The Jethro Principle: Become Less Needed and More Valuable.
I see this every day with the leaders I work with.
Your phone starts ringing before your day begins. Your managers need answers. Their people come to you too. The texts pile up.
And by the end of the day, you’ve helped everybody else and barely touched the list of things you have to get done before you can break away from work.
I know that feeling, because it was me.
The company I co-founded had grown to 2,000 sales reps across America. We’d just taken it public. I had two young kids at home, and I was serving as elders quorum president at my church.
I was overwhelmed, overworked, disorganized, and burned out.
Out of necessity, just to stay alive, I had to find a better way to lead. It didn’t happen overnight. But one principle changed everything for me. It put me back in the driver’s seat when I had more to do than I could possibly get done.
I call it the Jethro Principle.
It’s how you become less needed and more valuable.
80% of his region, every single week
Recently, I was coaching Tayson, a regional sales manager with more than a hundred people in his region.
He told me he was personally talking to about 80% of them every single week.
Why?
Because he was afraid that if he stopped, he’d lose people. So he kept answering. Kept checking in. Kept carrying more.
And it was costing him. In his words: “I’m not able to pour into my Dream 10 as much as I could, because I’m talking to everybody’s guys.”
His Dream 10 is the short list of people he’s most focused on developing into leaders. It’s one of the tools in The Sellership System®, and I walk through how to build yours in this video: Watch: The Dream 10.
He knew it wasn’t sustainable. He just didn’t know how to get out of it.
I could relate. Because this is the question so many good leaders struggle with:
How do you step back without everything you’ve worked so hard to build crumbling?
So we opened the book of Exodus to a conversation between Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro. Thousands of years later, Jethro’s advice speaks directly to this problem.
A line out the door
Here’s the setting. Moses is both the spiritual leader and the governing leader of his people. He’s just a man. And this is what his days look like:
“And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening.” (Exodus 18:13)
He had a line out the door. People were standing and waiting from early in the day until late at night.
Jethro sees it and asks the question every overwhelmed leader needs someone to ask them:
“What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?” (Exodus 18:14)
In other words: Moses, what are you doing? Everybody’s waiting on you. Why is this happening?
Moses’ answer is the same one most of us would give:
“Because the people come unto me to enquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me.” (Exodus 18:15–16)
They need me. So I’m here for them.
That’s a good heart. It’s the same thing Tayson felt. It’s the same thing I felt. When you care about your people, being the one they come to feels like doing good work.
“The thing that thou doest is not good”
Then Jethro says something most leaders don’t want to hear:
“The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.” (Exodus 18:17–18)
Notice who Jethro says is wearing away. Not just Moses. Both thou, and this people.
We usually think of the overloaded leader as the only casualty. The burnout. The long nights. The family who gets what’s left.
But the people pay too. They spend their days waiting on you. Every decision that has to route through you slows them down. And every answer you give is one they didn’t learn to find themselves.
Good intentions. Bad system.
When every problem has to come through you, eventually you become the bottleneck. And a bottleneck can’t scale.
The Jethro Principle
Jethro doesn’t just point out the problem. He gives Moses a better way. Here’s how I teach it to sales leaders.
1. Identify able people.
“Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness.” (Exodus 18:21)
Jethro doesn’t say find anybody. He says find able people. People of character. People who can be trusted. People who are committed.
For a sales leader, that means looking at your team with a different question. Not just who produces, but who can carry responsibility for other people.
2. Organize.
“…and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” (Exodus 18:21)
Moses goes from one man with a line out the door to a structure. Every person has a leader close enough to actually help them.
For Tayson, it looked like this: his people should be working with their managers every week. If it’s something bigger than that, it goes to the manager. If it’s bigger than the manager, then it comes to him.
3. Teach.
“And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.” (Exodus 18:20)
This is the step leaders skip. They hand off responsibility without handing over understanding.
Teach the principles so people aren’t coming to you for every little thing. Show them how you think. Show them what good looks like. Then they can make the call without you in the room.
4. Delegate, with clear lines.
“…every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.” (Exodus 18:22)
This is where most delegation breaks down. Nobody knows which decisions are theirs.
So get clear. Which decisions can your leaders make on their own? Which ones actually need to come to you? Small matters stay with them. Great matters come to you. And when your leaders know the difference, they stop asking permission for things they can already handle.
Identify. Organize. Teach. Delegate.
Give your leaders clear responsibility. Teach them how to carry it. Get clear on which decisions are theirs.
“That I could pour into the guys I actually want to pour into”
When we finished reading, I asked Tayson what it would do for him, and for developing his leaders, if he started heading in that direction.
Here’s what he said:
“It would free up so much time for me that I could pour into the guys I actually want to pour into. And I think it would help level the guys up faster, because they have way more accountability.”
That’s the shift.
He wasn’t talking about doing less. He was talking about spending his time where it multiplies. And he saw it right away. His managers don’t grow while he’s carrying their load. They grow when they carry it.
The promise
Jethro ends his counsel with a promise:
“If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:23)
You’ll be able to endure. You’ll be able to keep leading, and be there for your wife and your kids, and actually have a life.
And your people go to their place in peace. They stop wasting their days waiting on you.
Then comes one of my favorite verses in the chapter:
“So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said.” (Exodus 18:24)
He listened. He changed. And it changed his life.
Less needed. More valuable.
Moses had good intentions. So did Tayson. So did I.
But scaling isn’t about finding a way for you to carry more.
It’s about developing people who can carry more.
Not because you care less. Because the people around you are becoming stronger, more capable, and less dependent on you for every answer.
That’s how you become less needed and more valuable. That’s how you free up your life while still getting the results you want.
Your challenge: start with one manager
Pick one manager. Then ask yourself:
What are they bringing to me today that I could help them learn to handle tomorrow?
Start there.
If every problem still finds its way back to you, working harder isn’t going to solve that. You need leaders who can carry more of the responsibility.
And as you identify your able men and women, you’re going to promote some of your best salespeople into leadership. They won’t automatically know how to lead at the highest level.
That’s why I created The First 90, a free 90-day development plan to help you turn a top producer into a leader. It shows you what to focus on as you start developing them, what questions to ask, and how to help them hit the ground running.
And if you want to sit in on the full conversation with Tayson as we work through Exodus 18 together, I go deeper in the video:
Start with one manager. Then do it with everyone you lead.
Make it a great day.
