Why Leadership Today Requires More Than Grit and Guts

ISSUE #005 | THE LEADERSHIP CONTRARIAN

This week I'm trying to communicate something from a different perspective...go with me for a moment while I back into my point.

The lights would dim. The heavy curtains would pull back. A touch of theater magic that doesn’t exist in the multiplexes of today.

Growing up in Chico, California, I spent my childhood in the two movie theaters we had in town.  The first was a converted vaudeville theater built in 1906 called the El Rey. It had 25-foot high ceilings with old murals covering the walls. The other was The Senator Theatre, a classic art-deco style theater across town that felt like the “Movie Palaces” of the old Hollywood era.

The first movie I ever saw was a John Wayne film. I was too young to understand the plot, but I’ll never forget the image: one man, larger than life, towering over everyone else. He was the type of hero that was strong, certain and independent. 

I was too young to have an opinion about John Wayne but he was the first role model of leadership, besides my father, that I was exposed to and that seems significant.

A few years later, at age nine, I went back to that old vaudeville theater and saw Star Wars. I didn’t just watch it; I consumed it. I went back nine times.

Everything on the screen amazed me. The ships, the strange cultures, the adventures and the really cool light sabers! But all of that wouldn’t have wowed me if it wasn’t for the story and the characters. You had a farm boy, a cynical smuggler, a copilot that looked like "bigfoot" and a princess who didn't need saving. Just ask her. Oh, and don’t leave out the Wise Old Sage.

They didn’t agree. They didn’t trust each other. They didn’t even like each other.

But to survive the Evil Empire, they had to move past their egos. They had to find a way to work together that didn't involve one person just barking orders while keeping themselves removed from the danger.

These kinds of movies became the themes that would inspire me the most in life. If a movie started with a motley crew being thrown together and eventually becoming a winning team, then I was hooked.  

If they overcame insurmountable odds to do it, I became a fan.

Somewhere between John Wayne and Star Wars, my view of leadership began to shift.

The goal in my eyes went from being good at telling people what to do from a corner office and never building relationships, to actually building relationships and relating to people from alongside them.

Modern leadership isn't about being the lone hero riding into town to save the day. It’s partially about being the person who can get the farm boy and the smuggler to actually talk to each other and work with each other, in a way that allows them to overcome the obstacles and win together.  

What I didn’t know at the time was that this kind of leadership - the kind that brings very different people together - isn’t accidental.

It’s built on a specific set of skills.

In fact, research has been pointing to the same five relational capabilities for decades.

And when leaders develop them, something changes, not just in performance, but in people.

Those five are:

1. Caring Connections
2. Building Strong Teams
3. Collaboration
4. Mentoring and Developing
5. Interpersonal Intelligence

Every great story we can think of has elements of all five of these and this week let’s just take a look at the first two.

1. Caring Connection: Leading With a Human Heart

Caring Connection is exactly what it sounds like.

It’s a leader’s ability to form real, human relationships with the people they lead.

Not transactional relationships.
Not polite-but-distant relationships.
Real ones.

Leaders strong in Caring Connection don’t just manage work. They also care about the people doing it.

They notice when someone is struggling. They celebrate wins that don’t show up on a spreadsheet. They remember names, families, and stories.

This doesn’t make them soft.

It makes them trustworthy.

And trust changes everything.

If you think you have too many people in your company to care this much, check out this story.

Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of Southwest Airlines, understood this better than almost anyone. At a company event, surrounded by executives and important guests, Herb spent nearly fifteen uninterrupted minutes talking with an aircraft mechanic. He never looked over the man’s shoulder. Never rushed the conversation. Never signaled that someone else mattered more.

That mechanic never forgot it.

Neither did the culture.

People don’t work harder for leaders who impress them.
They work harder for leaders who see them.

Caring Connection creates an environment where people feel safe enough to bring their whole selves to work. Safe enough to speak up. Safe enough to admit mistakes. Safe enough to grow.

And here’s the part many leaders miss:

Caring Connection doesn’t avoid hard conversations.
It makes hard conversations possible.

When people know you genuinely care about them, they can hear feedback without feeling attacked. Accountability doesn’t feel like punishment, it feels like investment.

If you want your people to come together and work hard for you, it starts with a caring connection. 

2. Fosters Team Play: From “My Department” to “Our Team”

Fostering Team Play is about how a leader brings people together to work as one.

Not as silos.
Not as competitors.
Not as individuals protecting their own turf.

As a team.

Leaders strong in Team Play shift the focus from my role to our result. They create an environment where collaboration matters more than credit and where problems are owned by the team, not hidden or passed around.

This doesn’t happen by accident.

Before we started HaBO, Kathryn and I saw both kinds of leaders: some who built teams that thrived, and others who wrecked them out of ego or fear. You remember the great ones. And you remember the shipwrecks.

One leader that became a beacon of light was Alan Mulally.

In many organizations, people learn quickly that survival means keeping their heads down, guarding information, and avoiding blame. When that happens, teamwork becomes a slogan instead of a reality.

Alan Mulally has told this story himself many times, because it captures the moment Ford’s culture began to change.

When Mulally became CEO of Ford, he walked into exactly that kind of culture.

Ford’s leaders didn’t tell the truth about problems. Meetings were polished. Their reports were marked green to indicate nothing was wrong. And behind the scenes, the company was losing billions.

Mulally introduced a simple rule. In weekly leadership meetings, executives had to report the status of the major initiatives they were responsible for - things like product launches, quality issues, and financial targets - using a simple color code. Green meant things were on track. Yellow signaled concern. Red meant there was a serious problem.

But at Ford, “green” had quietly become a survival strategy. Leaders marked everything as fine to avoid blame.

For weeks, every single leader reported green.

Then one executive finally showed a red slide.

The room went quiet. Everyone assumed his career was over.

Instead, Mulally started clapping.

“Great visibility,” he said.
Then he asked a question that changed everything:
“Who can help?”

Heads came up around the room.
People who had been silent moments earlier began offering support.
One leader volunteered resources. Another offered expertise. Someone else asked how they could help remove the obstacle.

Ford stopped being a group of departments and started becoming a team.

Fear gave way to trust.
Blame turned into support.
Problems became shared work.

Teams don’t form because leaders demand teamwork.
They form because leaders reward honesty and invite help.

Fostering Team Play means creating a culture where people are not punished for raising their hand, but supported when they do. Where success is shared. And where no one has to carry the weight alone.

If Relating is about connection, Team Play is what happens when those connections start working together.

Closing Thoughts

If you look closely at Caring Connection and Fosters Team Play, a pattern starts to emerge.

When leaders learn how to truly relate to their people - and when teams learn how to relate to one another - something powerful happens.

And these two are just the beginning.

The other three areas of Relating matter just as much:

• Collaborating well across differences
• Mentoring and developing people
• Growing your own interpersonal intelligence

Together, these five skills create an advantage most leaders never realize is available to them.

And I want to say this plainly - because it matters.

In today’s competitive environment, leaders are usually missing two things:

1. Clarity on what the right next move actually is
2. The ability to execute that move without carrying all the weight themselves

Relating and its five subskills are the targets that solve both problems. Full stop.

When you invest here, the returns compound.

Your people start talking about how much more they’re getting done together.

They describe how meaningful it is to see others on the team succeed.

And instead of pulling you into the weeds with every problem, they come to you with options.

They’ve identified the challenge.
They’ve thought through solutions.
And now they’re asking for your judgment, not your rescue.

In my experience, those are some of the most encouraging conversations a leader can have.

Because when that starts happening, something shifts.

Your people are becoming leaders.
The team is driving the metrics that actually matter.
And you’re freed up to focus on the work that only you can do - the work that has the highest return for you, the team, and the business.

That’s the real payoff of Relating.

Not just better performance.
But better leadership - shared, sustainable, and worth carrying forward.

Your Turn

If any part of this resonated with you -
even a sentence,
even a tension you’ve been feeling -

Would you reply and tell me?

I read every reply.

Until then -
Stay grounded.
Stay growing.
And God bless,

- Michael Redman
Half a Bubble Out (aka: HaBO)
Business Consulting | Leadership Coaching