On servant leadership, shared success, and building businesses that enable others
Some years ago, a steady stream of well‑meant praise started landing at my door. Colleagues and clients congratulated me on “my” accomplishments—the successful launches, the elegant fixes, the metrics that ticked up and to the right. Each compliment felt like spotlight theft: the applause belonged to the engineers, analysts, partners, and supporters who did the real work.
Yes, I shaped the environment, set the guardrails, and cleared obstacles, but the glow people perceived as mine was powered by them and their effort.
I needed a shorthand to redirect the spotlight. So I turned to astronomy:
I’m like the moon. The light that looks like it comes from me is not my own; it’s a reflection of the people, and businesses, whose brilliance I’m fortunate to serve and amplify.
Borrowed Brilliance: Why the Moon Matters
NASA reminds us the Moon reflects only about 12 percent of the sunlight that hits its dusty surface. Even so, that sliver of radiance can illuminate entire oceans and guide night‑time travellers.
The lesson lands every time a senior leader thanks me for a breakthrough feature that the team shipped—work I didn’t personally build. In truth, I hadn’t written a single line of code; my role was to provide space, shield the roadmap from scope‑creep, and cheer the team on when testing dragged into the small hours. Their ingenuity was the sunlight; my contribution was to angle the mirror just right.
Leadership takeaway: You don’t need to manufacture all the brilliance yourself; position yourself where light is abundant and be ready to reflect it outward.
Illuminators in My Orbit
We rarely orbit alone. Behind every milestone is a constellation of people quietly adjusting our trajectory, topping up our fuel, or simply radioing encouragement from mission control. Here are a few of the luminaires whose rays sharpen my edge and brighten the path for everyone around them:
- Teams — Their determination to experiment can turn ambitious slides into working systems. Picture a junior developer proposing a small refactor that halves response times—moments like these remind us to trust fresh voices.
- Partners & Customers — Their feedback shapes the roadmap and funds the future. A client might reveal an inventive workaround built on top of your API, exposing an overlooked business case and prompting a rapid product pivot.
- Family & Friends — They answer late‑night calls and celebrate early wins. A simple message of encouragement in the small hours can carry more wattage than any keynote spotlight.
Their collective light is what others perceive as my glow. Without them, I’m a dark satellite drifting in silence.
Lessons for Reflective Leadership
Create space for stars to shine
Remove obstacles, not ownership. In practice this means giving people the why and the guardrails—then stepping back. The project feels riskier for you and richer for them, which is exactly the point.
Credit early and often
Recognition is a renewable resource. A 30‑second shout‑out in Slack, a note in the release notes, or a public “demo win” slot costs nothing but exponentially boosts engagement.
Serve, don’t steer
When deadlines loom, the temptation is to grab the wheel. Fight it. Ask instead, “What do you need from me to land this?” Then deliver precisely that and get out of the lane.
Build mirrors, not monuments
Policies, dashboards, and rituals should bounce light back onto the team, not etch any single name in marble. If your ‘process’ ends up needing a vanity label, it’s probably the wrong process.
Servant Leadership at Scale: From Teams to Ecosystems
The lunar principle multiplies when businesses enable other businesses. Consider the payroll platform that thousands of SMEs depend on each Friday. If its service stutters, wages are late and trust evaporates. In this context, humility isn’t nice‑to‑have—it’s non‑negotiable.
A platform can move from a “cool add‑on” to a “mission‑critical backbone” for clients. That promotion comes with a silent contract: stay humble, listen hard, fix fast. A common response is to increase incident‑response investment and embed customer advocates in every sprint review. The payoff wasn’t just uptime; it was the shared confidence that we were all standing under the same light.
Gratitude as Daily Practice
Borrowed light fades if we forget its source. My tactic is a two‑minute Evening Audit:
- List three names.
- Write one sentence per name on how they carried the day.
- Deliver the thanks — privately if delicate, publicly if it can inspire others.
This habit has an unexpected side‑effect: it rewires you to look for wins during the day, which means you spot, and amplify, positive behaviour in real time.
We’re In It Together
Whether you lead people, build platforms, or both, remember: we rise as a constellation or not at all. Illuminate others and the night sky fills with light; hoard credit and the darkness creeps back in.
So here’s the nudge. Identify your own sources of light. Reach out. Say thank you. Then ask: How can I reflect their brilliance so brightly that others notice them first?
When we operate that way, accolades become collective, and success scales faster than any individual could manage alone.
Leave a Reply