Leadership Styles in Modern Work

"Make me look good" leaders push employees beyond their limits, demanding performance at all costs. They don't care about burning people out, as long as they get what they want: a positive image. For these leaders, it's about ego, not real productivity. It's also not about excellence; it is about managing impressions. Under the term "productivity", they justify unethical and immoral behaviours such as bullying, discrimination, and fraud. They have no genuine interest in helping the organization, or society, for that matter; they care about control, power, and money. In many organizations, employees are required to perform work that often seems pointless and counterproductive, aimed at making leaders look good or increasing their chances of promotion. These types of leaders assume management roles with little to no interest in managing employees. They are often absent when their employees need support and spend a significant amount of time self-promoting (they call it strategizing). The time spent self-promoting and mingling with senior management helps them secure promotions for which they lack the necessary skills. They appear effective because they surround themselves with excellent employees who dedicate their time, effort, resources, and sometimes their health to make sure that when the manager needs to present the team's work, it looks impressive. "Make me look good" leaders are rarely effective themselves; they don't tolerate employees questioning or criticizing their decisions, don't listen to others' suggestions, don't care about ethics, and are usually highly competitive, as their only goal is to climb to the top of the organizational chart. For employees, working under these managers is very challenging because they are often more qualified than the manager. Moreover, the objectives and priorities constantly shift, and there is no stability as these leaders pursue what they believe will help them get promoted. These leaders are on a personal, self-serving mission; they don't care about the organization's mission, vision, and values. This leadership style is typical in toxic workplaces that focus on appearances rather than genuine, effective leadership grounded in supporting employees and providing the resources they need to perform their jobs. This type of leadership is associated with employee disengagement, cynicism, demotivation, burnout, and turnover. In workplaces where these types of individuals keep getting promoted, effectiveness is only superficial. If you look a little closer, the people who work to make the leader "look good" are suffering. A management role involves the responsibility of caring for a team. Selection and promotions committees should consider not only the goals the candidate has achieved but also how those goals were reached. Often, they will encounter a trail of burnt-out teams along the candidate's path to the top. Take care of yourself and the people around you 💗

In my early days at Rubrik, I made a mistake: I sought out leaders who mirrored my own strengths and weaknesses. It seemed logical at the time since I knew I could better relate to people with the same qualities as me, but I quickly learned that true leadership requires a diverse portfolio of skills. Just like in finance, where a diverse asset portfolio reduces risk, your leadership team needs a mix of perspectives and strengths. If everyone thinks and acts the same way, you’re setting yourself up for a major downfall. Think about it: When you're confronted with a problem you’re not sure how to tackle, it's a learning experience. But if no one on your team is equipped to handle that challenge, your entire organization can crash. Diversity of skills in leadership encourages innovation and resilience. It compensates for individual weaknesses and amplifies our collective strengths. When you embrace different viewpoints, you create a more adaptable and robust team capable of navigating challenges. The right mix of strengths will keep us grounded, even when the storms of uncertainty hit.

You're stuck in the middle. Leadership above you is paralyzed. Teams below you need direction. And you're supposed to just... wait? Fuck that. I've spent years being the unauthorized leader, the shadow decision-maker, the one who kept things moving while executives debated. Not because I wanted the glory – because watching nothing happen physically hurts. Here's what I've learned about leading from the middle when the top won't move. Stop asking permission for everything. They hired you to solve problems, not to be another inbox item. If it's reversible and under $10K, just do it. Success forgives all sins. I once restructured an entire development process without asking. When leadership noticed, we'd already shipped two releases early. Suddenly, I was "proactive." Build your shadow cabinet. Find the finance person who'll find budget. The IT admin who'll provision resources. The HR partner who'll fast-track hires. These people exist everywhere, quietly keeping things running. Trade favors. Build trust. This isn't politics – it's survival. Document decisions that aren't being made. Keep a simple log: "Waiting for X since [date]. Impact: Y." One client discovered their average decision wait was 47 days. For decisions that took an hour to make. That data changed more minds than complaining ever did. Create "pilot programs" instead of asking for change. "Can we try something new?" gets you six months of meetings. "I'm running a three-week experiment" gets you results. Leadership loves to debate strategy but rarely objects to small experiments already in progress. Master strategic disobedience. Some rules matter. Most don't. The approval that takes six weeks? Find who can do it in six hours. The mandatory meeting where nothing happens? Send a delegate. Most organizational rules are comfort blankets for people afraid to decide. Protect your people from the chaos. When strategy changes weekly, your team doesn't need to know. Give them consistent direction even when you're not getting it. They need to trust someone knows where they're going. If leadership won't be that someone, you have to be. Know when to leave. This approach has a shelf life – maybe 18-24 months before you burn out or get forced out. Organizations that need shadow leaders don't deserve them. You're donating leadership to a place that doesn't value it. Don't document yourself into entrapment. Weak leaders always ask for more documentation. Not because they're interested in your solution, but because that's how they play time to avoid decisions. You have all the responsibility and none of the authority. You see what needs doing but can't officially do it. So you have two choices: wait for leadership to lead (good luck with that), or become the leader your organization needs but doesn't deserve. The question is: How much longer will you wait for permission to do what you were hired to do? #leadership #changemanagement #middlemanagement #corporatesurvival #shadowleadership

Diverse teams are powerful, but only if they’re designed to be. Just putting different people together isn’t enough. What I’ve learned over 11+ years is that true  🧠 Collective Intelligence only emerges when diversity is intentionally activated. 🖌 My Blueprint to unlock it: 🔹 Cognitive diversity It’s about bringing different thinking styles. Teams that embrace divergent ways of solving problems uncover creative solutions that others miss. 🔹 Demographic Diversity The presence of different intersectional identities and lived experiences creates a richer understanding of potential blind spots and unmet needs. 🔹 Experiential Diversity Diverse career paths and life stories equip teams with practical insights that can cut through “tried-and-true” methods that often fail in complex, changing environments. 🔹 Psychological Safety This is the game-changer. Without it, diversity backfires. High-performing teams create a “safe container” where everyone—from the quiet thinkers to the bold disruptors—can voice their ideas without fear. 🔹 Inclusive Decision-Making Diversity is wasted if decisions are still made by the loudest voice in the room. Structured inclusion ensures that varied perspectives aren’t just heard but drive the direction forward. The result? 1️⃣ Faster, smarter decisions: diverse insights reduce blind spots and increase confidence in strategic choices, helping leaders respond swiftly to market changes. 2️⃣ Increased innovation and agility: aligned teams leverage diverse perspectives to solve complex problems creatively and adapt to new challenges with resilience. 3️⃣ Stronger engagement and retention: when teams feel psychologically safe and included, they’re more committed and motivated. This translates to lower turnover and higher morale. The path to unlocking your team’s full potential starts with aligning on the right elements—diversity, psychological safety, and inclusion in decisions. 🤔 P.S. Where is your team on the path to collective intelligence—and what’s your next step?

My Deloitte Human Capital colleagues have recently published their insightful Human Capital study. One particular interesting insight is on why successful transformation is decided in middle management Many transformations don’t fail because of strategy – they fail because of sentiment. While leadership teams craft visions and launch campaigns, middle management is often left behind: overwhelmed, unheard, underestimated. Yet this is exactly where the key to impactful change lies. According to the #Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report 2025, 80% of transformations led by middle management succeed – compared to just 20% of those driven by top management. Leadership in the middle means more than operational control. It’s about coaching, communication, and culture. It’s time to reframe leadership as a cultural responsibility. 73% of organizations say reinventing the role of middle managers is important – but only 7% are making real progress. That gap speaks volumes: if you’re serious about transformation, you need to empower the middle. Because culture isn’t something you decide – it’s something you live and reinforce. #Deloitte #Transformation #Leadership #MiddleManagement #Culture #ChangeManagement

Ever wondered how you can transform seasoned mid-level leaders into visionary senior leaders right within your organization? Here’s a compelling case study that might inspire you to rethink your approach. Imagine leading an executive presence intervention for a top-tier manufacturing unit within a global engineering giant. With 12 leaders, each boasting over 20 years of stellar performance, the challenge was clear: ignite their passion for growth and elevate their executive presence for high-stakes meetings and CXO conversations. The goal? Beyond refining their skills, we aimed to instill the gravitas needed to drive the organization’s vision and foster authentic leadership from the inside out. Here’s what we did: 1. Crafted a Six-Month Leadership Odyssey: Dynamic group coaching sessions fostered stronger bonds and deep trusting conversations. Leaders felt safe to open up and share their vulnerabilities, creating a powerful foundation for growth. A 100-day support process bridged virtual gaps. 2. Customized Coaching: Each leader received personalized coaching, enriched by insights about Fortune 100 CXOs. We focused on Executive Presence and applied innovative communication techniques to enhance their gravitas and presence in critical meetings. The Result? These leaders didn’t just evolve—they underwent a profound transformation into change agents who propelled the organization towards sustainable change and new heights of employee and customer-centric excellence. They embraced authentic leadership, leading with confidence and authority in every high-stakes meeting. What Can You Take Away? 1. Foster Deep Trust: Create an environment where leaders can open up and share their vulnerabilities. Deep trusting conversations are essential for authentic leadership and sustainable change. 2. Enhance Executive Presence: Equip your leaders with the skills and confidence needed to handle CXO conversations and high-stakes meetings with gravitas. Tailor interventions to build their presence from the inside out. 3. Embrace Inside Out Leadership: Focus on nurturing leadership qualities from within. Authentic leadership starts with understanding oneself and extends to how leaders engage and inspire others. 4. Drive Sustainable Change: Ensure your leadership programs are designed to create lasting impact. Invest in ongoing support and personalized coaching to facilitate long-term growth and transformation. Here’s to unleashing the incredible potential within your organization! #LeadershipDevelopment #SuccessionPlanning #ExecutivePresence #AuthenticLeadership #InsideOutLeadership #CXOConversations #HighStakesMeetings #TransformationalLeadership #SustainableChange #Impact #Gravitas

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN AN AGE OF CRISIS: When Power Meets Conscience   Why be just when you can be rich? Plato’s Ring of Gyges still shadows every boardroom. If profit is possible through injustice and no one is watching, what will you choose? Today’s leadership culture—built on compliance, KPIs, and risk management—dodges Glaucon's famous question. The result is predictable: systems that reward getting as close to the “moral minimum” as possible, monetising harm while branding it “value creation.”   Today we inhabit the ruins of our own success: record share prices, record inequality, a planet in distress. Leadership has become performance art—purpose statements on our office walls, denial in our dashboards. We brilliantly manage our own blindness, mistaking agility for progress and OKRs for meaning. This is not a crisis of capability but of conscience: a failure to understand how our systems themselves produce the outcomes we claim to fight.   Most leadership models treat ethics as a compliance problem—but when regulation fades and profit trumps penalty, why be good at all? Secular ethics—utilitarian, contractual, procedural—fail the Gyges test. If values are mere preferences, exploitation becomes rational. When social systems are treated as neutral markets rather than moral orders, injustice hides inside the algorithms of efficiency.   Ethical leadership begins where management ends: with the question of what legitimises power. It's not charisma or style but stewardship—the disciplined use of power for the common good. It rests on three practices: truth, seeing systems as they really are; imagination, envisioning what they could become; and judgment, choosing wisely when values collide. This is practical wisdom—the courage to act rightly, even when no one measures it.   To make this real, organisations must be designed for character, not compliance. Profit must serve purpose; incentives must reward contribution, not extraction. Governance must mature from box-ticking to moral judgment—boards as trustees of conscience, not guardians of quarterly returns. Accountability cannot be procedural alone; it must be moral. Leadership is public trust, not private property.   Developing ethical leaders means rethinking formation itself. Not tournaments of ambition but apprenticeships in judgment. Not high potentials but humble stewards able to hold power to account—including their own. No system can rise above the moral maturity of those who lead it—if leaders refuse to grow, they must make way for those who will.   Ethical leadership, at the end of the day, is the bridge between the actual and the possible. In a world of cascading crises, only leaders grounded in care, imagination, and moral courage can restore trust and renew possibility. The world is watching. So are our grandchildren. #EthicalLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #CorporateGovernance #SystemsThinking #Sustainability #BusinessEthics #ResponsibleLeadership #ESG #Philosophy #PurposeDriven

Breaking the Mold: Why Cross-Industry Leadership Hiring is the Future In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the traditional approach of hiring leaders exclusively from within the same industry is becoming increasingly outdated. As organizations face unprecedented challenges and opportunities, there's a growing recognition that fresh perspectives and diverse experiences can be invaluable assets in the C-suite. ## The Power of Cross-Pollination When we bring leaders from different industries into our organizations, we're not just filling a position – we're infusing our company with new ideas, innovative approaches, and unique problem-solving skills. This cross-pollination of talent can lead to: 1. Increased innovation and creativity 2. Enhanced adaptability to market changes 3. Fresh perspectives on long-standing challenges 4. Improved diversity of thought in decision-making ## Transferable Leadership Skills Great leaders possess a set of core competencies that transcend industry boundaries. These include: • Strategic thinking and vision-setting • Change management expertise • Strong communication and interpersonal skills • Ability to inspire and motivate teams • Adaptability and learning agility These skills are often more valuable than industry-specific knowledge, which can be acquired on the job. ## Overcoming Resistance Naturally, there may be concerns about bringing in leaders from outside the industry. Common objections include: • Lack of industry-specific knowledge • Potential culture clash • Learning curve and adjustment period However, these challenges can be mitigated through proper onboarding, mentorship programs, and a culture that values diverse perspectives. ## Success Stories We've seen numerous examples of leaders successfully transitioning across industries: • Alan Mulally moving from Boeing to Ford • Satya Nadella shifting from cloud computing to lead all of Microsoft • Angela Ahrendts transitioning from Burberry to Apple's retail division These leaders brought fresh ideas and approaches that revitalized their new organizations. ## The Way Forward As we look to the future, organizations that embrace cross-industry hiring for leadership roles will likely find themselves better equipped to navigate the complexities of our rapidly changing world. By valuing transferable skills, diverse experiences, and fresh perspectives, we can build more resilient, innovative, and adaptable companies. What are your thoughts on cross-industry leadership hiring? Have you seen success stories in your organization? Let's continue this important conversation in the comments below. #LeadershipDevelopment #CrossIndustryTalent #InnovativeHiring #DiverseLeadership #BusinessStrategy #OrganizationalChange #TalentAcquisition #FutureOfWork #ExecutiveLeadership #CareerTransitions

Let me share a moment from a team meeting I facilitated not long ago. The leader of the group started by laying out a big decision their team had to make. A few voices dominated the room, confident and loud, steering the discussion in a clear direction. The others? Silent. As an observer, it was clear there was more to the story. So, I asked: “What’s missing? Who else should we hear from?” It was like a light bulb went off. The quieter team members shared perspectives that completely shifted the decision-making process. What looked like the obvious choice moments ago suddenly seemed shortsighted. By the end of the meeting, they had a new, more innovative solution—one they wouldn’t have reached without that diverse input. Here’s the truth: Dominance doesn’t lead to better decisions—diversity does. Research backs this up: Teams with varied perspectives make more informed choices and foster greater innovation. Quick Wins for Better Decision-Making Today: 1️⃣ Pause before deciding: Ask, “Whose voice haven’t we heard yet?” 2️⃣ Encourage contrary views: Actively invite someone to challenge the majority opinion. 3️⃣ Normalize silence: Give space for quieter voices to think and then contribute. Now, your turn: Do you agree that diverse teams lead to better decisions, or do you believe too many perspectives can muddy the process? Let’s debate—drop your thoughts below. #DiversityInLeadership #TeamCollaboration #BetterDecisions #LeadershipInnovation

💥 Increasing diversity isn’t enough. What you do next is what makes all the difference 💥 We know that greater diversity can bring real advantages: better decisions, smarter risk management, stronger client relationships, more creative solutions and fewer costly blind spots. But as the latest research from TheDiversityProject and Alex Edmans highlights, it’s more complex than that (link in the comments). And those of you who have followed me for a while know that I love getting into the nuance - for that is where the difference that makes all the difference lies. Here are some of the findings:- 👉 Diversity isn’t just about who’s in the room; it’s about how these people work together 👈 Demographic diversity, such as gender, race or background, can bring different perspectives. But it doesn’t automatically lead to diversity of thought. Simply adding diverse individuals into existing teams without adapting the leadership styles, culture or ways of working often leads to frustration, tokenism and lost potential. 👉 Cognitive diversity brings different ways of thinking, and that’s exactly why it can create friction 👈 When people approach problems from different mental models, disciplines or communication styles, it becomes harder to coordinate, align decisions and fully understand one another’s perspectives. Without strong leadership, shared frameworks and psychological safety, people often end up talking past each other and the benefits stay locked away. This strongly echoes what my research. Women feel that if the surrounding culture often remains rooted in traditional leadership norms, what looks like inclusion on paper can feel very different in practice. 👉 Psychological safety is non-negotiable 👈 When people don’t feel able to challenge or share alternative views safely, cognitive diversity stays dormant. Many women in my research described the Communication Bias where assertiveness and volume are given unfair focus and mistaken for competence, leaving many unable to make their valuable contributions. ✅ Inclusive leadership is the real lever Leaders need to create environments where different thinking styles are welcomed, dissent is safe, and contribution isn’t limited to those who shout the loudest. This is about more than just increasing diverse people in your teams; it’s about building a genuinely inclusive culture where those people feel able to contribute fully. 🔑 The key takeaway is that having diverse people and thinking holds huge potential but it requires intentional leadership for it to be unlocked. It will not add value by default - it only delivers when leaders create the conditions for it to flourish. What are your thoughts? Where have you seen cognitive diversity work well, or not, in your organisation? And how are you creating the conditions for real diversity of thought to thrive? #Inclusiveleadership #Organisationalculture #Psychologicalsafety #Womeninleadership