Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

The Nuts and Bolts of Quintessential Leadership

Posted: August 13, 2025 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership
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Quintessential leadership is not glamour. It is grit and grace held together by character. Lead people. Manage things. Put people first. Take responsibility for everything you touch. That is the work.

Start with character. Character shows up in the small choices you make each day. Show up on time. Keep your word. Tell the truth. Finish what you start. Admit when you fall short. Make amends fast. None of this is flashy. All of this builds trust. Trust is the currency of leadership.

Choose the high road. The low road is loud and easy. The high road is quiet and hard. Make the hard right choice when the easy wrong choice is begging for attention. Stay there when pressure rises. People will know they can count on you. Your team will bring you their best because you protect what is right.

Practice radical honesty. Say what is true. Skip spin. Skip blame. Own the outcome. If you broke it, say so. Fix it. Share what you learned. Invite the team to do the same. Honesty shrinks fear. Fear kills initiative. Honesty frees people to act.

Match words with behavior. Say only what you are ready to live. Do not promise what you will not deliver. Model the standard in how you listen, decide, and follow through. People do not follow posters on the wall. People follow the pattern you live.

Lead with humility. You do not know everything. Hire for the strengths you lack. Give authority with responsibility. Ask for help early. Credit your team in public. Hold tough talks in private. Humility is not weakness. Humility is strength under control.

Build self awareness. You carry habits into every room. Some help you. Some hurt your team. Get feedback from a few truth tellers. Listen without defense. Choose one habit to change at a time. Track the change. Share your progress. Growth compounds when you do it in the open.

Make clarity a habit. Explain the why. Define the win. Set a simple plan. Name the owner. Set the check points. Remove noise. Clarity reduces rework. Clarity speeds good work.

Communicate to serve. Use simple words. Direct requests. Put decisions in writing. Share the tradeoffs. Invite pushback. Close the loop with a clear call to action. Communication is how work moves.

Choose courage. Change is messy. Growth feels awkward. Step into hard conflicts early. Protect the mission and the people. Say no when the work is not aligned. Say yes when it serves the mission. Courage makes space for progress.

Set standards and boundaries. Define what great looks like. Define what is out of bounds. Write it down. Teach it. Hold it. Standards protect quality. Boundaries protect focus and health. When something breaks the standard, fix it fast and fair.

Build systems that back your words. One on ones every week. Clear role charters. Decision logs that show who decided and why. Pre mortems before major work. After action reviews when you finish. A simple scorecard everyone can see. Systems turn values into muscle memory.

Invest in people. Coach in the moment. Teach the craft. Give stretch assignments that match readiness. Pair new people with steady mentors. Celebrate good work. Help each person see a path to grow.

Protect time and attention. Meetings have a purpose and a plan. Start and end on time. Keep the room small. Share materials early. Record decisions and owners. End with next steps. Cancel meetings that do not serve the mission. Give the team blocks for focused work.

Keep promises about accountability. Accountability is not punishment. Accountability is clarity about commitments and consequences. Make it fair. Make it consistent. Start with yourself. If you miss, say so and reset. Your example sets the tone for everyone.

Make decisions with principle and evidence. Start with values. Gather facts. Seek diverse views. Weigh the tradeoffs. State the risks. Decide. Communicate the why. Review outcomes on a set schedule. Adjust when new facts show up.

Cultivate resilience. You will stumble. Teams will miss. Customers will be unhappy. Use the miss to learn. Separate intent from impact. Fix the impact. Improve the system so the miss does not repeat. Move forward without drama.

Guard culture with care. Culture is how we act when no one is watching. Reward the behaviors you want. Confront the behaviors that harm. Hire for character and skill. Address repeated harm that will not change. Culture compounds.

Serve customers with integrity. Do what you say. Ship what works. Own defects. Make support fast and humane. Improve the product in ways that solve real pains. Customers stay where trust is strong.

Measure what matters. Track output tied to value for customers and the team. Watch lead indicators. Watch lag indicators. Share the numbers. Use them to learn.

Keep things simple. The right plan is usually the simple plan. Shorten the path from idea to action. Remove steps that do not add value. A simple plan is easier to teach, run, and improve.

Model steadiness. Be calm under stress. Be thoughtful in conflict. Be patient with learning curves. Be consistent with praise and correction. Emotions spread fast. Choose emotions that help the team do good work.

Show gratitude. Say thank you. Be specific about what you noticed and why it mattered. Do it in writing when you can. Gratitude raises morale.

Hold a long view. Build for durability. Protect reputation. Grow leaders who will outgrow your role. Make decisions your future self will not regret. Winning the moment means little if you lose the trust that takes years to build.

These nuts and bolts form a single system. Character is the foundation. Humility keeps you learning. Clarity turns values into work. Courage drives change. Discipline turns habits into results. Service keeps you oriented toward people first. When you live this way, teams do their best work and customers feel it.

Here is a simple starter plan you can use right now. Pick three standards you will live and teach. Schedule weekly one on ones for every direct report. Write a one page brief that states mission, strategy, and the top five priorities. Share it every two weeks. Start a decision log this week. Add the decision, the why, the owner, and the date to review. Run a short after action review at the end of every project. What worked. What did not. What to change. Repeat this cycle for ninety days.

The value shows up fast. Trust rises. Turnover drops. Execution speeds up. Waste falls. Customers stay longer and buy more. Hard problems get solved sooner. Meetings get shorter. People speak up because it is safe. The team starts to feel proud of the work.

Quintessential leaders are not perfect. We are honest about our flaws. We do the work to improve. We put people first and hold ourselves to the same standard we expect from others. We take the high road when it costs more. We keep our word when it is hard. We stand firm on values and adapt our plans as facts change. That is how we build something that lasts.

This is not theory. It is a daily practice. It shows up in calendars, checklists, and habits. It shows up in tone and body language. It shows up in the way people talk about the work when you are not in the room. Live this system and your team will feel the difference.

Book Review – “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Jonathan Haidt

Posted: February 17, 2020 in Quintessential Leader Book Reviews, Quintessential Leadership
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The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for FailureThe Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While Haidt makes his case in a very narrow sense that focuses on the current higher education environment, the reality is this is the current pervasive American (regardless of age) mindset. We’ve, collectively, just turned off our brains from any kind of critical thinking and just absorb the opiate of the masses around us until it becomes the tainted glass through which we see and respond to everything.

We’re dumbed down and weakened by not be aware enough and courageous enough to stand alone and think for ourselves using common sense, logic, and reason within a moral and ethical framework that is unchangeable. (more…)

Book Review of “Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom” by Thomas E. Ricks

Posted: March 5, 2019 in Book Reviews
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Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a perspective I’d never made a connection between. While Orwell has always been one of my favorite authors (fiction and non-fiction), Churchill has never been that endearing to me as a person or as a politician.

This book helped me see that both Orwell and Churchill were on the same team in decrying the moral evils and corruption that enabled the dictatorships of the 1930’s to take hold in Europe and Asia, and eventually led to World War II.

Churchill and Orwell, although they came from different British classes, had childhoods that were remarkably similar. They both had absent fathers and distracted mothers, which led to a penchant for solitude, although they both wanted families (and had them eventually). That solitude gave them time to observe, to think, and to create discussions and conversations and speeches that were astoundingly prescient and shocking (for the time).

I definitely recommend this book. It gives insights into both the author and the politician that show just how much they shared the same view of the extraordinary time they lived in.

View all my reviews

Coaching Millennials – A Quintessential Leader Perspective

Posted: November 19, 2018 in General Things about Quintessential Leadership
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Peter Pan Syndrome - Millennials

Coaching millennials and breaking the Peter Pan syndrome and perpetual adolescence that helicopter parenting and snowplow parenting has created and embedded in Gen Y is a process. A long process that is not for the faint of heart, the impatient, or the unmerciful.

Courage, patience, and mercy are traits of people who are striving to be quintessential leaders. Millennials will test these – not even consciously, because everything they believe is so deeply indoctrinated and entrenched in them that they don’t see anything wrong about their behavior, their attitudes, and their lives – at every turn in every way until something has to give or break.

Millennials are fragile. They’ve been, in almost a cult-like way, conditioned to believe they’re special, they’re awesome, they’re talented, they’re gifted, and they’re owed everything. Because no limits have ever been place on them and they’ve been awarded and praised just for existing, Millennials live in a bubble of delusion about themselves and about the world around them.

As quintessential leaders, our responsibility is to break that bubble without destroying the person inside it. And that is a challenging task and it’s going to cause pain on both sides of the bubble.

Imagine being blind from birth and creating your world simply by the sounds and the smells and the textures and the words your read with your fingers around you. It’s not going to be the same world that someone who is not blind sees or lives in.

Then one day, you wake up and you’re not blind anymore and you can see the world in another dimension you didn’t have before.

If it were me, my gut reaction would probably be to go back to being blind, because the world I would have created in my mind would be a safer world, a prettier world, and a more perfect world than the world actually is.

The other reason that my gut reaction would be to go back to being blind would be that once I could see, I’d no longer have anyone looking for me or taking care of me to make I was safe and had everything I needed. And that would be scarier than anything I could imagine because I’ve never been prepared for that and I wouldn’t know what to do.

Millennials have been blind from birth and they’ve created a world in their minds a world that doesn’t exist (and their parents have full culpability in this as well). We, as quintessential leader coaches, have the job of restoring their sight so they can see the reality of the world, life, themselves, and themselves in relationship to other people.

They’re not happy about that. And, frankly, we’re not happy about it either. Because we’re on opposite ends of the spectrum and it takes a long, hard, painful, and, sometimes, breaking-along-the-way, journey to meet in the middle.

One of the things that’s important for us as quintessential leader coaches to remember is that this bubble, this blindness is all Millennials have ever known. For 20, 25, 30, 35 years. That’s a long time and it is going to take time to make any kind of dent and progress in getting them where they need to be.

Having said that, as quintessential leader coaches, we have to be committed to the process and to doing the hard stuff and giving them tough love every step of the way.

Millennials will get angry or upset at every little perceived hurt or slight, but they won’t say anything to us. Instead, they’ll run back and complain to their helicopter and their snowplow parents with tears (and I’m talking about 25-30-year-old males and females) about how their feelings are hurt. Be prepared for the phone call berating you for hurting their “little, precious child,” for not understanding, and then a litany of all the wonderful things about their children that you don’t know or see.

If you think I’m kidding, then you’ve been hiding under a rock. it happens. A lot.

So in the process of coaching the Millennials, you now have be a quintessential leader coach to the parents, a task you didn’t bargain for because you didn’t hire the parents or invite the parents into the relationships with the Millennials.

Firm assertion in a polite way is the first step in coaching helicopter and snowplow parents. They’re not your employees and they weren’t invited into the relationship, and, it’s really none of their business are the three things you have to diplomatically tell them.

Tell them you won’t speak with them about your relationship with their children again. Here’s the easiest way to get this across in a way that makes sense: ask them if (a) they would have asked their parents to do this for them on the job and, (b) if they would have wanted their parents to do this for them on the job.

You know what the answer is going to be, followed by “but…,” of course, but it’s a way to get the message across to the parents that they’re not welcome to be involved in something that doesn’t have anything to do with them.

Next, you have to confront the Millennials with what their upset about. This rattles them and usually you get all the body language of anger and defensiveness, but they have no skills to fight the battles themselves.

Keep at it. They’re going to break a little a little at a time, over and over, and it’s going to hurt a lot because they’ve been so overprotected, they don’t know what breaking feels like. It’s okay. They’ll heal. Remind them that you’ll help if you need to (and the need has to be something that is literally impossible for them to do, but only after they’ve spent the time exhausting every possibility, option, and idea available to them), but you will not do anything they can and must do for themselves to grow up and you will not, unlike their parents, enable them.

Millennials won’t understand for a long time that you are teaching them resilience, independence, and the ability to think and do for themselves. In fact, you’re teaching them to be accountable, responsible adults, something their parents didn’t do.

No quintessential leadership coach signs up to be a parent to someone else’s child-in-an-adult-body. But that’s exactly the extra responsibility we have when we’re working with Millennials.

We must not fail and we must not quit, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how disheartening it can be at times, and no matter how much resistance we face because we’re the last shot they have at getting it right.

How are we doing?

The First Quintessential Leader in My Life: My Dad

Posted: June 17, 2018 in Quintessential Leader Basics, Quintessential Leadership
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daddy-young-man-1If my dad were still alive, he’d turn 90 next month. That sounds really old to me, but I am reminded that he and my mom came to parenthood later in life, after he’d almost finished his veterinary degree and after several years of heartbreaking miscarriages, the last of which almost killed my mom.

After Dad and Mom realized they wouldn’t be able to have biological children, they still wanted a family, so they decided to adopt children and love them as their own. (more…)

Are You a Quintessential Leader As a Parent?

Posted: April 5, 2018 in Quintessential Leader Basics, Quintessential Leadership
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Are we unquintessential leaders in the way we parent our children?The first relationship that children will – or should – experience leadership (both as a role and as a role model) is with their parents.

In our society, many parents have abdicated this leadership role – in spite of having experienced it, albeit imperfectly at times, themselves as children – in favor of being friends with their children. 

This is unquintessential leadership at a core level (it is also parental neglect) and it, just as quintessential leadership aims to grow quintessential leaders as its legacy, produces a new generation of unquintessential leadership that is even worse than the one before it.
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