The Leader People Want to Follow
THE LEADERSHIP EDGE NEWSLETTER | Your Guide to Exceptional Leadership
March 2026 | 620 words = 2.5 - 3 minute read
#1. All Leaders Need An MRI – get your leadership effectiveness checked out.
#2. You Work Out the Best with a Trainer – become a better leader, faster with a coach.
#3. Invest In Yourself and See A Huge Return – how does 30-300% sound? Use a specialist to help you learn, grow, and change.
What separates the leaders people genuinely want to follow from those they simply tolerate? The research points to something fundamental: willingness to do the hard inner work. I explore three core foundations of effective leadership — what leadership actually is, why leading yourself must come first, and how trust becomes your greatest asset. Each foundation includes a concrete action you can take this week.
#1: Know What Leadership Actually Is
If you confuse leadership with management — or with decision-making authority — you will struggle. Here's the clearest definition available:
"The art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations." — Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge
Note the keyword: want. Anyone can use a carrot or a stick. The leaders people remember, the ones people tell their friends about, create a genuine desire to strive toward something bigger. That requires a fundamentally different skill set.
Jim Collins identified this in his research on Level 5 Leaders (Good to Great, 2001): eleven CEOs who transformed their companies through a rare combination of personal humility and fierce professional resolve. These companies outperformed the market by more than 3x over 15 years. What distinguished them wasn't charisma or authority — it was how they led.
So how do you build these skills? Start with honest data about yourself. Don't guess at your strengths — get the data. As Jim Yong Kim put it:
"The most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try to get better — because your job is to try to help everybody else get better." — Jim Yong Kim, former World Bank President
Action: Schedule a 360-degree assessment within the next 30 days. Use the results to identify your top two development opportunities — and act on them.
#2: You Can't Lead Others If You Can't Lead Yourself
This is where most leadership development programs fall short. Technical skills and frameworks are teachable. The inner work is harder — and more important.
"The inner game runs the outer game." — Robert J. Anderson & William A. Adams, Mastering Leadership
To lead yourself well, you need genuine self-awareness: a clear-eyed understanding of your values, beliefs, mental models, and the psychological patterns that drive your behavior. Most of us have blind spots — habits and reactions that undermine our effectiveness — and we don't even know they're there.
Jim Collins' Level 5 Leaders weren't the loudest people in the room. They weren't seeking the spotlight. Because they had done the inner work, they led with humility: they took blame for what didn't work and gave away credit for the successes. They got themselves out of the way — and that's what made people want to follow them.
Leaders who regularly practice self-reflection consistently outperform those who don't. These practices include:
Meditation and intentional reflection
Journaling to unpack your own decision-making and reactions
Actively requesting honest feedback from those around you
Working with a coach to surface and rewire limiting patterns
This isn't soft work. It's the hardest work in leadership — and the highest-leverage.
Action: Identify one habit or pattern that consistently gets in the way of your effectiveness. Write it down. Share it with someone who will hold you accountable to changing it.
#3: Trust Is Your Most Important Leadership Asset
Here's a sobering data point: the 2022 Workplace Belonging Study by Ipsos found that nearly 50% of employees are actively considering leaving their organization. In most cases, it comes down to trust.
"The level of trust you have for your manager is directly correlated to retention."— Rebecca Ryan, Founder, Next Generation Consulting
Trust isn't built through authority. In fact, leaders who rely heavily on positional authority erode trust over time. The leaders who retain and inspire their best people build trust through influence — and influence is built through strong, genuine relationships.
Versatility: The Trust Multiplier
Research by David Merrill and Roger Reid (the Social Styles model) introduced the concept of versatility — the ability to adapt your communication and behavioral style to meet others where they are.
Here's the challenge: most leaders don't realize that their natural style resonates instinctively with only about 25% of people. The other 75% experience them as mismatched to their preferences, which translates directly into lower trust and lower engagement.
High-versatility leaders close this gap. They adapt, not inauthentically, but thoughtfully, to how different people need to be led. The result is that more people feel genuinely trusted and respected, which is the foundation of any high-performing team.
Action: Ask two or three people on your team, especially those who seem less engaged, whether they feel trusted and respected. Listen without defending. What you hear will reveal a great deal about your versatility.
Empathy and Vulnerability: Non-Negotiables for Great Leaders
The stress and anxiety your team carries is real. Great leaders acknowledge this — not just privately, but visibly. Small acts of genuine empathy (noticing what matters to someone, checking in without an agenda, adapting your expectations) send a powerful signal: I see you as a person, not just a performer.
Don't underestimate vulnerability either. Brené Brown's TED Talk on The Power of Vulnerability has over 17 million views for a reason — it resonates because most of us are starved for leaders willing to show their imperfections. Patrick Lencioni's concept of Vulnerability-Based Trust (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) shows that the teams with the deepest trust are those where leaders go first in acknowledging their own limitations.
A leader willing to say 'I don't know,' 'I was wrong,' or 'I need your help' will outperform the polished, all-knowing version every time.
Three Reflection Questions
Take 15 minutes this week to sit with these:
How good are you — really? How will you get meaningful feedback?
What personal habits or patterns get in the way of your effectiveness? What would those who report to you say?
How much versatility do you demonstrate? Do the people who are most different from you feel genuinely trusted and respected?
Go Deeper: Recommended Reading
The Leadership Challenge — James Kouzes & Barry Posner. The definitive resource on what extraordinary leadership actually looks like.
Mastering Leadership — Robert J. Anderson & William A. Adams. A rigorous framework for breakthrough leadership performance.
The Social Styles Handbook — Tom Kramlinger. A practical guide to building versatility and winning trust across all behavioral styles.
The Leadership Edge - Sharpening your leadership skills, one insight at a time.