Last week, we explored the leadership lessons developed amid the heat and uncertainty of this year’s wildfire season—understanding the entire playing board, leading with humanity, and communicating with candour.
These principles are universal in any crisis, which is why they prompted me to reflect on the lessons I have gained from other seasoned leadership mentors who shared profound insights with me. Their experiences and the principles they championed resonate deeply with the challenges many organizations face in genuinely unlocking human potential.
The Imperative of Leader Role-Modelling
A central theme was the crucial importance of leaders actively role-modelling behaviours such as vulnerability, transparency, and trust. Without this, it is unrealistic to expect teams to tap into their innovative and creative capacities, which harness “what is on people’s shoulders.” This serves as a stark reminder that, in many settings, we still fall short of fully engaging the intellectual and emotional capital of our people.
Bridging the “See-Speak Up” Gap
Crucially, the conversation highlighted the gap between individuals noticing issues or opportunities and speaking up about them. Closing this gap depends on fostering psychological and organizational safety. This isn’t just a “nice-to-have”; it’s fundamental. When people fear reprisal or feel their voice doesn’t matter, valuable insights are lost, risks remain unaddressed, and potential stays dormant.
Shifting Power with Intent-Driven Leadership
An “intent-driven leadership” model directly addresses this by promoting the delegation of decision-making authority and articulating intent to those closest to the work. This signifies a radical departure from top-down directives. My own transformative journey as an infantry section commander involved learning to stop giving orders and instead empower my team to articulate their intentions. I would describe it as learning a “language of uncertainty, ambiguity, and vulnerability.”
Understanding Vulnerability
Vulnerability, in this context, isn’t weakness; it’s about self-awareness and inviting feedback. It involves understanding what we know about ourselves, what others know, our blind spots, and the hidden aspects. Actively seeking feedback, even on personal interaction styles (e.g., “How well did I listen in that meeting?”), is crucial.
I have expressed my past discomfort with this. Recently, I met a high-ranking naval officer who admitted that confronting a potential enemy combatant was easier than asking his team for feedback on his performance as their leader.
This resonates: true strength lies in the courage to seek and act on such feedback.
The Fallacy of Command and Control in Modern Work
Read more about the top-down fallacy
My reflections highlighted how outdated industrial-age models—where one group thinks and another does—are. This legacy, still evident in many organizational structures and even language (“white collar/blue collar”), is no longer fit for purpose.
In today’s complex world, the idea that a select few hold all the answers is false. The goal should be to create environments where those doing the work can make decisions about the job, fostering alignment and clarity of purpose while allowing freedom in execution.
Human Potential: The Greatest Untapped Resource
The most significant “waste” in organizations isn’t process inefficiency; rather, it is the untapped human potential – the creativity, ideas, and passion stifled by environments that prioritize compliance over contribution. When people come to work merely to be told what to do, their brains are effectively left at the door.
Intent-driven organizations, in contrast, operate with a bias for action (“yes, unless there’s a no”), fueled by transparency, which, in turn, builds trust. A critical point here is that leaders must act trustworthily rather than simply demanding trust.
Leadership as a Practiced Language
Effectively, this shift necessitates learning and consistently practising a new language of leadership. It’s not about one-time training days, but rather a more sustained effort.
The words that leaders choose, their responses to ideas (whether with curiosity or dismissal), and their approach to conducting meetings all contribute to the overall environment. Emphasis should be placed on practice within the real-world context of the organization.
Structure Enables Freedom
A crucial counterintuitive point is that structure provides freedom, not chaos. Clear boundaries, such as the lines on a sports field or the principles in a founding document, enable individuals to operate with confidence up to the edge.
Without a clear understanding of these boundaries, teams tend to become risk-averse.
Investing in People is a Long-Term, Uncertain Bet
Read more about the difference between High-Performance & High-Potential
Ultimately, the commitment to investing in people is inherently long-term and carries uncertainty. It requires leaders to resist the temptation to merely provide answers and instead nurture their team’s ability to think critically and develop solutions.
This represents a wager on future capability over immediate, small wins. Nevertheless, it is the only way to foster a genuinely empowered and self-sufficient team, breaking the cycle of dependency on the leader.
This conversation served as a potent reminder that re-humanizing work is not merely a lofty ideal; it is a strategic necessity. It involves creating environments where individuals can express their authentic selves, contribute meaningfully, and collectively accomplish far more than any top-down approach could hope to achieve.
