Your Best People Should Be Able to Leave You
by Feras Asakrieh
Aug 01, 2026
| Career ยท Leadership | ||||||
| By Feras Asakrieh ยท 4 min read ยท Issue #33 | ||||||
| Tuesday. Big executive review. I am already in the room when Alex walks in. | ||||||
| No text this time. | ||||||
| After twelve years, I noticed. | ||||||
| Who Walked In Twelve Years Ago? | ||||||
| Alex was not ready. | ||||||
| Smart, no question. But rough in all the ways that matter in corporate rooms. | ||||||
| Over-explained every idea. Repeated points that had already landed. In meetings, Alex would glance at me mid-sentence, looking for a small nod that said: keep going. | ||||||
| Before every high-stakes presentation, same message every time. | ||||||
| "Do I look nervous?" | ||||||
| Every. Single. Time. | ||||||
| Twelve Years | ||||||
| I could have kept Alex comfortable. Sheltered from the hard rooms. Coached just enough to get by. | ||||||
| I did not do that. | ||||||
| I had real conversations. The kind that are not in any leadership manual. | ||||||
| I told Alex things about how to show up, how to read a room, how to speak with weight even when you do not feel it. | ||||||
| Some of it landed easy. Some of it hurt to hear. | ||||||
| Alex heard all of it anyway. | ||||||
| Twelve years of that. | ||||||
| The Room on a Tuesday | ||||||
| The executive review starts. The table is full. | ||||||
| The kind of people who ask questions that end careers if you answer them wrong. | ||||||
| Alex walks in and does not look at me once. | ||||||
| Not for reassurance. Not for a nod. Not to check if the room is safe. | ||||||
| Alex just begins. | ||||||
| I watched from across the table. Every hard question answered without a pause. No searching for a lifeline. No glancing around. | ||||||
| At some point I stopped watching the presentation. | ||||||
| I started watching something else. | ||||||
| I was watching what twelve years looks like when it works. | ||||||
| Three Weeks Later | ||||||
| Alex came to my office and sat down. | ||||||
| A director role. Another company. A bigger room than I could offer. | ||||||
| Alex was taking it. | ||||||
| My first feeling was the loss. Twelve years has a weight to it. | ||||||
| My second feeling landed quieter. But it stayed longer. | ||||||
| This is exactly what I was trying to do. | ||||||
| The Second Feeling | ||||||
| Most leaders measure success by how much their team needs them. | ||||||
| The meetings that do not start without you. The decisions that wait for your input. The person who still texts you before walking into a room. | ||||||
| That feels like leadership. | ||||||
| It is not. | ||||||
| Real leadership is building someone until they do not need you anymore. | ||||||
| If the people you have invested years into cannot leave you, you have not developed them. You have made them dependent. | ||||||
| Alex walked out of my office heading toward something I could not have given. | ||||||
| That is not a loss. | ||||||
| That is the whole point. | ||||||
| Who on your team are you developing to stay, and who are you developing to fly? | ||||||
| Reply and tell me. I read every response. | ||||||
| See you next Saturday. Feras |
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