7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. of Exceptional Leaders

PROLOGUE

I’ll never forget the first moment I realized that leadership mattered.

I was 18 years old and working as a summer teller at the bank. It was my first real job, and the job was just that—a job. I was paid $8.50 an hour to balance a cash drawer and talk to people.

Both came easily to me, and I did my job well. But I have to admit, I had little awareness of what was going on in the company outside of my role—cashing checks, taking deposits, making change, and making conversation. Back then, my view of a job was simple: I showed up on time, waited on people, balanced the drawer, and left on time. Then, every two weeks, a few hundred bucks would land in my bank account. Awesome!

I’ll never forget the morning that everything changed.

One day, the branch manager, Donna, told us a few senior executives would visit us later that week, before we opened the branch, so we’d all need to show up early. She instructed us that we’d all have breakfast together, meaning, Don’t eat. And that was all.

Looking back now, I’m filled with so many questions that I didn’t know to ask then: Why were they coming? What was the purpose of the visit? Was this routine? A punishment for poor results? A reward for good behavior? No clue. We were only told they were coming.

That morning would change my life. We all arrived at the branch ahead of schedule. The executives who were visiting us were late. We waited for them. Problem #1.

When they eventually arrived, they did bring breakfast—a bag of bagels, some cream cheese, and a gallon of orange juice—but Donna was so busy trying to impress them, these things were shoved aside. Everyone scrambled into their chairs, and the pressure to conform (even though I was hungry) was palpable. What wasn’t present, however, was silverware, plates, or cups. So, nobody ate even though we’d been told we’d be eating together. Problem #2.

The executives made their introduction. They stated that they wanted to go through how we were doing on some key metrics and then they’d take questions. They also said they’d be staying a while and how excited they were to meet all of us.

I tried to stay engaged as the executives talked at a high level about these reports, citing various facts and figures. I had so many questions and wanted to learn. I scanned the room for similar reactions but found no visible mirroring of how I was feeling. Everyone smiled and nodded along approvingly. Time passed, and the meeting proceeded as a monologue, not a dialogue. Problem #3.

Suddenly, we were interrupted by a knock on the door. Sure enough, this meeting had run past our opening time, and now a customer was standing outside peering into the building, with his face cupped between his hands to block the glare of the early-morning summer sunshine. Problem #4.

Oh, gosh, it’s 9:02! said the branch manager, still in her seat. I glanced at the clock, surprised by this. We had never opened late.

Oh, yes! Of course, you should open, said one of the executives, standing. We’ll be around for a good while, and we definitely want to hear what’s on your mind. And just like that, the meeting was over. No questions had ever been asked. Everyone scurried to replace chairs and get into our positions. For a few minutes, the scene was chaotic. Problem #5.

Donna ushered the executives into her office, where they closed the door to talk. Now, I have to admit, I can’t say I was heartbroken by what had transpired so far. This was literally the first work meeting I’d ever gone to, so I hadn’t had any idea of what to expect, nor had I spent any real time thinking about it. I was about to learn that was not the case for everyone.

Next to me that morning was Debbie. Debbie was older than me—perhaps 30. She’d been working at the bank as a full-time teller for years, and I couldn’t help but notice how nervous she seemed. I hadn’t connected all the dots yet, but Debbie was dressed nicer than usual. I noticed one of her regular blouses, but this day, she wore a shiny black blazer over it and was also wearing dress pants. As we worked, I also noticed that she anxiously and repeatedly smoothed down her hair and adjusted her outfit. It was out of character.

After the morning rush was handled, per usual, we had a brief lull around 9:30. Everything okay? I asked as I straightened my teller work.

Debbie somehow managed to train one eye on me while keeping her other eye deadlocked on the manager’s office with the executives still inside. I’m just so nervous, she half whispered, half hissed at me. Aren’t you nervous?

I felt dumbfounded—like I had during the first week of freshmen calculus before realizing college courses were going to be more difficult than high school ones. Nervous about what? I whispered back.

Them! She motioned with a slight tilt of her head. This is my big chance, she added with another nervous brush of her hair.

Now I really felt stupid. Big chance for what? I asked, confused.

My promotion! she responded. This time it was 100% hiss. Donna has been saying that today’s visit is my chance to impress them, to show them what I’m made of, so maybe they’ll make me a banker!

My world got a little bigger in that moment, as this became my first-ever sighting of an engaged employee, connected to the bigger picture, wanting advancement and growth—and working hard for it.

Customers interrupted our conversation, and we both went back to our duties. Sometime around 10 A.M., the executives emerged from Donna’s office and stood in the lobby chatting. I felt my heart beat faster, as I now knew this was the moment Debbie had been waiting for: As promised, the executives were about to come over, talk to us, and hear what was on our minds.

Then, in a blink of an eye, it happened. If I hadn’t glanced up at exactly the right moment, I would’ve missed it! With a brief wave of their hands toward the teller and platform area, the executives headed for the door. Then they were gone, their dark suits becoming smaller in the parking lot with each passing moment. Problem #6.

Debbie was finishing up with a customer when this happened. Within seconds, she had locked her cash drawers and was heading toward the break room. For the first time in my career, I left my post without asking permission. I got up and followed her.

In the back room, I found Debbie already crying—actually, sobbing. This was the moment my world totally shifted. Through tears, Debbie explained to me that the suit she was wearing cost $300. She had gotten up ridiculously early that morning to curl and style her hair. She had taken home materials the night before (materials I didn’t even know existed!) to practice some questions for the Q&A section that had been promised. Finally, Debbie shared that she had been working extremely hard as a teller for years, hoping she could ascend to the platform. Her performance was strong, but Donna felt that she needed the approval of these district managers to seal the deal. Problem #7: a powerless frontline management team.

I couldn’t shake the scene of Debbie bawling her eyes out in the break room. She was committed to the overall company, committed to her immediate team and work group, but most importantly, she was committed to her own growth and development. That morning, it had all been overlooked. And nobody even knew anything about it. Those executives who had left without so much as a word to us likely had no idea who Debbie even was or what had happened that day. This moment stuck with me for years, and over time, I realized it was something of an atrocity.

That day, I didn’t know what to say or what to do, but I did know TWO things:

Leadership matters.

If I ever got the chance to lead people—especially in the kind of roles these executives were in—I would see to it that this kind of thing would never happen on my watch. That people would feel ignored or invisible, unappreciated, and unvalued, or that a manager would feel like they needed my blessing or permission to make every decision. I made a vow that I would be a much different leader than what I had seen that morning.

Years passed, and it wasn’t long before I graduated college and went into leadership myself. I soon realized that leadership is hard, grueling, taxing work. It’s by no means as easy as it looks. During my darkest hours and toughest moments, I worked hard to connect with WHY I had chosen a life in leadership. It was because I had never lost sight of Debbie and that image of her crying in that back room instead of getting an opportunity to fulfill her great potential. On my leadership journey, I considered Debbie often and all the other people I had met along the way with similar stories. As I learned, tested, and experimented with various leadership concepts, I became somewhat obsessed with Debbie. Not just actual Debbie, but the idea of Debbie—all the people who are having lousy or even horrible experiences in the workplace. All the wasted talent and unheard voices. All the disengaged employees who simply show up and punch the clock instead of really leaning in. I became determined to figure it out: what behaviors, what practices, what principles really make a difference in leadership. It became my life’s work, so that I could publish this book and help other leaders recognize what they need to do so there are no more Debbies.

The framework I’ve devised is called V.I.R.T.U.E.S., and I’ve spent two decades crafting it. Through this book, you’ll learn how important it is to set vision and have a view into the future that others can see. How critical it is to ask questions, engage your team, and stimulate conversation to foster trust and a real commitment. How integral consistent routines, structure, and discipline are to sustainable execution and results. How necessary terrific communication is. How paramount learning and understanding is—and how it needs to happen every day and is happening, even when leadership isn’t around. How desperately people want to be encouraged and recognized. And finally, how essential it is that you lead by example and model all the other behaviors. I promise you that these 7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. will change everything. I promise if you and the leaders around you practice these behaviors, you’ll never have another Debbie again.

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

In the 17 years after graduating college, I worked at six different companies, held 16 positions, and had 18 different direct bosses. Data suggests this isn’t uncommon and, if anything, is only becoming more common as millennials flood the workplace. One thing I was able to observe over these years was how common poor leadership is and how much of a difference exceptional leadership makes. Not just good leadership but exceptional leadership.

Of the 18 direct leaders I had in the last 17 years since college, I would only describe eight as good. Of those eight, I would only describe four as exceptional. That’s only 22%. I feel tremendously fortunate. My observations suggest that most individuals are working with even lower numbers than that. Perhaps I was able to find exceptional leaders 22% of the time because I left roles and organizations where I wasn’t getting exceptional leadership. Perhaps because I had become so obsessed with leadership, I sought out better leadership. Sadly, many people in this world who have a weak, poor, or bad boss won’t choose to leave. In some cases, it will be due to fear—worrying they won’t find another job with similar pay—or because change is hard. But in some cases, it will be because they don’t know what exceptional leadership is. We don’t always see it, so for many of us, it’s hard to identify, and we’re not even aware that our boss is failing us or how much more we deserve.

My research doesn’t end with leaders I’ve reported to. Over the last two decades, I’ve watched hundreds of managers attempt to lead, and these statistics are congruent with what I see—less than 25% of leaders are truly exceptional. The ones who aren’t have a huge cost on business. Their teams don’t achieve outstanding results. Instead, they often get mediocre or poor results. Things take longer to accomplish or don’t get accomplished at all, creating tremendous inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Trust doesn’t exist, and most feel it can’t be built, so silos and watercooler conversations gain momentum instead. Their teams have higher turnover, which causes increased recruiting, training, and hiring costs. And the reality is, folks aren’t engaged around them. People are miserable, and everything is affected from people’s health to their relationships at home. The problems are numerous, and the breakdowns occur at many different points.

For some, it’s communication: the vision, objective, and goals aren’t spelled out for the team, or just as bad, the team doesn’t understand it or believe in it. Really poor leaders won’t even know these things are happening. Some don’t even realize they should be communicating a higher purpose for their team. Others have such poor awareness or poor relationships with their teams that they don’t even know their team isn’t on board.

For other leaders, there’s a training, coaching, and development breakdown or gap. Folks understand what’s important—and may even want to deliver on it—but they’re not equipped with the right tools or resources to do it, or they’re not coached or developed to do it well. Again, leaders aren’t often aware that this is happening. We don’t know what we don’t know, and some leaders depend on their teams to tell them what’s missing or needed, but the team isn’t competent enough to see it. Either they’ve never had coaching, tools, and resources before, or they’ve never gone to the intended destination before—which might be bigger, greater, or different than past destinations—so they’re not aware of what they need to be successful.

For others, there’s a clear vision and goal as well as tools and training, but there’s no reward or recognition systems in place to keep people motivated or inspired. There’s a reason teachers give out gold stars in kindergarten or awards for perfect attendance: people like feedback. They like to be noticed, recognized, and celebrated.

The list goes on, but as I settled into years of observation and analysis, what I realized was more than disappointing; it was downright concerning. Today, more people are disengaged at work than not, and not only does this wreak havoc on company and organizational success, but it wreaks havoc on these employees’ lives. People are more stressed and overwhelmed, more obese and out of shape, and more distracted and detached than ever before. How are we going to solve the world’s problems and build a better tomorrow for our children if we don’t have the minds and hearts of our workforce actively engaged? We simply need to do better.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably, at some point, had a great job. You’ve also probably had a not-so-great job. Or maybe even a terrible job. Think about the difference in your life during those times. When we have a great job and a boss we love, we come home excited, energized, and ready to take on our personal lives.

In those times, we’ve got something left over. We can invest in ourselves: we can journal, pursue hobbies, play with our kids, spend time with loved ones, exercise, and take care of our health. We can nourish the four major components or needs we have as humans (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual). This means we can still find time to exercise either on our own or by playing organized sports, find time to learn (doing a puzzle, reading a book, or attending a workshop), find time to invest in our relationships (help our children with their homework, devote time to our significant others), and then, finally, attend to our spirit (activities that make us feel whole like scrapbooking, art, music, poetry, or attending a play). We need these things. Without nourishing these key areas of our lives, we lack the ability to truly become wholehearted and happy people, capable of tremendous inner peace and joy.

These areas desperately need our time and attention, but they also require that we have energy to invest in them. When we aren’t our best selves at work—getting to utilize our natural talents and gifts, those things we can do better and more easily than others—something dies inside of us. Oftentimes, when I ask people in these situations about their work life, their answers include the following:

I’m bored.

Another day, another dollar.

Oh, you know…it’s just my job; it’s not a career or anything.

It’s what I’m doing right NOW…until I figure out what I REALLY want to do.

They say they want us to do XYZ right now, which is basically impossible.

They just don’t get it.

I haven’t had a one-on-one with my boss in forever. I don’t know the last time we really talked.

I don’t really know what I’m working on for my growth.

They always want us to do more with less.

One day closer to Friday! The weekend is almost here!

If we’re feeling this way 40 hours a week or more, how could we possibly have time to really engage and focus on the things that matter most to us outside of work? What do we have left over for the people we care about most in our personal life? What about the energy left over for that class or hour of cardio at the gym? Or what about that home improvement project we’ve been wanting to do or that gardening itch we’ve been meaning to scratch?

Sadly, our tendency when we feel overworked, undervalued, and not fully utilized or attached to an objective we care about is to come home drained and zapped of the energy we need for those things. It’s no wonder we turn to the TV, our phones, or the internet to escape into someone else’s life or a world that doesn’t closely resemble our own. So, this problem with poor leadership and the disengagement it leads to isn’t just about the cost it has on the organizations we work for. It’s the cost it has on the rest of our lives and the world or society as a whole. This is why I wrote this book: to bring awareness to these issues that are critical for our workplaces and our society to address.

Now, if you’ve had a job you loved, think about that part of your life. How did you feel in those days, months, or years of your life? Fulfilled? Excited? Eager? Why was that? I’d argue that it most likely was because of the environment you worked in. You were in an environment where you were able to do your best, be your best. The reality is that LEADERS create the environments we work in. Highly engaged people I’ve interviewed often say the following things about their work:

I love my job. I love the people around me. I just love what I do!

I’m really passionate about my career.

The time flies by. I don’t even know where it goes!

I got so busy, I forgot to take a lunch!

My boss really cares about us—and shows it every day.

I’m able to be myself and be my best. My ideas count and matter. I count and matter.

I can’t believe they pay me to do this!

I get to do my best work here. It’s a perfect fit for me.

People who make these kinds of statements leave work and go into the rest of their life in a very different way. They’re energized, engaged, recharged, and ready to go. Have you ever seen the fuel light in your car come on, alerting you that you’ll soon need gas? I have, all too many times. There’s a sense of anxiety if you still have some distance to drive before you can pull over. It’s not fun driving on an almost empty tank.

Our bodies, minds, and spirits are like gas tanks. Folks who have great leaders they love often love their jobs. Folks who love their jobs often leave work on a full tank of gas. They’re able to zip along at any speed and head off to their next destination. Whether it be their yoga or spin class, their son’s basketball game, or a book club with friends, they’ve got something left over, something left in the tank for the other areas of their life.

How people FEEL about their work and their jobs is largely determined by their leader.

When I watched Debbie cry because leadership was too incompetent to see her as a person—to acknowledge her and her feelings—something shifted in me. I realized that leaders are very powerful people. They literally have the ability to make other people cry. I’m a big believer in accountability and responsibility, and I believe we choose our own emotions; they’re not given to us. Debbie chose to feel that way and cry. However, Debbie’s reaction and response is understandable given the circumstances. Leaders have a certain power over other people, and that’s because leaders set the ENVIRONMENT. They have the power to set people up in great landscapes or let them exist in ugly conditions—and the worst of leaders are so oblivious, they don’t even know it.

As Spider-man is told, With great power comes great responsibility. I can’t think of anything more true. Leaders have a responsibility for the people in their charge. They have a responsibility to create safe environments where people can speak up, voice ideas, and share in the company success or struggle—and where people want to do that. Leaders have a responsibility to provide training, resources, tools, coaching, and development so people can grow, get better, and not only do their jobs more effectively, but also develop as better human beings. They have a responsibility to evaluate what’s going on around them, to plan, do, check, and adjust, making a shift when things go off track.

Poor management often arises from folks who got into leadership wanting the power but not aware—or unaccepting—of the responsibility that comes with that power. Perhaps they were cultivated by other bad leaders who barked orders, gave direction, demanded results, and then washed their hands of the rest. That’s unfortunate because that style of management is what’s costing the organization time and money, and what’s harming their people’s personal lives.

As a human race, we are so diverse, so unique, that we have the ability with our tremendous capacity for learning and analysis to solve the world’s problems. But to do that, we need to be ON. We need people to turn on their brains and be at their very best. When people are placed in poor, toxic cultures where their efforts go unnoticed and ignored, like Debbie, they shrivel up and withdraw. They become fearful of authority. They act timid and stuck. They question themselves and engage in self-doubt or negative self-talk. They lose that childlike spirit of innovation, imagination, and ideation that so many of us have when we are young. They start to wait to be told what to do rather than find the answers on their own. They fear change and stay static, developing what Carol Dweck (in her book, Mindset) calls a fixed mindset versus developing a growth mindset. And so, while they can solve the world’s problems (or maybe just their company’s problems), they don’t. Many of us don’t even have the mental endurance or strength to cook or live healthy lifestyles when we go home. Instead, we’ve become a fast-food nation, looking forward to the weekend when we can finally escape before the grind starts up again.

What a lousy life! Many of us spend most of our waking hours at work. Shouldn’t we demand and expect more out of our work? And more out of the leaders who guide us in that work? Shouldn’t we demand greatness? I think so.

We need people at their best so they can do the things we can’t. Whether you’re in wealth management or a literature teacher, you’re not the same person who can perform open-heart surgery or build an airplane. One thing we all have in common, wherever we are and whatever we do, is we have someone who leads us.

We deserve better leadership. There’s a leadership crisis in the world. People, everywhere, are accepting and tolerating lousy bosses. In some cases, they don’t know any better because they’ve never seen great leadership.

My partner, David, was working for a major airline, in an individual contributor role, when I met him. He has an incredible gift and talent for anything aviation related and is an incredibly gifted structural engineer with 25 years of experience being around planes, studying planes, and flying planes. He also had a keen interest in developing his knowledge and sharing it with others. When I asked him why he hadn’t moved into leadership roles, where he could positively impact the lives of others, his answer was simple: All our senior managers are stressed out. They look exhausted. They all rush around, work nights and weekends, and don’t have a social life. I’ve never wanted that life for myself; it really doesn’t look worth it.

I was absolutely dumbfounded. Leadership, for me, has been the most rewarding part of my career. I never felt like I had to invest in other people; I felt that I got to. There’s such a difference. I had been gifted this tremendous opportunity to create environments where I could help other people begin their own journey of making themselves great. I communicated early and often, did a few things, put some guardrails in place, and then sat back and watched with glee as people would go off and become great. It worked—every time—and as it did, I developed a model for leadership: a system of beliefs of what leaders need to do to help unleash talent in others. What’s stressful about that? There’s no need to rush around or work long hours. When it comes together as it should, it hums perfectly, like a well-oiled machine.

As I reflected on David’s comments, I felt a tremendous pain in the pit of my stomach. I realized that poor David had a distaste in his mouth about leadership, as a whole, because all he had experienced was poor leadership. David, someone who might have been a great candidate to lead others, now didn’t even want to because he only knew of one way of leading—the wrong way. This is incredibly common.

Another close friend of mine, John, who works for a technology company, has described to me for years some of the most terrible leadership I’ve ever heard of. I’ve said many times, Why don’t you talk to someone about this? Your boss? His boss? HR?

Absolutely not, John has repeatedly told me. HR just backs the bosses up. This is how things are done around here. You don’t fight the system. I’d lose my job.

Really? I’ve thought. Lose your job for speaking up? For doing the right thing? For demanding more? For wanting better? How is that possible? I remember once talking to my boss about this topic, and he simply said, You have to remember that they likely have a very different culture than we do. Where he works, that probably isn’t acceptable.

How is that OK? I’ve thought to myself. How is that just or fair or right? And WHO is doing something about that?

Well, the simple answer is: YOU CAN.

I wrote this book because I wanted to voice my belief that there’s a better way for leaders everywhere. I wanted to share the simple roadmap for great leadership that I created years ago and have been testing ever since.

Regardless of your role, you can start fighting for better leadership today. If you’re like my friend John, and you’re in an environment where you don’t have great leadership, you can leave. You can start your own company or go elsewhere where you observe that there is great leadership. You can do what I did—explore the opportunities and culture at six companies until you find it. When you find it, you can hang on and never let go. You can push back on the leaders you see in the organizations you’re in. You can recommend this book to them. You can help me continue a revolution that many others have already started—people like Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers, or Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, or Brendon Burchard, author of High Performance Habits, who also speaks about the 6 E’s of Leadership. You can pass it along; you can join the crusade.

It’s hard to fully explain my emotions when Debbie stood in front of me crying. I hadn’t had any formalized training or teaching around leadership, but I felt something die inside me that day. I knew something was wrong. I felt angry—almost outraged—that she didn’t have better leadership. I didn’t know that moment would lead me to a life of leadership, but leadership has become more than a fascination of mine. As Conor McGregor so articulately pointed out, to do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession. Conor is right. I’ve spent years asking my teams what we were obsessed with. For many of the teams I’ve led, it’s been the principles of servant leadership—caring, investing, coaching, development, training, teaching, evaluating, rewarding, recognizing, and then doing it all over again. What are you obsessed with?

If there’s something in your life you really want, then it’s going to require your full energy and effort. If you don’t have great leadership around you helping create a great culture in your work life, then that’s going to be hard to achieve. Your poor leader at work could be blocking you from achieving greatness. If you are that leader, it’s imperative that you’re obsessed with being a great leader. You took on a responsibility to do exactly that—to be great—when you took the job. No matter how bad the leaders were that brought you up, or came before you, you can change. You can adapt. You can lead in a new and wonderful way—where you commit each day to help others be great and unlock their potential—so we can turn this world into a better place. It’s that important.

Before we begin, I want to add a word of caution for any senior executives who are reading this book. C-level executives will benefit most by ensuring the leaders and managers rolling up to them in their organizations practice the 7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. of leadership outlined in this book. That’s not to say that the 7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. don’t apply to senior executives and are only for middle or frontline managers. That’s not it at all. However, the job of senior executives is more heavily centered around ensuring that they’ve got the right people working for them to carry that out. One of the biggest learnings I had in my role as a chief operating officer was that, all too often, we try to do the jobs of our people. At all levels, leaders are likely to get too involved in things their team should be doing. We don’t empower others nearly enough. We often don’t empower others enough because we don’t trust others enough. This often happens because we don’t have the right people, but we are too afraid to do something about it. We struggle to have tough conversations. We avoid being direct and truthful. We sugarcoat. We pick up the pieces for our teams. We tolerate mediocrity. None of that leads to success.

Some of the principles and practices in this book are heavily centered around coaching and training. Although two important things for any organization, they often are not the job of an executive. It’s their job to ensure coaching and training is happening all around them. When executives step in to do these things for their senior folks, they strip away the ability, the power, and the desire for those who roll up to them to do it themselves. When it comes to routines, it’s not often the job of the executive team to decide and define which routines work. It’s important they, too, have a routine regimen, but that’s going to look different than the routines their people have.

If you’re a senior executive reading this, I strongly encourage you to make sure you’ve got the right people, then teach them this framework. You’ll notice many aspects of the V.I.R.T.U.E.S. framework will also apply to yourself, but the biggest impact you’ll see is by encouraging others to lead this way. So, if you have a corner office, I strongly hope you ensure these 7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. are applied in every part of your organization.

A LEADER’S PLEDGE

Before you go any further, it’s important you make a pledge with yourself. If you don’t want to, or don’t feel you can, you’re not going to find a lot of value in this book. If your goal is to get something out of this book beside enjoyment, it’s important that we agree on a few things. This book makes some key assumptions about being a leader, and leadership as a whole, that you must accept before you start. I hope you’ll be able to say, Well, sure, of course I can agree to/pledge to/promise that! Duh! However, the sad truth is I’ve seen more leaders than I can count—some of them in senior or executive positions of leadership—who don’t agree to the following things. This framework will only work for those who agree to the following:

First, you must pledge to remember that it’s NO LONGER ABOUT YOU. For some, this might be obvious. But for many, it’s not obvious at all. Many people in positions of leadership were promoted into those roles because they were really good at getting things done. In fact, they excelled at it, and most were recognized and rewarded for it. Then, they were given the ultimate recognition: they were promoted to manage and oversee others. Since getting things done often leads to promotion into management, it’s not uncommon for leaders to have strong muscle memory, habits, and beliefs around getting things done and to want to continue doing that. But here’s a glaring problem: True leadership is not about getting things done. It’s about getting things done through other people. However, if you’re in leadership, you no longer have any individual results. Your results are the results of your team. Your job is no longer about performing. Your job is about helping other people perform. So, you must pledge and promise, here and now, that you’ll understand that everything in this book isn’t about you. It’s about the people who look to you for leadership.

The second part of this pledge dovetails with the first. If you’re going to find value in this book and apply its principles, you must pledge to do the following:

To care about others

To want them to develop, grow, and get better

To recognize that it’s your job to create an environment to help them become stronger

To understand that most everything you do affects others around you—and that’s a big deal

If you’re in a position of leadership but don’t have an openness to these concepts, you are going to struggle. You, and your team, will always struggle to create consistent results. Leadership is not about being successful on your own or creating breakthrough results independently; it’s about helping other people be successful as a team and helping them create breakthrough results together. A leader’s job is to lay groundwork and create an environment where that can happen. It’s important and taxing work, and it doesn’t always come with a lot of credit, which is why the best leaders out there don’t really need a lot of credit. Instead, they often find great fulfillment in watching their people do great things.

The people around you won’t just develop better knowledge or skills on their own. They won’t improve or grow without feedback, and some of that feedback needs to be tough, critical feedback. Some of it should be praise-based appreciation. Both kinds of feedback should be honest and candid. Your people aren’t going to use the creative and innovative parts of their brains without knowing that it’s okay to make mistakes, and even fail at times. They aren’t going to develop fierce loyalty toward you unless they feel they can talk to you and confide in you. They aren’t going to give it their all and put forth one thousand percent of their best selves if they don’t feel valued as a human being—both at work and outside of work. They’re not going to get excited and engaged about new projects if they don’t know where things are heading. They aren’t going to become resilient and adaptable