Discoveries

We spend years preparing to work. Some of us attend colleges and universities, studying accounting, engineering, medicine, law, education, finance, technology, operations, and countless other disciplines. Others go directly into the workforce and learn through experience. Either way, we spend years becoming good at what we do.

We learn. We gain experience. We become proficient. We produce results. We demonstrate responsibility.

And one day, someone says:

Congratulations. You're the manager.

What Now?

For all the education, training, experience, and preparation that may have brought us to that moment, many of us have had remarkably little preparation for what comes next.

How do you lead another human being? How do you create an environment where people are willing and able to carry responsibility? How do you help people grow? How do you create opportunities for people to contribute—and make sure that contribution is recognized? How do you help people understand why their work matters?

For many leaders, those questions arrive at exactly the same time as the responsibility to answer them. And then we are largely left to figure it out while doing the job.

Who gets to be a leader?

Leaders aren't chosen.

Someone can choose you to be a manager. Someone can give you a title. Someone can put you in charge of a department, a team, a company, a classroom, a project, or a practice. But none of those things makes you a leader.

I've always believed that you are who you choose to be.

You become a leader when you choose to lead—and someone chooses to follow. That means leadership is available to far more people than leadership development has traditionally been available to. You don't need to be anointed the leader to influence the environment around you.

You can help create an environment where people carry meaningful responsibility. You can help someone grow. You can make it possible for someone to contribute. You can recognize that contribution. You can help someone understand why what they do matters.

Responsibility. Growth. Contribution. Recognition. Meaning.

You don't need a title to promote those things. You need to choose to.

Essential

During COVID, we began using words that have stayed with me.

Essential. Nonessential.

We used them to describe businesses, jobs, and workers. I understood why distinctions had to be made. But I also found something about the language troubling. I don't believe another person, organization, or government gets to determine whether a human being is essential.

I think we demonstrate our value through the contribution we choose to make. And perhaps one of the most valuable contributions a leader can make is to create an environment where other people have the opportunity to discover how essential they can be.

Not because someone gave them the label. Because they can see their responsibility. They can see themselves growing. They can see their contribution. They know that contribution is recognized. And they understand why their work matters.

That's leadership.

And now AI arrives

Now we are entering another period when people are asking very reasonable questions about their place in the world of work. Where do I fit? Will what I know still matter? Will I still be relevant? Could I be replaced?

Those concerns are real. But there is another question worth asking:

What could people become with these tools that they couldn't become without them?

That is not only a technology question. It is a leadership question. Organizations are going to need people who can create environments where new tools don't simply replace human contribution, but make greater responsibility, growth, contribution, recognition, and meaning possible.

Technology doesn't make the human environment irrelevant. It may make it more important.

So, wanted: leaders

Not perfect leaders. Not leaders with all the answers. Not leaders who have memorized another framework. Leaders willing to look at what is actually happening and ask better questions.

How do I get the outcome I need?

What behaviors are producing the outcomes I'm seeing?

What kind of environment makes those behaviors make sense?

How might my leadership be influencing that environment?

What Now?

That is why I created the Sustainable Leadership System. I wanted leadership support to be available when leadership is actually happening. A private, 24/7 Sustainable Leadership consultant you can talk with about an environment you actually lead.

Not to tell you how to lead. Not to make your decisions. Not to replace your judgment.

To help you observe what is happening. Organize what you are seeing. Become oriented. Consider what deserves your attention. Decide what comes next. And then observe again.

Because perhaps leadership development shouldn't end when the class ends. Perhaps it should be available when you're actually leading.

Wanted: leaders who can build environments that allow others to see how essential they can be if they choose to be.

Our first team meeting was a disaster.

I was the new manager, and all I seemed to hear was complaints.

“My route’s too big!”, “Corporate doesn’t care!”, “Nobody answers my calls!”, “We can’t keep new employees!”, “I need more money!”. What in the world had I walked into?

I did what I thought a good manager was supposed to do. I started solving problems.

All of them.

Before long, I was at the office seven days a week, often 16 hours a day. For every problem I solved, two more seemed to appear. I wanted to quit.

Eventually, my boss called and asked me, “What the bleep are you doing?” It was a pretty good question. What I couldn’t see at the time was that I needed a place to step out of the moment and look at the environment we were creating. I needed a way to observe what was happening, organize what I was seeing, and orient myself to where we actually were before deciding what to do next. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I saw later that this was what I was doing.

As I began doing that, something changed. The complaints were still there. The problems were still real. But I started hearing them differently. What had sounded like complaints began to sound like suggestions. They were telling me something about our environment. We had begun to orient ourselves differently. Instead of treating every problem as something the manager had to solve for everyone else, we could begin building an environment where we worked on them together.

About four months after that first meeting, our team made a decision:

We were responsible for the environment we operated in, and we were going to change it.

Complaining gradually gave way to a goal the team chose together. We built capacity. We celebrated progress. People took greater responsibility. Interestingly, we worked harder than ever—but it felt different. We looked forward to our team gatherings. Eventually, we became the number-one large branch in the company.

But something more important had happened along the way.

We had replaced despair with stewardship

I can’t promise anyone those outcomes. There were many things that contributed to what that team ultimately accomplished. But the experience changed the way I thought about leadership. I had started by believing that being a good manager meant personally supplying enough energy to solve the problems around me. What I began to discover was something different.

As people became increasingly involved in shaping their own environment, they also became increasingly capable of contributing to it, taking responsibility for it, and eventually helping protect what we were building together.

Our capacity grew.

That gave us greater capacity to deal with our internal issues. Which gave us greater capacity to serve our customers. And outstanding business outcomes followed.

As we talked about leadership and the idea behind Sustainable Leadership, I tried to explain the value of building an environment that produces positive outcomes. I could tell the idea wasn't really connecting. I kept thinking about the conversation afterward.

There is enormous attention today on getting more production from people. AI promises greater productivity. Organizations work on culture. We install systems, processes, accountability, incentives, and technology. And somewhere in all of it, responsibility often comes back to the leader.

Make it happen.

Get people to perform.

Build the culture.

Hold everyone accountable.

Keep the system working.

Strong leaders can do those things. They can push, inspire, intervene, solve problems, and personally drive very good outcomes.

But the conversation left me with a different question:

How long can the leader sustain that kind of energy?

Maybe the question isn't only, How do I get more out of my people? Maybe there is another question worth asking:

What kind of environment are we building together?

An environment where people have opportunities to carry meaningful responsibility. To grow. To contribute. To be recognized for that contribution. To understand why their work matters.

Over time, something else may begin to happen. People develop a stake in the environment itself. They don't just work in it. They contribute to it. They reinforce it. They notice when something threatens it. Eventually, they may begin to help protect it.

That changes the role of the leader. The leader is still part of the environment and still affects it. But sustaining the environment no longer depends entirely on the leader personally supplying the energy required to keep everything moving.

The best leaders I know are obsessed with business outcomes. They know their KPIs. They post them. They talk about them. They challenge their teams to win. In some cases, they're probably more demanding about results than leaders I would describe as extractive.

Years ago, one of the most effective leaders I know said something to me that I've never forgotten: “It's not that I don't care about business outcomes. It's how we go about getting them.”

He cared deeply about results. But there was one business outcome he watched more closely than almost any other: Retention.

I've been thinking about that differently lately. Two teams can be producing very similar numbers. In one, people are winning together. They're carrying responsibility. They're growing. They know they contribute. Their contribution is recognized. They understand why their work matters. In the other, the numbers may look just as good—but underneath them, people are exhausted, disconnected, dependent on the leader, or quietly deciding how long they're willing to stay.

The KPI report may not show you the difference yet. Retention eventually might.

Good retention doesn't prove that an environment is healthy. People stay or leave for all kinds of reasons. But if you want people to stay, there's a question worth asking: What kind of environment are you asking them to stay in?

That's where I keep coming back to five things: Responsibility. Growth. Contribution. Recognition. Meaning.

A common explanation is that people aren't taking enough ownership. But there may be another question worth asking: “What has the environment taught people about where decisions belong?”

We can delegate a task without creating the conditions that allow someone to carry it. If expectations, decision boundaries, information, or authority aren't clear—or experience has taught people that bringing decisions back to the leader is safest—waiting for the leader may actually make perfect sense.

Before asking people to take more ownership, perhaps it's worth asking what the environment currently supports.