From The Daily Coach…

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849. She was 27 years old, she had traveled nearly 90 miles on foot through hostile territory, and she had reached Philadelphia. She was free. 

Many people would have stopped at that point. Certainly she had earned the right to. The risk she had taken was extraordinary, and the cost had been enormous. Freedom, once reached, would have been enough for almost anyone. 

Yet Tubman went back 19 times. Over the next decade, she returned again and again into the same danger she had escaped, guiding more than 300 people out of slavery through the Underground Railroad. She was never caught and never lost a passenger. She later said she could have freed thousands more if only they had known they were enslaved in their minds.

There are many ways to tell the Harriet Tubman story. The one that gets told least is probably the leadership one. 

As Tubman once said: “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world.” 

But it’s what Tubman did that separates leaders who are admired from leaders who are followed. She used everything she had gained, knowledge, experience, courage, credibility, not to secure her own position but to pull others forward. She treated her freedom not as a destination but as a resource. 

Tubman operated on a completely different definition of leadership and success. To her, success was how many people you brought with you. 

This is the question that most leaders have to face, even if they don’t frame it that way. You’ve built something, you’ve learned something, you’ve gotten somewhere. But now what? 

The easy answer is to protect it, consolidate, or enjoy what was earned. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it tends to produce a certain kind of leader: one who is respected from a distance, one who built something, but not something that outlasts them. 

The harder answer is to go back, to invest in the person who is where you were 10 years ago, and to sponsor someone who has no political value to you. Or to mentor the rookie or assistant coach who will eventually take your spot. To share the knowledge that took you decades to accumulate with someone who is just starting out. 

Tubman understood that freedom hoarded is another kind of captivity. What you don’t give away, what you don’t reinvest in others, eventually becomes ego and isolation.

Leaders who leave deep marks are almost never the ones who accumulated the most. They’re the ones who turned around, who looked back down the mountain and asked who still needed help getting up. 

The instinct is available to everyone, in every organization, every locker room, every team, every relationship. 

Are you willing to use what you’ve earned for something beyond yourself?

In other words: Who are you going back for?