Async leadership isn't about stepping back It’s about making space

The first step in my async leadership system

I have a system for how I practice async leadership. It has not only made me more efficient and impactful at work, but it has also made my work and my team’s experience much more enjoyable.

My system has three phases:

• Reacting to information

• Turning information into knowledge

• Async direction

In this article, I’ll focus on the first phase, reacting to information. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also the most dangerous of the three. This phase, which I sometimes call being in reaction mode, is about responding to information, not tasks. But it’s also about surfacing what’s not immediately visible, engaging just enough to draw out signals that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Early in my game dev career, I saw that reactivity was rewarded. It built trust. I became the reliable one, the go-to when the pressure mounted. But as my experience grew, I started to feel the danger in that pattern. Jumping in to fix a problem everyone worried about felt great. So great, in fact, that it created a dopamine loop. I began to chase that feeling of saving the day. When you combine that with the imposter syndrome that so many of us carry, it becomes a fast track to burnout.

This becomes even more risky when you move into a leadership role.

Leadership brings more visibility, more responsibilities, more chances to insert yourself, and more opportunities to feel needed. If you keep reacting to everything, you eventually turn yourself into the system. Every decision flows through you. Every blocker waits on you.

You are not becoming a great leader.

You are becoming a dangerous dependency.

This is not only a risk for you, it becomes a risk for your entire team and potentially for the whole company. When everything routes through you, people learn to wait. They ask before acting. They rely on you when they should be trusting themselves and one another. And what happens if you get hit by that metaphorical bus… the whole system shuts down.

The hardest part about growing into leadership roles is learning how to step back. This is difficult because you've been conditioned to react. You know the answers. You know the solutions. You might even feel like you are not useful anymore because you are no longer diving headfirst into every situation where you could contribute.

But stepping back does not create distance. It creates space.

• Space for people to take ownership.

• Space for teams to self-organize.

• Space for individuals to do their best work.

This space only opens when there is trust. Not just trust in your team, but trust in your own leadership. You need to believe that the direction you have set is clear enough to carry forward without you. Trust does not come from constant involvement. It comes from setting a direction and then letting go. This is when people thrive. Autonomy grows. People feel more valuable and more capable.

When I struggled with this, I thought I needed to stop being reactive entirely. But I had a hard time with that because the truth is, I love being in this mode. I love the energy, the urgency, and the sense of togetherness that comes from pushing forward with talented people. When I began practicing async leadership, I realized I didn’t need to stop. I just needed to shift the purpose behind it.

Reaction mode is still one of the most important parts of how I operate. And honestly, it is probably when I’m having the most fun. I’m high-energy, move quickly between Slack threads, dive into complex conversations, and explore projects from different angles. Not because I need to act on anything. Not because I’m worried about deadlines or task status. I do it because I’m trying to surface information.

I’m not there to steer every decision or shadow every move. I’m there to sense how the system is operating, what’s rising, what’s stuck, and where energy is building or draining.

That information becomes the raw material I use in the next phases of my system. It becomes knowledge, and eventually, async direction.

Everything I gather gets captured in my second brain. I save notes, threads, links, screenshots, images, and anything else that feels relevant. But I’m not just collecting hard data. There is another kind of signal I pay close attention to. It is less measurable, but just as important. I look for energy and passion.

I ask myself:

• Do I sense worry in the voice of a programmer talking about a system?

• Is there excitement in the way a designer describes an idea?

That energy is just as valuable as a clear answer or a written plan. It gives me context. When I move into the knowledge phase, I follow up with the programmer to understand what is behind the concern. I talk with the designer to figure out how to support and amplify the value they see in their idea.

This approach puts me in the best position to provide direction and effective leadership. More importantly, it helps the team feel seen and valued. They understand that I'm not here to parachute in and fix every problem. My role is to give them the tools, guidance, and space to do their best work.

In this phase, we need to lean on our experience as masters of our crafts, all these times that we did put out the fire or patch the live servers. We use this experience to ask the right questions, listen for the emotion and maintain the flow. But we don't dive in.

Reaction mode isn’t about being in control. It’s about being plugged in.

And that’s where real async leadership begins.