When I started out, I thought leadership was a checklist. Skills. Commitments. Accountability. Outcomes. I ran my teams like a system diagram, all boxes and arrows.

Twenty years in, I barely lead anyone that way anymore.

I used to lead the work. Now I lead the person.

Early on, every conversation with my team was technical. What’s the status? What’s blocking you? When does it ship? I was good at it. I also missed almost everything that mattered.

These days, my one-on-ones sound different. I ask people what got them here. What they actually want. What blew up in their face last time? Where are they trying to go next? I do this even when we’re deep in a tactical fire drill, and the building feels like it’s on fire.

It feels slow. It isn’t.

Why I never bought servant leadership

Here’s the thing. I was never in tune with servant leadership, and most people get it wrong anyway. They hear “servant” and picture a leader chasing consensus, polling the room, waiting for the crowd to nod along.

That’s not leadership. That’s a focus group.

I’m outcome-focused. Always have been. But the time I spend understanding one person pays me back more than any all-hands speech ever could. When I know what drives someone, I can put the right people together, at the right moment, for the right reason. That beats begging the masses to understand a hard call.

And the calls are hard. In executive leadership you make decisions a lot of people won’t like or even understand. Especially now, when the AI ground shifts every single week. You rarely get a show of hands. You move anyway.

Speed is not an excuse to skip people

We’re all deciding faster than ever. That part is real. The trap is using speed as the reason to stop investing in the individual.

Think of it like driving on the highway at night. You’re moving fast, but you still glance over at the people in the car with you. You check in. You make sure they’re still with you. Lose that, and you’re just one person alone in a metal box doing eighty.

The research says the same thing. A meta-analysis on leadership and stress found that the quality of the relationship between a leader and the people they lead is a significant predictor of team stress and burnout (Harms et al., 2017). Not your vision deck. Not your quarterly goals. The relationship.

The Burnout Connection

Most people miss this part. Leaders don’t just burn out the people under them. They burn themselves out, and disconnection is a big reason why. When you lead from a spreadsheet and stop knowing the humans around you, the work gets lonely fast.

That loneliness chips away at your relationship with your environment and your read on the future, which is exactly how I define burnout.

A meta-analysis on social support and burnout found that work-related support is closely linked to lower emotional exhaustion (Halbesleben, 2006). So I tell the leaders I work with the same thing every time. Protect the personal connection. It isn’t soft. It’s fuel.

Make This Work for You

Pick one person on your team this week. Skip the status update.

Ask them three things. What got you into this work? The best project you ever worked on, and why. Where do you want to be in two years?

Then shut up and listen. 👈

Next, do it again with someone else next week. After that, make it a habit instead of an event. Finally, watch what happens to a team’s energy when people feel known instead of managed.

If you want help building a leadership style that gets results without grinding you down, come work with me. Grab a time at https://book.drdegnan.com.

References

Halbesleben, J. R. B. (2006). Sources of social support and burnout: A meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(5), 1134–1145. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.5.1134

Harms, P. D., Credé, M., Tynan, M., Leon, M., & Jeung, W. (2017). Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(1), 178–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.10.006