Blog on Two Leaders. One Deadline. Very Different Outcomes.

Two Leaders. One Deadline. Very Different Outcomes.

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When the Deadline Becomes the Mission

Two federal leaders reportedly received extraordinary, short-notice requests in advance of America’s 250th anniversary: turn the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American flag blue” and help create a new $250 bill featuring President Trump.

One deadline produced a fiasco. The other produced an act of courage.

Reflecting on the Pool

The Reflecting Pool project bypassed normal competitive bidding and was rushed toward completion before July 4. For a brief time, it appeared to work. Then the lining began peeling, and the problems surfaced.

Officials blamed vandalism. Former Olympian David Hearn, who said he merely touched a loose piece of lining, was arrested and charged with felony property destruction.

Then the story changed.

Documents provided to prosecutors after Hearn’s indictment reportedly revealed “a rushed and flawed installation process,” repeated failures during installation, and extensive peeling before Hearn ever approached the pool. Prosecutors moved to dismiss the case, saying the damage resulted from a botched installation rather than vandalism as the Department of the Interior had initially represented.

The deadline had become the mission. Normal safeguards became obstacles. Speed displaced judgment. When the result failed, the search for a culprit overwhelmed the search for the truth.

The Courage to Speak Up

Patty Collins, then director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, reportedly faced a similarly unrealistic request. Patty and I served together in the Pentagon and Afghanistan and have remained friends ever since.

According to various news reports, senior Treasury officials wanted the bureau to help develop a $250 bill featuring President Trump. There were a few complications. The United States does not have a $250 denomination. Federal law prohibits placing a living person on currency. Congress had not authorized the bill. And creating a secure new banknote normally takes six to eight years.

You cannot simply adjust a few dials and start cranking out money. Apparently, even the federal government has limits.

Patty reportedly explained that she had no objection to the concept, but there was no lawful or responsible way for her agency to produce the bill on the requested timeline. She also noted that her bureau was not the approving authority.

She was subsequently removed from her position.

These two episodes center on Keen Judgment, one of the nine accelerators in the 3-Discipline Leadership System® (see video here).

Keen Judgment is the ability to assess reality, weigh competing risks and perspectives, and determine what the moment requires. It enables leaders to make sound decisions when information is incomplete, pressures are intense, and no option is risk-free.

In both cases, the desired outcome collided with reality.

One agency pushed ahead, weakened safeguards, and eventually blamed someone who appears not to have caused the damage.

One leader surfaced the problem and accepted the personal consequences of telling senior officials what they did not want to hear.

How Do You Develop Keen Judgment in Your Organization?

Begin by making your values and standards explicit. Then discuss what should happen when they collide:

  • What happens when speed conflicts with quality?
  • What happens when one value conflicts with another?
  • What happens when accomplishing the mission requires violating a standard?
  • Who has the authority to pause the work?
  • How should someone challenge an unrealistic directive?

These conversations are especially important when delegating consequential work. Shared standards help people understand where they have freedom to improvise and where they must stop, question, or elevate the decision.

Why It Matters Even More Today

Keen judgment is increasingly vital. AI will produce more ideas and make action possible at unprecedented speed. But speed does not make an idea wise, lawful, or executable. It merely gets us to the consequences faster.

The leaders you cannot afford to lose are often the ones willing to place a dose of reality on an exciting idea before it becomes an expensive fiasco.

If loyalty is your organization’s only implied value, you will not create disciplined initiative. You will create blind obedience and flattering agreement.

And eventually, the epoxy begins to peel.

Blog on Trump’s Red Card Call Shows the Problem with Adding Value

Trump’s Red Card Call Shows the Problem with Adding Value

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When you add value to someone else’s plan, you decrease their commitment. Do this instead.

“This is a super game plan, Allie, but you should change this and add that, and the other thing.”

I meant to be supportive and help make Allie’s online retreats even more appealing.

Allie deflated. She made the changes without enthusiasm. A plan she owned 100 percent and was committed to executing was now partly my plan. Her commitment dropped accordingly.

It’s a mistake I didn’t realize I was making, so I kept repeating it. When you add a little extra value to someone’s plan, you improve it a little, but your employee’s commitment drops significantly.

President Trump’s well-intentioned call to the FIFA president to review the questionable red card on Team USA star Folarin Balogun reminded me of this lesson. FIFA overturned the controversial red card, and Balogun was allowed to play against Belgium.

The soccer (football) world exploded in drama. People were outraged by what appeared to be strong-arm tactics and political influence. The issue added fuel to Team Belgium’s fire and probably robbed Team USA of some righteous indignation. Had Team USA prevailed, it would have been a victory for President Trump’s intervention rather than an underdog triumph.

In the event, an inspired Team Belgium trounced a lackluster Team USA 4-1.

I learned from the school of hard knocks that ownership and commitment to success go hand in hand, and as a leader and advisor, you want to strengthen rather than diminish them.

What if you see places where the plan could be improved? Don’t leaders have an obligation to point that out?

The way forward in this dilemma is to ask questions rather than give answers. I could have said to Allie, “Tell me more about this part of the marketing plan. If it were possible to strengthen it, what would that look like? What could you do to address this concern people might have?”

You are coaching your employee to make the changes on their own rather than implementing your advice. Their commitment remains at 100 percent, and you’ve helped them improve their thought process for future events.

What if they don’t make the changes and the plan fails? You’ve learned something important about your employee and will learn something more depending on how they respond to the outcome. You can consider it as tuition on employee growth or fitness for the role.

This process also reduces dependency. After a few value-adding interventions, employees will expect that you’ll come to the rescue. The quality of their work will diminish – why apply the extra effort when you know the boss is going to make a bunch of changes?

It’s another difference between service-centric leadership, which promotes growth, and servant leadership, which creates dependency.

Blog on Hegseth’s Military Purge Shows the Value of Viewpoint Diversity.

Hegseth’s Military Purge Shows the Value of Viewpoint Diversity

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When you surround yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear, you develop a taste for silliness.

Army Chief of Staff Randy George became the last casualty in Secretary Hegseth’s war against uniformed senior leaders (Randy George and I served at the same time in Afghanistan in 2009 and have some friends in common, but we do not know each other well). In just over a year, at least a dozen three- and four-star officers have been dismissed from the services. It is a purge. I spoke about the matter on TV here.

As I’ve mentioned before, I want Secretary Hegseth to be successful and for the Department to thrive. The alternative is too troubling to fathom. I firmly believe in civilian control of the military, and Secretary Hegseth has the authority to promote, retain, and dismiss the Department’s senior leaders. It’s not a question of CAN, but SHOULD.

The pretext for George’s firing is a promotion list to brigadier general. Hegseth wanted five officers struck from the list, including two women and two black men. George, rightly fearing for the integrity of the Army’s promotion system, wanted to discuss the matter in person with Hegseth. The meeting never occurred, but the request brought about the firing.

What’s troubling is the very clear signal Hegseth is sending: disagreement is intolerable.

Strong Leaders, Strong People

Did you ever notice that strong leaders surround themselves with strong people? They have the self-confidence to seek out the best people for their team. They welcome respectful disagreement because it is the source of innovation and better ideas.

I remember getting into a substantial disagreement with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about Afghanistan. I did not know him well at the time, but figured that he deserved to know one of his assumptions was wrong.

An hour or so later, I received a message from his Chief of Staff. I opened it, fearing the worst. “There are 20,000 people in this building who will agree with anything the Secretary says,” his chief wrote. “He appreciates how you stood your ground and told him your point of view.”

Weak leaders, by contrast, surround themselves with weak people who don’t threaten the leader’s self-confidence. They seek out people who agree with them and do their bidding.

To curry favor, their subordinates tell the leader what they want to hear and how wise they are. The most savvy ones play to your impulses, dragging you into your own fever-swamp.

Soon, you are admiring your own clothes and aroma.

Avoiding the Hegseth Trap

The military culture is sound enough to withstand a short period of top-level viewpoint conformity, but I worry the Secretaries who follow will implement the same playbook as payback.

Ambitious senior uniformed officers will see the game for what it is, and curry favor, leading to a politicized military that no longer offers professional military advice. Such sycophancy undermines the profession and puts people’s lives at needless risk.

Here’s my question to you: Are you moving toward the Hegseth trap? How often do people disagree agreeably? How quickly do they flag problems and nip them in the bud? When did you last hear a fresh idea or example of someone trying new things?

You have to be intentional about creating a culture of respectful candor and vigilant in maintaining it. This is particularly true as your company grows and you become more senior. Left unchecked, you suddenly find that you are getting better looking every day, your jokes are funnier, and your decisions increasingly wise.

Chris Kolenda and text - blog on The Real Jack Hughes Olympic Lesson

The Real Jack Hughes Olympic Lesson

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Jack Hughes shows that pain is inevitable, but resilience is voluntary.

Jack Hughes scored the men’s hockey gold medal-winning goal against Canada after losing three teeth taking a high stick to the mouth in the third period. It’s tempting to say the leadership lesson is about grit and playing through pain.

Did you recall that Hughes committed a penalty afterward that gave Canada a late-game power play? In a championship game, that is the kind of mistake that can haunt a player and rattle a team. Canada did not score. The game went to overtime.

Hughes then scored the winning goal.

It would be easy to tell this as a simple grit story. Play through pain. Deliver in the clutch. I think there’s a more interesting lesson: leaders bouncing forward after mistakes instead of dwelling on them. Here’s how to do that.

1. Stay Focused on the Goal, Not on Beating Up Yourself (or Others) After a Mistake

Giving Canada a late power play could have triggered blame or overcorrection. There was no finger-pointing on the US bench. Instead, Hughes returned to the ice in overtime, focused on the objective to win the game.

In business, leaders make errors, too. A rushed hire. A flawed forecast. A strategic decision that goes awry. The real danger is rarely the mistake itself. It is the emotional spiral that follows. When leaders keep the mission larger than their misstep, they steady the organization. Focus restores confidence.

2. Make Contribution Bigger Than Ego

After the win, Hughes redirected praise toward teammates and spoke about representing something larger than himself. He did not frame the moment as personal redemption. He framed it as a collective achievement. That wasn’t performative. It’s the way he is.

That posture builds trust. Leaders may be tempted to center themselves, especially after overcoming errors or injuries, but doing so degrades the team’s contributions. After all, people maintained faith in you despite the setbacks. Hughes’s presence on the ice after that mistake showed the team’s faith, as did the brilliant pass to Hughes that led to the goal. Eisenhower was famous for always passing the credit; Hughes followed that tradition.

3. Pain Is Inevitable, Bouncing Forward Is Voluntary

Hughes absorbed the consequences of the penalty and loss of teeth. He recalibrated and continued performing under high pressure. Resilience is about bouncing forward. Whenever you are engaged in something challenging, mistakes and setbacks are inevitable.

If you react by pointing fingers and evading accountability, you wind up repeating the errors like you’re in a hamster wheel. Why change your actions when it’s someone else’s fault?

If you respond by learning and trying new things, you will bounce forward to new heights. Hughes kept his eyes on the windshield and not the rearview mirror, putting himself and his team in a position to win. As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed; I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Then, he found the one that did and changed history.

Many executives confuse resilience with endurance. Just push harder. Just grind through it. Sustainable resilience asks a better question. What has changed, and how must I respond now, especially when I helped create the challenge?

Mission anchors you. Contribution binds the team. Accountability sharpens resilience. The gold medal makes the story memorable. The penalty makes it instructive. Because leadership is not about avoiding mistakes. It is about how you lead after you make one.

Chris Kolenda and text - blog on The Olympics Show the Limits of Best

The Olympics Show the Limits of Best Practices

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U.S. Olympic speed skater Kamryn Lute is the daughter of a dear friend and mentor. She competed on February 18th in the women’s 1500m race.

The Olympics remind me of the limits of best practices. Do you remember the double axel jump in figure skating? Perfecting the move was once essential to medal. Now, athletes are hitting quadruples. Vaults in the 1980s gymnastics look basic compared to today’s double- or triple-twisting double-backs. Freestyle skiing and snowboarding often feature multiple corkscrews and 1440+ rotations (that’s four full revolutions in the air).

Best-practice thinking would have deprived us of these feats, because athletes would seek to perfect existing moves rather than invent better ones.

Sears’ catalogue-based sales were a best practice for a century until Amazon came along. Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores and late fees kept the company profitable until Netflix began streaming. Kodak invented and rejected the digital photograph. Film was the best practice.

Chart on innovative behaviors - blog on The Olympics Show the Limits of Best Practices

Innovation is applied ingenuity. You improve or invent new practices instead of perfecting existing ones. A better-practices mindset requires Consistent Curiosity, Strong Standards, and Appropriate Adaptability.

Without curiosity, you will be content with best practices. Lack of strong standards means you’ll execute new ideas poorly. Poor adaptability results in resistance to change.

Hire for these behaviors and promote people who demonstrate them if you want your business to be driven by a thirst for better practices. You’ll be Quinting while others are perfecting the double loop.

In business, like sports, patterns don’t break by themselves. They break by design.

Sam Darnold Shows Why Culture Fit Matters

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I met Sam Darnold at the Jets training camp in 2019. The son of a defensive line coach introduced us; the young man loved the Jets’ quarterback.

The Jets, however, did not love Darnold. He bounced around the league for a few years and finally found a fit in Minnesota. After winning 14 games in his only season with them and then losing their first playoff game, the Vikings decided to part ways.

Darnold found the right fit in Seattle, a defense-oriented team that did not rely on quarterback heroics to win. They needed a steady field general who avoided the big mistakes. Darnold delivered, leading his team to win this year’s Super Bowl.

What does this mean for your business?

Hiring for the Right Fit – blog Sam Darnold

A common mistake I see many leaders (and athletic teams) make is looking for so-called top talent based solely on demonstrated skills or a university degree, without considering whether the person meets your behavioral standards.

If you are a sports fan, you’ve seen countless cases of teams hiring a signature talent only to find that person destroys the locker room and drags down everyone’s performance. It happens more subtly in your business. A highly skilled person who engages in gossip, hoards information, bullies co-workers, can’t get things done on time, and the like, degrades the performance of your company. People weary of the toxic environment or double standards begin to look elsewhere.

This chart illustrates the challenge. The lower left, poor skills plus poor culture fit, is the easiest to avoid, unless you are the type taken in by someone who looks, thinks, or acts like you, and you mistake them for the upper left: good culture fit but in need of skill training.

You can often find bargain talent in the upper left. This person buys-in to your behavioral standards, but does not yet have the skills to do the job. You have to determine if the skill deficit is bridgeable at a reasonable cost. If it is, you have a great hire.

The lower right is the seductive talent trap. This highly skilled person could damage your business even while delivering excellent individual results. Most adults have substantial challenges changing behavior, especially when the behaviors undermining your team are the same ones that have worked for the individual in the past.

The upper right is your right-fit zone. The biggest challenge to hiring and promoting there consistently is that most companies don’t describe their behavioral standards beyond platitudes. I facilitated an off-site recently for a company that has too many people in the lower right. We determined their operating values and identified the behaviors that illustrated what right and not-right look like. Now, they can hold employees accountable.

If your business is not realizing its full potential, it may not be a motivation, skill, or talent issue. It could be an internal culture clash. Breaking that pattern unlocks potential. Seattle unlocked Darnold’s potential and that of his teammates by assembling a team of talented players who shared the same behavioral standards.

In business, like sports, patterns don’t break by themselves. They break by design.

Leaders Without Chests: Minneapolis and the Leadership Crisis We Keep Repeating

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What happens when you make leaders without chests?

The question for leaders today is not whether you can think clearly. It is whether you can remain steady when everything around you is trying to pull you toward extremes.

C.S. Lewis wrote something decades ago that feels uncomfortably close to the mark today. In The Abolition of Man, he warned of a future filled with what he called “men without chests.” People with sharp minds and powerful appetites, but without the trained heart that makes virtue possible.

Lewis was not making a political argument. He was making a human one. His concern was that we were slowly losing the moral and emotional center that allows reason and instinct to be ordered toward the good.

Lewis argued that human beings are properly formed when the head, our rational mind, governs the belly, our instincts and desires, through the chest, the heart. The chest is the mediator. It is where emotion is governed, where courage becomes habit, and where values become something more than slogans.

Without that middle element, Lewis said, we are left with cold calculation on one side and raw impulse on the other. Intelligence without virtue. Passion without restraint. Power without wisdom. In other words, men and women without chests.

If you want to understand the modern leadership crisis, you do not need another productivity hack or another clever management trend. You need that diagnosis.

Minneapolis and the Anatomy of a Flashpoint

The tragedy in Minneapolis is a case in point. Tensions rise around enforcement actions or perceived injustice. Communities respond with anger, fear, and grief. Protests ignite. Social media accelerates everything at the speed of outrage. Politicians rush to microphones, point fingers, and egg on their followers to ever more extreme measures. The temperature climbs faster than understanding; the infinite mirror creates a downward spiral. Two avoidable deaths result.

In moments like these, it becomes difficult to tell where accuracy ends and spin begins, where accountability is being pursued, and where outrage is being harvested. The dynamics are not mysterious. They are deeply human.

The head shows up quickly in the form of legal arguments, policy statements, and carefully crafted talking points. The belly shows up even faster in the form of fear, rage, tribal appetite, and the instinct to strike back or double down.

The chest is missing.

The trained heart can hold tension without exploding. You have the intellectual courage to find common ground instead of scoring points. The emotional courage to calm situations, see the humanity in others, and go positive first. The moral courage to do what’s right, especially when your side is pushing the extremes. The steadiness to act rightly rather than react loudly. This is not about one city or one moment. It is about a pattern we keep repeating because character and judgment have lagged behind intensity and outrage.

The Real Shortage Is Not Intelligence

We live in a world overflowing with smart people. Organizations, governments, and communities are full of talent, data, sophisticated tools, and endless analysis. The problem is not a lack of information. It is a lack of formation.

We have leaders with strong heads: strategic competence, technical mastery, and the ability to optimize almost anything. We also have leaders with powerful bellies: ambition, appetite, urgency, the hunger for control or victory, and the fear of losing ground.

We’re lacking leaders with chests, the trained heart that builds bridges, expands trust, and resolves conflict. Without it, systems fracture. Attitudes harden. Trust collapses. People become instruments or enemies rather than human beings.

The word courage comes from cour, the French word for heart. That is not an accident. Courage is not bravado. It is not dominance. It is not adrenaline. Courage is the trained capacity of the heart to see clearly, to trust wisely, and to act rightly, especially when it costs something.

The Invitation in a Divided Age

You do not need more cleverness, louder outrage, or hollow eggheads. You need leaders with chests. Leaders with trained hearts. Leaders who can hold complexity without hatred, who can pursue accountability without dehumanization, and who can build cultures that thrive.

The crisis is not only political, social, and organizational. At its core, it is a crisis of moral and emotional formation. C.S. Lewis saw it coming. The question is whether we will keep producing leaders without chests, or whether we will do the harder, nobler work of building the heart again.

Your company thrives when you build leaders with chests, and developing them is straightforward. The truth is that your leadership capacity is infinitely upgradable. When you exercise the heart, you improve performance, which expands the heart itself, continually elevating your capacity to see clearly, trust deeply, and act decisively.

That is the Heart-Building Loop: the source and the result of disciplined leadership, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Reflected Reciprocation: Minneapolis Shows the Impact of Mirroring

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How can you attract the right people and prevent problems from escalating in your business? 

The most reliable way I’ve found is to follow the principle of reflected reciprocation. You get back what you put out. Your heart collects what your mind projects.

We are watching the opposite play out in Minneapolis.

Enforcing immigration law is the responsibility of the executive branch. Doing so with competence, respect, and common sense is the right standard.

ICE officials face constant harassment from people opposed to their mission. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. Deliberately provocative behavior is something else. It heightens risk for everyone involved, and those who encourage it bear responsibility for the consequences.

An investigation will clarify the facts surrounding the shooting. Perhaps the officer feared for their safety or the safety of others. Still, this situation should not have escalated to a needless loss of life.

Downward spirals rarely start with a single act. They grow through reflected behavior.

I have seen the opposite dynamic work powerfully in Afghanistan and in business. Going positive and going first invites similar behavior in others. What comes back is usually a mirror of what you put out.

The exceptions prove the rule.

You can enforce standards and serve customers in ways that build commitment, loyalty, and respect. In so doing, your company will be admired by citizens, employees, customers, partners, and even competitors.

Here are five low-cost, high-payoff ways to put reflected reciprocation to work.

Take Off Your Masks First 

Masks send the wrong signals. People hide their faces when they are ashamed. Masks increase apprehension and uncertainty about intent. They also foster a sense of impunity, increasing the risk of bad behavior.

In Afghanistan, our soldiers removed sunglasses and face coverings, and often helmets, when engaging locals. We believed that pointing guns at people and tearing through their homes would fuel resentment. Treating people with dignity would invite positive reciprocity.

We were right. Ninety-eight percent of the population responded positively. We built allies with them and handled the remaining 2% by exception. That approach motivated a major insurgent group to stop fighting and switch sides.

Business masks have similar effects. Anonymous employees are harder to hold accountable. Distant leaders care less about their people, which erodes performance, development, and retention. Bullying rises with physical and emotional detachment.

Outside of Hollywood, it is hard to think of anyone on the right side of an issue who hides their face.

You can protect employees from harassment while still making them visible and human to customers.

What masks are your people wearing? How clearly do customers and employees know who to turn to for help?

Be Accountable 

Samuel Johnson once said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. He was deeply patriotic himself. His warning was about using lofty language to excuse corruption, incompetence, and moral failure.

Labels work the same way. Calling someone a terrorist or a fascist can become a shortcut that justifies bad behavior on your own side.

Leaders should back their people and give them the benefit of the doubt. The customer is not always right. Protesters are not always right. Officials are not always right either.

Treating citizens poorly breeds resentment. Provoking law enforcement is dangerous. Leaders on all sides should set the example.

Publish clear standards for how employees treat customers and how customers are expected to treat employees. Live those standards before expecting others to follow them. Do the same internally between managers and staff.

Clear standards reduce bad behavior across the board.

How well do your codes of conduct advance your mission?

Video: Supportive Accountability.

Hire for Common Good Fit 

Your common good includes your mission, goals, and standards. A wrong-fit hire damages morale, degrades performance, and accelerates turnover.

Organizations that carry weapons have an added duty of care. Most ICE officials want to serve honorably under difficult conditions. The risk is that authority and force can attract the wrong people if hiring is sloppy.

Clear performance and behavior standards act as a powerful filter. People who share your standards are drawn in. Misfits tend to self-select out.

How precisely do you define what right looks like and what is unacceptable?

Ensure Competence 

Mission pressure can push unprepared people into critical roles. The Wall Street Journal has reported extensively on how poor tactics at ICE checkpoints and traffic stops have increased danger for everyone involved.

The military does this well. Each rank has defined competencies. First-line leaders are trained, present, and continuously developing their people. Leader presence reduces error and accelerates learning.

Growing businesses face similar risks. Rapid hiring and promotion demand strong onboarding and on-the-job training. A common mistake is promoting your best salesperson to sales manager without training. That often ruins two jobs instead of improving one.

How intentionally are you preparing your managers for their current and future responsibilities?

Video: The 3-Discipline Leadership System™.

Build Relationships 

People give you the benefit of the doubt when they know you as a human being.

The mutual accusations coming out of Minneapolis are likely to fuel further escalation. Each side is mirroring the other.

I would welcome a joint statement that sets clear behavioral standards and a joint effort to curb threatening behavior. Protecting lives and property is shared ground. Disagreement is inevitable. Conflict is optional.

Relationships require investment. Community involvement builds reputation. Knowing employees as people increases ownership and discretionary effort. Treating customers and suppliers well turns them into ambassadors.

How invested are you in your community, your customers, and your people?

Video: Managing Workplace Conflict.

Reflected reciprocation is at work in Minneapolis and elsewhere. It will keep spiraling as long as each side waits for the other to change.

The spiral stops when leaders police their own ranks and build bridges for the common good.

Who will have the courage to go positive first?

Burning Trust: 5 Change Management Lessons from Climate Hysteria

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The Burning Platform is a simple idea: people change when staying the same feels more dangerous than moving. Used well, it cuts through complacency and forces honest reckoning. Used poorly, it becomes fear-based manipulation that corrodes trust.

In the climate arena, many experts and advocates crossed that line, claiming that a catastrophe was imminent if we did not convert to electric cars, stop using gas stoves, and even de-growth our economies. 

These same people took private jets to glitzy conferences, while labeling dissenting views as heresy. Their hypocrisy created a significant backlash. 

Bill Gates has moderated his stance substantially, while citizens are refusing to pay the costs of a poorly thought-out emergency transition to green energy.

The same failure patterns show up every day in business transformations, culture initiatives, and strategic pivots.

Lesson #1: Urgency Without Proportion Destroys Credibility

One of the fastest ways to lose trust is to overstate certainty.

In climate messaging, probabilistic forecasts were often framed as inevitable outcomes. Deadlines became absolute. Nuance disappeared. When reality failed to conform neatly to the narrative, credibility cracked.

Inside organizations, this shows up when leaders declare:

  • “This is the only way forward.”
  • “We have no time for debate.”
  • “Anyone who disagrees just doesn’t get it.”

People don’t expect leaders to be omniscient. They do expect intellectual honesty.

Confidence earns followership. False certainty breeds quiet resistance.

Lesson #2: Permanent Crisis Mode Creates Apathy, Not Action

Humans cannot live indefinitely in emergency mode.

In climate discourse, the alarm bell rang year after year, always louder, always more urgent. The result wasn’t sustained engagement. It was numbness.

Leaders do this, too.

  • Every quarter becomes “critical.”
  • Every initiative is “make or break.”
  • Every miss is “existential.”

Eventually, people stop listening, not because they don’t care, but because their nervous systems are exhausted.

Urgency is a spark, not a fuel source. If everything is on fire, nothing is.

Lesson #3: Moralizing Change Turns Partners into Opponents

Perhaps the most damaging mistake was collapsing disagreement into moral failure.

Questioning tactics became questioning science. Questioning trade-offs became questioning values. Debate became heresy.

Inside organizations, this looks like:

  • Labeling skeptics as “resistant”
  • Treating concerns as disloyalty
  • Using values language to shut down dialogue

Here’s the paradox: The more righteous the tone, the weaker the coalition.

Adults don’t resist change because they’re immoral. They resist when they feel dismissed, coerced, or disrespected.

Lesson #4: Hypocrisy Is Fatal to Change Leadership

Nothing kills a burning platform faster than unequal sacrifice.

When elites preach restraint while exempting themselves, urgency turns into cynicism. People will endure hardship for a shared mission, but not for someone else’s virtue signaling.

In companies, this shows up when leaders:

  • Demand belt-tightening while protecting their perks
  • Push flexibility without changing their own behavior
  • Preach accountability without sharing risk

Credibility is not what you say. It’s what you’re willing to absorb personally.

Lesson #5: Fear Can Force Compliance, But Not Commitment

Fear can make people jump. It cannot tell them where to land.

In climate activism, fear often substituted for agency. The public was told what to fear, but not meaningfully invited into solution-building.

Organizations do this all the time:

  • Announcing transformation without co-creation
  • Declaring urgency without direction
  • Demanding buy-in instead of earning it

Compliance looks like progress. Until the moment leadership pressure eases, and everything snaps back.

Gaining Buy-in

People become willing to lean forward and lend their discretionary effort when they are clear about what you want to change and why, when they have confidence that the game plan is going to work, and they conclude that they are better off buying in. 

Without clarity, you create confusion; without confidence, you get cynicism. People resist when they believe change leaves them worse off.

Advocates of climate hysteria failed on all three counts. The backlash has sidelined sensible initiatives that most people could get behind.

People don’t want to be scared into change. They want to be respected into contribution.

The Deeper Leadership Lesson

Successful change management isn’t about the strength of the initiative; it’s about the strength of trust in you.

Hegseth Shows That Slogans Have Consequences

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I am deeply troubled by what appears to be the killing of defenseless survivors by the U.S. military. The facts are still coming in, so it is essential to leave room for more information.

What makes this moment especially disturbing is the implied guidance from Secretary Hegseth to “kill them all,” as reflected in numerous slogans like…

Lethality first. Lethality last. Lethality always.

Warfighters must have complete freedom of action.

You kill people and break things for a living.

I give the military the benefit of the doubt when it comes to judgment calls in highly ambiguous situations, and it’s reasonable to believe that Hegseth’s guidance shaped the admiral’s decision to order a second strike to kill two survivors clinging to the debris of their destroyed boat. 

I have been in firefights when our troopers were wounded and killed. I know the rage that tempts you to shoot at anything that moves. That is precisely why the U.S. military trains its leaders to restrain that impulse. 

When a combatant loses the will or means to resist, they are no longer combatants. They become your responsibility. That distinction separates a professional military from a mob.

How Careless Words Create Drift

Careless bravado creates powerful incentives. “Kill them all” is the kind of chest-thumpery that reduces a complex situation to a slogan. Subordinates may take it more literally than you ever intended. Ethical drift often starts this way.

This dynamic shows up in business all the time. Leaders want urgency. They want excellence. Yet when their words carry too much heat or too little clarity, people begin interpreting them as permission to cut corners, hide problems, or push boundaries.

Your words can create the belief that results are the only thing that matters.

When Leaders’ Words Backfire: Business Lessons

Wells Fargo

Senior leaders promoted an aggressive “eight is great” cross-selling mantra. No one instructed employees to create fake accounts, but the relentless pressure made many believe integrity was optional. Millions of unauthorized accounts later, the consequences were unmistakable.

Uber

Travis Kalanick celebrated hustle and disruption. Employees absorbed that message as a cue to outmaneuver regulators, bend rules, and treat people poorly. Most were not unethical people. They simply followed the incentives they believed their leader endorsed.

Boeing

During the 737 MAX program, executives emphasized speed, deadlines, and staying ahead of competitors. Engineers heard that loud and clear. Some safety concerns that might slow production were muted or ignored. The words themselves were not illegal, but the pressure behind them shaped the choices that followed.

Everyday Companies

Even common phrases like “we don’t lose deals” or “make the problem go away” can prompt otherwise principled people to misrepresent information or rush work that undermines quality. Leaders mean to inspire. Their people hear something else: winning matters more than how we win.

The Leader’s Responsibility

This is where your leadership matters most. Your people interpret every signal you send, especially when the stakes rise. When your words are clear and aligned with your values, they reinforce professionalism and integrity. Ambiguous bravado creates drift.

What phrases might your people be hearing that could be misunderstood if taken literally?

You already know the power of your voice. The opportunity is to use it with the intention and steadiness that help your people make choices they can stand behind with pride.