Why I Give Away Credit — And Why It Makes Me More Powerful

There's a scarcity mindset in most organizations around credit. Leaders accumulate it. They attribute wins upward to themselves and failures downward to their teams. They treat recognition as a finite resource that must be hoarded.

I operate from the opposite assumption. Credit is generative. The more you give away, the more you produce.

Here's what I mean.

The Hidden Cost of Credit Hoarding

When leaders take credit for their team's work, something invisible happens: the team starts to hold back. The best idea gets kept quiet because "why bother — he'll take credit for it anyway." The extra mile doesn't get walked because "no one's going to notice it was me."

Over time, you end up with a team that executes instructions rather than generates initiative. You become the permanent bottleneck. You work harder. The team works less hard. And the quality ceiling drops to whatever you can personally produce.

That's not leverage. That's a trap.

What Giving Credit Actually Does

When I publicly attribute a win to the person who actually produced it — by name, with specifics, in the meeting where it matters — several things happen simultaneously.

That person grows into the attribution. Human beings have a tendency to meet the expectation that's been set publicly for them. When I say "Marcus solved this problem — let me have him walk you through it," Marcus becomes the person who solves that kind of problem. That's not just perception management. That's identity development in real time.

The rest of the team pays attention. They learn that expertise gets recognized here. That initiative gets attributed. That being known for solving something valuable is a real outcome, not a fantasy.

And I get something back that's worth far more than a single win: loyalty, initiative, and a team that's actively looking for the next problem to solve.

The SME Credit Loop

This is why my SME program isn't just about assigning domains — it's about making sure the credit for those domains is visibly tracked back to the person who owns them.

When an accessibility issue gets solved in a cross-functional meeting, I don't say "my team handled it." I say: "Jordan has been our WCAG subject matter expert for the past six months — Jordan, walk us through what we found."

Jordan walks into that meeting as an authority. They leave it as one.

Multiply that across a team of 65 people and you've built something that can't be replicated by bringing in outside experts: a self-reinforcing culture of recognized expertise.

The leaders I've respected most were the ones who made the people around them shine. Not because they were selfless — though many of them were — but because they understood the math.

Giving credit is a compounding investment. You don't spend it. You multiply it.

Be generous with credit. The authority that returns to you will be earned, specific, and durable — not borrowed from a title.