Have you ever noticed that the best leaders don’t just get things done—they inspire others to lead, too? Leadership isn’t about managing every detail or micromanaging every task. It’s about creating an environment where people can step up, grow, and become leaders in their own right.

In this blog, we’ll reveal the secrets of real leadership, focusing on how to empower the people around you to thrive independently and take ownership of their roles. It’s a game-changing mindset shift that can transform your business, your team, and even your personal relationships.

The Shift from Caretaking to Empowering

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is doing too much for the people they lead. It feels productive, right? You get the job done, people are happy, and everything seems smooth. But here’s the thing: when you do the work for others, you’re not empowering them—you’re enabling dependency. Real leaders understand the power of giving others the tools and confidence to succeed on their own.

In my latest video, I break down this key shift and show how you can apply it to your leadership style. Here are three powerful takeaways that will change how you lead:

1. Empower, Don’t Enable

Doing everything for your team or family might seem helpful, but in the long run, it holds them back. Empowerment means giving people the skills, knowledge, and trust they need to handle challenges independently. It’s about setting clear expectations and letting them find their way to success.

Why it matters:
When you empower others, you’re not just helping them get things done—you’re building their confidence, competence, and ownership. Empowered people are more engaged and committed, which leads to better results and more growth for everyone.

2. Challenge for Growth

Growth doesn’t happen in the comfort zone. If you want the people around you to grow, you need to challenge them. This doesn’t mean throwing them in the deep end without support—it means setting stretch goals, providing guidance, and encouraging them to push beyond what they think they can do.

Why it matters:
Challenging others helps them discover their true potential. When you create an environment where growth is encouraged, you’re not just improving individual performance—you’re building a stronger, more resilient team.

3. Lead by Example

As a leader, your actions speak louder than any advice you give. People look to you not just for guidance but for a model to follow. If you want others to take ownership, work hard, and show integrity, you need to demonstrate those values in your actions every day.

Why it matters:
Leading by example creates trust and inspiration. When people see you practicing what you preach, they’re more likely to follow suit. Your behavior sets the tone for the entire team, creating a ripple effect of positive leadership.

Why These Leadership Secrets Matter

At the core of great leadership is the ability to create more leaders. This doesn’t just help your business or team succeed—it fosters a culture of independence, growth, and self-confidence. When people are empowered to take on challenges, make decisions, and grow into leaders themselves, you’ve created a cycle of success that can keep growing even when you’re not there to oversee every detail.

The difference between enabling and empowering, challenging and supporting, and leading by example are the keys to unlocking this potential. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it.

Ready to transform your leadership style?
Watch the video above and discover how to apply these secrets to your own life and business. Or listen and subscribe on Spotify.

Next Live Workshop

Contrary to popular belief, being busy does not equal being productive. 

Are you a multifamily investor who struggles with:

• Difficulty focusing amidst numerous opportunities?
• Overwhelm from juggling multiple paths forward?
• Balancing the demands of your W2 job, family life, and your multifamily journey?
• Lack of consistency?
• Feeling like you are always busy, but not moving forward quickly enough?

Join me on October 31, 2024 at 9am EST for the free Master Productivity Workshop.

TRANSCRIPTION:

and I want you guys to think about it in relation to your own life.

your role as a leader is to create more leaders,

Because people around you are looking for a model for them to follow, not just what you say, but an example to follow.

And today I want to specifically focus on one area. And this, the reason why I picked this area because this is the overall theme that keeps coming up.

keeps coming up with pretty much almost most of my clients. Most people are not very good at this just because they're trained to think a certain way, not because they're inherently not good at this and including me. I've had to work on this and there are times I still work on this area. And Uh, the distinction, I didn't create this distinction.

Actually, this distinction came from Brendan Burchard. I want to give him credit in his book, The Charge. One of the chapters he covers

around this is called caretaker versus Caregiver. And it's a very important concept

and I want you guys to think about it in relation to your own life. So what is it? The best way for me to explain this, uh, is, is to tell you guys about that quote that almost everybody might've heard is give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

Uh, and teach a man how to fish. You feed him for a lifetime. So, uh, what does that mean? That means that most of us and that's the distinction between caretaker and caregiver. Most of us actually are trained to be caretakers. That means that we're constantly giving people fish and fish can show up in all sorts of ways.

Fish can so show up in the day to day when my child asked me, can I get a glass of water? Uh, it's like, okay, I'll give it to you. Can I get a glass of water? And then eventually they become dependent. Me versus, Hey, uh, you're sitting right there. Can you go grab your own glass, glass of water or, uh, uh, help teaching somebody to clean their room versus doing it for them.

Uh, one of the things I remember as a child, it was a big frustration my mom had, um, uh, when I was growing up, I was not the cleanest or most organized person in the world. , and she always complains like you never clean your room. In fact, I was famous for that. Um, and, but while she would, uh, complain about that and, and I understand her frustration fully, and especially looking back because I was completely messy, um, like to an extreme, uh, while she would complain about that, she would come in my room and clean everything.

And she would do that over and over and over. So subconsciously, the message that I got is like, I don't need to worry about that. She's going to clean it anyway after about a day or two. Now, um, in business, it shows up in this way. So I've worked with teams, , a lot of times where it's so subtle, you don't notice it.

I've worked with teams, for example, whether it's in multifamily or other businesses where, with partners, I've noticed when partners work together, there's usually one person. Where they're not taking a responsibility for their own, uh, for their part of their role in the company and pretty much everybody else is cleaning up after them.

And, and people are covering for him or her. , they're not showing up to do the thing, the project to move forward, the projects that were support to, they're not clearly asking for support. They're not moving things in a timely fashion, but everybody else around them is kind of trying to pick up after them.

And the name of. Let me support this person. But what they're really doing a lot of time is holding the company back. The same dynamic shows up in our personal life when we're not, uh, when we see in a family, there's always some, there's always somebody who might be, struggling or they might not be be supporting the family in a positive direction, whether that's a kid in the family or a parent or whoever it might be, it doesn't matter.

They're showing up in a way that might that's irresponsible, which means that they're not actually taking care of their role, but everybody else is cleaning up after them. Very common thing. Um, there's a, this is not me. I'm going to quote somebody. So the, this is George Carlin, one of my favorite comedian.

If you've ever heard anything from George Carlin, you know, he's very direct. Uh, so he's like, uh, in every family, there's an asshole. If you don't know who that is, it's probably you.

If you don't know who that is, probably you. So again, it's not about pointing fingers also noticing what is the impact we have on other people. Because there might be things we're doing that might not be as great as we think we are. So for example, whenever I'm interviewing people or For my company or for somebody else's, or if I'm assessing somebody for a specific position or whatever, I, I look for when something happens,

when something goes wrong, do they take responsibility or do they blame?

When, when something goes wrong, are they open to having a difficult conversation or they kind of work around that? That usually determines how they operate in the day to day life. So how much responsibility do they take? Do they deal with problems head on? So coming back to that distinction around caretaker and caregiver, and I want to share about four things for us to pay attention to for you to show up more as a caregiver.

The first one is actually the intention behind it. The intention always is whenever. You do something for people, uh, ask yourself this, are you gonna empower this person or disempower this person?

So what does that mean? That means that, uh, whether you do something for your child or to your spouse, or with your spouse or with your team member or with your partner, are you empowering them as a leader themselves or you disempowering them?

Are you helping them build character skill sets, awareness. Or are you just making them dependent on you? That's also my value around a coach as well. My, my role as a coach is not to forever be a coach for somebody. My role as a coach is to help people develop awareness, skill sets, ability to lead, ability to move forward in their own way.

And I hope that at some point they become a leader and they are usually most of my clients are leaders, but they become better leaders in their own right and their home and their community and their organizations. So, um, I'm there as long as. I can support that person, get to that point. And there are times where my clients.

Go off and do incredible things. And a lot of times I partner up with them. Uh, other times they go off and do bigger things. But my role as a leader and as a coach is to empower my clients to, to, to help them build skill sets, awareness, and the ability to lead others, the ability to create what they want to create.

And actually your role as a leader is to empower other people around you to become leaders. And that's actually one of the biggest value ads you can have. This is why and this is from the servant leadership model that says

that your role as a leader is to create more leaders,

not for you to lead others.

It's actually to create more leaders around you. That could be with your team. That could be with your children. That could be even with your partners, whether it's life partner or business partner. So my question is, are you checking in with that intention? Every action you take, the way you treat this person, the way you connect with them, are you empowering them or disempowering them?

Again, we're all going to do a mix of those. I don't pretend to be perfect in this area. I struggle with this area at times. I don't do the most empowering things in my personal life and professional life, but half the time I'm hitting myself in the head. Why did I say that? Why would I approach it this way?

But that, that iterative, we, we, we will have thousands of opportunities to correct, self correct and adjust and improve. And that's the whole point. The point is that we are, we're looking to improve. We're looking to grow. We're not looking to be perfect. So ask yourself that first intention is, are you empowering those around you?

And the second one that's connected to that is, are you supporting them for success?

And this is I think this was, uh, some people like him. Some people don't. Jordan Peterson talks about this. He talks about children. He's like, don't allow your kids to do things that will make you despise them to some degree like that, or that will make you hate them as in don't set your kids up for, uh, for failure.

And, and their role as children, which means that you're gonna have to call out what they're doing, which means that you're gonna have to be, uh, tough at times. Same thing with your partners. , I don't think this is that different from there. Like whether it's your life partner or business partner or core team, whoever that is, don't, don't allow them to, to set them up for, success, which means that give them the tools.

the awareness, but also the next step is challenge them.

And this is the third one is challenge. And the one thing that that's hard to do as a leader is to challenge those around us. Some people are better at this. Some people have to learn it. To be honest, I've had to learn that. I have not been the best at this area.

I've grown up with people around me that were more passive. So I I don't like confrontation. I don't like conflict. Interestingly, most of the things that has helped my clients and myself is has been dealing with conflict,

which means that, um, how good are you on a scale of one to 10 and challenging those around you,

which means that if you have a business partner or a team member or an employee or somebody around you who's not, uh, fulfilling their role.

Are you challenging them? You don't have to challenge them in an unkind way, but are you doing it in a kind way? Which means that, hey, I think you're better than that. I see you've been doing all you've been approaching this problem in this in this way, I really think that you're better than that. How can I support you to do this better?

That could be one of the ways to approach it. But a lot of people connect, uh, challenging others with conflict, and we we all want to avoid conflict because conflict brings pain for a lot of us, unless you see it with a different lens.

I think conflict. Is actually essential. A lot of times to growth.

That doesn't mean that fight.

It just means that our arguments just means that there's tension is a requirement of growth. Struggle is a requirement of growth, which means that for you to deal with difficult situations, things that are not easy to deal with, you're going to have to be okay with challenging those around you. If it's, for example, in our own homes, like it's hard to run a home, forget about a business.

Um, it's like with me and my wife. There's so much to do. We have little kids that like we have to challenge ourselves. It's like, hey, did you did you do this thing? Uh, you said that you were going to do it. Did you actually do it? No, I completely slipped my mind. Okay. How can we set it up better so we can do this in the future?

So, for example, cooking was and food was a huge issue in my household. So how do we do this with my wife being busy? I'm busy. How do we run this through? Cleaning is a big issue. How do we do that as a family? Do we hire people? Do we delegated? Do we have a better process along with all the other responsibilities?

Same thing happens with business, like whose role and respondent, like when I'm working with teams, one of the clear things that you understand is most people are not clear about their roles and responsibilities. They will say that they will have a title but title is not the same thing as specific roles and responsibilities and metrics.

All they're following through in is the team keeping them aligned, accountable to those things that they, and accountable doesn't mean punishing them, it just means that they've taken on responsibility are they presenting that responsibility that's actually moving forward or they're making excuses for that?

Do they need support to move that responsibility, that role forward? And are you actually, are we supporting them in that process? So again, being open to challenge as a leader and also being open to be challenged by others. So again, the kind of leader who's open to feedback again, one of the things that I always want to know in leaders.

Are you open to feedback? And what is your process for asking for feedback? Do you actually go out of your way proactively to ask feedback from your, from your kids, from your life partner, from your business partners, from your colleagues, from your friends? Hey, when I do this, how does that make you feel like?

How do you think I approach that situation? Was could I have done a better job? And when you look at bigger companies, they usually have process for feedback. They, they collect anonymous feedback a lot of times, or they collect feedback and one on one conversations for leaders and for other people, because it helps us get rid of blind spots.

Because a leader can clearly have blind spots. If you study enough history, you find out that some of the most amazing leaders that we consider that we followed, we watched, watch what they have done and they have a net positive outcome, but they've made some major mistakes. They've thrown off organizations and communities and And if it if they had better feedback before they would have done a better job, and they will admit it themselves.

But again, how proactive were they? And this is why a lot of leaders when they grow, they realize that you know what? I can't figure out all this on my own. I need this is the whole idea behind having a board of governors. This is the idea around having a system where not one person, one dictator doesn't make all the decisions because we know that humans make mistakes no matter how great they are.

So how what is your feedback process? Do you feel do you?

That's the fourth one. Where do you model this process? Do you

model asking? Do you model being child being okay to be challenged by those around you? Um, do you model, uh, asking for support from those around you? Do you ask for that?

Do you model having an intention to empower others versus disempower? Because people around you are looking for a model for them to follow, not just what you say, but an example to follow. , and it's circled back around, and I want you to consider it specifically in your relationships.

What's happening in your personal life? What's happening in your professional life and your business, in your job? How do you deal with people? Do you, are you always. trying to please them because that's a nice thing to do. Are you being kind? Kind means you might have to be assertive. You might have to be harsh at times, harsh in a kind way, which means that you might have to give direct feedback.

Some of the best feedback that I've gone and in the past years of my life has been very feedback that hurt me in the moment, but it helped me in the long term. So how are you dealing with the people around you? Are you empowering them or disempowering them? Do you even have an intention? Are you automatically showing up as a leader in that one of the biggest?

Um, that challenge for leaders is that they don't have influence because they hope that just by the way they are, they will have positive influence. No, you need to set an intention for that. Are you challenging those around you? Are you setting them up for success by asking them what kind of support they need?

Are you modeling the way for them to operate like that as leaders? And if you're not doing these things, more than likely, you're taking care of people and they're full becoming dependent on you versus doing their showing up as leaders in their own right. And that's a question I want you to ask throughout the week.

And on Thursday, what we're covering is we're going deeper into this idea of caring. Caring a lot of times means to empower others. Caring means that I care enough for you to grow. Caring means that I care enough for me to, to, to bite my tongue in this moment, allow you to make mistakes. Caring means that I push you a little bit.

I challenge you a little bit. It doesn't always mean pleasing the other person. And people have a weird association with that because we've just been trained like that. Uh, and we're going to go much deeper. We're going to talk about how, uh, your level of presence in your life, because that's incredibly important.

Your intentions, how you're showing up with those around you, whether it's your team, your business team, your family, whoever, and how are you setting those boundaries around you? All that stuff becomes important. Uh, so we're going to go deeper into this, uh, this, uh, Thursday, but I'd love to hear. What was your biggest insight as you hear this?

If you can just put in the chat and then we'll go into the audio and video mode. What was your biggest insight around all the things that I covered today around caregiver versus caretaker?

And if you want to take this training further, download your free unlock your legacy life power pack at FaisalEnsaun.Com. You should be able to find that link right below. Take care. Bye.