Life is never meant to be done alone. There are moments that don’t just test us; they change our identity. Sometimes it's personal: the unexpected loss of a job, a health scare, a crisis at home. Sometimes it's professional: a board-level decision, layoffs, a major change initiative, a public failure. These moments change the air in the room with colleagues, friends, and family. They shift time. They make certain tasks feel heavier, and familiar meetings feel different. And in the middle of these times, something else can rise up; something strong enough to be felt, even amid hard seasons. People show up. Texts you didn’t expect. Phone calls that don’t need fixing words. Stories shared. A simple “I’m here if you want to talk” that feels like a firm hand on your shoulder. When pressure strips away the non-essentials, community becomes unmistakably essential. The recent passing of my father last week has been one of those moments for me. Waves of grief stripping away the noise in my calendar and leaving what’s truly important. And in the days surrounding his death, one leadership truth is undeniable: Community matters more than we notice when life is “normal.” The outpouring of support for the loss of my father has reminded me that strength isn’t only personal courage and grit. Strength is also often relational. It’s the steady presence of people who choose to show up, without needing to fix anything. A hike that made the point for me This Sunday afternoon, I took a walk on a familiar trail and snapped this photo of a tree that had stopped me in my tracks before: two trunks joined together. This time I noticed how strongly they were intertwined, growing as if they’d decided it's better connected than separate. It felt like a living metaphor for my recent experiences with friends and family. Because community at its best isn’t a crowd. It’s a shared trunk—people connected deeply enough that when one bears weight, the others lean in. Why this matters to executives In business, we often reward independence and celebrate self-sufficiency. But leadership has a shadow side: the higher you go, the easier it is to become isolated. And isolation doesn’t just affect your well-being—it affects your judgment, your energy, and your ability to lead through pressure. One of the simplest leadership lessons research keeps reinforcing is how much supportive people influence our performance and resilience—especially in chaotic, uncertain moments. In other words, isolation isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a risk factor. And community isn’t just sentimental or a nice-to-have. It produces tangible outcomes—belonging, trust, reduced anxiety, and increased self-esteem. Those are personal outcomes, yes. But they also translate into organizational outcomes: stronger relationships, healthier teams, and cultures that can withstand stress without fracturing. Rev. Dr. Ronald D. Doolittle, Sr. A few lines of legacy (without telling the whole story) When a father passes, what remains isn’t only memory—it’s influence. My dad wasn’t trying to be a “thought leader.” He simply lived certain values with consistency—the kind that shows up in small decisions and steady character. If I had to summarize his legacy without oversharing, it would be something like: Loving people well. Presence with others. Living consistently with your words and actions. Perserverance and deliberateness in doing the right thing. Nothing flashy. But deeply humble. And what struck me about the support I received is this: when people show up for you in grief, they’re not only caring for you. In a quiet way, they’re also honoring the kind of life that shaped you. The leadership habit that chaos, uncertainty, and loss demand If you lead people, hard seasons, uncertainty, and loss put an uncomfortable question on the table: Are you actively building community or merely managing relationships and resources? Building community requires being deliberate and isn't accidental. It’s a Life-Changing Leadership Habit of "living in balance." And it requires intentionality. Here are three practical steps you can take to strengthen your community (starting now): Build connections on purpose, not by convenience. Don’t wait for crisis to find out who is connected to whom—and how deeply. Reduce psychological distance. Proximity doesn't mean community, but hybrid work and high pace can create polite, efficient disconnection. Connection requires pursuit. Lead with the intent to will the good of others. People can feel when they’re loved or a means to an end. They can also feel it when they are genuinely valued. Reflection: What is your real challenge? When leaders experience uncertainty, chaos, and loss, the instinct is often to tighten up, push through, and protect everyone else from the weight. But it reveals a hard truth: carrying it alone is costly—personally and professionally. This is one of the reasons executive coaching is so transformational. Coaching creates a protected space, a creative thought partner to process what you’re carrying, regain clarity, and translate pressure into purposeful action. While not leaking stress into your relationships, your culture, or your decision-making. Remember that pressure is a privilege. Coaching won't remove the burden of leadership, but it can keep the burden from reshaping you and your organization in ways you never intended. If you’re not ready for coaching right now, start by choosing one trusted person and telling the truth about what you’re carrying. If you’re in a moment where life and leadership are colliding, you don’t have to navigate it alone. Life is not meant to be done alone. The strongest leaders build a “shared trunk” around themselves—trusted, wise, objective support that helps them lead with steadiness, humanity, and intent. Where have you normalized isolation as “part of leadership”? Who are your “shared trunk” people—the ones who steady you and tell you the truth? What’s one habit you could practice this week that increases trust and belonging on your team? References Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 Proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Godfrey, C. M., Harrison, M. B., Lysaght, R., Lamb, M., Graham, I. D., & Oakley, P. (2011). Care of self – care by other – care of other: The meaning of self-care from research, practice, policy and industry perspectives. International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare, 9(1), 3–24. Richards, S. (2010). The benefits of self-care. British Journal of Healthcare Assistants, 4(5), 246–247. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2016). Creating a healthier life: A step-by-step guide to wellness. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Language does not simply describe reality. It shapes what is elevated, what is questioned, and what the organization ultimately acts upon. Communication is one of the most central functions of life. Like air, the words leaders speak can give life to a business. But words can also constrain and limit realities. When leaders consistently talk about what is wrong, they ignore what might be and limit what's possible. Fixing what is wrong is important, but considering the best of what is and what might be is necessary to inspire a shared vision. Shared vision unlocks a growth mindset, embodies hopes, and gives an organization a sense of purpose. Leadership language is not just communication. It's part of the organization’s operating system. Often overlooked, leadership language does more than communicate priorities. Research has shown that it not only reflects thought but systematically shapes what individuals are able to perceive and act upon. What leaders communicate sets the stage for what the organization sees, discusses, and ultimately decides. Over time, language patterns influence not only how people think but also the quality of decisions an organization can make. Changing Your Mindset to Change Your Results Many current work processes are designed to identify deficits and problems rather than find strengths. A deficit-thinking approach starts with leaders identifying shortcomings and selecting solutions to address them. The goal is to see all the potential gaps so that continuous improvements can be introduced. While this approach leads to progress, it does not identify what you want beyond knowing the solution to the problem. It can also unintentionally narrow how individuals and teams define success and opportunity. Deficit thinking leadership approaches are failing business and society. This mindset has led to incremental workplace improvements, a flood of low-cost, high-quality disposable products, and a lack of innovation. While deficit thinking has been used successfully in many organizations, it is not without risks. Deficit thinking techniques can put people on the defensive, create resistance, a lack of buy-in, and in some cases develop a culture of blame rather than encourage change. How engaged will employees be if they believe leadership views them as problems needing to be fixed? Additionally, when leaders are always approaching employees about what is wrong, eventually, employees associate the leader with being the problem—even if what the leader has to share is helpful to the business. You know this link has occurred when hearing others say sarcastically, "I am from corporate, and I am here to help." They are saying this because they know they are not being viewed as helpful. Over time, this pattern can do more than affect engagement—it can influence what employees choose to share, what they withhold, and how openly they contribute to decision-making processes. Compared with strengths-based approaches, deficit-oriented thinking leads to lower employee engagement, lower levels of performance improvement, and higher employee attrition rates. In learning studies, it has been found that individuals engaged in approaches to identify deficits have lower perceptions of competence and lower intrinsic motivation than strength-based approaches. Strength-Based Thinking I define strength as the best of what is and potential for the best of what can be within a person, team, or organization. Strength-based thinking is not ignoring weaknesses; instead, it is about prioritizing and pursuing understanding, reinforcing, and leveraging the best of what can be. This shift is not simply about positivity—it influences how individuals and teams interpret challenges, identify opportunities, and contribute to outcomes. Appreciative framing and appreciative interviews are two strength-based skills that support strength-based thinking. Appreciative Framing Individuals, teams, and organizations move in the direction that is repeatedly discussed and where questions are asked. Appreciative inquiry assumes that our inquiries define outcomes, and we influence the results by discussing them. Appreciative framing is taking a given focal point for transformation and restating it as an opportunity. In doing so, leaders influence not only how challenges are viewed, but also how people engage with them and what actions are considered possible. The following are some examples: Framed as Concerns Bias in the workplace Customer complaints Missed opportunities Absence of leadership Framed as Opportunities Embracing differences at work Exceptional customer support Seeing new challenges Growing exceptional leaders Facilitating Appreciative Interviews Every employee and team has strengths. In contrast to deficit thinking, the focus is on what has worked, what is working, and the strengths. An appropriately developed appreciative interview builds on these points to guide the individual and team toward a positive future. When listening, it is essential to focus on the positive things happening in the story, how they unfold, and the attributes that make their dreams and wishes so exciting. This focus can shape how individuals understand their roles, capabilities, and contributions to the organization. Once the focal point of the discussion is framed appreciatively, a couple of my favorite appreciative questions are: What would you wish for if you had three wishes to dramatically improve your organization's health and vitality? (no, you cannot wish for more wishes) Imagine it is five years from today, and everything you had hoped for related to the appreciative focal point of the interview has come true. What would you see and hear? Describe the changes with people, processes, places, products, and services. Describe what you or others have done to make these changes possible. Embracing a strength-based habit prompts us to explore new and creative ways to approach our work, solve problems, and complete projects. Instead of our words working against us or limiting us, strengths-based thinking works in our favor. Over time, the words leaders consistently use become institutionalized realities. They shape how the organization operates, regardless of whether those realities reflect the full truth of the business. When leaders are intentional with their language, they influence not only perception but also the range of possibilities people are willing to pursue. If you are looking for executive coaching or need change consulting, we're ready to partner with you to craft a solution tailored to your organization's context and challenges. References: Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. Harper Collings Publishers. Cooperrider, D. and Srivastva, S. (1987). Appreciative inquiry in organizational life. In R. Woodman and W. Pasmore (Eds.), Research in organizational change and development, Vol. 1, pp. 129–169. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 Proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Greenaway, K. H., Wright, R. G., Willingham, J., Reynolds, K. J., & Haslam, S. A. (2015). Shared Identity Is Key to Effective Communication. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(2), 171–182. Hodges, T. D., & Clifton, D. O. (2004). Strengths‐based development in practice. In P. A. Linley, & S. Joseph (Eds.), (pp. 256-268). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hiemstra, D., & Van Yperen, N. W. (2015). The effects of strength-based versus deficit-based self-regulated learning strategies on students' effort intentions. Motivation and Emotion, 39(5), 656-668. Wolff, P., & Holmes, K. J. (2011). Linguistic relativity. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science, 2(3), 253-265.

Most organizations don’t lack empowered people; they lack systems that support them. Many leaders achieve their goals and even increase company revenue. But in a world of fast-paced change and complexity, businesses need empowered employees who will proactively engage in problem-solving, drive change, and take initiative to innovate. To create a competitive advantage, leaders need a committed team that can take charge. But, challenging the status quo often requires working against decision systems, acceptable risk tolerance, and accountability structures that keep people from taking greater ownership. Research from McKinsey & Company suggests that ineffective decision-making can consume 20–30% of organizational time, often driven by unclear authority and excessive approval structures. The result is a quiet but persistent tension where employees are encouraged to step up, but remain uncertain about authority and consequences. Leaders promote ownership, but retain control over key decisions. In this environment, hesitation is not a failure of motivation. It is a rational response to ambiguity. If leaders don't know how to empower others effectively, and organizations aren't structured to support greater ownership, evidence suggests that team morale and the business suffer. Empowerment as an Organizational Condition The word empowerment has come in and out of favor with leadership. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” Bill Gates Sadly, a common, overly simplified misconception of empowerment is that leaders give away power. Empowerment in action is the promotion of the skills, knowledge, and confidence necessary to take charge. At scale, empowerment is better understood as an organizational condition. One where individuals can make decisions, act, and be held accountable without unnecessary friction. Leadership behaviors can support this condition. They do not create it on their own. When empowerment is inconsistent across the organization, it is usually a signal that something in the system is misaligned. Where Empowerment Efforts Break Down Most organizations pursue improving empowerment through leadership development: Encouraging active listening Teaching leaders to ask better questions Promoting delegation Reinforcing vision and purpose These efforts matter. But they often conflict with an operating system that has not been updated to support these new behaviors. In this case: Decision rights remain unclear Risk tolerance varies by leader Accountability is inconsistently applied. Over time, leaders and employees learn to navigate the system as it actually operates, not as trained. Your culture shapes behavior far more than leadership messaging. 3 Structural Conditions That Enable Empowerment For empowerment to translate into performance, three conditions need to be aligned. 1. Clarity of Decision Rights People are more likely to take initiative when they understand where they have authority and where they don't. This includes: Defined ownership of decisions Clear escalation paths Agreed thresholds for involvement Without this clarity, initiative becomes uneven and difficult to sustain. 2. Alignment on Risk Empowerment assumes that individuals will make decisions in the face of uncertainty. That requires alignment on: What level of risk is acceptable How failure within those boundaries is handled How consistently leaders respond If similar decisions lead to different consequences depending on the leader, employees will default to caution. Not because they lack capability or the will to take risks, but because the system lacks consistency. 3. Consistent Accountability Empowerment and accountability must move together. When individuals are given authority without clear accountability, execution fragments. When accountability exists without authority, decision-making slows. Organizations that sustain empowerment over time tend to: Tie ownership to outcomes Maintain visibility into decisions Apply accountability consistently across levels This balance is what allows autonomy to scale. The Role of Leadership Behaviors The leadership practices often associated with empowerment matter. Active listening, thoughtful questions, effective delegation, and a compelling vision all contribute to how people experience the organization. But it is important to place them in context. These behaviors tend to be reinforcing mechanisms , not primary drivers. They are most effective when: Decision rights are already clear Risk expectations are understood Accountability systems are functioning Without that foundation, even strong leadership behaviors can produce uneven results. 5 Empowering Leadership Habits Although there is limited research into the most effective means for a leader to empower others, your leadership plays a key role. Managerial practices and leadership are the primary drivers of whether followers voluntarily take charge. You can encourage others to take charge by applying good active listening skills, asking for input, and delegating authority. Leadership Habit 1: Active Listening Being truly heard is rare in the workplace. Listening leaves your team feeling valued, affirmed, and emotionally connected to you. Active listening is the ability to hear and improve mutual understanding. When you actively listen, you pay attention, show interest, suspend judgment, reflect, clarify, summarize, and share to gain clarity and understanding. When you listen, you are available to the other person. The following video from Simon Sinek is about creating an environment where the other person feels heard. Leadership Habit 2: Leading with Questions Questions grounded in curiosity create influence. Not all questions are equal. For example, if you ask followers why are they behind schedule? You will likely get a defensive response rather than a solution. If you ask, what key things need to happen for you to achieve the goal? You will encourage followers to apply critical thinking to identify a solution. Learning to ask the right question instead of always having the answer benefits you, your team, and the organization. Leaders who ask questions become better listeners and gain deeper insights into how to bring out the best in others and guide the organization. Followers asked questions develop greater self-awareness, self-confidence, and empowerment. Leadership Habit 3: Delegating Authority Caught between the pressure of urgent and important work demands, delegating is often one leadership approach that gets cut. One of the more complex and essential things for a leader is going from doing to leading. Giving up authority and responsibility can seem counterintuitive to leadership. Spending a little time and effort upfront to consider the task, situation, employee, communication, and leadership support is crucial to delegating effectively. If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make an impact, learn to delegate. – John C. Maxwell Leadership Habit 4: Vision Articulating a compelling vision clarifies direction, inspires confidence and action, and coordinates efforts. Evidence suggests that a compelling vision is directly and positively related to creative performance. To be considered compelling, a vision needs to be desired, beneficial to others, challenging, and visual. Stories and metaphors are powerful ways to connect with others. Developing a vision is an exercise of both the head and the heart, it takes some time, it always involves a group of people, and it is tough to do well. Kotter, Leading Change Leadership Habit 5: A Servant Leadership Style Leading from a follower's first point of view, such as servant leadership , results in a willingness to take charge, set high standards, and a devotion to each other. Trust, love, and belonging unlock the team's ability to excel because of their differences rather than in spite of them. The following short video from leadership guru Ken Blanchard provides some thoughts on the power of servant leadership in today's workplace. Robert Greenleaf is attributed by most as the founder of servant leadership, described a servant leader as a servant first and used the following test to answer the question, are you a servant leader? The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived. ~Greenleaf & Spears To learn more about servant leadership , check out this article, which includes an assessment to help you determine whether your current leadership style aligns with servant leadership and the ten leadership characteristics. The Cost of Misalignment When organizations promote empowerment without aligning their systems, the effects are subtle but significant: Decisions are delayed or escalated unnecessarily Informal influence begins to outweigh formal authority Effort increases, but execution speed does not Confidence in leadership messaging gradually erodes None of this happens all at once. But over time, the gap between what is said and how the organization operates becomes more visible and increasingly more consequential. A New Framing of the Challenge The question is not simply whether leaders are empowering their teams. A more useful question is: Where might the organization be limiting the very behavior it is asking for? Are decision rights clear enough to support initiative? Is risk handled consistently enough to encourage action? Is accountability structured in a way that reinforces ownership? In many cases, the answers to these questions determine whether empowerment is experienced or remains aspirational. Final Thought Empowerment cannot be delegated solely to leaders. It is shaped by how the organization defines authority, distributes risk, and enforces accountability. When those elements are aligned, leadership behaviors amplify performance. When they are not, even well-intentioned efforts tend to stall. The opportunity is not simply to encourage empowerment. It is to ensure the organization is designed to support it. What is your real empowerment challenge? References: Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 Proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Edelmann, C. M., Boen, F., & Fransen, K. (2020). The power of empowerment: Predictors and benefits of shared leadership in organizations. Frontiers in Psychology, 11 , 582894-582894. Greenleaf, R. K., & Spears, L. C. (2002). Servant-leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness (25th-anniversary ed.). Paulist Press. Leavy, B. (2020). The dynamics of empowering leader-follower relationships. Strategy & Leadership, 48 (6), 27-33. Li, S., He, W., Yam, K. C., & Long, L. (2015). When and why empowering leadership increases followers' taking charge: A multilevel examination in china. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 32 (3), 645-670. McKinsey & Company. (2019). Untangling your organization’s decision-making .

Often, organizational culture problems are governance design failures in disguise. Organizational culture does not fail because leaders lack a desire for something better. It fails because the systems that govern decisions, incentives, and authority are allowed to drift. Over time, organizations default toward entropy, misalignment increases, decision quality erodes, and informal norms override the written strategy. Culture is a silent operating system determining what actually happens, regardless of what leaders say they want. Culture architecture is not a discretionary or soft leadership initiative. It's the one thing in your business that impacts everything. When leaders do not deliberately design and reinforce the mechanisms that shape behavior—what gets attention, resources, rewards, and advancement—the default culture will continue to reproduce itself despite any strategic priorities. The challenge leaders face today is not whether culture matters. Organizational culture is everyone's responsibility, and leaders play a central role in influencing and reinforcing the desired culture. Leaders need to be able to operate within and upon the business. The challenge is the professional will to engineer the system that produces culture, rather than being constrained by it. The good news is that culture change does not require grand programs or proximity in shared offices. It requires disciplined attention to a small number of levers that quietly govern how people decide, act, and adapt. The Control System That Produces Culture What people think, feel, and perceive is the byproduct of six reinforcing mechanisms that govern how the organization actually operates: 1. What leaders pay attention to regularly Your attention is one of the most potent mechanisms for culture change that leaders always have at their disposal. What leaders choose to systematically measure, reward systematically, and control matters, and the opposite is also true. For example, suppose an organization wants to build an analytical orientation  within the culture. In that case, a great starting point is to ask leaders what data they use to make decisions or reward leaders for making data-driven decisions. 2. How leaders react to critical incidents When a business or a leader faces significant stress, the organization's actual decision framework is revealed. These crucible moments are like refining fires. The heightened emotional intensity increases individual and organizational learning. For example, the recent global pandemic revealed much more about an organization's values than any about page on a website or company orientation ever would. Sodexo is one positive example of an organization demonstrating its commitment to employees through leadership's pandemic response . 3. How leaders allocate resources and control costs Capital allocation is the most accurate indicator of an organization's beliefs. Follow the money. Additionally, resources include physical assets such as equipment and tools, as well as human resources. What gets resourced gets reinforced. Going back to the example of creating an analytical orientation, leaders should consider what tools and resources employees have available for data analytics. 4. Deliberate role modeling and training Observed executive behavior establishes the boundary of acceptable action. How leaders act and behave is more significant than what they say or demonstrate during training. Leaders looking to build an analytical cultural orientation would benefit by explaining to and demonstrating to the organization how they use data to make routine decisions. 5. How leaders allocate rewards Compensation, recognition, and advancement systems encode the organization’s true priorities. Rewards and recognition come in many different forms. What is considered a reward varies from person to person. What gets rewarded, how it gets rewarded, and what does not get rewarded reinforce organizational culture. There are tangible rewards and social rewards. Simply saying thank you for presenting a decision using data analytics is a social reward. 6. How leaders recruit, promote, and fire Hiring, promotion, and termination decisions determine the durability of culture. Who gets hired, promoted , and fired, and for what, creates and reinforces your organization's culture. Talent management decisions can be viewed as a subtler nuance of culture change because they are influenced by explicitly stated criteria and unstated value priorities. A leader looking to influence an analytical cultural orientation would benefit from assessing the skills needed within the organization and then hiring based on them. The word culture gets used differently by different people at different times. Edgar Schein is considered to be one of the most influential contemporary thought leaders on organizational culture, and below is his organizational culture definition: "a pattern of shared basic assumptions  that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." It is easy to focus on the visible things that describe an organization's culture. However, an organizational culture framework consists of artifacts, values, and underlying assumptions: Artifacts:  These are the things you can see, feel, or hear in the workplace. Examples include what is displayed, office layouts, uniforms, identification badges, and what is discussed and what is not. Espoused Values:  What you are told and the beliefs you can use to make decisions. Examples include a company's vision and values or mission statement. They are explicitly stated official philosophies about the company. Basic Assumptions:  These things go without saying or are taken for granted. Examples could include speaking up in meetings, holding a door for someone, smiling, or greeting someone by name as you walk down the hall. Why Culture Change Efforts Fail Most culture initiatives fail because they attempt to intervene at the level of behavior while leaving the underlying system intact. Organizations introduce new values, communication campaigns, or training programs while continuing to: Fund conflicting priorities Reward outdated behaviors Tolerate misaligned decision-making Maintain unclear authority structures Under these conditions, resistance is not emotional—it is rational. Employees do not resist change. They adapt to the system that governs consequences. Psychological safety can enable dialogue, but it cannot override structural contradictions. If the system penalizes the desired behavior, no level of safety will consistently produce it. The Leadership Responsibility Culture change is not an initiative. It is a governance obligation. Leadership teams are responsible for ensuring that the organization’s control mechanisms are coherent, aligned, and reinforcing the intended strategy. This requires confronting a more difficult reality. Most organizations are not misaligned in intent. They are misaligned in the systems they tolerate. Culture does not degrade over time. It stabilizes around whatever the system consistently reinforces. Organizations with strong cultures are defined by a culture deeply rooted in how they operate. The following three companies are frequently recognized for their organizational culture: Southwest Airlines   operates within an industry routinely made fun of for its poor customer service; however, it is known for the opposite. Employees at Southwest can do what is needed to make customers happy, and as a result, their customers are loyal. Zappos  is an organization that has tightly connected its culture with its hiring practices. Zappos offers new hires $2000 to quit if they feel the job is not the right fit for them within the first week of employment. Check out this Zappos organizational culture video: Keeping culture strong becomes more challenging as the organization grows. Google has faced many challenges on its path to becoming the 5th most valuable company by market capitalization in the world. Businesses have to reinvent themselves to grow and adapt to changes. Google is known for being unique and leveraging data everywhere. Google uses people analytics not just for feedback but also for organizational culture analysis. Explore Google  Project Aristotle   to discover how data drives improvements in teamwork. How Do You Overcome Culture Change Resistance? Organizations are likely to deny the need for change and become defensive when the suggestion is made. If leaders are not attentive to the resistance, they can underestimate the change needed. Just mentioning the word change creates anxiety. Creating momentum within the organizations around the desire to survive and thrive reduces learning anxiety by creating psychological safety. Psychological safety is when you feel included, able to learn, contribute, and provide critical feedback without fear of embarrassment, exclusion, or punishment. Leaders increase psychological safety by consistently helping followers comprehend and accept the challenge. A critical takeaway observation from the six strategies for change is that they are about the leader's habits rather than a one-and-done culture change intervention. Also, these strategies tap into critical drivers of organizational change: The inspiration of employees. Involvement  is for everyone as much as possible. The internalization of the change. The six controls discussed in this article are not episodic interventions or change management tactics. They are continuous control mechanisms that operate whether leaders choose to engage them or not. Every organization already has a culture because every organization already reinforces behavior through attention, response, resource allocation, rewards, and talent decisions. The only question is whether those cultural reinforcements are intentional or accidental. Resistance to culture change is often misdiagnosed as emotional reluctance or lack of commitment. More often, it is a rational response to misaligned incentives, unclear authority, or conflicting signals embedded in the system. Psychological safety matters, but it cannot compensate for governance structures that reward the very behaviors leaders claim they want to change. Organizations that succeed at culture change do not attempt to “fix” people. They redesign the conditions under which people make decisions. They clarify what the organization truly values by making those values observable in budgets, promotions, consequences, and executive behavior. Culture changes when the system makes it easier to act differently—and harder not to. For leaders, the real work of culture change begins with an uncomfortable but necessary question: What behaviors does our organization reliably produce—and what system is producing them?   Until that question is addressed directly, culture will remain an outcome of design by default, not by choice. Organizational culture is the one thing that influences every aspect of your business. It directly impacts the overall success of your organization, your people, your customers, and your communities. The underlying values of an organization influence the behaviors of employees and their decisions. Much has been written on the impact of culture on business effectiveness. Scholarly research has directly linked the effects on customer satisfaction, employee teamwork, cohesion, and employee involvement. Organizational culture creates an internal and external brand identity that influences what and how people think about your organization. Organizational culture is also key to unlocking innovation . Just as some organizational culture characteristics can support innovation, others can also inhibit innovation. For example, a hierarchical organizational culture type has been proven to decrease an organization's ability to innovate. Let’s clarify your culture’s decision levers and remove hidden barriers to reinforce and drive strategic execution. Schedule a Strategic Leadership Conversation References: Büschgens, T., Bausch, A., & Balkin, D. B. (2013). Organizational culture and innovation: A meta‐analytic review. The Journal of Product Innovation Management, 30 (4), 763-781. Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (Third ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Gregory, B. T., Harris, S. G., Armenakis, A. A., & Shook, C. L. (2009). Organizational culture and effectiveness: A study of values, attitudes, and organizational outcomes. Journal of Business Research, 62 (7), 673-679. Nieminen, L., Biermeier-Hanson, B., & Denison, D. (2013). Aligning leadership and organizational culture: The leader-culture fit framework for coaching organizational leaders. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 65 (3), 177-198. Pater, R. (2015). Advanced culture change leadership. Professional Safety, 60 (9), 24. Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. (2016). Organizational culture and leadership, 5th edition (5th ed.) John Wiley & Sons.

5 Levers Leaders Control Accountability is one of those leadership topics that sounds like it should be easy, until results slip, execution breaks down, and you realize that good people can still develop accidental habits of avoidance, blame, and underperformance. Often, organizations try to address accountability issues by improving hiring practices, tightening policies, or increasing monitoring. But leaders often miss that workplace accountability is primarily architected. shaped by what they consistently reinforce through expectations and consequences. A recent CEO benchmarking study found that nearly 1:5 CEOs identified “holding others accountable” as their greatest leadership competency weakness, with nearly as many also self-identifying that they are struggling to let go of underperformers. That’s not a capability gap in the middle; it’s often a governance and leadership-system gap at the top. A Useful Definition of Accountability Employee accountability is the expectation that an employee may be called on to explain an action or inaction to others, with the belief that a consequence will follow based on an evaluation. In other words, accountability is clear ownership, visibility, review, required explanation, and meaningful consequences for actions. When those elements are weak, cultures drift. People ignore, deny, blame, and play the victim. When they are strong, accountability supports job performance, motivation, ethical behavior, and discretionary effort. The Five Leadership Levers That Determine Whether Accountability Shows Up—or Disappears Research points to five psychological “dimensions” (levers) that drive accountability at work. These levers are practical because they are designable —leaders can strengthen them through operating rhythms, performance systems, and cultural expectations. Lever 1: Attribution, Ask: Who owns what? Accountability rises when work is personal, explicit, and unambiguous—when others clearly know who did it  (or didn’t). Attribution increases when people believe actions and decisions can be linked directly back to them. Leadership Team questions Are the most critical outcomes assigned to a single accountable owner (not a committee)? Do we have role clarity at the executive and enterprise level that eliminates “shared ownership” ambiguity? Are job and performance expectations explicit enough that there’s no confusion about what “good” looks like? Executive actions Make decision rights and ownership unmistakable (roles, RACI, “single throat to choke” where appropriate). Tighten success definitions: “What does success look like, by when, and by what measure?” Develop meaningful relationships with direct reports—accountability increases when leaders know people, not just titles. Lever 2: Observation, Ask: Can performance be seen? In an observation-accountable culture, people expect their behaviors and judgments will be visible to leaders, peers, and stakeholders. As the perceived audience size increases, accountability increases. Leadership Team questions Where is our execution invisible (especially cross-functional work)? Do we get leading indicators—or only lagging results after damage is done? Does peer-to-peer accountability exist, or does everything escalate up the hierarchy? Executive actions Increase transparency: dashboards, visible commitments, clear operating rhythms. Use peer-to-peer mechanisms (cross-functional reviews, team scoreboards). Reduce “private work” on enterprise priorities—make progress observable. Lever 3: Evaluation, Ask “Is work meaningfully reviewed?” People act differently when they expect performance to be reviewed in a real, comparative way. Evaluation accountability rises when feedback is frequent, and outcomes matter. Leadership Team questions Are performance reviews and business reviews robust—or ceremonial? Is there calibration across leaders to ensure consistency and fairness? Are evaluation outcomes variable (i.e., do strong and weak performance lead to meaningfully different outcomes)? Executive actions Strengthen business reviews and performance reviews with real standards and evidence. Add “reviewer status” by including a second-level review (leader’s leader) for formal evaluations. Make feedback a normal leadership discipline, not an annual event. Lever 4: Obligati, Ask: “Do people expect to explain the impact on others?” Obligation accountability increases when employees expect they must explain decisions and their impact on others’ well-being—customers, peers, teammates, or the public. Leadership Team questions Where do we tolerate “results at all costs” behavior that harms trust or culture? Do leaders explain decisions and consequences—or simply announce them? Are customers and stakeholders meaningfully represented in how we evaluate performance? Executive actions Build in required explanation: decision memos, post-mortems, customer impact reviews. Increase visibility to talent and performance across the organization through calibration meetings. Reinforce that “how results are achieved” is not optional—it’s part of the standard. Lever 5: Consequential, Ask: “Do consequences actually follow performance?” In strong accountability systems, people expect their actions will be linked to positive or negative consequences. Consequences include extrinsic rewards (bonuses, promotions, loss of privileges) and intrinsic outcomes (pride, meaning, satisfaction). Accountability collapses fastest when consequences are inconsistent or unfair. Leadership Team questions Do we reward results while ignoring behavior that erodes culture? Are consequences consistent across functions and leaders—or leader-dependent? Are we tolerating chronic underperformance because it’s uncomfortable to address? Executive actions Ensure fairness: people are motivated when rewards are equitable compared to others. Involve employees in defining rewards/recognition norms where appropriate. Build consequence integrity: if you say it matters, it must show up in rewards, promotions, and exits. A Practical Board/Executive Tool: The Accountability “Pulse” Survey If you want to strengthen accountability, measure it. The following validated survey by Han and Perry can help leaders better understand employee accountability within a team or across an organization. Have employees anonymously indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement with the following statements using a seven-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Consider using this survey before and after taking steps to improve the team and organizational accountability. Measurement improves focus and tracks progress over time. What I do is noticed by others in my organization. If I make a mistake, I will be caught. I am constantly watched to see if I follow my organization's policies and procedures. Anyone outside my organization can tell whether I'm doing well. My errors can be easily spotted outside my organization. People outside my organization are interested in my job performance. The outcomes of my work are rigorously evaluated. My work efforts are rigorously evaluated. I expect to receive frequent feedback from my supervisor. I could not quickly avoid making a false statement to justify my performance. I am constantly required to follow strict organizational policies or procedures. I am not allowed to make excuses to avoid blame in my organization. If I perform well, I will be rewarded. Reasonable effort on my part will ultimately be rewarded. If I do my job well, my organization will benefit. Each question aligns with one of the five accountability levers. The higher the score, the higher the dimension of accountability. Attribution Accountability (Q1-3) Observation Accountability (Q4-6) Evaluation Accountability (Q7-9) Obligation Accountability (Q10-12) Consequential Accountability (Q13-15) Accountability is shaped by what leaders consistently reinforce — through clarity, visibility, expectations, and consequences — especially when results are under pressure. Holding employees accountable isn't easy, but it significantly impacts your leadership and business results. Where might your leadership team be unintentionally weakening accountability — not through intent, but through what you tolerate, inspect, or model? What Boards & Leadership Teams Should Watch For: The Accountability “Leak Points” When accountability issues repeat, they are rarely solved by telling people to “try harder.” They are usually symptoms of problems with the leadership system design. Common leak points include: Unclear ownership  for the outcomes that matter most Low visibility  into execution until it’s too late Soft evaluation  (feedback is vague, infrequent, or non-comparative) Low obligation  (leaders don’t explain decisions or impact) Inconsistent consequences  (standards vary by leader, politics, or favoritism) Three Immediate Actions to Take in the Next 30 Days Select 2–3 enterprise-critical priorities  and tighten ownership, measures, review cadence, and consequence alignment. Run the accountability pulse survey  in one high-impact area to identify which lever is weakest. Institutionalize calibration  of talent and performance, so that accountability is consistent across leaders—not personality-dependent. Closing challenge for the board and CEO Where might the senior leadership team be unintentionally weakening accountability, not through intent, but through what you tolerate, inspect, or model? References Connors, R., Smith, T., & Hickman, C. (2010). The Oz Principle: Getting results through individual and organizational accountability. Prentice Hall. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 Proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Han, Y., & Perry, J. (2020). Conceptual bases of employee accountability: A psychological approach, perspectives on public management and governance , 3:4, 288–304 Han, Y., & Perry, J. (2020). Employee accountability: development of a multidimensional scale, International Public Management Journal, 23:2, 224-251. Howard, S. (2019). Holding employees accountable: where most leaders fail. Predictive Index.

And influencing the way you lead, think, and show up every day What if your greatest risk is not the decisions you make, but the ones you never examine? Everyone is busy. Organizations are busy. Calendars are full. Decisions are made quickly. That pace is often necessary, but it creates a quiet tradeoff. Very little time is spent stepping back to understand what those decisions actually produced or why. This is where outcomes separate from moving ahead or falling behind. Leaders do not improve simply by working longer or harder. They improve by becoming more intentional about how they think, decide, and learn. Evidence reinforces this. Spending just fifteen minutes a day reflecting can improve performance by as much as 23% compared to simply gaining additional experience.We also know from decision science that humans default to fast, intuitive thinking. Rapid decisions are efficient, but under complexity and pressure, they are consistently biased toward our preferences. Sometimes errors in leadership result from inaction; often, they result from misjudgment. When moving quickly, misjudgments are harder to see and easier to repeat. That is why high-performing teams build structured reflection into after-action reviews. It is what turns experience into learning instead of repetition. The pattern is consistent. It is not experience that improves performance. It is the ability to reflect on that experience and learn from it. Without reflection, even the most capable leaders and organizations can move quickly while repeating the same patterns. Reflection is the difference between activity and improvement. Why Reflection Matters More Than We Think Reflection is often viewed only as a personal habit. Something leaders do to improve self-awareness or productivity. And it does both. But its impact extends far beyond individual performance. Reflection helps leaders and teams recognize patterns, challenge assumptions, and better understand the connection between decisions and outcomes. Without it, confidence can grow faster than clarity. Leaders continue making decisions. Organizations continue executing. But the thinking behind those decisions remains largely unexamined. Over time, that gap compounds. Effective reflection involves the ability to doubt, pause, and be curious even about the ordinary. The practice of reflection provides a path to deeper understanding. It enables leaders to consider and learn about underlying contexts and causes for results. Evidence suggests that spending 15 minutes a day improves productivity by as much as 23% compared to those without reflection time. Researchers found that the benefit of additional experience is inferior to deliberately translating and organizing previously accumulated experiences. Sometimes reflection creates discomfort and conflict at both the individual and organizational levels as leaders wrestle with self-limiting beliefs and failure. However, leaders risk repeating bad decisions that could prove disastrous if they fail to consider alternate viewpoints. The best mindset to adopt is not to let a difficult past situation go to waste. The Leadership Dimension At the individual level, reflection creates space. Space to pause. Space to think. Space to question what feels obvious. In that space, leaders begin to see: where their assumptions influenced outcomes where bias-shaped decisions where a different approach may have led to a better result This is not about slowing down for the sake of slowing down. It is about improving the quality of the decisions that drive everything else. The ability to reflect requires open-mindedness, responsibility, and a willingness to evaluate oneself honestly. Open-mindedness: The desire to listen to other points of view and recognize that even the most strongly held beliefs may be questioned. Open-minded leaders have very few ideas that cannot be changed. Responsibility:  The desire to pursue truth and apply it to today's situations. Wholeheartedness:  A sincere attitude toward the critical evaluation of themselves and others. An unwavering commitment to make necessary changes and overcome the fear of failure. These are not soft qualities. They are what allow leaders to learn faster than the complexity around them. Conversely, narcissists generally lack the empathetic self-reflection necessary to facilitate self-reflection. While we all possess narcissism to some degree, if you are worried that you might be too much of a narcissist, relax; you probably are not. The Organizational Dimension While reflection begins with individuals, its real impact shows up at the organizational level. Most organizations are built to execute: Goals are set Plans are developed Results are measured Fewer are built to consistently learn from those results. Without shared reflection: Insights stay with individuals Teams interpret outcomes differently The same challenges reappear in new forms Experience accumulates, but learning remains uneven. When reflection becomes part of how an organization operates, something shifts. Teams align more quickly. Decisions improve over time. Patterns become visible earlier. The organization begins to learn as a system, not just as a collection of individuals. Practices That Make Reflection Work Reflection does not need to be complex to be effective. It needs to be intentional. Set aside time. Even brief moments of focused thinking can create clarity. This is a potentially obvious point, but crucial. Planning is often the most significant barrier to reflection. You get too busy or distracted and move on to the next thing before reflecting. It doesn't have to be a lot of time, but I recommend scheduling at least 20 minutes in a quiet place. Narrow your focus. Reflect on specific decisions, time periods, or experiences rather than everything at once. Let's be honest; it is hard for most of us to remember last week, much less last year. Rather than considering the whole year, break the year into periods or quarters. Then focus on each segment of time separately. Taking a strategic approach helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. The following powerful questions, taken from an after-action review process used by the military, provide a structure for your reflection: What was expected to happen? What actually occurred? What went well and why? What can be improved and how? These questions help connect actions to outcomes in a meaningful way. Maintain a balanced perspective. Recognize both strengths and areas for improvement. Growth comes from understanding both. Adopt a strengths mindset. It is easy to be drawn to what is not right and focus on your weaknesses during reflection. Having a balanced focus is not about ignoring weaknesses; it's about prioritizing, pursuing, and leveraging strengths and opportunities to bring out your best. Consider what strengths contributed to your success. Tools That Strengthen Reflection Reflection is often more effective when supported by simple tools. Use a journaling app like Day One to capture your thoughts, feelings, successes, and frustrations. This approach has been demonstrated to be incredibly impactful on leader-follower relationships, clarity of purpose, and the acquisition of new skills. Like building any habit, start small and tie it to an existing practice, like your routine, before you leave the office for the day. Critical reflection should be a social process. It is most successful when collaborative. Leaders need to understand how followers perceive their actions. Using a leadership 360 assessment is one proven tool to improve critical reflection. These assessments typically gather feedback from their leader, peers, and direct reports, allowing comparisons with others. This is one leadership assessment you need to be using. Thought leadership introduces new ideas that challenge assumptions and expand understanding. Books, articles, and assessments on leadership can help leaders examine a particular situation from different perspectives, fostering critical reflection. Thought leadership grounded in research provides leaders with proven solutions that can be applied and shorten the learning process. If you are not a skilled speed reader, you may be surprised that you can learn how to read a book in an hour. Like any skill, there are tips and tricks to increase your speed and retention. Here is a bonus link to an assembled collection of my top five favorite books from thought leaders on change management, coaching, culture, innovation and creativity, leadership style, servant leadership, and strategic planning . Used together, these tools help turn reflection into consistent learning. Making Reflection Part of How You Lead and Operate The opportunity is not simply to reflect more. It is to reflect with purpose. For leaders, this means creating space to think and question. For organizations, it means creating space within the rhythm of work to step back and learn. After decisions are made.After projects are completed.Before moving on to what is next. When reflection becomes part of how work gets done, learning becomes part of how progress is made. Everyone is busy. Work continues. Decisions are made. Momentum builds. But without reflection, it is possible to move quickly while staying in the same patterns. With reflection, those same experiences become a source of clarity, learning, and better decisions. The question is not whether reflection is valuable. The question is: What decisions have you not revisited that are still shaping your business today? References: Densten, I. L., & Gray, J. H. (2001). Leadership development and reflection: What is the connection? International Journal of Educational Management, 15(3), 119-124. Di Stefano, Gino, F., Pisano, G. P., & Staats, B. R. (2016). Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning. IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc . Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 Proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Gardner, S. & Albee, D. (2015). Study focuses on strategies for achieving goals, resolutions. Dominican University of California. Helyer, R. (2015). Learning through reflection: the critical role of reflection in work-based learning (WBL). Journal of Work-Applied Management. Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup Press.

Self-Sacrifice as a signal of leadership credibility and trust. It's easy to be a leader when authority is clear, resources are sufficient, and outcomes are favorable. It becomes real when the leader must absorb the cost rather than pass it on. That is the moment people decide whether leadership is just a position they hold or a substantive calling. In many organizations, leaders challenge teams to accept uncertainty, stretch beyond their comfort zones, adapt quickly to change, and make personal sacrifices for the greater good of the organization. Those expectations are not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is expecting them to be credible when the same executives remain insulated from the same demands. This is why self-sacrifice matters. Not as symbolism. Not as moral theater. And not as a continuous state of self-denial. It matters because, at critical moments, leadership requires visible evidence that the mission outranks personal convenience and status. Executives must understand this intuitively. Followership is not secured by title alone. It is shaped by whether people believe the leader is carrying responsibility 'with them' or assigning it 'to them.' Self-Sacrifice Is Not the Strategy. It Is the Signal of Trust. Leadership self-sacrifice is often misunderstood. Some interpret it sentimentally, as though good leaders must always give more, take less, and defer to others endlessly. Others reject it entirely, viewing sacrifice as naïve, unsustainable, or incompatible with executive responsibility. Both interpretations miss the point. Self-sacrifice is not the operating model of leadership. It is one of the clearest signals of leadership credibility and trust. At decisive moments, leaders are watched for what they protect, what they surrender, and whose interests prevail when trade-offs become real. Those observations shape trust far more than value statements, speeches, or leadership frameworks. When leaders visibly incur a cost for the sake of the team, mission, or institution, they send a message that authority is in the service of something larger than themself. That message has organizational consequences. It strengthens trust. It deepens belonging. It increases willingness to reciprocate, cooperate, and commit. It also changes how people interpret difficult decisions. Employees are more willing to accept strain when they believe the burden is being shared rather than being exported downward. This is not a soft dynamic. It is an execution dynamic. Acts of self-sacrifice are inspiring. Many stories of modern w orld changers involve a common theme of tremendous self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr. was central to the American civil rights movement. He faced numerous threats to his life and was ultimately assassinated in 1968. His message and his sacrifices galvanized the civil rights movement, leading to significant legislative and social changes in the United States. But not all acts of self-sacrifice in the workplace result in a positive impact. Those most influential involve self-sacrifice that conveys the leader can be trusted to act in ways that benefit the team and its mission. In the following video, Simon Sinek discusses the power of self-sacrifice within an organization. It's inspired by Marine Corps General Flynn's  account of why senior officers in the military eat last. Why Executives Should Take This Seriously The executive relevance of self-sacrifice is not primarily personal. It is institutional. Every organization depends on a belief that leadership authority is legitimate. Once that belief weakens, the enterprise does not necessarily collapse. More often, it becomes slower, thinner, and more political. People still comply, but with less trust. Change initiatives encounter more resistance. Cooperation becomes conditional. Discretionary effort declines. The organization continues to move, but conviction has been replaced by calculation. That deterioration is rarely caused by a single decision. It accumulates through repeated observation that leaders reserve sacrifice for others. Executives should care because people are constantly interpreting leadership through asymmetry. Who is expected to absorb the pressure? Who is protected when priorities collide? Who gives something up when trade-offs become unavoidable? If the answer is always “the team,” then the organization will eventually understand leadership not as stewardship, but as insulation. That is a dangerous realization. The Systems Condition: Self-Sacrifice Must Reinforce the Mission, Not Compensate for Disorder This is where a more executive-level reading becomes necessary. Self-sacrifice is not automatically virtuous simply because it is costly. It matters only when it strengthens trust in the leader’s commitment to the mission and to the people responsible for carrying it forward. That distinction matters because organizations can easily romanticize sacrifice while ignoring the conditions that make it meaningful. There is a difference between a sacrifice that clarifies leadership commitment and one that conceals a weak design. A leader who gives credit away, takes responsibility in crisis, protects the team during uncertainty, or shares in difficult conditions strengthens the legitimacy of leadership. Those actions reinforce the organization's social contract. A leader who repeatedly overextends to cover broken processes, chronic understaffing, vague decision rights, or preventable ambiguity may still look admirable, but the organizational effect is different. In that case, sacrifice is no longer reinforcing the system. It is compensating for its failure. Executives need to be able to tell the difference. If leaders never sacrifice, trust erodes. If leaders must always sacrifice, the system is unstable. This is the real leader-follower tension. The Trade-Off Executives Must Manage Self-sacrifice is necessary in leadership, but it comes with risk. The question is not whether leaders should ever put others first. They must. The question is how to do so without creating distortion. There are at least three executive trade-offs to manage. 1. Credibility vs. Dependency Visible sacrifice builds trust, but overused sacrifice can create dependency. Teams may begin to rely on the leader’s willingness to absorb cost rather than strengthening their own ownership, judgment, or accountability. The executive task is to model commitment without becoming the institution’s permanent shock absorber. 2. Symbolic Value vs. Structural Consequence Some acts of sacrifice are symbolically powerful and organizationally healthy. Others feel noble in the moment but quietly reinforce bad design. Leaders should ask whether the sacrifice is strengthening trust in the mission or merely preventing the organization from confronting a structural problem. Not every burden should be carried. Some burdens should be redesigned. 3. Shared Burden vs. Performative Hardship Employees are quick to distinguish between genuine sacrifice and staged sacrifice. Leaders who make visible sacrifices for recognition, or who dramatize burden without materially sharing it, weaken trust rather than build it. Self-sacrifice is credible when it is proportionate, relevant, and aligned with the mission. It becomes corrosive when it is theatrical. Where Self-Sacrifice Belongs in Executive Practice The practical question is not whether senior leaders should sacrifice. It is when that sacrifice is most consequential. In executive leadership, self-sacrifice is most credible when it appears in moments such as these: When leaders accept accountability rather than deflect blame downward When they give up status advantages that create unnecessary distance from the team When they share the burden of difficult transitions rather than merely announcing them When they subordinate personal recognition to collective contribution When they allocate time, attention, and resources in ways that demonstrate people and mission are not secondary considerations When they make hard calls that protect long-term institutional health over short-term executive comfort These moments matter because they answer the question people are always asking: What is this leader actually willing to risk, lose, or surrender for the sake of what they say matters most? That answer defines leadership more than competence alone. Two Executive Disciplines That Make Self-Sacrifice Useful The original argument rightly points toward two practical areas: goal design and belonging. Both remain important, but for an executive audience, they should be reframed as organizational disciplines rather than interpersonal suggestions. 1. Build Leadership Goals That Require Shared Benefit Leadership goals should not be limited to personal output, visible wins, or enterprise contribution detached from team consequence. Senior leaders should be evaluated in part by whether their decisions strengthen the capability, clarity, and performance conditions of the people they lead. That means leadership expectations should explicitly include: building environments where people can contribute and grow creating development conditions, not merely demanding results providing honest and timely communication recognizing contribution visibly and fairly ensuring the team is better positioned because of the leader’s presence This is where self-sacrifice becomes concrete. It moves from rhetoric into goal architecture. Leaders are no longer rewarded only for what they achieve personally, but also for what they make possible institutionally. 2. Treat Belonging as an Execution Condition, Not a Cultural Accessory Belonging is often discussed in emotional language, but its executive significance is operational. People commit more fully when they believe they are seen, valued, and safe enough to engage reality honestly. Leaders cultivate belonging not through sentiment, but through disciplined attention: curiosity, listening, practical support, acknowledgment, and respect. These behaviors communicate that people are not merely instruments of delivery. They are participants in the mission. Self-sacrifice plays a role here because belonging is weakened whenever leaders hoard comfort, distance, or privilege while asking others for commitment. People do not experience belonging where the burden is visibly asymmetrical. The Boundary Executives Must Keep Clear A final caution is necessary. Self-sacrifice should never be used to justify avoidable exhaustion, chronic overreach, or organizational martyrdom. Executives should reject any interpretation that equates leadership seriousness with perpetual depletion. That is not discipline. It is drift. The correct standard is not “leaders must always put themselves last.” The correct standard is more demanding and more precise: Leaders must be willing, when the moment requires it, to bear personal cost in ways that strengthen trust, reinforce mission, and dignify the people they lead. That is different from self-erasure. It is also different from comfort-preserving leadership. A mature organization does not ask leaders to sacrifice because it is careless with systems. It asks leaders to sacrifice because there are moments when no enterprise can be led credibly without visible shared burden. Final Thought At some point, every serious leader must choose between protecting self and the claims of the mission. People remember those moments. They build their interpretation of leadership around them. They notice who goes first. They notice who absorbs the cost. They notice whether responsibility is shared or assigned. And in the end, they decide whether leadership in their organization is something to trust, endure, or imitate. That is why self-sacrifice matters. Not because sacrifice is the goal. But without it, leadership often lacks proof. References Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-Changing Leadership Habits: 10 Proven Principles That Will Elevate People, Profit, and Purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Gallup. (2022). State of the global workplace 2022 report. Gallup.; Best Christian Workplace Survey 2022. Hoogervorst, Niek (2012). When do leaders sacrifice? The effects of sense of power on leader self-sacrifice. The focus quarterly (1048-9843), 23 (5), p. 883. Shin, J., & Shin, H. (2022). The effect of self-sacrifice leadership on social capital and job performance in hotels. Sustainability, 14 (9), 5509. Van Knippenberg, B. M., & van Knippenberg, D. (2005). Leader self-sacrifice and leadership effectiveness: The moderating role of leader prototypicality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 25-37.

Growth Becomes Questionable When Decision Systems Stay Unclear Economic uncertainty was already part of the 'new normal' leadership landscape well before the pandemic disrupted global markets. Today, a trend of increasing uncertainty remains, even as signs of resilience continue to emerge. The International Monetary Fund projects global economic growth of approximately 3.3% in 2026, despite ongoing trade tensions, inflation pressures, and policy shifts. At the same time, surveys of global executives reflect cautious optimism, with a majority of CEOs and investors expecting the global economy to improve in the near term. Growth in an uncertain environment is never straightforward. As executive teams and boards look to remain competitive in a turbulent digital marketplace, they face pressure across every part of the business. For Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike, professional organizational consulting services can provide a practical pathway to navigate uncertainty, strengthen organizational capacity, and support growth. Why Hire an Organizational Consultant? The heart of consulting is integrity, trust, and ethics. Professional consultants help organizations take measured risks and create value by providing support and advice based on experience, education, and specific qualifications. They bring clarity and simplicity to inherently ambiguous and complex challenges. Additionally, they identify the root causes of achieving the client's growth goals and introduce proven strategies and processes implemented in partnership. Typical Pain Points on the Pathway to Growth Growth-oriented pain points are often considered good problems to have; if individuals and organizations are not growing, they are falling behind. Across industries, growth-stage organizations and established companies alike tend to encounter five recurring challenges: Leadership bench strength is thin. Critical roles lack ready-now successors, and future leadership capacity has not been developed with enough intention. Employee engagement starts to slip. Morale, trust, and discretionary effort decline when people feel disconnected from priorities, overloaded by change, or uncertain about expectations. Confusion increases across the organization. As businesses grow, communication gaps widen, decision rights become fuzzy, and teams can lose clarity around roles, priorities, and accountability. Change outpaces the organization’s ability to respond. Leaders may recognize the need to evolve, but resistance, limited alignment, or outdated systems make change difficult to execute well. Development is not keeping pace with business needs. Organizations often outgrow their current leadership habits, team capabilities, talent systems, and ways of working. These issues are rarely isolated. They tend to compound one another, creating friction that shows up in performance, retention, culture, and execution. What is the role of an Organizational Consultant? The word consultant  can mean many things, and unfortunately, the word consultant brings up mixed emotions around what they do, as evidenced by this UPS commercial: At Organizational Talent Consulting, organizational consulting is not about handing over generic advice. It is about helping leaders solve meaningful business and people challenges in a practical, high-trust, results-oriented way. Depending on the need, the consultant’s role may include a blend of the following: Expert Sometimes leaders need specialized insight, an outside perspective, or proven guidance in areas such as leadership development, succession planning, organizational effectiveness, culture, team alignment, or change leadership. In this role, the consultant brings tested frameworks, experience, and practical counsel. Facilitator In other situations, the knowledge already exists within the organization, but leaders need a skilled facilitator to create alignment, guide dialogue, surface issues, and move a group toward clear decisions. This is often critical in executive teams, strategic planning, and high-stakes organizational conversations. Builder and Implementer Many organizations know what needs to be done but lack the time, bandwidth, or internal capacity to build the systems, processes, and tools required to move the work forward. In this role, the consultant helps design and execute the work so momentum is not lost. The most effective organizational consultants have a heart to serve and the competence to shift across these roles based on the client’s goals, readiness, and internal capabilities. What Strong Organizational Consulting Requires Effective organizational consulting is both relational and strategic. It requires more than expertise in one discipline. It calls for sound judgment, business understanding, and the ability to help leaders move from insight to action. At its best, organizational consulting draws on strengths in: business and organizational strategy leadership and executive coaching change leadership communication and facilitation talent and succession planning learning and leadership development organizational design and effectiveness performance improvement culture and team alignment project and implementation management Just as importantly, it requires trust. Leaders need a partner who can listen well, tell the truth, protect confidentiality, and help them make progress on what matters most. The Value of Organizational Consulting When done well, organizational consulting creates measurable value for leaders and organizations. Fresh perspective Internal teams are often too close to longstanding issues to see them clearly. An external consultant can bring objectivity, pattern recognition, and perspective that help leaders name what is really happening. Better decisions Experienced consultants help leaders avoid wasting time on trial-and-error approaches. They bring tested methods, insight from similar situations, and an ability to clarify tradeoffs. Greater execution capacity Organizations in growth mode are often fully stretched. Consulting support allows internal leaders to stay focused on running the business while critical strategic work continues. Improved alignment and efficiency Clearer priorities, better processes, stronger leadership routines, and more defined roles reduce friction and help teams execute with greater consistency. Stronger leadership and organizational performance When leaders, teams, and systems are better aligned, organizations are more likely to retain talent, respond to change effectively, and sustain healthy growth. Confidential support for sensitive challenges Many organizational issues involve sensitive personnel matters, leadership transitions, conflict, or structural concerns. A trusted outside partner can provide a safe and professional space to work through them. What Organizational Consulting Includes Organizational consulting can take many forms depending on the business challenge, but the work typically centers on elevating people, profit, and purpose. Strategic Planning and Alignment Organizations need more than a document—they need strategic clarity. Effective strategic planning helps leaders make better choices, align stakeholders, clarify priorities, and translate direction into action. It creates the focus needed to guide decisions in both the present and the future. Organizational Design Structure influences behavior. The way an organization is designed affects accountability, speed, collaboration, decision-making, and culture. Organizational design work helps align strategy, roles, processes, and leadership responsibilities to enable the organization to perform more effectively. Change Leadership As markets, technologies, and workforce expectations evolve, organizations must adapt. Change leadership helps leaders guide people through transition, reduce resistance, build buy-in, and improve the odds that change efforts will stick. Executive and Leadership Coaching Coaching helps leaders grow in self-awareness, effectiveness, confidence, and influence. It creates space for reflection, challenge, and forward movement. For many leaders, coaching becomes a powerful lever for behavior change and better performance. Leadership and Team Development Organizations rise or stall based on the quality of leadership and teamwork. Development work helps leaders strengthen critical habits, improve communication, navigate conflict, build trust, and lead with greater consistency and intention. Succession Planning and Talent Development Leadership transitions carry real risk. Succession planning helps organizations identify critical roles, assess bench strength, clarify development needs, and prepare future leaders to step into larger responsibilities with confidence. A Practical Partner for Growth Organizational consulting is most valuable when it is tailored, practical, and connected to the real needs of the business. Some engagements are short and focused, such as a one-day strategy session, team workshop, or leadership offsite. Others are broader and longer-term, including multi-month or multi-year work tied to succession, organizational change, leadership development, or strategic execution. The right scope depends on the organization’s goals, urgency, and capacity. At Organizational Talent Consulting, the aim is simple: help leaders create greater clarity, alignment, and effectiveness so their organizations can grow with purpose and lead with confidence. References: Appelbaum, S. H., & Steed, A. J. (2005). The critical success factors in the client-consulting relationship. The Journal of Management Development, 24 (1), 68-93. Biech, E. (2019). The new consultant's quick start guide. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New Jersey. Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used, third edition (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass. Chalofsky, N., Morris, M. L., & Rocco, T. S. (2014). Handbook of human resource development (1st ed.). Wiley. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-Changing Leadership Habits: 10 Proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Flemming, P. and Olson, T. (2018). Management consulting today and tomorrow: Perspectives and advice from leading experts. Routledge. New York. Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity . Free Press. Hirudayaraj, M., & Baker, R. (2018). HRD competencies: Analysis of employer expectations from online job postings. European Journal of Training and Development, 42 (9), 577-596. Hagenmeyer, U. (2007). Integrity in management consulting: A contradiction in terms? Business Ethics (Oxford, England), 16 (2), 107-113. International Monetary Fund (2026). Global Economy: Steady amid Divergent Forces. Maister, D. H., Green, C. H., & Galford, R. M. (2000). The trusted advisor . Free Press. Schaffer, R. H. (2002). High-impact consulting: Achieving extraordinary results. Consulting to Management, 13 (2), 12-18. Weiss, A. (2011). The consulting bible: Everything you need to know to create and expand a seven-figure consulting practice. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New Jersey.

When Strategic Planning Becomes Strategic Blindness Is it time for executives and teams to say goodbye to strategic planning? Strategic planning becomes a liability when it preserves confidence without improving organizational readiness. In many companies, the annual planning cycle no longer functions as a serious decision system. It functions as a ritual that updates language, reaffirms assumptions, and protects leadership from confronting the extent to which uncertainty now shapes the operating environment. That is the real issue. The challenge is not whether organizations should stop planning. The challenge is whether executives are willing to abandon a static planning model in a world defined by generative AI, compressed decision windows, and volatility. In an environment shaped by generative AI and rapid external change, strategy cannot remain an annual exercise built on the assumption that tomorrow will resemble today. What is needed is not less strategy, but a more adaptive form of strategic thinking—one capable of testing assumptions, widening leadership perspective, and preparing the organization for multiple plausible futures rather than a single preferred one. So, how can organizations and teams account for uncertainty and make progress on what matters? This is where the good news comes in. Here is a practical strategic planning method that can push your organization and team toward positive actions. Scenario Planning: A flexible strategic planning method Scenario planning helps organizations focus on likely and critical external elements impacting the business and think creatively about their situation. The benefits of scenario planning are changed thinking, informed narratives or stories about possible futures, improved decision-making about the future, and enhanced organizational learning and imagination. Scenario planning is a decision-making tool for exploring and understanding various issues impacting your business. Since you cannot predict the future, both learning and preparation are essential. The goal is for leadership teams to become more informed by broadening ideas about what multiple futures might bring. Scenario planning involves identifying a specific set of uncertainties and different realities of what might happen in the future. Wind tunneling is a metaphor for the basic concept. Scenario planning allows the organization to be tested in various turbulent times. As with any strategic planning process, you must carefully consider identifying vital internal stakeholders. It helps to have inclusive representation from a cross-section of departments, functions, and subject matter expertise. The most threatening competitor leadership teams face is themself. The typical approach to scenario planning involves the following eight steps: Identify a focus question: When selecting a question, it needs to help focus on the uncertainty you want to prepare. For example, you could ask, “How may generative AI affect our organization, what should we do, and when? Identify critical environmental factors: This is where you brainstorm anything related to your focus question happening in your surrounding environment. Identify driving forces: These underlying forces could shape your focal question. Using a Futures Wheel aligned with the STEEP (Societal, Technological, Economic, Ecological, or Political/Legal) framework can help brainstorm these forces. Rank critical uncertainties: Scenario planning is often more qualitative than quantitative, and it is easy to be influenced by optimism bias. Ranking helps avoid cognitive errors in scenario planning. Choose the central theme: These are the most uncertain and essential driving forces selected from the ranking in the prior step. Develop scenarios: This step can be sped up by selecting already developed scenarios. If you decide to build your scenarios, you should aim for four. This is a good number because it provides a variety of plausible futures. Examine the implications of the scenarios: This is where the team assesses the current state using tools like a SWOT analysis to identify impacts and potential adjustments to your strategy. Identify ways to monitor changes: Monitoring helps account for risks and opportunities in your strategic planning. Start by identifying what signals movement in each driver and scenario. Organizations that do not evolve their planning model will eventually default to one of two failures: short-term reactivity or overcommitment to a single forecast. Neither is strategy. One abandons direction. The other mistakes confidence for discipline. Scenario planning offers something more useful. It creates a structure for leadership teams to examine uncertainty before uncertainty forces the issue, to test the durability of current assumptions, and to build greater decision readiness across a range of possible conditions. The value is not in predicting the future. The value is in strengthening the organization’s ability to govern, decide, and adapt when the future refuses to cooperate. The question is no longer whether strategic planning should continue. The question is whether leaders are prepared to replace planning as an event with strategy as an ongoing discipline. How can your organization move beyond what is already known and evolve its strategic planning approach? References: Chermack, T. (2011). Scenario planning in organizations: How to create, use, and assess scenarios. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Cornish, E. (2005). Futuring: The exploration of the future (First Paperback ed.). World Future Society. Lewis, K., (2019). Preparing for the 2030 labor market. HR Magazine. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Ludwig, L., Giesecke, J.,& Walton, L. (2010), Scenario planning: a tool for academic health sciences libraries. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 27: 28-36. Lund, S., Manyika, J., Segel, L., Dua, A., Hancock, B., Rutherford, S., and Macon, B. (2019). The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow. McKinsey & Company . Nugent, T. (2020). 9 trends that will shape business education in 2020. Business Because . Tibbs, H. (2000). Making the future visible: Psychology, scenarios, and strategy. Global Business Network .

Assumptions become plans. Plans become liabilities—unless they’re tested early. Most leadership risk enters the business quietly—through a confident “yes” that becomes budget, headcount, and timeline. Self-awareness matters because it determines how accurate that “yes” really is. Evidence suggests that poor-performing businesses have 20% more leaders with blind spots than high-performing businesses. Leaders don’t just make decisions; they make forecasts about capacity, tradeoffs, and downstream impact. When that forecast is off, the organization doesn’t simply “miss a goal”—it institutionalizes the wrong assumptions and pays to unwind them later. The fastest way to raise self-awareness isn’t collecting more opinions. It’s learning how to separate useful feedback from noise—before the noise becomes policy. Why self-awareness matters in leadership To know yourself means seeing yourself objectively, being aware of similarities and differences with others, and understanding the perspectives from which you see others and the world. "To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom." Socrates Leadership is a relationship, and it is vital to know what others think. If you only consider your perspective, you have an incomplete picture. Like trying to navigate a ship on the open seas without a sextant or GPS, lacking self-awareness limits a leader’s ability to realize professional and personal goals. Self-aware leaders are not naive about their habits and can develop better ones. The importance of self-awareness is not new. However, a recent study of 486 companies demonstrated that the most self-aware leaders populate the best organizations. Poor-performing businesses had 20% more leaders with blind spots than high-performing businesses. Additional studies have linked greater self-awareness with: improved leadership relationships self-control better decision-making life satisfaction In today's increasingly complex and culturally diverse workplace, leaders who accurately perceive, assess, and regulate their own and others' emotions can  better leverage diversity and foster team cohesion. Evidence also suggests that leaders with low self-awareness are more likely to struggle to regulate their emotions and behaviors effectively, contributing to poor physical health, work performance, and social interactions. The difference between useful and useless feedback The difference between useful and useless feedback is its reliability, validity, and fairness. Key 1: Feedback Reliability Reliable feedback has a high probability that the same actions lead to the same feedback in the future. When feedback lacks reliability, it creates confusion and can slow your development. Reliability is important because it helps reveal key themes for improvement. Reliability helps you focus, especially when using structured feedback tools like 360 surveys that increase the amount of feedback you receive. It may be tempting to try to put development plans in place for every piece of feedback, but you will see the most growth in building better habits when you pick one small change and then gradually improve. Key 2: Feedback Validity Feedback based on a deep understanding is most valid. Validity relates to the extent to which the feedback takes into consideration the subject matter expertise of the topic, your situation, and the context. The validity of the feedback is crucial because it directly affects the quality of any insights or conclusions that you can draw. When you use feedback that is inaccurate or incomplete, the conclusions you make will be unreliable and potentially misleading. Poor validity can lead to faulty decision-making , inaccurate predictions, and, ultimately, wasted time and resources. Key 3: Feedback Fairness Feedback bias happens when personal experiences shape the feedback. We all have bias, and likewise, all forms of feedback have some degree of bias. The greater the bias, the less useful and fair the feedback. I like asking my mom for feedback, but I must realize that she has a vested interest in being my mom. Likewise, the higher you ascend within your organization, the more challenging it becomes to receive fair feedback. When you receive feedback, it is important to test it for reliability, validity, and fairness. Ask yourself: How consistent and dependable is the feedback? How logical is the feedback and factually informed is the source of the feedback? How impartial and free from bias is the feedback? Rather than responding with a yes or no, score each question using a scale of one to ten. A rating of one is not at all, and ten is to a great extent. To become more self-aware, it is best to get curious, embrace the variability of feedback as a path to improvement, take the valuable parts of the feedback, and disregard the rest. “Look outside, and you will see yourself. Look inside, and you will find yourself.” Drew Gerald Discover Your Leadership Habits “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It’s lethal.” Paolo Coelho The greatest threat to your career and business success is the routine practices performed automatically in daily life. My hypothesis is that leadership habits are life-changing. It is easy to get the need for better habits in theory, but in practice, one still falls into unintentional patterns and accidental habits. We don’t set out to develop bad habits. We don’t need to just want it more. While you may be aware of some leadership habits, there are likely others that you are completely unaware of - those accidental habits that go unnoticed but significantly impact your leadership effectiveness . Part of the answer is greater awareness of proven principles. That is why I wrote Life-Changing Leadership Habits: 10 Proven Principles That Will Elevate People, Profit, and Purpose. If you want access to the latest research and practical tools to help you get better every day, pick up your ebook or print copy on Amazon or anywhere you buy books. To help you uncover these life-changing leadership habits, I've created the leadership accidental habit assessment (AHA). By taking this free survey, you'll gain valuable insights into your leadership and identify areas for improvement. Take the assessment now and start your journey to becoming a more effective and self-aware leader. Self-awareness is a decision asset. The question isn’t whether you get feedback; it’s whether the feedback you rely on is credible enough to change what you commit to, how you lead, and what the organization funds. When leaders raise the quality of their self-forecast, the enterprise makes fewer promises it can’t keep—and spends less time correcting avoidable drift. What is your real self-awareness challenge? References Bratton, V., Dodd, N., & Brown, F. (2011). The impact of emotional intelligence on the accuracy of self-awareness and leadership performance. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(2), 127-149. Brickhouse, Thomas C.; Smith, Nicholas D. (1994). Plato's Socrates. Oxford University Press. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-Changing Leadership Habits: 10 Proven Principles That Will Elevate People, Profit and Purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Goldstein, G., Allen, D. N., & Deluca, J. (2019). Handbook of psychological assessment. Elsevier Science & Technology. Oltmanns, T., Gleason, M., Klonsky, E., & Turkheimer, E. (2005). Meta-perception for pathological personality traits: Do we know when others think that we are difficult? Consciousness and Cognition, 14(4), 739-751. Pekaar, K., Bakker, A. B., van der Linden, D., & Born, M. (2018). Self- and other-focused emotional intelligence: Development and validation of the Rotterdam emotional intelligence scale (REIS). Personality and Individual Differences, 120, 222-233. Wilson, T., & Gilbert, D. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science: A Journal of the American Psychological Society, 14(3), 131-134. Zes, D., & Landis, D. (2013). A better return on self-awareness. Korn Ferry Institute .

Where leadership impact becomes measurable through governance design, not leader personality. Most organizations overestimate what leaders control and underestimate what leadership shapes. That distinction matters. It drives how you invest, how you evaluate performance, and how quickly you scapegoat or canonize leaders at the top. Leadership attribution errors are real in every organization: When a team makes a championship run, we credit the coach; when the season collapses, we take to social media to remove the coach, often as if there were no other contributing factors. But skepticism about leadership can swing too far in the other direction, toward dismissal. Leadership rarely “causes” outcomes in a simple, linear way. In many environments, results are largely produced by follower capability, local decisions, and operating conditions. What leadership reliably does is shape the conditions under which people make decisions, allocate effort, take risks, collaborate, and sustain trust, especially under pressure. So the real question isn’t whether leadership matters. It’s when it matters, how it shows up in measurable operating outcomes, and what that implies for your next leadership investment. Below are five enterprise-relevant pathways where leadership consistently changes results—and what to watch for in your business. Leadership Impact # 1: Business Performance Good leadership can create a win out of a weak plan, but ineffective leadership can destroy a business with a great strategic plan . Leadership effectiveness moderates company performance. According to Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, a review of 1,435 companies studied over more than forty years revealed that leadership effectiveness accounted for up to 6.9 times greater financial returns than market averages. In a separate study of over 2,000 firms and leaders, effective leadership accounted for a 38% increase in an organization's overall business performance. This same study then examined the leadership effectiveness scores of the top and bottom-performing 10% of companies. The results revealed that leadership effectiveness was at the 80th percentile in the top-performing companies. Leadership effectiveness was at the 30th percentile in the lowest-performing companies, lower than 70% of the norm leadership effectiveness scores. Personal experience: Working with a large Forbes Top 25 Private Company, we set out to quantify the value of executive leadership. We used internal key business metrics and various cognitive and behavioral leader assessments. A large controlled study involving leaders across different markets revealed a positive correlation between the leader's effectiveness and employee retention, sales, margin, labor costs, and net profit. Leadership Impact # 2: Follower Performance Several studies investigate the connection between the leader and the follower's performance . The evidence is consistent that leadership moderates follower performance. In a survey of 100 executives and middle management leaders in manufacturing and service organizations, effective leadership improved follower performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Also, effective leadership is shown to significantly impact follower discretionary effort, known as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This is when employees voluntarily go beyond what is expected of them to benefit the organization. A study of 815 employees and 123 leaders found that effective leadership increased OCB and workplace climate. Leadership Impact # 3: Innovation Fostering innovation within an organization is an increasingly important leadership behavior. No organization is looking to stay the same year over year. Innovation drives top-line revenues, creating a competitive advantage in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous marketplace. Evidence suggests that leadership is essential for driving innovation. A study involving over 400 executives from 48 companies connected effective organizational strategy and innovation performance with leadership habits. Leadership Impact # 4: Trust and Organizational Change Trust is the currency of business relationships, and an absence of trust can bankrupt the organization  and its employees. At an individual level, a lack of trust contributes to feelings of: Frustration Rejection Stress Anxiety Depression Leadership trust is directly connected to employee retention, organizational commitment, and support for organizational change . Unfortunately, trust in leadership is becoming rarer. Trust is given based on leadership competence and ethical behaviors. In their book The Leadership Challenge, authors Kouzes and Posner suggested that "credibility" is the foundation of effective leadership because employees must be able to trust their leaders. Numerous studies demonstrate that leadership is critical to successful organizations and change. Whether a change is department-specific or company-wide, it benefits from executive engagement. Executive leadership teams provide vision, establish strategy, prepare the corporate culture for change, and motivate employees to change. This is important because trust has been shown to mediate employee openness to change and, ultimately, the outcome of change. When trust is present, organizations navigate and manage change  with improved results. Change events heighten emotional responses, making communicating effectively challenging for the most skilled leaders. Leadership Impact # 5: Communication & Relationships Leadership is a conversation. Like air, the words leaders speak can give life to a business. But words can also constrain and limit realities for individual employees, teams, and organizations. Leadership communication cultivates quality leader-follower and employee-organization relationships. In a study of 400 employees working in various companies with an average company tenure of 10 years, influential leaders increased: Two-way communication Creativity Collaboration Job attitudes Organizational commitment Bottom line: leadership is not the sole driver of results—but it is a consistent amplifier or suppressor of performance. It shows up most clearly where the enterprise is under strain: execution discipline, discretionary effort, innovation throughput, trust during change, and the quality of day-to-day communication that determines whether work actually moves. If you’re evaluating a leadership development investment, don’t start with programs or competencies. Start with outcomes and conditions: What business metrics are most sensitive to leader behavior in your system? Where is trust fragile? Where is innovation blocked? Where does communication break under pressure?  The best leadership investments are the ones tied to measurable shifts in these operating realities—not to inspirational intent. Great leaders don’t just produce better results. They build conditions that enable repeatable results—across teams, markets, and time. If you’re making—or funding—leadership investments this year, schedule a confidential Leadership Strategy Conversation. We can help you map where leadership is actually moderating business outcomes in your system, identify where attribution is masking structural failure, and define the few changes that would move performance without relying on heroics. Key Points Effective leadership makes a difference in the personal and professional results you achieve and the life you live. Leadership effectiveness improves the bottom line. Effective leadership improves follower performance and promotes higher business levels, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Senior leadership is essential for driving innovation. Senior leadership trust is directly connected to employee retention, organizational commitment, and support for organizational change. Influential leaders increase two-way communication, creativity, collaboration, job attitudes, and organizational commitment. Great leaders achieve great results and create great company cultures . References: Anderson, R., & Adams, W. (2016). Mastering leadership: An integrated framework for breakthrough performance and extraordinary business results. Wiley. Day, D., & Lord, R. (1988). Executive leadership and organizational performance: Suggestions for a new theory and methodology. Journal of Management, 14(3), 453-464. Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap--and others don't. HarperBusiness. Dhar, U., & Mishra, P. (2001). Leadership effectiveness: A study of constituent factors. Journal of Management Research, 1(4), 254. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-changing leadership habits: 10 proven principles that will elevate people, profit, and purpose. Organizatonal Talent consulting. Eisenbeiss, S., van Knippenberg, D., & Boerner, S. (2008). Transformational leadership and team innovation: Integrating team climate principles. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6), 1438-1446. Hackman, J. Richard, and Ruth Wageman. 2007. Asking the right questions about leadership: Discussion and conclusions. American Psychologist 62, no. 1: 43-47. Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (2017). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (Sixth ed.). Jossey-Bass. Madanchian, M., Hussein, N., Noordin, F., & Taherdoost, H. (2017). Leadership effectiveness measurement and its effect on organization outcomes. Procedia Engineering. Volume 181, pp. 1043-1048. Men, L. (2014). Why leadership matters to internal communication: Linking transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee outcomes. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26: 256–279. Walumbwa, F., Hartnell, C., & Oke, A. (2010). Servant leadership, procedural justice climate, service climate, employee attitudes, and organizational citizenship behavior: A cross-level investigation. Zhang, H., Ou, A., Tsui, A., & Wang, H. (2017). CEO humility, narcissism, and firm innovation: A paradox perspective on CEO traits. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(5), 585-604. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.01.003

Want to diagnose where speed is breaking down in your organization? Start a confidential leadership strategy conversation. Most leaders don’t avoid strategic work because they’re lazy or unaware; they avoid it because it forces visible decision-making amid uncertainty. In the moment, it feels slower than execution and more exposed. Under pressure, it’s safer to double down on what’s known than to wrestle with what needs to emerge. But markets don’t reward comfort. They penalize decision latency and different parts of the enterprise acting on different interpretations of reality. A recent global study found 90% of organizations are struggling to adapt quickly, and nearly half report poor coordination and ineffective strategic execution. That’s not a talent problem as much as a system problem: weak signal capture, unclear decision rights, or no rhythm for shared interpretation and direction. What makes this especially costly is the belief executives sometimes carry, quietly or openly admitting, I’m just not strategic.” Strategy isn’t a personality type. It’s a discipline shaped by practice, feedback, and the frames you use to interpret reality. Over time, you can build both proficiency and appetite for the work—not because it’s a fashionable executive-level trait, but because it’s how organizations anticipate and capitalize on trends instead of being managed by them. Challenges arising from the absence of an organizational strategy Research shows that only five percent of employees truly understand their company's strategy. When employees feel left out, they are less likely to support the company's goals, leading to disengagement and confusion about the company's direction. This lack of inclusion in strategic planning can lead to lower quality and creativity in the company's strategies and can contribute to a toxic culture that values certain groups or levels within the organization over others. Three studies conducted by Zenger Folkman found that a leader's strategic thinking is linked to career advancement. These studies, involving over 1300 leaders, found a significant correlation between executive leaders' promotions and their strategic thinking abilities. Leaders who lack strategic thinking skills may struggle to align themselves and influence others, making it challenging to achieve success in both personal and professional endeavors. Focusing solely on immediate tasks can lead to falling behind, especially in a highly competitive market. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” William Bennis 5 key strategic leadership competencies Leaders must be able to navigate complex scenarios and growing ambiguity. Critical thinking is essential for evaluating the core business factors and obstacles unique to a particular organization. It involves recognizing potential outcomes and having the foresight to guide both employees and the organization toward success. Strategic thinking is a crucial aspect of effective leadership, encompassing five key competencies that are often overlooked and not fully developed within organizational leadership: Scanning: This involves actively looking for subtle signals that may not seem significant at the moment but could have a profound impact on the business in the future. It requires a keen eye for detail and the ability to anticipate potential changes before they become apparent. Visioning: Clarifying the organization's shared purpose and aspirations is essential to building a cohesive, motivated team. Leaders must articulate a compelling vision that inspires others to work toward common goals, fostering unity and direction. Reframing: This competency involves challenging existing assumptions and encouraging fresh perspectives on future possibilities. By questioning conventional wisdom and embracing innovative ideas, leaders can unlock new opportunities and drive transformative change within the organization. Making sense: Engaging in a rigorous intellectual process of conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating data is critical for effective decision-making. Leaders must possess strong analytical skills to make sense of complex information and draw meaningful insights to inform strategic choices. Systems thinking: Adopting a holistic approach to understanding how different components within a system interact and influence outcomes is essential for effective leadership. By recognizing the interconnectedness of various elements, leaders can identify leverage points and design interventions that yield desired results while minimizing unintended consequences. The following video breaks down the often-confused difference between strategic planning and strategic thinking. Enhancing your strategic leadership proficiency and passion in 4 steps We often dread tasks because we lack proficiency. We feel slow or inefficient. The first three steps below outline practical ways to improve your strategic thinking proficiency. Leaders pressed for time don't like doing things that make them feel incompetent. Improving your proficiency will go a long way to increasing your passion for strategic leadership. Step 1: Listening. Start by assessing your strategic thinking proficiency and identifying areas for growth. Listen to yourself. Making sense requires critical thinking skills. Various psychometric leadership assessments can measure an executive's critical thinking capability. The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) is a valid leadership assessment that assesses an individual's ability to recognize assumptions, evaluate arguments, and draw conclusions. For more information on the Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal, visit www.talentlens.com . Life was not meant to be done alone. Too often, busy leaders fail to pause and consider how to leverage others to develop new habits . Whenever trying to create a new leadership habit, you can benefit significantly from deliberate practice and coaching feedback. Partnering with a qualified executive coach is proven to improve strategic leadership. Step 2: Being far-sighted Failure to account for future environmental changes can hinder your organization's ability to respond quickly to shifting markets. Leaders do not have to gamble with the company's future or rely solely on reactionary planning. Future-ready leaders can avoid costly mistakes by envisioning what could be rather than constantly reacting at the last minute. Being far-sighted involves practices from  strategic foresight . Strategic foresight involves looking beyond current experiences and scanning the horizon. This helps leaders identify signs of emerging trends in the margins to prepare for the future. Strategic foresight is a way of thinking critically, engaging, discovering, and acting. Strategic foresight aims not to predict the future but to enable better decision-making and preparedness. It is a systemic view of change that considers the likely and possible realities. The use of predictive and prescriptive analytics promises improved strategic foresight . Step 3: Being inclusive. Leveraging multiple perspectives enhances strategic thinking , creativity, engagement, and strategy quality. Although achieving complete transparency and involving every possible stakeholder may be infeasible, it offers significant value for inclusive leaders and organizations. Before adopting an inclusive approach to strategic thinking, senior leadership should agree on the process, participating stakeholders, and the organization's business vision, values, and mission. A generic, inclusive strategic thinking process typically engages others in ideation, refinement, and development. Step 4: Reframing your MVP. Words shape worlds. Before starting something you know you don't like doing, it's important to attempt to reframe your MVP: Motivation. Is your motivation about checking a box? Or is your motivation about making a difference? Reasons for strategic leadership matter. It is less likely that your efforts will lead to positive change without a clear rationale. Vision. How do you see the result of strategic thinking going? Is it leading to the best of what might? Or is what you see a list of all the potential issues? When you anticipate a positive step in the journey, it provides a sense of purpose and direction to inspire your best and achieve success. Perspective. When the lens through which you view strategic thinking is off, your results will be poor. Is your paradigm for strategic thinking that it will provide the best foundation for a healthy culture for your team, lead to business growth, and enhance your effectiveness? Or is your paradigm that it is best to avoid strategic thinking because you need to manage your image, and things will change anyway? Strategic leadership won’t always feel natural. Some parts of it will remain effortful—and that’s normal because it requires choosing before certainty. The aim isn’t to force enthusiasm. It’s to remove the unnecessary friction caused by low proficiency, unclear processes, and a mindset that turns strategic work into self-protection rather than value creation. If you step back, the real question isn’t whether you like strategic thinking. It’s whether your organization is designed to recognize emergence early and respond coherently, or whether it will keep paying for comfort in the form of drift, rework, and slow, reversible trends. So what’s the real constraint in your strategic leadership right now—capability, cadence, inclusion, or the way you’re framing the work altogether? References: Amrollahi, A., & Rowlands, B. (2017). Collaborative open strategic planning: A method and case study. Information Technology & People (West Linn, Or.), 30(4), 832-852. Bartell, R. (2011). Before the call: The communication playbook. Hudson House. Bennis, W. G. (2008). Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. Journal of Property Management, 73 (5), 13. Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-Changing Leadership: 10 Proven Principles That Will Elevate People, Profit, and Purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting. Folkman, Z. (2021). Strategic thinking: The pathway to the top. Forbes. Hughes, R., Beatty, K., & Dinwoodie, D. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader: Your role in your organization's enduring success. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Kaplan RS, Norton DP. The office of strategy management. Harv Bus Rev. 2005 Oct;83(10):72-80 Nwachukwu, C. E., Chladkova, H., & Olatunji, F. (2018). The relationship between employee commitment to strategy implementation and employee satisfaction. Trends Economics and Management , 12(31), 46-56.