Leadership is one of the rare topics that ranks high in importance, but low in know-how. Most leaders get promoted to the roles they’re in for being excellent individual contributors. The prolific software engineer becomes a director of engineering, the killer account manager becomes the VP of client services, the awesome operator becomes the SVP of operations.

What isn’t always clear is that leadership roles require a fundamentally different skillset than individual contributor positions.

One of the most common leadership questions is whether leaders should strive to lead from the front or back of their organizations. The word “leadership” stereotypically conjures image of the front. Washington leading his troops across the Delaware river or Steve Jobs revolutionizing consumer technology as the visionary behind the iPhone.

Conventional wisdom has always pointed to leading from the front to be the way to go, but recent research gives several reasons to lead from the back. Here are a couple:

Many Hands make Innovation

While pop culture will point to a singular innovator as the reason for inventions such as the iPhone (Jobs) or the Tesla (Musk), the reality is that innovation is the result of many individuals’ work. Rather than being the sole source of ideas, leaders should strive to create environments where entire teams have the autonomy to come up with ideas and iteratively move towards true innovation. One giant innovative idea is actually the combination of dozens (or maybe even hundreds!) of small innovative ideas.

Lack of Ego

Leaders who lead from behind are completely willing, and even desire, to give credit to their team. They cultivate environments where team members feel valued and are empowered to stretch beyond their job descriptions. This manifests as being willing to throw ideas out in meetings, drive projects without supervision, and chase threads on autonomously.

Fundamentally, this means that leaders must view themselves as “cultivators of communities” rather than “the sole source of ideas”. There must be trust that if a leader creates a community where ideas are generated, tested, and iterated upon at rapid velocity then there will naturally be innovation. This innovation is reward enough for a leader even if it means that she is not the one coming up with all the ideas.