‍“Your job as a leader is to grow more leaders. That's what it's all about.” – Andy Freed

In this episode of 5 Minutes with Andy, Virtual, Inc. CEO Andy Freed shares how the best leadership moments often happen behind the scenes — when leaders step back and create space for others to lead.

Andy discusses:

• Why leaders are always “on stage”, even in quiet, everyday moments.
• How the greatest act of leadership is growing more leaders.
• Simple, intentional ways to help others step up and shine.

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Hi. Welcome to Five Minutes with Andy. My name is Andy Freed. I'm the CEO of Virtual, Incorporated. For the last 25 years, we've been helping organizations as they're forming, growing and changing, and helping them make their mark on the world.

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For every leader, there's a moment when you're in the spotlight. Maybe you're addressing a team of people at a staff meeting. Maybe you're giving a presentation. Maybe you're giving a podcast. But there are other moments when being in the spotlight might not be as apparent. Well, when you might not realize that you are leading. And yet you're really doing so.

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Now, years and years and years ago, Shakespeare said that all the world's a stage, and a few years after that, Tom Peter said leadership is a performance.

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If you take those things together, what you discover is that as a leader, you are always on stage and you are always performing and always have the opportunity to influence and always have the opportunity to communicate. Now, sometimes that can be really obvious when you're presenting, but other times it can be little one-on-one moments when you're catching people.

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Sometimes it can be just a moment to be able to communicate with somebody, how they can improve, to communicate with them, something that they've done right, that they should keep doing. Sometimes the important thing about that is also recognizing that the best thing you can do as a leader is to also step back and let others lead.

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That's something I struggle with from time to time, is going to a meeting and actually being quiet. But that's when people can actually fill the white space and step up —when you learn to do that and discipline yourself to see who's going to step up when somebody else isn't in the picture.

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Now, if you struggle with that, the other way to do that, if you can't go to the meeting and be quiet, what I find at times, and what I get help from some folks to do, is sometimes it's important to say, I'm just not going to be there. You see that with great baseball teams, a great basketball team, somebody will be sitting out and all of a sudden somebody steps up into the lineup and does very important work.

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So, it's also recognizing not just as a leader when you want to show up, but also recognizing from time to time, the biggest act of leadership is to know that you're going to sit this one out and watch your team shine. And some of the proudest moments that I've had at Virtual have been moments where I'm not there, but I'm watching our team shine as they fill the white space, as they grow and they become leaders themselves.

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And after all, more than anything, that's your job as a leader. Your job as a leader isn't just to lead yourself. Your job as a leader is to grow more leaders. That's what it's all about. That's what servant leadership does. And you do that not just at the moments that you're presenting, not just at the moments that you're spending five minutes on a podcast, but you do that every single day, day in, day out, not just for five minutes, but for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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That said, thanks for spending five minutes with me today. And if you’d like to spend five minutes with me again, make sure you like or subscribe and join me again sometime soon. I’m Andy Freed. This has been 5 Minutes with Andy.