Same Thing Helping More People, Not Higher

Helping More, Not Helping Higher: The Proper Role of Leadership

Here’s a concept that might ruffle some feathers: leaders who rise higher shouldn’t do less work. They should help more people. The reward for climbing to the top isn’t escaping the work. It’s gaining the authority and position to serve, train, and elevate more people than you could before. And if you think leadership means delegating everything, taking the corner office, and working a four-hour work week while everyone else grinds, you’re not leading. You’re abandoning ship.

This is about what leadership actually means when you strip away the reward-based mindset that the industry sold us.

The Pain of Leaders Who Escape the Work

There’s a prevailing concept I think that’s how you say it, prevailing anyway, whatever, a concept that leaders as they go higher have kind of a reward-based mindset or perspective where their goal is to get farther away from the work and spend less time doing it. This is kind of a Four-Hour Work Week kind of book, kind of a mindset.

And I remember being in one of Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery courses where Keith Cunningham said, well, basically, well, earmuffs for anybody who has kids in the car, but Keith Cunningham said whoever wrote The Four-Hour Work Week was a complete dumbass because you can’t work four hours in a week and lead a business properly. It’s just not how life works.

Basically, the four-hour work week concept is where you want to exploit people and make money and then f off somewhere and drink mai tais in the sand. Now there’s nothing wrong with drinking mai tais on the beach. But not at the expense of other people. Anybody knows that if you’re going to lead a business, you’ve got to lead it.

And leaders will do a good job and then get to the point where they’re like, and even I do it, where they’re like, “I want to be less involved. I want to do less. I want to distance myself.” And that’s just not life. That’s not how life works. That’s not what a proper leader does. And that sounds super judgy, but this whole escape from the work and do less and be available less and turn it over to other people when it’s your business or you’re the leader or you have the vision or you have the drive, it’s just classical business management. It’s not appropriate.

The Distinction: You’re Not Doing Less, You’re Helping More

And I want to make the distinction that when you get in higher leadership roles, you’re not doing less and moving away from the work. You are in the work supporting. So, you’re doing the same things as you were before from a hierarchy standpoint, but you’re spending more time helping.

So don’t look at your role as you’re higher and you get to do less and delegate more and you have this big corner office and lots of rewards and perks and you’re going to take the favorite parking spot. It’s really that it’s your job to serve and help and improve more people’s lives. So you’re really doing the same thing at the same level, helping more people with more authority of course. But you don’t look at it as higher and farther away. That’s classical business management.

Here’s the truth: when you rise in leadership, your scope expands. You’re not escaping the trenches. You’re expanding your ability to serve more people in the trenches. The superintendent becomes a general superintendent and now serves multiple projects instead of one. The foreman becomes a superintendent and now trains multiple foremen instead of leading one crew. The project executive oversees multiple divisions and now develops multiple project teams instead of running one project.

At every level, the work changes. But the service doesn’t. You’re still in it. You’re still supporting. You’re still training. You’re just doing it for more people.

What Happens When Leaders Escape: The Consequences

What happens when you go into the higher and farther away reward center leadership? Your standards start to drift. The vision gets lost. Your mid-level leaders who count on you for leadership, drive, and vision are lost and failing to a certain extent because they were there to patch up and fill in the gaps for your leadership, not to replace you. They can’t replace you. It’s not their business.

And progress stalls. Division of the company gets lost. And people lose their way. And as you get more disconnected, everything slows down. And then less people are trained, less people are helped. It’s almost like, “Oh, I made it. Now I’m going to f off.”

Here’s what I’ve seen happen on projects when leadership escapes. The owner or the executive shows up less. The mid-level leaders superintendents, project managers, foremen start making decisions without guidance. They patch the gaps. They try to hold the vision. But they can’t replace the leader because it’s not their vision. They don’t have the authority. They don’t have the access to resources. They were there to execute the vision, not create it.

And slowly, the standards drift. The culture weakens. The training stops. The mentorship disappears. And the team starts operating in survival mode instead of growth mode. People stop asking questions because leadership isn’t around to answer them. People stop innovating because leadership isn’t there to support them. And the business plateaus or declines because the leader climbed to the top and then wandered off.

The Mountain Analogy: Send the Rope Back Down

Here’s an analogy. Let’s say that you’ve climbed this massive mountain. And there’s two ways to look at it. Let’s do both ways. Let’s say you’re the husband in a traditional marriage, which is super great, super fun with all that. And you’ve climbed this mountain, but the whole time your wife was taking care of kids and helping you and supporting you while you were in college and keeping everything down. And then you literally get successful and you’re like, “Effing, I’m out.” And she’s like, “Wait, what? What happened?”

I remember I saw this little video that was like the husband is climbing up this mountain and the wife is the belayer, the person down at the bottom holding the rope. And then when the husband gets to the top, he then pulls the wife up so that she can experience her dreams. Once you get to the top, you send the rope down. You don’t wander off and f off and then go marry a twenty-four-year-old. Okay? So that’s not a lecture, that’s just data. Or that’s my opinion rather, it’s not data.

The other thing with business is like you climb this business, you build this business, you get to the top, you’ve made it this far. And then you get to the top and you’re like, “Effing, I’m out. I’m going to go work a four-hour work week and everybody can figure it out.” You’re not sending the rope back down.

Why not work with your employees? Why not create an ESOP? Why not continue the training? Why not go work shoulder-to-shoulder? Why not help people with kaizen events? Why not help drive the progress? Why not help do training? Why not, like Ryan Schmidt does at Pepper Construction, Coach Schmidt keep doing orientations? Why not? Ryan Schmidt goes out and does barbecues for crews with Lauren Atwell. Lauren Atwell and Ryan Schmidt are some of my favorite human beings. They are such good mentors and examples to me.

When you reach the top, you don’t f off and work a four-hour work week. You help more people and you send the rope back down.

What Sending the Rope Down Looks Like

Here’s what this looks like practically. Ryan Schmidt is a senior leader at Pepper Construction. He still does new hire orientations. He still shows up to job sites. He still does barbecues for crews. He’s not in the corner office delegating everything. He’s on the ground helping more people because his position gives him the authority to do it at scale.

Lauren Atwell does the same. She’s in leadership, but she’s not distant. She’s present. She’s training. She’s mentoring. She’s working shoulder-to-shoulder with the people who need her most. That’s what helping more looks like. That’s what sending the rope down looks like.

And I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve seen leaders who climbed to the top and then disappeared. They stopped showing up to job sites. They stopped doing training. They stopped mentoring. They delegated everything and called it leadership. And their companies suffered. Standards drifted. Culture weakened. People left. Progress stalled. Because the leader wasn’t leading. They were managing from a distance and calling it success.

Connecting This to Respect for People

This is a respect-for-people issue. When you escape the work, you disrespect the people who helped you get to the top. You disrespect the team that’s still grinding while you’re in the corner office. You disrespect the craft by treating it as something to escape from instead of something to serve.

Respect for people means you keep helping as you rise. You don’t do less. You help more. You train more. You mentor more. You work shoulder-to-shoulder more. You elevate more people because your position gives you the authority and access to do it. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

And here’s the truth: the people at the top of great companies are the busiest people in the company. Not because they’re micromanaging. But because they’re serving more people, training more teams, and driving more progress than anyone else. That’s what leadership is. That’s what it means to send the rope down.

A Challenge for Leaders

Here’s what I want you to do this week. If you’re in a leadership role, ask yourself: Am I escaping the work or am I helping more people? Am I delegating to distance myself, or am I delegating to free up time to serve at a higher level? Am I less available than I was before, or am I more available to more people?

If you’re escaping, stop. Get back in the work. Not to micromanage. But to serve. Go do orientations. Go do job walks. Go train foremen. Go work shoulder-to-shoulder with the crew. Go help more people because you’re in a position to do it. That’s the reward for climbing the mountain. Not escaping. Helping more.

And if you’re climbing the mountain right now, remember this: when you get to the top, send the rope back down. Don’t wander off. Don’t escape. Help more people. Train more teams. Serve more crews. That’s what great leaders do. That’s what leadership actually means. As we say at Elevate, leadership is service at scale. The higher you climb, the more people you help. Don’t escape the work. Help more people.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean to help more, not help higher?

It means as you rise in leadership, you don’t do less work or escape the trenches. You expand your ability to serve more people. You’re still in the work, still training, still mentoring. You’re just doing it for more people because your position gives you the authority and access.

Isn’t delegation part of good leadership?

Yes, but delegation isn’t escape. You delegate to free up time to serve at a higher level, not to distance yourself from the work. Great leaders delegate tasks so they can train more people, work shoulder-to-shoulder more often, and drive progress at scale.

What happens when leaders escape the work?

Standards drift. Vision gets lost. Mid-level leaders struggle because they were there to execute, not replace you. Progress stalls. Training stops. Culture weakens. And the business plateaus or declines because leadership isn’t present to guide, serve, and elevate the team.

How do I balance leadership responsibilities with being present on the ground?

You don’t balance by doing less. You balance by serving more people at the level you’re at. Senior leaders do orientations, job walks, kaizen events, and training at scale. You’re not in the weeds managing tasks. You’re on the ground helping more people.

What does sending the rope back down look like practically?

It means you keep training, mentoring, and serving as you rise. You do orientations like Ryan Schmidt. You work shoulder-to-shoulder with crews like Lauren Atwell. You stay present, accessible, and invested in elevating the people who are still climbing.