As the world takes in the ravages and horrors of the war in Ukraine, it’s revealed an unexpected and heroic story about leadership.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as the steadfast leader his country desperately needed, while Russian President Vladimir Putin’s iron leadership is in doubt. Yet within these real-time battles are also crucial, real-world lessons for every leader and business, says one lauded wartime author-expert, Christopher D. Kolenda — a trusted adviser to three four-star generals and two undersecretaries of defense. He became the first American to have both fought the Taliban as a commander in combat and negotiated with them in peace talks. 

What comes to mind when you hear the word discipline? Most people think of punishment. They view discipline as a way to gain compliance and turn people into unquestioning automatons. This type of discipline is extrinsic, and it’s common in many compliance cultures.

But there’s a second form of discipline, one that you’ll find in the best military units: intrinsic discipline. Intrinsic discipline occurs when people advance the common good voluntarily. It comes about when people understand the difference between right and wrong and do what’s right—even when the boss isn’t watching or when times are difficult.

Intrinsic discipline is a powerful tool. It creates the trust that’s needed to promote organizational initiatives, it empowers your people, and it produces a durable competitive advantage—all factors that lead to success in business and on the battlefield.

However, intrinsic discipline doesn’t happen by accident. As a leader, you must develop it intentionally, or your teams will get stuck in extrinsic compliance. But where should you start?

1. Define and explain the common good.

The first step to gaining your team’s commitment to the common good is to define and explain it so your people understand what it is, why it’s important, and how the organization will get there.

Xenophon, a pupil of Socrates and an experienced military commander, was the first great thinker in the Western world to outline this component of discipline. According to Xenophon, the first step to intrinsic discipline begins with the leader, who must possess areté—a combination of character and competence—to gain support from followers even in times of great danger.

Xenophon explains that leaders must teach their followers the common good and the difference between correct and incorrect performance and behavior. Defining and explaining the common good will create clear expectations and explain why you’re asking people to do what they do.

“Obedience,” Xenophon tells us, “must be given voluntarily rather than under compulsion.”

2. Gain buy-in by building trust.

The second step is to gain buy-in by building trust. People need to trust their leader, the desired outcomes (your organization’s vision, mission, and goals), and how they’ll reach these outcomes (through values, expectations, and strategies).

As so many studies of human decision-making attest, people make choices based on emotion and then rationalize those decisions. Trust and mutual respect are what create this emotional connection.

Exceptional military leaders understand this. While admonishing the United States Military Academy Corps of Cadets to end the practice of hazing in 1879, Academy Superintendent General John M. Schofield crafted what’s now referred to as “Schofield’s Definition of Discipline,” which still must be memorized by all West Point cadets:

The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instructions and to give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice to inspire in the soldier no feeling but an intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey.

The one mode or the other of dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due to others cannot fail to inspire in them regard for himself, while he who feels, and hence manifests, disrespect toward others, especially his inferiors, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.

The takeaway? Leaders who are trustworthy and treat people with respect create an environment in which intrinsic discipline can emerge.

3. Strengthen accountability.

The third step is to strengthen accountability. Accountability means to be answerable. It’s a four-way intersection: up, down, and lateral. Everyone on the team needs to be answerable for doing the right things in the right ways.

Importantly, this includes you as a leader; accountability begins in the mirror. Leaders need to walk the talk and enforce standards consistently so that everyone sees that the standards are essential rather than arbitrary.

As Greek military leader Xenophon explains:

“Good workers get depressed when they see that, although they are the ones doing all of the work, the others get the same as they do, despite making no effort and being unprepared to face danger, if need be.”

Playing favorites and haphazard enforcement are morale killers—they indicate to everyone involved that the standards and expectations are arbitrary and unimportant. And Xenophon is quite clear that the leader, not the followers, is to blame if the expectations and their importance are unclear or selectively followed.

To illustrate this principle, Xenophon provides examples in his famous work Anabasis of two commanders during the expedition with Cyrus against the Persian king Xerxes in 401 B.C. Both commanders failed in different ways.

Clearchus, a Spartan commander, took pride in his severity, believing that soldiers should fear their superiors more than the enemy. Because his rule was considered arbitrary, many of his men deserted.

In contrast, Proxenus, a Boeotian and a friend of Xenophon, sought to win the love of his soldiers by withholding praise from wrongdoers instead of punishing them. He became an object of contempt, and his soldiers ran roughshod over him.

The bottom line

These three steps—clarity, buy-in, and accountability—are the foundations for intrinsic discipline. They interact like a Venn diagram: Clarity and buy-in without accountability mean that any good results are a matter of luck. Clarity and accountability without buy-in creates compliance only, and people won’t contribute their best. Buy-in and accountability without clarity creates the hamster wheel effect: a lot of activity but no movement toward your goals. Having all three in place helps organizations move from compliance to a deeply inspired culture.

Have you ever led a team that can’t seem to live up to its potential? Or a team that consistently misses deadlines? Team members don’t share information? Don’t contribute during meetings? Call each other names and don’t adhere to company culture?

Employees leaving in the Great Resignation say they don’t feel valued. Employees are downsizing their contributions, stating that they experience bias and don’t feel they can bring their authentic selves to work. Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs U.S. companies $450-$550 billion per year.

This begs the question for you as a leader: How do you keep and get the most out of your team? Whether you’re a supervisor or senior executive, knowing the answer to this question is the ticket to success. 

The answer is establishing a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). As proof, World Economic Council studies confirm that diverse organizations outperform their peers who aren’t diverse across a wide range of key performance metrics, including profitability (25-36%), innovation (20%), decision-making (30%), and employee engagement (statistically significant).

This is because when diverse people are included and treated equitably, they feel that they belong and can bring their authentic selves to work. They feel comfortable sharing their different perspectives. And different perspectives are necessary for high-performing teams. That’s the value of DEIB – a means to the end that is superior organizational performance.

But how is diversity achieved? How are equitable and inclusive practices executed? How are people made to feel that they belong? All these occur through the efforts of skilled leaders.

Leaders who’ve acquired the secret weapon of leading through DEIB go through what Jennifer Brown calls the “Leadership Continuum.”

Phase 1

A leader is unaware of diversity and its value. The leader thinks diversity is compliance-related — something the government makes you do. It’s considered simply tolerating others. Ensuring that DEIB happens is someone else’s job, not the leader’s, so it’s not worth paying attention to.

Phase 2

A leader becomes aware of having a role to play in DEIB and begins looking into how best to move forward at the interpersonal level. The levers that a leader can pull at this stage of development are:

• Showing respect for the opinion of every employee
• Keeping quiet when appropriate
• Challenging assumptions
• Having empathy and humor
• Interrupting any bias

Phase 3

A leader has shifted priorities and is finding a voice in taking meaningful action that supports others. This is moving away from an autocratic management style to a collaborative management style. The leader has shifted from acting in a private way to acting in a public way. The levers to pull to make this stage happen include:

• Mentoring and sponsoring
• Showing vulnerability
• Taping into your “why”

Being cognizant of the unique challenges faced by diverse people and being available to help them through these challenges.

Phase 4

A leader proactively and consistently confronts discrimination. The leader uses an equity lens and ensures that everyone else uses that equity lens. The leader works to bring about change in order to prevent discrimination on a systemic level by evaluating how policies and procedures are implemented and followed. The levers at this stage are:

• Examining norms with the goal of leveling the playing field at work and in life
• Identifying and working to correct systemic inequities
  
  Team members who feel that they’re included and supported will then:
  

• Trust their leader and others on the team, which reduces drama and delays
• Have clarity on what they need to do to contribute, which drives accuracy and coordination
• Feel a sense of accountability for their work, which drives completion of tasks on-time and on-budget
• Are more engaged because they know their work has meaning and impact, which drives productivity
• Exhibit a winning attitude that drives engagement and innovation.
  
  DEIB is a secret weapon for getting the most out of your team. Honing the skills to use this weapon comes from moving through the phases of unawareness, awareness, action, and advocacy. Granted, this takes time, but research proves that the results of leading high-performing teams are well worth an allocation in any leader’s schedule.

“The only way to become good at something is to practice the ordinary basics for an uncommon length of time. Most people get bored. They want excitement. They want something to talk about, and no- one talks about the boring basics. Boredom encourages you to stop doing what you know works and do something that might work.” – Farnam Street

I’ve had my struggles with ambition. 

For those familiar with the Enneagram tool for developing leaders, one of the nine Enneagram types is the Competitive Achiever, which describes individuals whose core motivation is to win or impress. 

It has its upsides in that these sorts of individuals get a lot done and create much energy that sweeps others up in their endeavors.

But there is a downside. Impatience.

Over time, I have learned to wait. To not act. To observe and consider my plans more carefully before I pull the trigger. To not put the rush of achievement aside and find a wiser part of me, has a better perspective, and makes better-informed choices.

When it comes to building your CEO skill set, the truth is that it is a long journey. Not a taxing journey – quite the opposite. But becoming a stand-out CEO is not an overnight thing and requires inch-gains over a long period to build a set of competencies that are sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the CEO role. 

My observation is that impatience can wreck the process of becoming a higher-order CEO. 

The desire to move the needle quickly by demanding instant results gets in the way of building this nuanced skill set. Impatience is an energy rush that eviscerates the care, dedication, and fine attention to detail that separates exceptional CEOs from average CEOs.

Take internal communication as an example. You can bang out an email that lays out your requirements. Or you can craft a communique that has a story to it, references anecdotal evidence, uses descriptive metaphors, and generously shares your insight and struggles. 

A quick email will do the job, but a communique will move people permanently by being compelling, persuasive, and enticing. The benefits will continue to pay dividends down the line and likely avoid the need for more directive and instructional communication.

You might question the ROT (Return on Time) of such efforts if you are impatient about your craft. 

But take the long view and recognize the wisdom in the above quote. You’ll warm to the task, do it excellently, and take one more step toward becoming a higher-order CEO, aggregating the myriad benefits along the way.

Behind every successful business is a finely balanced set of competing tensions. As a leader, it is your responsibility to find the right balance for your particular business in order to create long-term success.

Responding to the tensions they face is a critical decision for any leader, as the wrong response could tip the scales and lead to significant problems.

Tensions are an entirely natural part of business, and they can’t simply be ignored in the hope that everything will sort itself out in time; failure to make a decision is a choice by default.

The goal isn’t to eradicate tensions, as this is neither possible nor beneficial. What is needed is a strategic approach to managing these tensions, one where choices are made between competing demands. By doing so, a business starts to figure out exactly what kind of organization it wants to be and begins to prioritize the aspects that are most important.

Tensions are rising

We only have to look to COP26 to see how managing competing tensions around sustainability is playing out in businesses across the globe right now. As a planet, we must transition from a carbon-intensive economy to one that favors sustainability. This isn’t the natural position for many businesses that were not created with this goal in mind. For many, it’s an entirely new tension to manage as they figure out how to balance business growth, profits, and shareholder value with being environmentally and socially sustainable.

Another tension that is present in many businesses is the continued evolution of society, and the changing wants, needs, and motivations of younger generations of employees, customers, and stakeholders. A new breed of business is emerging, where decentralization and people-centricity supersede hierarchical ‘command and control’ style leadership. With every new idea comes a new model for success, new tensions to balance, new choices to make, new opportunities to grasp, and ultimately, a new balance to find.

Success v Failure

Businesses are under significant pressure to make these critical decisions in real time, and before any damage is done. Given the immediacy of modern global news reporting, it’s pretty clear which businesses are failing to balance their tensions effectively, as they’ll be the ones we read about in the news.

Some recent examples include the stories leaked from unhappy Amazon warehouse workers, where it appears that the tensions between command-and-control leadership and worker trust and autonomy are out of kilter. Shell and BP’s continued prioritization of short-term commercial reward over long-term sustainability is a tension that will only get tighter, particularly in light of greater awareness of the role fossil fuels play in climate change. Nokia’s historic fall from grace illustrates the danger of prioritizing incremental improvements in existing products over new product innovations, such as touchscreen technology.

These businesses are not alone, far from it. I could go on citing examples of businesses that are struggling to balance their business tensions effectively. It’s a constant process as different forces come in and out of play. What is much harder is to find those who have got the balance just right.

Many of the businesses that are balancing things well are hidden from sight, perhaps because the news doesn’t find their success ‘click worthy’. But I can assure you they are there.

One such example is Buurtzorg, a pioneering healthcare organization established in 2006 with a nurse-led model of holistic care that revolutionized community care. Buurtzorg is Dutch for ‘Neighborhood Care’ and their ability to balance the tensions has seen them grow from a small nurse-led start-up to providing support to nearly 100,000 people today. The company has created a way to balance patient needs with regulatory standards, nurses’ desire for autonomy over care pathways, and affordability.

Identifying tensions

The business of balancing tensions is unique to each organization, but that does not mean that the tensions themselves are different. There is much common ground between the varying strategic tensions that are present in modern business.

Common business tensions include:

● Short-term goals v long term vision
● Commercial ambition v sustainability
● Control v freedom
● Transformation v incremental change
● Challenge v support
● Purpose v profit

The Principles behind Balance

Having identified the key tensions a business faces, the next step is knowing which to prioritize. A business’s values alone cannot guide the decision-making process as they tend to be too vague to be enough in the face of a difficult choice.

Instead, it is essential to develop a set of strategy or design principles. These act as a set of rules to follow when faced with an important decision and help to define the type of organization you want to be.

These principles should ensure that making difficult decisions is easy. A great example of this was the response by Crossfit New England Owner Ben Bergeron to the Covid-19 outbreak. Given that the overarching goal of the company was to ‘optimize members’ health over the long-term, the decision to sacrifice short-term income by closing the gyms in order to protect them from infection, was crystal clear.

It doesn’t mean action will be easy, of course, that’s the toughest part. The next step is to build accountability systems so that these decisions aren’t ignored or overruled. Turning these principles into measurable behaviors or actions means that the organization can track its progress and celebrate when they are achieved.

Maintaining internal communications is essential to continued buy-in across the organization as is being transparent when the road has been rocky, but you stayed true to your principles.

The Board also has a major role to play in choosing which stakeholders matter the most, and in whose best interests the firm should act when faced with a difficult decision.

In conclusion, an organization is the culmination of every decision made by the company’s leaders when faced with competing tensions. Balancing the business scales simply cannot be left to chance; it’s not a decision you can abstain from. By consciously choosing what decisions you take and designing a set of principles that the business abides by, even when faced with difficult choices, you can ensure that the act of balancing becomes a deliberate one, the rewards of which are plentiful.

‘Leadership is a contact sport’.

To lead means to engage, to talk, the debate, to steer, to manage, to placate. All of that happens in conversations, and so it stands to reason that knowing how to architect a leadership conversation really matters. It’s an easily-dismissed point, however. After all, talking is natural and many leaders don’t feel that it requires a particular skill or more than a cursory focus.

But not if you believe in the craft of leadership; where every word uttered, every email sent, and every offsite held is an opportunity to shape people and their behaviors.

Here’s my take on what a great leadership conversation looks like:

• Settle people in so that their thinking is grounded, their nervous systems are placated and their thoughts are deliberate.
• Provide careful framing as to what is being discussed or decided. Be clear about what’s not on the table.
• Position the issue carefully, so that all important aspects of the conversation are understood (note: give yourself permission to be prescriptive here – you, as the CEO, have a far broader perspective than they do).
• Open it up for various points of view to surface. Listen for long periods of time so that the conversation evolves and you become more clear on the full range of perspectives.
• Share your summary observations about what is being said, what isn’t being said, and the choices that are available to make.
• Make a choice and communicate it fully, being clear about why you’ve chosen this direction and what the full implications are.
• Check for alignment, and name where you feel alignment isn’t there.
• Be clear about the next steps, who is responsible for which actions, and by when.
• Close the conversation so that everyone feels ‘complete and ready’ to move on to other things.

Once you appreciate how important and nuanced conversations are, it will open up a whole world of opportunities for you to express your leadership craft. The thoughts a CEO shares carry heavy, heavyweight and you want to be ultra-careful about giving conversations the attention they deserve.
Consider conversation to be a performance. That elevates them to the place they deserve to be.

Every so often, I try and share a broad perspective about what I’m seeing across my CEO advisory landscape to make a comparison with other CEOs or recognize similar challenges that CEOs are facing to yours.

My hope is that it a) gives you a sense that you are not alone, and b) gives you some ideas or inspiration to push on.

‘Pushing on’ matters because it’s linked to ambition, and ambition is a marker of sorts: about your level of vitality as well as a measure of your clarity of purpose.

Being on the cusp is probably a familiar position to find yourself in as a CEO. There’s a constant barrage of stimuli coming at you which can either function as an inspiration or a threat. Knowing this is one thing, but acting on it is another — and these actions require courage. Maybe some encouragement or prompting might push you over the rise and get you going on a more profound path.

Here’s what I’m seeing:

• The CEO’s choice to take on the new ways of operating that are now on offer, given the maturing understanding of what a relevant and modern business is.
• The decision to embrace leadership as a performance-enhancing lever and to invest generously in building good leaders around the CEO.
• The choice to interrogate the base viability of your business to ensure its future competitiveness and to be brave about revealing the blind spots that are so prevalent in business strategies and which keep businesses stuck in 2nd gear.
• The willingness to embrace the fact that the CEO position is a complex, nuanced position that requires deep attention being paid to the quality of the CEO’s development. A CEO’s character in particular.
• To embrace the fact that most CEOs are, in fact, struggling, and to do what it takes to change their reality from dis-ease to ease.
• To accept the fact that budgeting, as a practice, is a poor investment of time and energy and move to a more flexible, responsive way of allocating capital.
• To bravely accept when a business model has lost its edge and to come up with a new and better formula for success in order to reinvigorate a business.
• The common denominator is ‘will’. The will to change or elevate. There are plenty of reasons not to, given that remaining as-is offers the (false) specter of safety.

That’s a form of being ‘on the cusp’: teetering, wondering, hoping, waiting. If that’s where you feel you are, then push on. Take the leap.

Fortune favours the brave in this new world of work

We see examples of the misuse of power and poor leadership in the news on a daily basis, whether on the political, corporate, or world stages. But recently we have been seeing a refreshing leadership style by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. What is it about him that has us all so enamored?

We are bearing witness to a leader who is using courage and compassion to lead his people. Indeed, Zelensky’s heart-based leadership has captured the hearts of his people and those around the world. Zelensky is rewriting history by embodying the power of the heart in his leadership.

What Is Heart-Based Leadership? In action, it is when leaders fully utilize their skills and humanness to guide their communication, choices, and relationships with others.

Men aspiring to be allies and leaders typically ask the question, “What do I do?” The reality is that this is more a question about our states of being and we should ask ourselves how to achieve our highest state.

If we all need to aspire to be in our best state, then most certainly our leaders need to be in theirs — to connect with us, to empower us, to lead from their hearts.

Men in power and position need to be in their hearts and model a different relationship with their own sense of masculinity. As a playbook for leaders, the power of the heart has five cornerstones to guide leadership:

Emotional Literacy
Emotional literacy requires that we have a conscious relationship with our emotions so we can experience them instead of ignore them and allow them to build unchecked. More importantly, we can respond instead of reacting. No doubt Zelensky feels unimaginable depths of fear, anger and sadness, yet he remains grounded and taps into the strength of his heart to maintain composure and lead his people.

Vulnerability
Vulnerability gets a bad rap and is unfortunately often seen as a sign of weakness as opposed to a sign of strength. True power comes from one’s willingness to be vulnerable — and this is especially true for leaders, as vulnerability fosters trust and respect from others. We can measure how brave you are by how vulnerable you’re willing to be. President Zelensky, perhaps thanks to his training as an actor, models his emotions for all to see, and allows vulnerability to be one of his strengths. Further, his vulnerability serves to demonstrate the deep empathy he has for his people.

Authenticity
Instead of portraying the image of what you think others need to see, which is persona-driven, authenticity is all about character … as in yours. People see through the performative tactics of inauthentic leadership. Zelensky recognizes the world stage he finds himself on and rather than performing, he shows us who he really is. The result? Both his people and the international community want to follow and support him. His authenticity is quickly earning him trust and respect.

Inclusivity
Those who lead from the heart possess the power to make everyone feel included. When people feel like they belong, they make more positive contributions. A culture of inclusion is imperative for good performance in business as in life. The solidarity Zelensky has inspired amongst Ukrainians and the international community at large is a testament to his inclusive leadership.

Love
There is true love in seeing, listening to, respecting, and valuing others for who they are and what they contribute. When Zelinsky recognizes the men, women, and children around him who have been through horrific experiences, when he listens to their stories, respects them, and values their contributions, he is demonstrating love.

There is true power in leading with heart. It takes copious amounts of courage and compassion — for oneself as well as for others. Those who lead with heart are authentic and demonstrate vulnerability. While they are not fearless, they are willing to face their own emotions and grow from their experiences. They center others, encourage others, and don’t let their egos run the show. They know life is not a dress rehearsal, and ergo, they work indefatigably to achieve their highest state of being. Heart-based leaders galvanize the strength of those they lead and inspire them to rise to their highest states — where just about anything is possible.

In 2016, I held a learning exercise with 222 senior leaders from a sophisticated billion-dollar technology company. I asked attendees to jot down the company’s single-sentence corporate mission statement on an index card. Unfortunately, less than 2% of the leaders in attendance could do so.

I asked leaders to describe their job roles in five to seven bullet points on a second index card. The vast majority of responses, 86%, had to do with job functions, the duties and tasks associated with their roles: managing, staffing, problem-solving, forecasting, strategizing, traveling, etc.

Only 14% of the responses related to their job’s purpose, their single highest priority at work. These responses included relationship-building, delighting customers, and going the extra mile.

On a third index card, I asked the group to record their employees’ single highest priority at work. Roughly 70% of their responses were—you guessed it—about their employees’ job functions.

Later in the presentation, I revisited this question, suggesting that these leaders pose the question to employees: “What’s your single highest priority at work?”

Then I asked the group, “What would you want them to say?”

The group came alive as people shared aspirational responses they’d hope to hear from their teams, such as safety, customer service, quality, productivity, cost containment, and teamwork.

Then I asked the group, “But how would they know to say that?”

The room grew quiet as these leaders faced a sobering realization.

Employees model their leaders

Employees are pretty observant; they don’t miss much. The actions and behaviors they see modeled and the ideals their immediate supervisor appears to value will inform their decisions and behavior at work. If they see a management team that prioritizes tasks, efficiencies, and productivity (job functions), then that’s what they’ll focus on—often at the expense of the company’s own mission.

Jobs are more than ‘what’ and ‘how’

In every organization, there’s a systemic relationship between purpose (why we do something), the work itself (what we do), and the methods used (how we do it).

In the absence of a clearly defined “why we do something,” other priorities (usually job functions) fill the void. In these instances, employees go to work to reliably execute job assignments rather than with the mission to achieve a higher purpose. They’re given a task to work on rather than a purpose to work toward.

But work is more fulfilling when employees know that what they do makes a difference and that their jobs have purpose and meaning. This isn’t a romantic notion. In most organizations, purpose and meaning are elusive and difficult to define, measure, and pursue.

Why your employees don’t know their ‘why’

As my example above shows, leaders and managers who discount the relevance of meaning in the workplace may lack it themselves. And if these leadership teams are disconnected from their purpose at work, how can their subordinates reasonably be expected to reflect their purpose in their actions and behaviors consistently?

They can’t. Your employees don’t know their “why” for three very real reasons:

Job functions are visible and concrete. Managers can see them, touch them, and measure them daily. They are a real, relevant, and credible part of managers’ world of work, whereas job purpose is nebulous, abstract, difficult to see clearly, and tough to articulate. And it comes up only now and then (e.g., annual all-employee meetings, Customer Service Week, or new-hire orientations).

Ongoing conversations about job purpose are rare. We’re all too busy talking about job functions and concerning ourselves with quotas, productivity, and other metrics. Additionally, managers tend to focus almost exclusively on job functions because they’re what their bosses tend to focus on.

Job purpose is poorly defined—if at all. Job purpose is seldom articulated in words, modeled by leadership, or intentionally connected to employees’ daily job responsibilities. At most, it may be relegated to the employee handbook, a laminated wallet card, an annual report, the company website, or a plaque in the executive corridor.

Managers lack tools and processes that highlight job purpose. Because managers lack these tools, any early progress or enthusiasm following an event that showcases job purpose quickly loses momentum as job functions reassume center stage.

Creating job purpose starts with you

Reflect on your focus at work. What questions do you tend to ask? What priorities do you emphasize? What expectations do you convey? Consider your last meeting agenda. What percentage of it pertained to job functions versus job purpose? Creating purpose for your employees starts with you.

The answer to this question is key to those of us who spend time thinking about organizational development.

A business is a ‘thing’, a linear entity that takes money in – pits it against the costs of creating this money – and kicks out a profit. It is monitored by the sole metric of ‘money created’.

An organization is an exact opposite.

An organization is considered to be a living, breathing, layered organism that at any given time is thriving, or struggling, or changing, or resting, or ramping up. It’s alive and is responding to stimuli all the time: from leaders, customers, markets, and employees. It responds to things done well. And it responds to things done badly.

From a leadership perspective, it is important to be clear about how you view the entity you’re leading.

If you are seeing it as a business, your task is to manage the business within this narrow field. This has upsides and downsides: on the upside, it is a simpler existence – you will inquire less, manage fewer metrics, and simply watch the P&L. The downside is that you have fewer options available to you in trying to leverage performance, and especially so when times are bad. For some leaders, it may be reasonable to take this simpler view of a business. If an individual is not drawn toward complexity, then a simpler worldview is easier to manage. I do have reservations about this approach. The business world of today brings many complexities into play:

• Rapid technology advances;
• The evolving nature of the employee;
• The more nuanced understanding of leadership;
• Disintermediation; and
• The power of the consumer.

Leaders need to embrace complexity and push themselves to think about topics that aren’t naturally considered to be relevant.

Questions to think about:

1. What is your view of the current ‘health’ of your organization, and how do you know this?
2. How is your organization currently changing, and what is it evolving from/evolving to?
3. How do other people experience you as a leader, and what are the implications for the greater organization you’re leading?
4. What is the primary shaper of your organization’s behaviors?
5. How well is your organization performing relative to its full potential? (Look at metrics beyond just revenue and profitability.)
6. What is your talent most motivated by?

Your reaction to these questions might be: “Who cares?” And to a business builder interested solely in kicking out a profit, that may be a fair enough answer.

However, if you are interested in building an organization that is sustainable, nimble, responsive, and that can improve continually, these are the questions that will ensure that you are overseeing this sort of entity.

Like most of you reading this article, I was initially dismayed and stunned by what happened at the Oscar awards ceremony earlier this year. As someone who studies the motivations of leaders and how they influence the people they lead, upon further reflection, my surprise gradually ebbed away. In this article, I’ll explain why.

First, we must all understand that the Slap Heard Around the World struck a chord around the world because it so closely mirrored what we’ve all been watching for over a month now on the global stage—a larger physical and economic power sauntering into the sovereign territory of a smaller one unannounced and attempting to strike it down. Hard.

You Used to Be Like Me

A leadership principle I teach to companies and organizations is called “Nothing Blinds Like Success.” As social psychologist Michael Hogg has uncovered, leaders are elected or selected because they have internalized the values, characteristics, and features of the group.

Over time, however, something unfortunate happens: they shift from being prototypical and representing what the group most cares about to being expelled—socially at first and, eventually for most, physically—from the same group they used to represent so well.

Consider Robert Mugabe. After winning the revolution against the white Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, the ZANU-Patriotic Front rebel leader became the prime minister of the newly independent republic of Zimbabwe in 1980.

Did Mugabe apply the caring and compassion for everyday Zimbabweans that caused his countrymen and women to follow him as a revolutionary in the governance of the country?

Not at all. Instead, he became a ruthless dictator who stewarded his country into becoming rated by the UN as one of the least habitable on the planet and a paragon of human rights violations for almost four decades until he was put under house arrest in 2017.

It Starts On the Way Up

How do leaders go from regular folks to first to worst? It begins with their ascent. As they rise to power, their followers focus on everything they say and do. Why? Their livelihoods depend on it.

With all this attention on them, leaders begin to believe they are larger than life. They start to believe their own press, to breathe their own exhaust. They start having thoughts such as, “I am extraordinary. That’s why I’ve risen to this role. That’s why so many are focused on my every move.”

As a consequence of this type of thinking, they stop paying attention to the people they lead. Social psychological research has found that leaders are more likely to eat more than their share of the cookies, to allow more crumbs to fall from their mouths, and to eat with their mouths open than their subordinates.

Why? The higher an individual climbs the ladder of success, the less they attune to and empathize with others.

King Richard

Enough about the general dynamics of leadership: let’s now consider Will Smith. The veteran actor and producer is the third-highest-paid organizational member (at $40 million per movie) in an industry that currently employs over 250,000 people (down from over 440,000 before the pandemic).

Smith knew he was a shoe-in to receive its highest accolade to an individual member—the Best Actor award—and continue his ascent to becoming the highest-paid individual in the industry. Perhaps he really does merit the name King Richard.

Then, after his slap-down of Rock, like a highly powerful senior executive that offends many people in the room but knows it will damage the CEO more to make a scene of his forced departure than it will benefit the company, Smith refused to leave when asked by the Academy.

Power and Our Brightest Stars

As with Mugabe and most of our leaders who are comfortably embedded in their roles at the top of their fields and become disconnected from the rank-and-file (Pope Francis, the first pope to refuse to live in the Papal Palace in over a century, is a notable exception), Smith enacts a code of living that most of us cannot even fathom.

King Richard’s behavior is an unfortunate outcome of the delusion many leaders allow to guide them every day. Encircled by sycophantic followers rather than upright colleagues willing to share with them the real information of what’s happening in their organization that they desperately need to listen to in order to sustain their success, they live in a filter bubble almost entirely conceived by their own imagination. When you live at the top of the pyramid, you’re only surrounded by air.

Sometimes, like the recent Oscars, this unfortunate byproduct of a leader’s ascent to power can produce disastrous results—for the people they lead and the leaders themselves.