“I will never ask you to do something I can’t do myself.”

That was one of the core tenets of leadership taught to me at the Naval Academy… and it was a bad one.

On first glance, it’s not a bad idea to teach young leaders, “you must continue to hold yourself to the highest standard because you set the standard.”

This is a fine point in the context of running around the athletic fields, shining your shoes, or keeping your room clean, but it doesn’t apply to real-world leadership challenges that are faced by young junior officers everyday.

The idea that a leader can’t ask subordinates to do things that the leader can’t do themselves is ludicrous. The reason why hierarchical structures of senior and subordinate relationships exist is to manage task allocation among a large organization.

In my own experiences leading sailors, primarily as an Avionics Division Officer, while I was a young Lieutenant and Lieutenant Junior Grade, it would have been absurd to not ask my sailors to only do the things I could do. They are the technical experts, not me.

Real leadership is enabling and supporting subordinates to execute the tasks that leaders can’t do themselves. Real leadership is knowing how to support their subordinates and enable them to do their tasks more efficiently, with a higher rate of exactness, while building them into technical leaders.

A leader does this by building their subordinates physically, mentally, and emotionally. By focusing on building subordinates in these three basic areas, a leader can effectively understand their role.

This isn’t easy! It’s terrifying to be leading a division or a group of people that you are tasked with accomplishing functions that you can’t do either because of time, experience, or education. But your role is to promote and enable their success. Get them the things they need in order to be successful. Figure out what those needs are. Since you aren’t cranking wrenches or soldering wires, that is your job.

People, all people, want to do satisfying work. Work is satisfying when it is achievable, but challenging, and when you have the skills and resources needed to accomplish the task. Be the leader that makes work satisfying for your subordinates. Be the leader that helps your subordinates grow the volume of their buckets.

Some things to think about:

• Can you think of an experience where you were disappointed a leader didn’t know how to do your job?
• Can you think of an experience where you as a leader felt overwhelmed because you didn’t know how to do your subordinates jobs? How did you deal with that?
• How did a leader of yours help enable your success? In what ways do you wish a leader had helped enable your success?