From Lone Wolf to Team Builder

Written by: Jocelyne Bilodeau

Edited by: Jocelyn Martin

When I first stepped into a leadership role in social services, I was determined to prove I belonged there. It was my first time overseeing a program. I suddenly wasn’t just part of the team — I was responsible for it. Responsible for outcomes. Responsible for standards. Responsible for making sure everything ran smoothly.

And if I’m being honest? I believed that if I didn’t do it myself, it wouldn’t be done right. So I stayed late. I double-checked everything.
I took on tasks that weren’t actually mine to carry. I told myself I was being responsible. In reality, I was becoming a lone wolf.

The Slow Burn of Control

At first, it felt productive. I was efficient. Things were getting done. But slowly, something shifted. I was exhausted. I was irritable. I wasn’t growing — I was drowning. Then one day, an on-call supervisor said something that stopped me cold: 

“We don’t even call anyone else anymore. We know you’ll say yes.”

It wasn’t meant as criticism. It was almost said as a compliment. But it hit me like truth. I drove home that day in silence. I don’t even remember choosing where to go. I pulled into a random store parking lot and parked the car. I sat there staring ahead and started crying. Not because I was sad. But because I realized I had lost myself.

Somewhere along the way, saying yes to everything had become my identity. Being reliable had turned into being overextended. Proving I was capable had turned into carrying what was never mine to carry alone.

That moment forced me to confront something deeper.

In Positive Intelligence, Shirzad Chamine writes,

“Your Saboteurs are the internal enemies that judge you, your performance, and others” (p 27).¹

And even more striking:

“When your Saboteurs are running you, they hijack your mind and block your true potential for both performance and happiness” (p 6).

My saboteur wasn’t laziness or avoidance. It was over-performance. It was the part of me that believed my value depended on being the one who always said yes.

The Identity Shift

Later, when I revisited Bob Proctor’s Thinking Into Results, one principle from Lesson 2 echoed loudly in my mind:

“If you want to change your results, you must change your paradigm.”2 My results were burnout, overwhelm, and quiet resentment. My paradigm was simple and dangerous: If I don’t do it, it won’t be done right.

That belief shaped my leadership. And until I changed it, nothing else would.

In You², Price Pritchett explains something that felt almost confrontational when I first read it:

“You don’t get big results by making small improvements. You get them by making big leaps” (p. 9).³

And even more directly:

“Quantum leaps are not incremental improvements. They are discontinuous changes” (p. 5).

Delegating one small task wouldn’t fix this. I didn’t need a minor adjustment. I needed a leap. A discontinuous change in how I saw myself as a leader.

The Conversation That Changed Everything

Eventually, the burnout became too loud to ignore. I had a conversation with my supervisor — one of those honest, grounding conversations that shifts your trajectory. “You don’t have to do it all to be a good leader.”

That sentence cracked something open in me. Real leadership isn’t about being the most capable person in the room. It’s about building capability in the room. It’s about trusting others enough to step back. And trusting yourself enough to not measure your value by how much you carry.

From Doing Everything to Building Everyone

I began making changes — not tiny tweaks, but real shifts. I delegated tasks that didn’t require my hands, invited input instead of assuming responsibility and trusted my team to rise. Something surprising happened. The program didn’t weaken. It strengthened. When people feel trusted, they rise. When they feel ownership, they engage.

The house ran more smoothly. The team supported one another. And I no longer felt like I was holding the entire system together through sheer willpower.

I stopped being the lone wolf and I became a team builder.

What I Learned

Leadership is not about doing more. It’s about becoming more. It’s about recognizing when your identity is built on over-responsibility and having the courage to shift it. It’s about understanding that saying yes to everything may look like dedication — but sometimes it’s fear in disguise.

Influence emerges when control is replaced with trust and shared ownership. The strongest leaders are not lone wolves. They are team builders.

And sometimes, the turning point begins in a quiet parking lot — when you finally realize that leading well should not require losing yourself.

References

1. Chamine., S. (2020) Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours. Greenleaf Book Group Press

2. Proctor., B. Thinking Into Results Lesson 2. Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/document/465635888/Bob-Proctor-Thinking-into-Results-1

3. Pritchett., P. (2012) You 2: A High Velocity Formula for Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps. Pritchett & Associates