Centering your team and becoming “The Irrelevant Leader”
Want to know how effective you are as a business leader? Then ask yourself this question: How well can the team/business I lead keep moving forward when I’m not there?
The concept of the irrelevant leader may sound counterintuitive at first. After all, leaders and business owners are the driving force behind a team’s and a business’s success. Yet true leadership is understanding that the team should be the centre, not the leader. It’s about empowering, trusting, and delegating so that the team and business can succeed when the leader isn’t there.
Becoming an irrelevant leader means we can break free from some, if not most, of the daily operational issues, creating space for growth, innovation, and autonomy of the team and the business we lead. This frees us up to apply strategic leadership and ultimately drives greater success for our organization/business.
This irrelevant leader mindset is how I led in combat operations, how I led in my career after the military, and it’s how I lead my small business now. It’s even how I parent my kids, where the concepts and principles are equally applicable.
It was January 2008, and I found myself on a flight home from Afghanistan for a period of leave away from my combat leader role. I was resting and reconnecting with my family, yet my mind was consumed with anxiety. One of the most significant operations of our deployment was about to unfold, and I wouldn’t be there to lead my team of 40 soldiers through it. I worried about how they would manage without me.
Two weeks later when I returned to Helmand Province and stepped off the helicopter, I immediately saw the success they’d had. They’d built the combat bridge and established the base as planned. The mission had been executed flawlessly—without me, their leader.
It’s shameful to admit, but I didn’t feel the pride and contentment I’d expected. Instead, I felt envy that I hadn’t been part of the mission, that someone else had led the team. It was envy and a realization that, as much as I’d thought I was important to the functioning of the team, in fact, I wasn’t. I was irrelevant to the success and the effectiveness of the team I’d been training with and leading for the previous eighteen months. And this was exactly what was supposed to happen. It was exactly what I’d been trained to do, to make sure the team I led could succeed without me.
The ultimate leadership paradox
As humans, we are biologically wired to seek relevance and feel needed—a trait rooted in our evolutionary need for survival and belonging. Yet, the irrelevant leader mindset challenges this instinct and proves that true leadership comes from empowering others to excel without constant guidance. Ultimately, it makes the leader more valuable by stepping back.
Becoming an irrelevant leader doesn’t mean abandoning your team. It means leading so effectively that your presence is no longer critical for success. It’s about developing people to operate at their highest potential, with or without you. And ironically, the less relevant I have always become to my team’s daily successes, the more valuable I have become to the organization am I part of, as I’m able to step back from the daily, operational issues and apply strategic leadership—to look ahead and see what needs to happen to make sure we’re still moving in the direction of our vision.
Because in the end, the best leaders are the ones who make themselves irrelevant—and that’s exactly why their impact lasts.
Learn more about Phil Jewell and his book The Irrelevant Leader at:
