The true test of your leadership comes when you are not in the room.
In some organizations, the moment the leader is not there, decisions freeze, teams hesitate, and progress slows down. In others, the leader can be absent for weeks and the business doesn’t just keep running, it thrives. What separates those two realities is not luck, but the way leadership is practiced.
When you step away, three truths about your leadership are exposed and tested instantly:
How you delegate?
Too many leaders confuse being busy with being effective. They hold onto every decision, becoming the bottleneck for their own teams. Delegation is not about passing down tasks; it is about creating a culture of ownership and responsibility. Authentic, mature delegation gives people clarity, authority, and confidence to act even (specially) in your absence. Without it, the organization paralyze. So, are you creating owners or followers?
How you develop and prepare successors?
Succession isn’t a plan for someday. It’s the carefully thought out and systematic way you prepare people to lead when you are not there. Strong leaders make it part of their daily work, identifying talent, enhancing and expanding it, and preparing it to take on bigger responsibilities and vital roles. I’ve seen transitions where growth accelerated because the next generation was ready, and others where uncertainty destroyed value because no one had been “really” prepared. The contrast is striking. So, are you building the future or protecting your seat?
How much trust you have built?
Trust is invisible until it is missing. Without trust, people second-guess every decision, boards hesitate, and execution slows down. Within a carefully built and nurtured ecosystem of trust, teams step forward even when the leader is gone. They don’t wait, they act, because they know their judgment will be respected. Trust brings effective delegation and reliable succession potentials to life. So, do people move faster because of you or without you?
The way you delegate, prepare successors, and build trust is not just about your leadership style, it defines the elasticity and resilience of the organization itself. Investors, boards, and employees measure a company not by how it performs when the leader is present, but by how it behaves when the leader is absent. This is the moment where confidence or doubt is created, about how well prepared for the future the organization is.
Across markets and industries, at Ad Capita (INAC Portugal) and INAC Global Executive Search, we have seen many organizations remain fragile, where leadership is confined to one individual, no matter how brilliant that person is. By contrast, those where encouragement to take on leadership opportunities is a fundamental trait of its culture, successors feel ready and eager, and trust runs deep, become more robust and enduring. They not only withstand change, but they also grow stronger because of it.
This is why the true test of your leadership is not when you are present, but in the moments of absence. Therefore, the real measure of your leadership is not what happens when you are there, but what continues when you are not.
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Rui Borges, President INAC Global Executive Search and Managing Partner Ad Capita (INAC Portugal)
Rui is the founder and Managing Partner of Ad Capita Executive Search (𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗖 𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗴𝗮𝗹), a preeminent retained Executive Search firm in Portugal since 2001. A recognized seasoned Executive Recruiter for the past 25 years, Rui has been identifiying and placing senior-level executives across sectors and geographies and has always devoted himself to emerging leaders and the buildout of executive talent pipelines. Rui is also Co-founder of our network, 𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗖 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹, one of the leading Executive Search networks in the world. Having served this organization for over 30 years and held a variety of roles during that time, most recently as its President, Rui has always focused his energy and intercultural intelligence on building and leading a global team to drive growth, entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity to provide first-rate talent advisory services across the globe.
