The instruction I gave every team lead who reported to me

Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

August 19, 2026

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The instruction I gave every team lead who reported to me

Howdy ,

When I resumed in my latest role, I called every team leader who reported to me and gave them one instruction: choose a Number 2.

Not all of them had one. Some had to go build someone in their team into that role.

I wasn't asking them to do this so they'd have someone to delegate tasks to. I was asking so that they…could go on vacation without having to worry about work.

Here's what most leaders get backwards: they think rest is something they earn by proving the team can't function without them. It's the opposite.

Rest is something you earn by proving the team can function without you.

A leader whose team collapses the moment they're offline hasn't built a team. They've built a dependency.

And a team that depends entirely on one person can't be trusted to keep its promises when that person is unreachable…which means the leader isn't actually running a reliable operation. They're running a single point of failure with a job title.

That's the real cost of not building a Number 2. It's not that you can't go on vacation. It's that your team's word…its ability to do what it said, the way it said it, every single time…is only as strong as your presence in the room.

Building a Number 2 isn't succession planning. It's trust-building. You're not just choosing a backup. You're proving that the reliability you've built doesn't live in one person…it lives in the system you've built around you.

If you lead people and you don't yet have someone who could run your world for two weeks without it falling apart, that's not a scheduling problem. That's an identity problem…yours. It says the team's reliability is still tied to your presence, not your leadership.

Fix that before you fix your calendar.

Keep winning at work and in life.

Tola Akinsulire
Your Strategic Workplace Mentor