The Credit You Keep for Yourself Is Costing You Your Best People

In a leadership update, maybe you said “we” landed the account. Everyone in the room knew exactly whose idea actually closed it, and it wasn’t yours. Nobody corrected you out loud. But your best people were doing math in that meeting, and the number they were calculating wasn’t the deal size – it was whether they were truly valued members of your team or just stepping stones on your ladder to success.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: The “We” That Was Actually a “They”

Absorbing credit rarely feels like theft from the inside. It feels like representing the team, protecting them from exposure, keeping the narrative simple for leadership above you. But your most capable people notice whether their specific contribution ever gets named out loud, or whether it just disappears into a collective pronoun that conveniently includes you. Do this often enough and your best performers stop bringing you their best ideas at all — why hand over something that’s just going to become “we” by Thursday’s update? Talented people don’t leave teams that challenge them. They leave teams that erase them.

H – Hear: Going Before Each Other in Honor

“Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” (Romans 12:10)

The Greek behind this verse is doing more work than the English translation lets on. “Brotherly affection” is philostorgoi — a compound word built specifically for the warm, instinctive affection of family, not the professional courtesy you’d extend a colleague. And “outdo one another in showing honor” is literally proēgoumenoi, meaning to go before, to lead the way. Paul isn’t picturing people competing for credit. He’s picturing people racing each other to give it away — each one trying to be first to name the other’s contribution before anyone else beats them to it. That is a strange, countercultural instinct in a boardroom trained to protect their own name recognition. It is exactly the instinct God’s love produces in a leader who has nothing to prove.

E – Exchange: The Trade Between Absorbing the Credit and Naming the Contributor

What has to be exchanged is the quiet habit of letting credit blur into “we” and instead making a distinct point to give honor where honor is due.

Because God’s love is like a Father who delights to name and reward His children, how does that change the next update you give about your team’s work?

W – Walk: The Public Credit Script

Use this the next time you’re tempted to say “we” when you mean “she” or “he”:

Practical Tool

In your next team update, leadership meeting, or client call, name one specific person by name and one specific thing they did — no qualifiers, no shared credit, no “and the whole team pulled together too” softening it afterward. 

Script: “I want to be specific about something — [Name] is the one who [specific action]. That’s why this worked.” 

Say it once, cleanly, and stop talking.

Closing question: Closing question: Whose name have you been leaving out of your own success story?