When we think about great managers, we often measure them by tangible outcomes.
Did they build a high-performing team? Did they deliver ambitious projects? Did they develop talented engineers? Did the organisation become stronger because they led it well?
Those are important questions, and they’re rightly expected of anyone in a leadership position.
But over the years, I’ve come to believe they aren’t the only questions worth asking.
I think managers often underestimate just how much influence they have over the people they lead—not because of the authority that comes with the role, but because of something much harder to quantify: trust.
When someone trusts your judgement professionally, they sometimes begin trusting your perspective more broadly. Before long, conversations that started with software, products or careers quietly evolve into conversations about confidence, uncertainty and some of life’s biggest decisions.
That wasn’t something anyone taught me when I first became a manager.
Like many new leaders, I thought my success would largely be measured by the teams I built, the products we delivered and the careers I helped shape. Those things still matter deeply, but over time I found myself reflecting less on sprint reviews or performance conversations, and more on completely unexpected moments that happened in between.
Not because they were part of my job description, but because they reminded me that leadership doesn’t neatly end where work does.
Every so often, someone would ask if they could get my perspective on something that had very little to do with work itself.
One conversation was about buying a first home. It wasn’t really about property or mortgages. It was someone trying to navigate uncertainty and asking for a perspective from someone who had already been through a similar experience. We spoke about the trade-offs, the risks and the things I wished I’d known, but the decision was always theirs to make. Years later, they mentioned how happy they still were with that decision. I don’t see that as a reflection of my advice; if anything, it reminded me how valuable it can be simply to help someone think more clearly when they’re facing an important decision.
Another conversation came back to me years after it had happened. A former colleague reached out to let me know that she had received indefinite leave to remain in the UK. She thanked me for the encouragement I’d given her during a period when she doubted herself. Reading that message left me feeling less proud than grateful—grateful that she had trusted me enough to share part of that journey, and grateful that she had achieved something so meaningful through her own determination.
There have been many smaller moments too. Conversations with people wondering whether they should leave an unhealthy work environment. Discussions with someone trying to reinvent their career by moving into software engineering from a completely different background. Difficult conversations with an employee who eventually realised that entrepreneurship suited him far better than traditional employment. Looking back, what strikes me isn’t the outcome of any one story. It’s how often the most memorable conversations had very little to do with the work we were employed to do.
Those experiences slowly changed the way I think about management.
I’ve become convinced that one of the greatest responsibilities of leadership isn’t having the right answers. It’s recognising that people often place more weight on our words than we realise.
That doesn’t mean managers should become life coaches, therapists or financial advisers. Nor does it mean involving ourselves in decisions that rightly belong to other people. Professional boundaries matter, and they always should.
If anything, I think the opposite is true.
The role of a manager isn’t to tell people what they should do. It isn’t to persuade them to follow the path we would have chosen ourselves.
It’s to create enough trust that people can think more clearly, ask better questions and leave the conversation feeling more confident in making their own decision.
That’s a subtle distinction, but I think it’s an important one.
The best leaders I’ve worked with have never tried to become the main character in someone else’s story. They don’t seek credit for another person’s success, because they understand that success belongs entirely to the individual who did the difficult work.
At most, they provided perspective at a moment when perspective was needed.
That’s all.
The older I get, the more I appreciate that leadership is often measured long after the meetings have finished.
Rarely through the presentations we delivered.
Rarely through the quarterly objectives we achieved.
Rarely through the performance reviews we wrote.
Instead, sometimes it’s measured by an unexpected message years later. A brief update from someone who wanted to let you know how life turned out. Not because they’re acknowledging something extraordinary you did, but because, at one point in their journey, you happened to be someone they trusted enough to talk to.
I don’t look back on those moments as achievements.
If anything, they remind me of the responsibility that comes with being trusted.
Managers have the privilege of occupying a unique place in people’s lives. We see them at moments of growth, uncertainty, ambition, disappointment and change. Whether we realise it or not, our words can carry weight far beyond the immediate context in which they’re spoken.
That’s both humbling and slightly intimidating.
It also serves as a reminder that leadership isn’t only about building better teams.
Sometimes it’s about helping people leave a conversation believing a little more in themselves than they did when they walked into it.
If we can do that—even occasionally—I suspect we’ll have had a far greater impact than any quarterly metric could ever hope to capture.