I’ve been reflecting on leadership recently and recalled an idea that struck me during my time leading organizations in the Texas A&M University Memorial Student Center Student Programs Office. In organizations that turned over leadership each year, the leadership followed a predictable pattern of flipping from strong leadership to weak leadership, then from weak to strong, as if on a loop. I developed the idea that in subsequent generations, strong leaders beget weak leaders, and weak leaders beget strong leaders. Based on this observation and idea, I developed a practice of being intentionally weak in certain circumstances in order to develop leadership in those I led.

Before we continue, let me define terms as I’m using them:

• strong – proactive, decisive, quick to correct, and minimize risk of failure
• weak – passive, indecisive, leaves a gap that needs to be filled, risk of failure

When I’ve searched for these terms online, I typically see something that looks more like a contrast of “good” versus “bad” leaders, for varying definitions of “good” and “bad.” When I use “strong” and “weak,” I assume both exhibit “good” leadership qualities, for whatever definition you wish to use for “good.”

The practice I tried to develop while at Texas A&M was to identify and intentionally give space for others to step up and grow as leaders. I provided backup to minimize the impact of failure and follow-up with a retrospective to learn and grow. This was moderately successful, in large part because I had a lot of room to learn and grow myself. Thankfully, the advisors at Texas A&M were wonderful and provided the same kind of environment to grow as leaders.

I’ve found this approach continues to work well throughout my career, though I have forgotten to use it at times. I recently started exploring new (to me) programming languages and came across Gleam, a typed, functional programming language for the Erlang runtime. Erlang is known for its resilience and fault tolerance, yet it achieves this by means of a “Let it Crash” philosophy. This seems counterintuitive. Success through failure? In Programming Erlang, Joe Armstrong notes that the difference is in expecting failure, one can focus instead on planning how to identify and recover.

There is a correlation between the “Let it Crash” philosophy and growing leadership abilities. We tend to think of success as good and failure as bad, but failure is only bad if it does not translate into a learning opportunity. Successful and unsuccessful outcomes can both be positive outcomes, but they need to be planned. Planning involves identifying opportunities for each person you want to grow in leadership, assessing risk, and providing for contingencies.

You may be wondering how this is different than coaching. I see the difference in coaching is an explicitly communicated opportunity, whereas what I propose above is not explicit. You have to make room for others to identify and then pursue the opportunity on their own. Coaching should certainly be part of the process, but it falls into the “strong” leadership category.

Leaving room for others is challenging. It means waiting on making improvements. You may get only a partial solution. However, your people will struggle to make it to the next step without opportunities. I’ve enjoyed reflecting on and rediscovering this approach. I’d love to know how others approach leadership development in their people. Let me know in the comments.