What If the Most Caring Act of Leadership Is Learning to Lead Yourself?

WHEN I started a business at 19, I knew next to nothing about leadership. The only thing I did know was that I wanted to put my people first, always. I was a servant leader through and through.

Being so others-focused was a huge strength. It helped me become a caring leader who was in tune with other people’s needs and who focused on making people feel valued. It helped me build a company and a culture that people loved being a part of. It filled me with a sense of purpose.

But years later, I would learn that this strength had a shadow side. In becoming so others-focused, I had become disconnected from myself. I’d taken servant leadership to the extreme, and now, I knew others’ needs better than I knew my own. I had strong, trusting relationships with my team and almost no relationship with myself.

That meant that in my worst and lowest moments, like when I was overworking myself and burning out, or when I felt let down by my team, my instinct was to put the blame externally. I became resentful, and I never once stopped to look at my own role in how I was feeling.

It wasn’t until I started working with an executive coach that I became aware of this pattern in myself. In one of our calls, we identified something he called a personal narrative. Narratives form in childhood, he told me, and most people have at least one, if not more. These narratives drive our behaviors and actions whether we’re aware of them or not, and they stay with us until we recognize that they’re there and attempt to rewrite them.

My coach helped me figure out that one of my narratives constantly told me that it’s my job to keep people happy. It came from my childhood, and everything I learned about how to be a leader who puts others first reinforced it. I learned that while it was helpful for me to have this narrative because it made me care about the happiness of other people, it also severely limited me.

I struggled to give honest feedback. In fact, I avoided giving it at all costs while telling myself I was caring for and protecting my team—but really, I was afraid of making them unhappy.

I never asked for help. I thought that supporting my team meant shouldering the burden on my own, even though it was burning me out and making me resent my job. In reality, I was afraid that if I added more work to people’s plates, it would make them resent their jobs and become unhappy.

I didn’t set boundaries or make necessary changes to evolve my career. I never considered my own needs or what would make me fulfilled because I thought that prioritizing myself would negatively affect other people and make me seem like an uncaring leader.

My fear of making others unhappy kept me miserable.

Uncovering my narrative and learning how to confront it changed everything for me. I learned that my job as a leader isn’t to keep people happy; it’s to be honest and supportive. I learned that I can be a leader who chooses myself, who asks for help, who has high expectations, and who has hard but necessary conversations and still be caring. And that actually, that way of leading makes me a more caring leader.

We all have narratives that drive our behaviors and limit us. The only way to change that is to courageously face ourselves, compassionately examine our patterns, and see ourselves and our actions clearly. In doing so, we not only expand our capacity to care for ourselves, but we also make room for others to step up.

I want to encourage you to look at the actions you take—or don’t take—as a leader. What do you tell yourself about why you do or don’t do these things? What are you afraid will happen if you do the opposite? What narrative do you want to guide you instead of the one you’ve been telling yourself?

And then, start small: Do one thing that feels uncomfortable. Switch up your default response. Set the boundary, ask for help, have the hard conversation. Each time, you’ll gather more evidence that the world doesn't fall apart when you choose yourself. And soon, you’ll see yourself become a better leader for you and everyone who’s depending on you.

To be a champion of human leadership, we must learn to lead ourselves well. And that starts with having the willingness and courage to see ourselves clearly.

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Kristen Hadeed believes that authentic, human leadership can change the world. She helps leaders and teams around the world build cultures rooted in connection, courage, and humanity. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, TIME, and NBC’s Today. She is the author of Permission to Screw Up, which has sold more than 50,000 copies worldwide, and Human Leadership, released in October 2026.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:10 AM
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Leadership Against the Storm of Uncertainty

LEADERSHIP that is effective in uncertain times is equally effective in times of relative stability. The opposite, however, is not true. There are many actions taken by leaders in routine circumstances that give the leader power and influence, yet such behaviors may not work well when uncertainty dominates. Why? When things are going well, and not stirred by uncertainty or crisis, people are willing to put up with all sorts of poor leadership, often obeying leaders whether they trust them or not. Yet in uncertainty, trust becomes essential for influence. That’s when trust in the leader must be earned, rather than assumed. Against the Storm: How True Leaders Prevail When the World Shakes, holds more than a dozen practical techniques to build trust in uncertainty. Here are two:

1. Leader Meeting Control

All leaders host meetings. One type of meeting that is common, yet difficult, is the “town hall” meeting—meetings of 50-200 people with open questioning to the leader. Town halls are quite useful for academic, political, and business leaders. In those circumstances, the best leaders find ways to control dialogue. Uncontrolled dialogue in open meetings is a recipe for disaster—as many politicians have found out, having lost the ability to control their meetings and having been advised by their political leadership to stop having them.

Such meetings allow people with specific agendas—some well-meaning, some not—to take over the direction and purpose of the meeting. Competent leaders always put rules or procedures in place that give them some control over the dialogue. Such control has to be done thoughtfully and carefully, so as not to give followers the impression that the meeting is somehow rigged. Town hall meetings are not effective unless all participants can be heard.

One of the best ways to control dialogue in a meeting, yet all be heard, is what we call “card stack.” To card stack a meeting, give each participant a blank card, 3x5 or 6x8. To begin, ask them to write on one side something that the organization (or you the leader) is doing well. On the opposite side of the card, ask them to write something that the organization (or you the leader) is not doing well. Give them about 3 minutes, then collect up their answers to form a card stack. You now have tremendous power in your hand.

The card stack is a visible indication that everyone has been able to provide input. Once stacked, the leader may then start reading the cards, one at a time. The leader should not automatically read both the front and back of a card. Start by reading two or three positive comments, then select a negative comment to respond to. Holding the card stack, the leader has the opportunity to balance out the positive and negative, and should read more positive comments than negative ones. Control the tone.

Often in crisis or uncertainty, negativity emerges in the meetings. In some cases, it’s simply warranted because of threatening outcomes. In other cases, individuals may have their own agenda in being negative, and they may be persistently so. In such instances, the card stack is a terrific aid. The leader can address the negative issue to the right degree, then point out that the card stack is large and that the group can’t focus too long on one single issue—an issue that could also be dealt with at a later time in a different context.

The card stack represents a responsibility by the leader to respond to the written comments. If an issue has been written into the card stack, those who wrote it know that the leader knows. If the leader is viewed as responding over time, it’s a hugely positive perception. It’s a huge liability, though, if people know that the leader is informed of issues that are not dealt with. It will result in less feedback and honesty, less confidence that the leader is effective, and less trust. The strength in results that could be either positive or negative is an indication of the power of this technique.

2. Leader Pre-Mortems

In uncertain times, leaders have to anticipate catastrophic problems. The people who say, after a catastrophe, “I knew this was going to happen,” need to be uncovered and share their input BEFORE the crisis. It’s up to leaders to make that happen. The most proven technique for this outcome is called a Pre-Mortem.

The method of conducting a Pre-Mortem is as follows:

1. Assemble a group of knowledgeable employees representing all levels of the organization, a minimum of 8 people.
2. Explain that the purpose is to collect a series of catastrophic predictions, literal or imaginary.
3. Guarantee anonymity. Give each person a sheet of paper and a pen—nothing digital.
4. Ask the individuals to imagine a major fiasco affecting the organization, and to explain the failure.
5. Remind them of their anonymity. Give them limited time to write, say, five minutes, then collect the papers.
6. At this point, begin reading the most interesting fiascos aloud, creating group discussions about threats to the organization. Some of the issues may be too sensitive to work on as a group, so those may be skipped—but understand that someone knows that you as the leader have seen what they have described.

Pre-mortems have other advantages. Research reveals that review of imaginary or potential fiascos improves a leader’s intuition. The higher the leader, the more important experience and intuition is, rather than structured analysis. In uncertainty, the value of leader intuition skyrockets—at times being the only basis for decision-making. Pre-mortems improve that process.

The conditions of uncertainty that leaders currently face are record-breaking and mind-blowing. Leaders must not passively accept such conditions, but actively work for understanding, predictability, and trust. The need is for actions, not ideas. Find practical ways to lead in uncertainty—and just do it!

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Tom Kolditz has more than 35 years in leadership positions and received the Distinguished Service Medal, the US Army’s highest award for service. His first book, In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended On It, puts forth an original crisis leadership model. He holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Missouri and an honorary PhD from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. For more information, please visit tomkolditz.com/

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:40 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 22, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Richard P. Feynman on not knowing:

"Admitting that we do not know, and maintaining perpetually the attitude that we do not know the direction necessarily to go, permit a possibility of alteration, of thinking, of new contributions and new discoveries for the problem of developing a way to do what we want ultimately, even when we do not know what we want."

Source: The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

II.

Lloyd Blankfein on the importance of history:

"Every so often, when a young person asks my advice on what to study in college as preparation for a career in finance, I always recommend history rather than math or economics. I say that because it is valuable to have a sense of what has happened before, a consciousness of historical cycles, and the ability to distinguish secular changes from the kind that tend to recede and recur. That kind of perspective helps you keep your head on when things go awry and keeps you from getting too cocky when things go well. Ultimately, an awareness of history makes you a better boss, a better leader, and a better risk manager. It makes you better able to practice resilience, knowing that things do recover."

Source: Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:17 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 15, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Dave Rossi on living with purpose:

"Without this sense of purpose, emotion and rumination can take over, acting like a thick fog that distorts vision and clouds judgment. While emotions are powerful, they are not the objective truth. They can trigger impulsive reactions that feel right in the moment but ultimately lead to regret. Living with purpose forces you to challenge your automatic responses. It requires you to pause and ask yourself: Am I acting from fear, ego, or programming, or am I acting from a place of alignment with my deeper values? This simple shift-learning to recognize emotion and then choosing behavior instead of reacting—is profound. You either live for approval or live for purpose."

Source: Alphas Die Early: For the Man on a Mission — And the Women Who Love Him

II.

Nathan Bennett and Stephen Miles on the shifting role of COOs:

"COOs must simultaneously guide organizational development and manage high-velocity operations where necessary skills constantly evolve. Success depends less on executing predetermined plans than on orchestrating continuous adaptation—a skill set many traditional operators never mastered. Executive search professionals caution that operators without strategic depth face limited growth prospects. The label ‘solid operator,’ once praise, now functions as a ceiling. Today’s COOs are expected to act as strategic architects who not only translate vision into execution but provide operational insights that inform strategy—a significant departure from the historically narrower implementation focus."

Source: Riding Shotgun: The Role of the COO

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:48 AM
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The Leadership Style That Gets You Here Won't Get You There

IN the early stage of an enterprise software startup, the founder is often the best - and main - salesperson. And that makes sense – founders have the deep product knowledge, intuitive understanding of the market, and heartfelt enthusiasm to win over customers, even when they thought ‘sales’ wasn’t really their thing. But if you want to scale up, at some point founder-led sales are going to hit a ceiling, and founders have to work out how to transition to a different model.

This can be difficult: Intuition, improvisation, and sheer force of character often work to get deals over the line when a founder is the one working with the customer, but it is very hard to recreate once they pass the torch.

The foundational principle of my go-to-market framework – which I detail in my new book, Built to Grow: A Handbook for High-Performance Sales Teams – is that every startup passes through three distinct phases on the road to success.

First, you experiment with the tactics that will form the bedrock of your business. Second, you build systems and processes that create a repeatable and sustainable business. And then you scale everything: you hit the gas pedal and accelerate, investing heavily to drive growth.

When it comes to sales, founders and CEOs play a different role and must have different priorities in each of these phases. The approach that gets a business going isn't the same one that will get it to $100m in sales. Here's the roadmap founders need to follow.

Experiment

At this stage, no one knows better than the founder how to sell the product. The imperative during the early stages of building a go-to-market strategy is for founders to think very hard about how they can replicate themselves. The best way to do this has two components:

First, founders should experiment with, identify, and document their ‘repeatable sales motion’: the winning strategies and tactics that have enabled them to successfully sell in the early days.

In parallel, they should bring their first two or three ‘trailblazer’ sales hires on board who can experiment with them, and work out how to evolve their more improvised sales approach into this repeatable sales motion. Some of the important questions to ask here are: “Who is my ideal customer and where do I find them? What are their pain points and how do I communicate with them? And how do I best support their buyer’s journey, step-by-step, and close a sale with them? Writing all this down will create the company’s first brief sales playbook–a cornerstone of a startups GTM strategy.

During this early, experimental phase, founders are going to stay very involved with sales, alongside those key trailblazer hires. Once they have all this formally documented in their first, albeit brief, sales playbook, and 2 or 3 non-founder salespeople hitting quota, they graduate from ‘Experiment’ to ‘Build.’

Build

During the build phase - going from 3 to 8 or 9 salespeople - the founder or CEO’s goal is to pressure-test their repeatable sales motion and to prove that non-trailblazer salespeople can use the newly written playbook to successfully sell the product. They also lay the foundation for sustainable growth and operational excellence. This means establishing best practices for revenue management – which comprises opportunity management, pipeline management, and forecasting.

At the same time, you keep expanding the sales playbook - and if the newly hired salespeople are struggling to hit quota, you need to debug your approach. Are you not targeting the right type of customer? Is your messaging, pricing, or packaging wrong? Or maybe you haven’t hired the right profile of salespeople, or not trained them well enough?

The only way to grow sustainably is to keep refining the playbook until you prove that all non-trailblazer salespeople can use it to successfully sell and hit quota. This will allow you to transform sales into a disciplined function rather than an improvised and inconsistent art form. What you want to avoid at all costs is one day in the future having 30 salespeople who are each experimenting in their own way, doing their own thing, and thus making quarterly sales targets a gamble.

Founders are still pretty involved at this stage, but a big part of the build phase is preparing to be more hands-off later – establishing a dedicated head of sales and a fairly senior sales operations leader. Both of them will also continue to help select and integrate the right AI-supported sales tools for the growing sales team.

There's a balancing act here: founders want to hand over day-to-day management of the sales function, but remain close to their customer and their newly hired sales leader to understand if they have hired the right person for the job.

When the company has seven or eight dedicated salespeople that are able to use the sales playbook to reliably hit quota, it is ready for the next step.

Scale

This is the big one. If you have 7 or 8 salespeople reliably hitting quota, you are likely on to something, and it’s time to invest and take the market. In Scale, you're building from eight to 100 or more salespeople, and an $80m or $120m company has to be run differently from a $20m one. Everything changes in this phase, and sales productivity and efficiency become the name of the game. Think about it: If you have 80 salespeople, it makes a huge difference if each salesperson has 3 customer meetings per day versus 6 customer meetings per day.

The founder or CEO really can't be involved in the day-to-day management of the sales team at this stage. Now, they must rely on their sales leadership, specialized sales teams, and distinct customer success, sales enablement, and operations functions. That said, the founder still needs to understand enough about how a well-run revenue organization should function. As a founder or CEO you don’t want to be left surprised when your sales leader isn’t hitting their revenue targets until the end of the quarter, when it’s too late to take action.

A big failure mode for startups is being too slow to mature their management style and capacity at this stage, so founders need to be very clear-eyed about their management team. As they scale, they need to make sure they have enough executive horsepower in each of their functions and hire accordingly. Founders need to be intentional about building the right management team to have by their side for the crucial and intense years to come. For many, this is the time when founders have no choice but to significantly upgrade their go-to-market leadership. In parallel, founders should place extra focus on protecting the customer experience, which is one of the first things lost when a company suddenly starts to grow very quickly.

Getting a startup on track for a successful IPO or acquisition–or to become a large, independent private company–can be a long and difficult journey. But with the right go-to-market strategy, a successful pivot from founder-led sales to a repeatable, playbook-based sales motion, and a conscious focus on revenue fundamentals, startups can give themselves the best possible chance of reaching take-off velocity.

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Stephanie Friedman is an angel investor and adviser to startup founders. Built to Grow: A Handbook for High-Performance Sales Teams will be published by Stripe Press on October 13.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:27 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 08, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Ryushun Kusanagi on living in the now:

"Clinging to the past and using it as a reason to negate the present is a mental trap-a distraction from what truly matters, and a source of inner turmoil. Life is full of missteps and failures. What matters is how you respond to them. Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t look back in regret. Don’t give in to pessimism. Instead, focus on the present, understand it correctly, and dedicate yourself to what you can do right now. Of course, if you’ve hurt someone, it’s important to acknowledge it and sincerely apologize. Doing this is part of taking responsibility. Embrace that moment and take the opportunity to start afresh."

Source: The Practice of Not Reacting

II.

John Maxwell on not taking sides:

"If you’re a leader and you allow yourself to get drawn into taking sides and working against other groups of people, you’re limiting your leadership. As leaders, we all need the people on the other side. Our side doesn’t have all the answers. Believing we do is arrogant. I’m not always right, and neither are you. And those on the “other side” are not always wrong. If you don’t listen to them, you’re shrinking your influence and limiting your impact. If you can’t work with people who disagree with you, you will never become the leader you could be. No one will ever convince me that you can choose only half of the people and get as much done as if you work to lead all the people."

Source: High Road Leadership: Bringing People Together in a World That Divides

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:02 AM
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How to Respond When People Throw Wrenches During Change

CHANGE initiatives rarely fail because of flawed strategies or poor execution. They fail because of human behavior: what people do when they feel threatened or at risk of losing status, control, or relevance. A senior leader withholds resources from another team. A project team member hoards information about transition status. Each move undermines the initiative's success. When combined with others, they can derail it.

These are the wrenches people throw during high-stakes change. They can be hard to spot and address because they are often covert, uncoordinated, and unpredictable. Without quick and effective responses, dysfunction grows and plans unravel. Left unchecked, the self-interested behaviors become cultural norms, and the downward spiral to failure accelerates.

Why People Throw Wrenches During Change

Change initiatives typically start well. The leader’s vision of a better future is clear and widely supported. The kick-off builds momentum, and work begins. Before long, people piece together their relative position in the post-change organization.

Employees view disruptions through the lens of personal gain or loss. What will this mean for my role, status, influence, or security? As the answers become clearer, emotions flare, which drives actions intended to improve their position.

Four forces explain self-interested behavior:

• Self-preservation: People try to protect the status, certainty, freedom, camaraderie, and confidence they have.
• Power: People seek the capacity to influence outcomes. They do so through formal authority or personal influence. Change can threaten existing power sources or create opportunities for new ones.
• Politics: People maneuver to influence those who define the future ways of working. Alliances, favor trading, and even rumors can modify outcomes.
• Emotions: Anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, and contempt can harm colleagues and jeopardize the initiative. When emotions surface, self-protection outweighs concerns for others and their organization.

All four forces can be in play at any point in an initiative, so leaders need to anticipate them. Understanding what people perceive they will lose helps you predict likely self-interested behaviors and decide how to best address them.

The Wrenches We Throw

The most common self-interested behaviors vary in their intensity and the risk they pose to an organization. They fall into four categories, based on strategic intent and level of disruption: Influencing, Conspiring, Bullying, and Sabotaging.

The tactics are more extreme as you move to the right of the continuum. Influencing and conspiring are about angling for position, whereas bullying and sabotaging behaviors are about aggression to seize control.

These behaviors also evolve as the initiative progresses, because each phase of change reveals more about what people stand to gain or lose. During the planning phase, there are few details to analyze. Preparation activities such as testing, training, and day-in-the-life exercises begin to clarify future conditions. The full picture emerges after the launch when people live and feel their new roles. The clearer the personal consequences become, the stronger the emotional response, and the greater the likelihood of more aggressive behavior.

Responding When Wrenches Appear

When a political maneuver or power play catches us off guard, we often become spectators instead of responders. Silence, or a defensive reaction, can strengthen the behavior and increase its damage.

A consistent, stepped process, designed to interpret people’s behavior, helps you neutralize self-interested tactics. The Four-Step Response offers a simple approach to recognizing and responding to political maneuvers and power plays: Observe, Assess, Select, and Deliver.

1. Observe: Notice what the person says and does. If someone says, “I’ll support your region if you support mine when resources are allocated,” they are favor trading.
2. Assess: Identify the emotion that may be driving the behavior. Anxiety and anger call for different responses. Anxiety signals worry about uncertainty, whereas anger signals hostility over a perceived injustice or error.
3. Select: Choose the response best suited to the behavior and the circumstances around it. Consider the person’s role, the emotion they are feeling, and where the behavior surfaced.
4. Deliver: Give your response, then pause for a reaction. The behavior may stop. If not, their response will indicate your next move, whether to hold, engage or escalate.

If, for example, a team member repeatedly withholds information, an effective response might be to name the behavior directly: “The testing team needs the data we agreed to share. Without it, testing will be delayed. What is preventing you from providing it?” Their response may reveal a technical obstacle or a fear about losing control. Both guide how to proceed.

Following these steps helps you spot self-interested behavior early, identify the emotion behind it, and respond in ways that protect your credibility, relationships, and results.

We All Throw Wrenches

It’s easy to view people who withhold information, spread rumours, or blame and attack as villains. The reality is that we all throw wrenches when change threatens us. It's normal, and it’s human. Knowing what you personally stand to gain and lose can help you manage your behavior and respond better to others' actions.

You can’t control the wrenches thrown or the people who throw them. You can control how you respond. Observe the behavior, assess the emotion driving it, select the best option, and deliver it with purpose to protect the initiative’s progress and results.

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Phil Buckley is a change strategist and leadership advisor with 35 years of experience across 32 large-scale change initiatives in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He is the founder of Change with Confidence and author of Change on the Run, Change with Confidence, and his latest book, When People Throw Wrenches: Navigating the Emotions, Politics, and Power Plays of High-Stakes Change. Learn more at www.changewithconfidence.com.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:11 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 1, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Brady, Kliman, and Smith on seeing the full story:

"We feel strongly that empathy and humility aren’t distractions from value creation; they’re the drivers of value creation. In fact, they’re essential if we want to lead difference-filled teams that solve problems creatively, build trust across difference, and adapt in real time to new challenges. These aren’t soft skills. They are strategic capabilities for a complex world. Empathy, the emotional engine behind perspective-taking, is where real understanding begins. Without empathy, it’s impossible to truly see another person’s point of view, because you wouldn’t care enough to try. Empathy and humility ground us in the understanding that we don’t possess all the answers and that other people’s experiences matter just as much as our own in terms of making sense of any situation."

Source: All the Difference. Six Leadership Actions to Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value

II.

Jim Schleckser on peanut buttering:

"A lot of the mediocre and hardworking CEOs we have run into over the years are exceptionally good at what we call ‘peanut buttering.’ When it comes to allocating their time to the various tasks and stakeholders in their businesses—their boards, their supply chains, their investors, their communities, etc.—these CEOs do their best to spread their time as evenly as possible across all of them. The concern, of course, is to make sure everyone feels like they’re getting the CEO’s attention. In this effort, the CEO will work very hard, sometimes as much as eighty or more hours a week. The bad news is that this is the surest way possible to dilute the CEO’s impact on any one issue. Unfortunately, this concept of tending to every stakeholder is taught at many major business schools, which only perpetuates the error. This is done, in part, because CEOs aren’t certain what actions will drive the business forward; consequently, they work on all fronts, hoping one will yield results."

Source: Great CEOs Are Lazy

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:48 PM
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