I was terribly racially victimised from the age of five

Sorry this happened to you. The world can be a dark place. Especially so young that could never be easy

Thanks very much for the response. I do understand your approach and thought process. There's lots for me to take away and apply and keep in mind

I always sought to focus on the problem, not the person.

This is probably the best approach because then it's process focused, how do we all do X better as a team etc. And if people come/go you have a refined process of tasks rather than 1 or a few experts and a hole if they decide to leave.

I was big on ownership, responsibility and discipline.

I think this is important too and I have some of the similar attributes of you like keep working until you find a solution to something and prove yourself to the right people as effective and ready to take whatever good opportunity comes next. I probably don't quite have the same work ethic as you do :) but close

My ceiling so far is process supervision/training of newer team members without doing performance reviews for people as the people management part is one level above me. And the manager above me is good/great at people management and bad at processes so that's a mixed bag :)

I believe leadership is in my make-up, part of me, and because of that I pursued more knowledge to make me better at it;

I think that more leadership is on the cards for me but it's not clear yet if that's to fill a gap because it's there in a relatively small company or a natural fit. Will definitely have to work hard to figure it out.