On Leading with Greatness

I call this technique “the buy-In boomerang.” It’s a logical turnabout that uses someone’s own stated standards against them. It’s a way of neutralizing a passive aggressive bully by getting them to buy into your argument. This technique draws on established psychological principles like commitment and consistency, but it specifically applies it to workplace bullying where evidence is ambiguous.

Call them what you will: conciliators, moderates, normies, or rationalists, many of these people who guard the status quo constitute the extremist middle. In politics, they’re called “radical centrists,” but they pop up in all sorts of scenarios. They’re radical because of their ferocity.

Leaders are individuals, but their individuality is almost irrelevant when it comes to their leadership success. The best leader is, after all, just another team member.

For a leader, what could be more wonderful than heading an effective organization that has earned a top award? Such collective success can be more satisfying than any individual prize.

Leaders think a lot about success, so let’s do that. Success is obviously the goal, but what do we mean by it? All too often we focus on the wrong kind of success or the wrong metrics of success.

What a spectacle! A 70-something-year-old white man commanding the stage as he bellows into a microphone. He holds this packed stadium in thrall to his every utterance. The crowd is in raptures. His crowd. They’ve heard all he has to say before, and they want to hear it all again. They cheer, they chant, and they yell his words back in sync to him.

This is not some tawdry political rally, though, and the man on stage is no bumptious demagogue. He is Bruce Springsteen—“The Boss”—performing at a recent concert I attended. And I can tell you that his reputation as a fantastic showman is solid.

Great leaders think about legacy—what values and behaviors they’re passing down over the long haul, to whom, and how those recipients will carry what they learn into the future. Only this way can leadership have a positive effect beyond the immediate. Like all aspects of leadership, legacy thinking is imperfect, but it’s always preferable to the toxic bequest of bad bossing.

While there are traits and factors where leaders and philosophers significantly diverge, they also have a great deal in common. It behooves the leader to consider the philosopher’s way and embrace it wherever most beneficial while understanding the differences between leadership and philosophy.

With all the leadership advice (most of it quality) cluttering social media, our bookcase shelves, and our Audible lists, you’d think that we’d see a profound and widespread positive shift in how people in general manage. I guess things have gotten a bit better in spots, but overall the same assumptions and practices—the same bossing ethos—that have always held sway remain set. Most people in positions of authority cling to mere bossdom.

Let’s create a little thought experiment. Let’s imagine a continuum stretching from the bossiest of bosses on one end to the most virtuous of servant leaders on the other. Contemplating this continuum reveals a paradox of perception. Here’s how the paradox works: the more an individual’s behavior leans toward the virtuous leader end of the continuum, the more we perceive their flaws and inconsistencies no matter how minor or anomalous.

How can leaders maintain their decency in a world of indecency.