There is a man in your orbit watching you. A son, a younger brother, a guy on your crew who is nineteen and pretending he has it handled. He will never mention it, and he is taking notes on one thing only, which is how you behave when it goes badly.
Not your good week. Anybody can do a good week.
Authority arrives before competence does, usually by accident, and suddenly other people's mortgages run through decisions you make on a Tuesday afternoon with incomplete information and nobody to check your work. That gap never fully closes. Men who have led for thirty years still feel it. The difference is they stopped waiting for it to close before acting.
The conversation you are avoiding. Wanting to be liked, which is the fastest way to lose a room. Delegation that hands over the job and keeps the authority. Hiring, firing, and the honest weight of ending somebody's income. And the harder leadership, which is at home, where a crew can quit and a wife and a son cannot.
You were made into something in order to make others.
