TL;DR:
– You are not Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates… and that’s a good thing
– Leadership is not about you – it’s about the mission and the people driving it.
– Ego kills great teams. Confidence is knowing you don’t have to be the best at everything.

The thing about leadership is that people make it weird. They think they need to be the smartest, most innovative, most whatever-the-hell-inspirational person in the room. Spoiler: you’re not. And you don’t need to be. Leadership is just a few things: set the mission, set the goals, hire people better than you, and ask them what they need from you to hit those goals. That’s it. It’s not sexy, but it works.

Let me tell you about Eisenhower real quick. During World War II, Ike wasn’t in the trenches drawing up every battle plan. He wasn’t out there yelling orders or pretending he was some battlefield mastermind. What made Eisenhower Eisenhower was his ability to rally people who were, frankly, better at their jobs than he was. He got tactical geniuses to align behind a single mission and let them run. He made the mission the star, not himself. And that’s why he didn’t just win battles—he won the damn war.

The hard truth is this: if you need to be the smartest person in the room, you’re going to build a team that’s mediocre at best. Why? Because insecure leaders don’t hire people who might outshine them. They hire people who make them feel safe. And then the company stagnates while everyone sits around, agreeing with whatever the “genius” leader says. You’re not building a team—you’re building an echo chamber.

I say this all the time at my company: I have three hills I can die on. That’s it. Three things where I get to pull rank and make the final call, even if the team disagrees. But everything else? It’s a team decision—even if I don’t love the outcome. Why? Because I hired these people for a reason. They’re better than me at their jobs. If I’m second-guessing everything, what the hell was the point of hiring them in the first place?

And this takes internal confidence. Not the fake “I’m crushing life!” kind—the real kind where you’re secure enough to say, “I don’t know. What do you think?” You’re not Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, and honestly, that’s fine. The world doesn’t need you to be a copy-paste of some tech billionaire. The world needs you—whatever weird, scrappy, flawed version of leadership you bring to the table. And part of that is knowing when to shut up and trust your team.

The job of a leader isn’t to be the best at everything—it’s to find people who are the best, make them believe in the mission, and give them what they need to crush it. Success belongs to them. Failure belongs to you. That’s the deal you sign up for when you lead.

So let go of the ego trip. Be the dumbest person in the room if you have to. If you’re doing it right, your team will consistently blow your mind. And that’s the whole point. If your meetings aren’t full of moments where you’re thinking, “Holy shit, how did they come up with that?”, you’re probably holding your team back—or worse, hiring wrong.

Bottom line: Stop trying to be a hero. Start building the right team around the right mission. Your job isn’t to have all the answers—it’s to make sure your people do. And when they win (because they will), step back, let them have the spotlight, and clap your ass off. That’s leadership.