Business Leadership is a Call to Serve
It's a sacred responsibility and a noble profession when we realize our impact on others
Welcome to the latest entry in The Workaround. You’re in good company with thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and innovators!
I’m Bob, your host. My mission here is to share personal, behind-the-scenes stories of the ups and downs of my career leading tech startups and corporate innovation.
I write to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Here we go…
This summer I’m working out of a small office attached to a detached garage in the woods. As I commuted the twenty-five steps to start my morning work today—which is to write this post—I heard a guy singing. He’s a subcontractor doing some work nearby on a house under construction. Any job that causes you to spontaneously break out into song must be one you enjoy.
His song is a little synchronicity that makes me smile as I sit down and write about a job I love: Leading People.
Today’s post is less about storytelling and more about a philosophy of Work+Life. IMHO, Leadership is much more than a title on your resume. I’d call it Part 3 of my series on building a High-Performance Organization, or HPO (see Part 1 and Part 2).
I probably should have started my HPO series with this one because it’s about getting our heads in the game as leaders. So, let’s call this a Prequel. I promise no time travel through metaverses, but you might uncover some pretty “meta” lessons here…
TL;DRish
I bet you couldn’t guess my favorite book on leadership: Naturally Selected—Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow, and Why It Matters.
Co-written by a psychologist and science journalist, the book skips the usual celebrity CEOs and simplistic formulas. Instead, the authors explore the Whys of Leadership. In particular, why do we as a species even have leaders and followers?
The answer, like most things in life, is evolution. Going back to our millions of years of small tribes struggling to survive, there was an adaptive advantage to selecting a leader and following them. These leaders exerted social influence on their followers to accomplish a common goal.
Another research insight is that the best leaders are often Called to Serve. Let’s break down this very important phrase:
The Call: Leaders often don’t seek the role and can feel uncomfortable with the power it grants. But someone’s got to play point on killing the lion or pivoting the startup—and they’re pointing the finger at you.
To Serve: In any viable social system, everybody’s got to play a helpful role. You’re going to have to serve somebody. Leaders do what is required.
In most of human history, effective leaders got the tribe through their troubles and gave up the crown quickly. They gave the best cuts of meat to those who stayed home and ate their share of the kill after everyone else was full. Those leaders who abused their power were frequently killed by their followers. No joke!
Flash forward several millennia, and we are alive and have nice things like ice cream, rock music, and offices in the woods because of this leadership model's success.
Unfortunately, many business leaders today don’t earn their positions through skill or success and use their power for personal gain. You know a lot of them. Some sought these positions, others just took a promotion and got in over their heads.
I’ve always looked at Leadership as something important, bigger than me, and, well, “holy” is a word that keeps sticking in my mind. The power it gives to bend people to your will can be “awesome” in both the touching and scary meanings of the word. The more opportunities I have had to lead people, the more I see the value of this calling to serve.
And I think we need to take leadership a lot more seriously.
How I Got the Leadership Religion
Nature and nurture conspire to create our personalities at an early age, and looking back, there were a few clues that I had some interest in leading teams.
As a kid, I was always active in sports, scouts, and various indoor and after-school activities. I was never the top scorer or the smartest one in the room, but I tended to organize the pick-up game, suggest how to start a project, and hand out high-fives. Usually, a little voice in my head said, “Why isn’t anyone else leading this? OK, I’ll do it.”
My first job leading a team was at Procter & Gamble, a company known for training leaders—mostly by giving people clear ownership and accountability and getting out of the way. Even as an intern I had dozens of people counting on my leadership on projects. And it was wonderful. That summer, I stayed at my friends’ house in Cincinnati. While showering for work, I sang aloud, “It’s a beautiful morning!” My friends almost killed me a few times.
I began managing a much larger organization when I left that company to become a co-owner at a fast-growing digital agency. My fellow executives and I saw how creating a best-place-to-work would be a competitive advantage. We had a lot of success together. And I mostly learned from making mistakes in managing people there.
For example, I remember a Monday one-on-one with one of my star direct reports. She told me I made a comment the week before that had been bothering her for days. It ended up being a misunderstanding, but I came away shocked that I had the power to make or break a person’s weekend with a few throwaway words. It shook me—and forced me to improve.
[Side note: Kudos to her for having the courage to bring this up with me. She made me a better manager for her and hundreds of others since then. Her words still stick in my head today!]
Years later, I stepped into the CEO role of Ahalogy, a startup I co-founded. I inherited the role from my co-founder as our business was on the precipice of failure. On my first day on the job, I felt the clouds part and the sun shine down on me. Despite a stalled product, a few months of cash left, looming layoffs, and backup plans to go from 30 people to 5, I knew I was in the right position and loved every minute. We righted the ship, pivoted, got profitable, and achieved a strategic acquisition.
I got myself fired from the acquirer a few weeks into COVID. Oh, how I missed my team and the honor of leading them. Sitting in my home office chair, trying to cook up a new startup idea, I wished I could be with them again. Like Churchill sitting on the sidelines as WWII broke out, I was eager to lead through the challenge of COVID. I missed the opportunity to test myself and lead a team through the crisis.
So, to borrow from Plato, I escaped the cave and saw a glimpse of Truth in the light: that you can lead people in an enlightened way—without coercion through fear or constantly dangling dollar-shaped carrots. We want to do big things together and need a leader to bring the best out of us.
Instead of enjoying the sun with a drink on the beach, I’m back inside the cave (or office in the woods), trying to help others escape by writing like this and building new businesses.
The fun really starts when we help others break their chains and pay it forward as they assume leadership roles with an enlightened mindset. Most leaders have no idea how much they influence the people who work for them. They see you, model you, and build a version of you in their brains that talks to them. They become you.
To be great leaders, we must understand this power in all of its “awesomeness” and use it responsibly. We hold the power to positively touch people’s lives at scale. Our impact can be that of a great teacher, coach, health provider, soldier, or minister. Perhaps more so when considering that people spend most of their waking hours and energy at work. This potential power has increased in recent years as we look for purpose in our careers and seek better work-life integration.
When we view our roles as leaders in this special, sacred way, the rest takes care of itself. That includes revenues, profits, and company valuation. As I shared in my HPO series, even a hard-core capitalist will follow the religion of this lesson.
Leader, Manage Thyself
Whether you are managing an intern for the first time or you are a 50-something CEO, we can all buy into this mentality and begin anew today. But let me share two big watchouts before you accept the call to serve others as a leader.
First, make sure leading others is truly your calling. Some people don’t want the responsibility, dislike dealing with “people problems," and/or just really enjoy the craft of building, creating, serving clients, writing code, or managing projects. Often, success in their craft leads to a promotion to lead others.
You do not have to take this opportunity! I love it when people have told me they don’t want to manage others and prefer an individual contributor role. There are many ways you can continue to elevate your craft and your income by doubling down on what you love.
Please do not harm yourself and others by taking a leadership role that is not right for you. If you are later in your career, look in the mirror and ensure managing others still gets you up in the morning. Retiring from this battle is OK when your energy has tapped out.
Far too many leadership roles are secretly unwanted. If you don’t feel the call to serve as a leader, you’re failing other people and your organization and ignoring some other calling you should be following. If you are not loving your life, you’re living it wrong.
Second, fix your own mental demons before you inflict them on others. Your psychological baggage, childhood trauma, and ego issues will spread to others if unchecked. Countless examples show how a CEO’s personality generates at least half of what defines a company’s culture. The exec team changes its style to fit in with the CEO; managers adapt to mimic the exec team, and so on.
It infects those around you if you’re not feeling good or in tune with yourself. They, in turn, will bring your baggage home to their families and friends. So, grow up and out of the ego traps like money, status, respect, power, and the pursuit of more for its own sake.
[Side note: I know some repeat founders that started up again. They bought a bunch of toys after selling their last companies, are sitting on more money than they can spend, and have no investors to please—yet they are driving their team to work crazy hours and commit to higher growth rates. For what? To fill the bottomless holes they have inside.]
Get past your fears. Look inside those dark places. Seek therapy, find a support group, or ask the faith of your choosing for guidance. Just do it quickly and stop making misery in others’ lives.
Sadly, too many leaders get to their positions without earning them and before building people skills. But, again, it’s never too late. Check out the work by Jerry Colona, a founder who experienced this burnout and now coaches other startup leaders.
“I believe that better humans make better leaders. I further believe that the process of learning to lead well can help us become better humans. By growing to meet the demands of the call to leadership, we’re presented with the chance to finally, fully, grow up.”—Jerry Colona
Really, Please Do No Harm
Back at my agency, I had a truly awful client named Diane. She is the type who smiles and says nice things to your face, then goes behind your back and spreads poison. The business she touched was +$1 million per year for us, and she was embedded in her role there, so we constantly feared her.
I remember a new hire at the company named Matt, who got a job working for Diane right out of college. He started off full of positivity and was a great partner. But as the weeks and months progressed, we saw him twist into a mini-Diane. He took on her mannerisms, mistrustfulness, and passive aggressiveness.
We eventually resigned this business because we got tired of dealing with Diane. Thankfully, lots of other great clients quickly made up for the loss. But Matt wasn’t so lucky. He was stuck under Diane, who manipulated the system to keep him from taking outside assignments. Matt never got promoted. I still wonder where he would be today if he had worked for someone better.
At times I know I have been an asshole boss, friend, father, and husband. Thinking back, I tended to react negatively when I feared losing something, being exposed as a fraud, or just failing. Being a jerk always made things even worse. Ironically, for a leader, these fears mainly came from the feeling that I had no control.
Over time, we hope to see our problems, grow out of this phase, and become true adults. The first step is finding and leading ourselves.
“My purpose is to master myself, so I can serve humanity as a warrior, leader, and teacher.” Mark Devine
The second step is to keep working at it. I spend hours daily trying to up my game, especially through long-form reading and writing like this. I don’t read business leadership books anymore, instead going for “root corrections” in topics such as Buddhism, Stoicism, and Christianity—you know, the people who have been writing about self-improvement for over 2,500 years.
I’m not joining someone else’s tribe; more like building a personal point of view by taking bits and pieces that work—all with the hope of building a heaven on earth for myself and those around me. And I see progress, along with more room for improvement. This has me singing in the morning when I wake up. My wife has learned to tolerate me.
We Can Make Business a Noble Profession
If you’re looking for meaning in your work, you don’t have to find it in building a business that saves lives or the planet. All you have to do is elevate the people who work for you. Products and services come and go—but building up enlightened business leaders is the gift that keeps giving.
Most of what I’ve learned about paying it forward through people has come from managers who showed me the way, like Brian McNamara, who I wrote about last year. I still have a Mini-Brian in my head that guides my decisions.
I’ve learned from many more men and women who have taken the time to write down their teaching, and they have compelled me to do the same here on Substack.
[Side note: Did you know that Substack has a growing platform of people who write about business and leadership? Check out some of my favorites here.]
Just last week, I discovered the leadership story and life journey of Denis Beausejour, a fellow P&G alum who wrote a book on his evolution as a leader of people. Learning about Denis inspired me to write this post. While we approach life from different spiritual angles, we share a calling to serve others.
Everything takes care of itself when you earnestly accept the call to serve. Is there scientific proof? Maybe. But I’ve seen it work, and so has Denis and a lot of other folks I’ve met over the years. You’ve got to have faith.
If you’re still reading at this point, you get it. Congratulations! You’re at least 80% of the way there. Your unconscious kept you from swiping away, so you’re starting to integrate the lesson. Keep working on being a better business leader and all-around human. Not enough of you are out there. We’re all counting on you.
How we might work together…
Are you interested in launching your own consulting or service business or need help taking your current services business to the next level? Fleet is our holding company for services, and we’re actively looking to build business partnerships with winning leaders. Let’s talk!
My team and I lead Hearty, a boutique recruiting service that helps tech-forward companies hire proven talent. Our senior team of operators sources and screens, saving you time and money. When you need help, let’s chat.
Need help with a software project? Perhaps a product MVP, a project that requires outside help, or a fractional CTO for key strategic decisions? Our team at Shipwright Studio has worked together to build multiple successful startups, and we love helping leaders turn their dreams into reality. We're the team our clients trust for software built to last.
Looking for Influencer Marketing and Content Creation? The team from our previous company is back by popular demand with A2 Influence. We’re ramping up now and would love to share more.
Feel free to schedule a time during my Office Hours to discuss questions, feedback, networking, or any other topic!
BONUS: Cool Content of the Week
A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…
Ken Langone - The American Dream
In 1998, during the second year of my MBA program at NYU/Stern, I took a class on leadership taught by our Dean. The class mostly comprised guest appearances by very successful business leaders. The most memorable speaker was Ken Langone, a master finance mind and co-founder of The Home Depot. To this day, I still recall his great stories and low ego.
So, it was a joy to hear his voice again through a recent episode of the Invest Like the Best podcast. Reflecting on his long and fascinating career, Langone says success is “95% about people.” If you like self-improvement and business stories—you’re reading this, so, duh—then you’ll love this episode.
You will hear an 88-year-old man cry while telling the story of the kindest thing anyone did for him. This 52-year-old man shed a tear listening. Elders like Ken Langone should be honored. And we can honor them best by doing our best with people in business.