When leadership steps back

"I didn't feel needed anymore."

For many leaders, that might sound like failure. For Ntombizone Feni, it became one of the clearest signs that something important had shifted.

She recalls a meeting between colleagues who had been struggling to work together. They had been approaching the same challenge from different parts of the organisation, each convinced they understood the situation. As the conversation unfolded, something changed. People began explaining the realities they had each been carrying. Questions replaced assumptions. Gradually, they found themselves seeing the same situation through one another's eyes. When the meeting ended, she realised, 

"They had actual understanding of each other's perspectives. I didn't feel needed anymore."

The point had never been for her to solve the problem. It was to create the conditions in which others could solve it together. What happened in the room also suggested that disagreement need not stand in the way of progress. When people can engage constructively with different perspectives, the differences themselves can become part of finding a way forward. 

Listening to her, I found myself wondering whether this points to a significant shift in leadership: perhaps leadership becomes most valuable when people no longer need the leader to hold the conversation together.

Meeting Ntombizone Feni

Ntombizone Feni became Group CEO of 21st Century, a South African human capital consultancy based in Johannesburg, at a significant moment in the organisation's journey. The business was moving beyond its founding leadership while growing, professionalising its ways of working, and bringing together people with very different histories and experiences of the organisation. 

"There are many transitions," she reflects. "The company itself, with or without me, is evolving. The growth forces us to professionalise our processes."

That evolution is happening on several fronts at once. The organisation is moving beyond its founding leadership, new technologies are reshaping consulting, governance is becoming more intentional, and new leaders are joining alongside colleagues carrying years of organisational history and experience.

Yet throughout our conversation, Ntombizone rarely speaks about these as separate challenges. Instead, she returns repeatedly to relationships, conversations and understanding. Early in our conversation she describes herself simply.

"I'm a big picture thinker and a system thinker."

Purpose and impact also sit close to the centre of how she understands her work. Rather than seeing communication, governance, culture and growth as separate challenges, she sees them as deeply connected, each shaping the conditions in which people are trying to work together.

Growing together

"Transition is discomfort," she says. "Water that doesn't move gathers algae."

Movement is necessary. The challenge is not avoiding discomfort but learning from it. As organisations evolve, people naturally become more specialised. They deepen their expertise. New colleagues arrive with different experiences, while others carry years of history and organisational knowledge.

Ntombizone describes the contrast candidly. There are people who have been part of the organisation for more than a decade, alongside many who have arrived much more recently.

"It's chalk and cheese."

The differences bring new perspectives and capabilities, but they also create different understandings of the organisation and different interests within it.

"There can be so much self-interest in organisations," Ntombizone observes.

The challenge is not to pretend those interests disappear. It is to create enough shared understanding for people to see beyond their own position and recognise what they are part of together.

"We're struggling to get people to understand who our organisation is," she reflects. "We expect them to just come in, know it and adapt."

The challenge, then, is not simply helping people become increasingly effective in their own part of the organisation. It is helping them continue seeing how their work contributes to something larger than themselves. One phrase returns several times throughout our conversation.

"We are one team."

It sounds simple. The more I listened, the more demanding those words became.

Discovering one another

The meeting Ntombizone described at the beginning of our conversation offers a glimpse of what this can require. Looking back, she realised that the people involved had been carrying assumptions about one another.

"They had made so many assumptions about what each other thought."

Rather than trying to persuade people to agree, the conversation created space for them to explain how they were seeing the situation. They listened, asked questions and began to understand the experiences behind one another's positions.

Something shifted.

"They actually discovered each other."

By the end of the conversation, they had also discovered that beneath their different perspectives was something shared.

"This is the outcome that we all want."

The problem itself had not disappeared. What changed was their understanding of one another. That distinction stayed with me.

Perhaps organisations do not become fragmented because people stop caring. Maybe they become fragmented because people gradually stop seeing the organisation through one another's experience.

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Creating the conditions

This also shapes the way Ntombizone speaks about governance. It is easy to think of governance primarily in terms of structures, reporting lines and accountability. Ntombizone repeatedly returns to something underneath these things.

"People need to understand why we're doing this."

Structures alone cannot create that understanding. But when their purpose is clear, they can create conditions in which responsibility is shared more widely and people can work together with greater confidence.

In this sense, governance and relationships are not competing priorities. Structures can help an organisation become less dependent on individuals while strengthening people's ability to carry its purpose together.

Leadership that belongs to everyone

As our conversation continued, another pattern gradually emerged. Several times Ntombizone described deliberately stepping away from the centre.

She spoke about wanting important initiatives not to become "my thing" but something owned by the wider organisation. She described learning to trust other leaders with responsibility rather than remaining involved in every conversation. And the meeting she remembered most vividly was the one in which she realised she was no longer needed.

Looking across these moments, they no longer felt like separate stories. They pointed towards a particular understanding of leadership. Perhaps leadership becomes less about how indispensable the leader is, and more about whether others are increasingly able to lead together.

That does not happen through structures alone, nor through relationships without intention. It grows as people develop shared ownership, shared understanding and shared responsibility for the future they are building together.

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What holds us together

Throughout our conversation, Ntombizone kept returning to relationships. Not because relationships are more important than strategy, governance or performance, but because they are among the places where an organisation either holds together or begins to drift apart.

Every organisation changes. People join and people leave. Leadership passes from one generation to the next. Structures evolve. New experiences bring new perspectives, while others carry memories of what came before.

None of this means something has gone wrong. It is part of organisational life. The deeper question is not whether organisations change. They always will. It is what enables people to continue recognising that they are building something together.

As organisations change, what helps us continue seeing one another and the whole to which we belong?