You're Not the Hero, Your Team Is

Rethinking Leadership

Despite the continual evolution of the industry, many people still think that managers should be the loudest voice in the room. Even though many managers still have this mentality, in practice this approach almost always translates to lack of ownership, weaker engagement, slower decision-making, and teams that wait to be told what to do rather than thinking for themselves. Real leadership isn't about making every decision or being the hero, it's all about making others effective and providing the best conditions for people to thrive. There's a fine line between intentional de-centering and outright disengagement, and crossing it can be very dangerous. Disengagement breeds confusion, erodes trust, and leaves teams without support or direction. Intentional de-centering, on the other hand, is about stepping back with purpose, to create space for others to lead, while staying fully present and accountable, this is what I'll be touching on in this article.

Trust is the Strategy

When I first stepped into the role of Software Development Manager, I assumed my job was to be the one driving every conversation, making every decision, and basically steering the ship all the time. I thought a good leader had to be the loudest voice in the room, the person with all the answers who always took charge. As time went on, I realised that approach simply isn't sustainable, for me or the team. Being a leader isn't about constantly taking the wheel, it's about building a team that doesn't need someone to drive them every step of the way.

I made a lot of mistakes, but over time I learned by observing my team and my mindset gradually shifted from being the driver to becoming the enabler. Rather than directing every move, my primary focus became creating an environment where my team can confidently and competently take the wheel themselves. That meant investing in people, processes, and a culture that empowers others to make decisions, take ownership, and push things forward without constantly relying on me.

Letting others take the lead isn't a sign of weakness or stepping away from responsibility, it's a show of real confidence, confidence in the talent you've hired, the culture you've nurtured, and the foundations you've built. When you trust your team enough to step back, you're essentially saying, "I believe in you. You're capable of making the right calls." and that confidence tends to spread, encouraging people to step up, innovate, and develop into leaders in their own right.

In practice, this means deliberately choosing not to be the loudest voice in the room, but instead, listening a lot more than you speak and asking questions that spark reflection and ownership instead of rushing in with solutions. It's important to resist the urge to jump in and fix problems your team can handle. Instead, you need to focus on setting the right conditions for them to thrive independently.

Leading Without Hovering

It's all well and good talking about "enabling over controlling" but what does that actually mean in practice? When you're in the middle of deadlines, context switches, and never-ending meetings, theory doesn't help much.

This kind of leadership isn't about stepping back and doing less. It's about being intentional, that means knowing when to get involved, when to stay quiet, and when to quietly get something done so the rest of the team can keep moving. It's less about being hands-off, and more about being purposeful with where you put your attention.

What you shouldn't be doing:

• Talking too much in meetings - Holding back gives others the chance to step in. Speaking too early can unintentionally set the tone or shut down diverse viewpoints. A bit of silence may feel uncomfortable, but it often gives the team the space they need to think independently.
• Solving every problem personally - Even when the answer seems obvious, jumping in too quickly can short-circuit growth. Allowing the team time to work through issues helps build confidence and capability, offering support only when it's truly needed makes a lasting impact.
• Pushing personal technical preferences - Experience is valuable, but wielding it like a trump card discourages debate. Better results often come from inviting challenges, even to long-held assumptions. A healthy team questions ideas regardless of where they come from.
• Chasing credit - Recognition lands best when it's directed toward the team. Celebrating shared wins builds morale, and stepping up when things go wrong reinforces trust. Leadership isn't about being noticed, it's about helping others shine.
• Micromanaging under the guise of helping - Hovering over code reviews or demanding constant updates tends to break trust more than it builds it. Trusting the team to handle things and making that trust visible creates space for real autonomy to grow.
• Defaulting to firefighting - Always reacting to the loudest issue is rarely sustainable. A more valuable approach is to help teams stay focused, reduce noise, and prevent problems before they flare up. Anyone can put out fires, good leaders help stop them starting.

What you should be doing:

• Guiding conversations - Sometimes the most useful thing a leader can do is hold back from solving the problem. Asking thoughtful, open-ended questions encourages deeper thinking and better decisions than rushing in with quick fixes. It's not about withholding help, it's about creating space for the team to reason through complexity and arrive at their own conclusions. That's where real growth happens.
• Stepping in when it's genuinely needed - Being hands-off doesn't mean being absent. When the team hits friction they can't resolve alone, whether it's a cross-team dependency, unclear priorities, or a misaligned stakeholder, stepping in with clarity and calm can make the difference. The key is to intervene with intention, not control.
• Taking on problems the team can't - Some tasks fall outside the team's bandwidth or expertise, especially when deadlines are tight. Picking those up, smoothing over communication, unblocking dependencies and solving messy side issues, keeps momentum going without pulling the team off-track.
• Handling the work that clears the path - There's always a layer of invisible work; fixing documentation gaps, improving processes, managing context-switches, smoothing over release plans. It often goes unnoticed, but it's what helps everyone else focus on what really matters.
• Delegating real decisions - Trust shows up in actions, not words. Handing over meaningful ownership, not just tasks, but choices, shows belief in the team's judgment. Even when the outcome isn't what you would have done personally, standing by it helps the team grow in confidence and accountability.

Leading this way isn't passive. It's a deliberate, thoughtful way of showing up that gives your team the space and support to thrive. It's choosing not to dominate, because your role isn't to be the centre, it's to build a team that doesn't need you to be, and when that happens, you've done your job right.

Invisible by Design

One of the more surprising aspects of stepping into management is how much of the work becomes invisible by design. The better things run, the less is seen, and at first, this can feel deeply unsettling.

There's a strange shift from shipping code or solving tangible problems to spending time in conversations, smoothing over ambiguity, and gently nudging things into place behind the scenes. It can create the illusion of doing "nothing" especially when compared to the clear, measurable outputs of individual contributor work, but that feeling is misleading.

A large part of the role is about preventing chaos, not reacting to it. That might mean spotting misalignment early and clarifying things before it turns into rework, or absorbing pressure from stakeholders so it doesn't reach the team as last-minute panic. It often involves interpreting vague priorities, filling in the gaps, and quietly redirecting things without drawing attention to it.

Coaching also tends to happen quietly, not in grand speeches, but in short check-ins, private chats, or subtle reframing that help someone see a problem differently. Interpersonal dynamics are managed in the background too, long before they escalate into visible conflict. Then there's the constant, low-level navigation of organisational politics, decisions made in corridors, email threads, or management meetings, all of which impact the team, even if they never hear about it.

It's also common to pick up tasks no one else has time for, or that don't quite belong anywhere, fixing a flaky process, writing up documentation, unblocking a dependency, or catching something small but critical before it snowballs.

Over time, it becomes clear, the work is real. Just less visible. The impact is in the absence of dysfunction, in the reduced noise, in the way the team moves forward with clarity and focus. It may not feel like traditional output, but it's the difference between a team that's surviving and one that's thriving.

Getting comfortable with that shift takes time. Feeling like nothing is happening is normal early on, but eventually, patterns start to emerge, and it becomes obvious just how much is actually being done, even if no one's clapping for it.

Signs You're Leading Well

Over time, the effects of stepping back with intent start to become visible, not as dramatic turning points, but as gradual shifts in how the team behaves, interacts, and solves problems.

Confidence builds, engineers begin to take ownership of decisions without needing constant reassurance, they stop looking upwards for approval and start looking sideways at each other, asking better questions, giving clearer feedback and challenging ideas with healthy confidence.

This kind of behaviour doesn't emerge overnight, but when it does, it's a clear sign that the team feels safe, trusted, and respected.

Discussions also begin to shift, meetings stop revolving around a single voice or figure of authority, developers lead conversations, disagree constructively, and work through decisions as a group. Technical debates become more nuanced, less performative, and less dependent on someone in charge settling everything. It stops being about getting permission, and starts being about collective clarity.

Independence grows, team members start owning outcomes, not just tasks. They make calls, defend trade-offs, and follow through without needing every step checked. Even newer team members begin picking things up faster because the culture rewards learning and contribution over hierarchy.

The manager, the person in the enabling role, no longer becomes the bottleneck. Information doesn't need to be routed through a single person. Progress doesn't pause for approval. Delivery becomes faster, not because of more pressure, but because of fewer blockers. It's a quiet kind of efficiency.

When space is given, when the pressure to conform to a single vision is replaced by open curiosity, people tend to try more, suggest more, and build better. The team takes more risks, not recklessly, but thoughtfully. Ideas start coming from everywhere, not just the top and the best ones stick, because they're tested by the team, not just handed down.

None of this is flashy, it's not the sort of transformation that makes for a compelling slide deck, but it is the kind of long term cultural shift that makes teams resilient, thoughtful, and genuinely enjoyable to be part of.

Conclusion

At some point, good leadership starts to resemble doing very little. You're not making every decision, solving every problem, or guiding every conversation, and yes, that can make you feel a bit irrelevant, but that's often the point, and it isn't the case.

If your team is functioning smoothly without constant intervention, it's not an accident, it's the result of deliberate, often invisible work. You've built systems, habits, and trust, and you've reduced reliance, not relevance.

That said, if you vanished tomorrow, things would probably gradually fall apart but not because you're the hero, but because the work you are doing is critical and holds a lot of value, even if no one sees it.

The goal isn't to be absent. It's to be quietly essential, a steady influence that helps others shine without needing the spotlight yourself.