Leadership is a road, not a destination. And it’s time to start walking.

Embrace these 7 tenets on your path to empower others.

A very wise and down-to-earth CEO once told me that (paraphrasing) her job as CEO is to make herself unnecessary. Of course, she didn’t mean that the company didn’t need a CEO — it was about empowering the managers and leaders of the company to know and understand everything, so that the company could always move forward, with or without her. A couple years later, she left for a new opportunity, but she had accomplished her goal. The company did indeed move forward successfully — customers were helped, products shipped, revenue kept moving upward and the company’s presence continued to grow.

As leaders we must work to empower and grow the people around us. But most important of all is that it’s a lifelong endeavor.

But let’s get one thing clear — just because you are a manager, it doesn’t mean that you are a leader. And being a leader doesn’t mean you have personnel directly reporting to you, although you might.

The good news is, however, you can learn to be a leader as long as you have the dedication and passion to be one. You may not get there — many don’t — but that doesn’t mean you should not try.