Early in leadership, I treated being in the biggest project like proof I was still credible. I wanted the craft. I wanted the team to trust I was not a tourist. Then a senior director of product said something that sounded flattering and was actually a diagnosis ... when I was involved, projects went well. When I was not, they did not. I took it as a compliment at first. That was ego dressed up as humility. The real read was simpler. I had become load-bearing in a way that felt like leadership and functioned like risk. If my presence was the difference between success and drift, I had not built enough leverage through other people. I had built dependency with a nicer label on it. Call it whatever you want in a blog tag, the shape is the same. Decisions run through you. The wins cluster on the work you touch. You read that as proof you add value. It is actually proof the system is fragile, and you are the single point of failure wearing a title. So I did the harder work.…