired outcome, AI is ineffective without critical, creative, and outcome-based thinking.
For those who can engage in such thinking, AI becomes a powerful multiplier, enabling individuals to achieve things they once only dreamt of. AI will bring people back together in humanity, i.e. away from tech; the humanity of a team becomes super critical and will become more significant to society as time goes on.
How do you cultivate team autonomy while maintaining impact ?
The main insights you’ll get from this episode are:
- Leaders who make themselves indispensable limit both themselves and their team – the book is a practical field guide to move away from feeling needed.
- Working with clarity, not frameworks, helps to detach from ego/identity to allow the wisdom of stepping back shine through – letting people be brilliant and autonomous rather than governing them.
- Rewarding managers sets a bad precedent, demonstrating individual divisiveness as opposed to cohesiveness; much better to help people find their ability/confidence and encourage them to grow and act.
- Teams need space to become loyal, learning and defining themselves with an intentional and transparent social contract = vulnerability in giving people trust without them having to earn it.
- Yielding information yields a relationship, which then yields outcome: leaders can love their people for the individuals they are, trust them and watch them grow, but this requires introspection.
- Leaders must allow themselves to be loved by their team; when teams no longer need their leader, leaders must have the resilience to pivot.
- ‘Plant the seeds of a tree you’ll never sit under’ means: radical service, deep connection, humility in helping (younger) people, sharing your knowledge, and leveraging technology (AI) in smart ways to help create new horizons.
- Loyalty remains unchanged in the age of AI; AI is a tool for those who can think critically and want to maximise themselves – we can re-engineer ourselves by asking specific, creative questions and thinking differently.
- AI will bring people back together in humanity, i.e. away from tech; the humanity of a team becomes super critical and will become more significant to society as time goes on.
- Once AI no longer requires our human limitations, we will reinvent a new world; leaders must aim for a larger outcome, embracing AI, love, vulnerability and introspection to find out how to plant their seeds.
Find out more about Andrew and his work here :
