When I talk to leaders about their organisation’s leadership problems many executives are ok with the messages when I say:
“Your leaders are stressed.”
“People are burning out.”
“You need resilience.”
They kind of already know this. They might even be feeling those things themselves (though probably wouldn’t admit it).
What’s more difficult for these people to accept is the possibility that some of the behaviours their organisation currently rewards could be the very things pulling good leaders away from good leadership.
It’s easy to demonise other people and even systems but it’s rare in my experience that any system is inherently evil. It’s also highly likely in my experience that the company values and official culture are bought into.
Unfortunately though, it’s the systems themselves that shape behaviour (and mood) whether we acknowledge it or not.
A capable leader joins an organisation wanting to lead well. They want to think clearly, make thoughtful decisions, develop people and create meaningful work.
Then slowly, and often so gradually they barely notice it, the system starts teaching them something else.
Be fast…be certain…don’t upset the seniors…keep moving…be resilient…be available…always have an answer…failure is not an option.
People pay attention to what happens
Naturally people pay attention to what actually happens rather than what we say happens…so they drift.
The next problem is that this drift is often rewarded at first. The leader who says yes becomes “can do”. The leader who absorbs pressure becomes “reliable”. The leader who quietly carries impossible workloads becomes “senior enough”.
This then sends signals everywhere about what is accepted and expected. Behaviour elsewhere then trends towards that and, other leaders start to get a distorted view of what is good and how they should show up.
Indeed many organisational problems are not really capability problems but rather adaptation problems.
Organisations often respond to these problems as though individuals are failing. So they offer more training or performance management. In reality though the people are adapting quite rationally to the environment they’re in.
If the system repeatedly rewards certainty over honesty then people become find the metrics that tell a good story. If it rewards availability over sustainability then people become exhausted. If challenge feels politically dangerous then eventually only safe conversations survive.
Eventually those adaptations become culture which unsurprisingly leads to a whole host of unwanted downstream effects including but not limited to artificial urgency, performative busyness, burnout hidden behind competence, disengagement and churn.
The problem with resilience
One of the more dangerous myths in modern organisations is the idea that resilience means individuals simply becoming better at coping with unhealthy environments.
That framing is convenient because it keeps the responsibility located inside the individual.
If somebody is exhausted, they need better boundaries.
If somebody struggles under pressure, they need resilience training.
Maybe we’ll run a “psychological safety audit” and “open the communication channels” again.
Everyone’s fine? OK…carry on.
Of course those things can genuinely help but organisations also need the maturity to ask:
“What is our system repeatedly asking human beings to become in order to survive here?”
Most organisations don’t collapse because of one catastrophic leadership failure just like no leader turns up thinking “I’m going to completely betray my values”. They slowly drift into patterns that feel normal internally while becoming increasingly unhealthy and ineffective over time.
Another issue I see is that “leadership development” often focuses heavily on visible behaviours or “leadership toolbox skills” like presentation skills, executive presence, stakeholder management and influencing.
Don’t get me wrong – they are all very valuable (and things I teach and coach…wink) but what’s more important, in my opinion is helping leaders become more capable of retaining judgement, self-awareness, courage and humanity under pressure.
Let’s be honest, anybody can sound values-driven in a calm environment but pressure is where leadership identity and culture is tested.
Calm REBEL Leadership is not anti-organisation
When I wrote Calm REBEL Leadership, many people read it as “the system” (and therefore the organisation) is the villain and they tended to gloss over the fact that the system is rarely inherently evil.
This is normal as they are looking at it through their own lens but as a result Calm REBEL Leadership is sometimes misunderstood as encouraging rebellion against organisations themselves.
It is not.
As well as being a rallying cry to thoughtful leaders who have been slowly beaten down by the system, I believe my book is just as importantly a rallying cry for organisations who don’t realise what their systems are doing to their best leaders.
Healthy organisations need thoughtful, grounded, emotionally aware leaders more than ever. Modern organisations operate in environments filled with uncertainty, ambiguity, rapid change and competing pressures. The answer to that complexity is not emotionally disconnected leadership or endless command-and-control behaviour disguised as urgency.
It is leaders who can stay steady without becoming passive, adaptive without losing themselves and courageous without becoming combative.
I hope I don’t need to spell out how valuable effective leadership is to an organisation but the evidence is suggesting that perhaps someone does.
I don’t think the organisations that thrive over the next decade will necessarily be the ones that squeeze the most from people. I think they’ll be the ones that realise that systems shape people whether they intend to or not and become intentional about what kind of leaders their environment is slowly creating.
