Read enough books on leadership, listen to enough Ted talks, scroll enough LinkedIn posts, and a common theme appears. According to those sources, leadership is all about action!

A sucessful leader is all about doing! Creating! Managing Change! Executing! Responding to things!

The funny thing is, if you talk with leaders with strategy and vision they’ll tell you that often the best course of action is to do nothing.

How often do we choose to take action in a situation, not because the situation calls for it but because we feel the need to be doing something?

In little situations, the best leaders leave these actions to their team. Let your people manage. It’s what you’ve trained them for.

And in big situations? Sometimes a leader’s only job is to sit back and say “it’s all fine. We are prepared, we are insulated, we are ready.”

A common theme of poor leaders: they act often because they need to prove something, not because the situation requires action.