Leading from the back

I've been on the road for the past few weeks. We locked up the place in the Algarve, handed the keys to our real estate agent, moved into the van, and drove. Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Italy. A slow loop through places I know and places I don't.

While on the road i keep noticing that in the Algarve everything keeps growing. And it has been growing for years, without me in the room.

Five years ago I arrived in the Algarve with a question. Can you grow a community without being the face of it.

That was the experiment. Not a plan. An experiment. I didn't want to be the person everyone came to see. I didn't want the community to need me in the room to function. So I tried something. Identify the natural leaders. The ones already doing it without the title, already holding things together, already being followed whether they knew it or not. Then help them find their path. Give them space, give them context, give them the confidence to trust what they already had. Then have their back. When it got hard, when they doubted themselves, when the room got loud, I was there. Not in front of them. Behind them.

Over the past years leaders stepped up. The communities they built grew. The initiatives I kicked off were taken over by leaders who made them their own. None of that happened last month. It happened slowly, over years, one person at a time. And now that I've left, they don't stop. They keep running.

That's the part that makes me happy. Genuinely, quietly happy. The kind where you read a message and smile and put the phone down. The leaders I care about, in the Algarve and further afield, are busy. New things starting. Old things growing. Communities that were small when I arrived getting bigger, and the people inside them getting more confident.

Here's what I think success actually is. Not the thing you built but the leaders it produced. Growing leaders who go on to grow communities. That's the whole game. Everything else is a side effect.

The impact I had on the region didn't end when I left. It multiplied. Every person who took something on, who started something, who held a room together. They carry it forward. They add their own. The number of hands doing the work is so much bigger than mine ever was.

Do this over and over and some of them will truly change the world. And when they do, it makes you proud. Not because of your work. Because of theirs. Because of their journey. You were just the person who saw it early and refused to get in the way.

I love that role. Having other people's backs. Making sure they're the ones who shine. Playing my part in the background, ideally. Not because I don't want to be seen. Because the work is better when the right person is seen.

That's leading from the back.