As a fan of many sports, the biggest problem I have with the stars we watch on TV is that they’re not role models for the next generation of athletes. We cheer them on in stadiums and living rooms around the world, but we rarely hold them up as examples off the field.

The few exemplars that do stand out have often had to work hard to overcome extreme adversity in their personal lives before becoming masters at their sport. Their followers see them as models not only for their sporting ability, but for their approach to life. They are leaders who are creating more leaders, not just followers.

Both Ralph Nader and Tom Peters have said it: true leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders. First you need followers, though. I know, it’s so confusing!

In his book Turn the Ship Around! L. David Marquet offers some valuable insights into how to do this. As the captain of the submarine USS Santa Fe, he was charged with reinvigorating the team he was leading, 250 metres under the sea. What he discovered was a culture of order takers who hung on the words of the captain, not a team of leaders prepared to make autonomous decisions. So he decided to stop giving orders. It’s a great lesson for project managers. ‘Don’t preach and hope for ownership,’ Marquet writes, ‘implement mechanisms that actually give ownership’.

Move the language of your team away from ‘Can we?’ and ‘Do you think we should?’ to ‘I will’ and ‘I intend to’. Words can make a big difference to empowerment, and as a leader you need to encourage this awareness.

Derek Sivers’s 2010 TED talk ‘How to start a movement’ takes this a step further by showing how a leader can create followers, who in turn become leaders of the new movement. The catalyst for the movement isn’t the leader, he explains, but the first person to follow them. Once others see it’s the right thing to do, they’ll do likewise.

At one organisation I got it right. I put time and effort into creating a team of leaders. Finding ways to develop them. Encouraging them to use the right language. Showing them how to behave and communicate with different personalities. When I left the role, one of the team stepped up and is still there now.

At another organisation I got it wrong. With hindsight I understand that I put most of my time and effort into building a culture, rather than looking for opportunities to put my management team into different scenarios where they would learn what it would take to lead. Consequently, when I left the job, there was no clear candidate to step into my role and the culture slipped back into its old ways. This remains one of my biggest disappointments. I didn’t do enough to turn followers into leaders.

As leaders today, we have to work harder than we did 15 years ago. Not only do we need to behave impeccably and demonstrate the technical skills to those who follow us, but we also have to be technically savvy and embrace new and smarter ways of working.

Encouraging the team to think for themselves and outside of what they’re used to is one of the biggest challenges leaders face when converting followers. As L. David Marquet says, ‘Those who take orders usually run at half speed, underutilising their imagination and initiative, and that’s no good for anyone or the performance of your project when you’re not around’.