The leaders above you may be:
- Misaligned
- Dysfunctional
- Toxic
- Incompetent
Making matters worse: Those same leaders expect you to be at your best—to create alignment with colleagues and to model organizational values.
The tension is real. As one leader told me, “It feels like our organization is eating itself alive—from the inside out.”
The temptation is to use the conduct of others as an excuse for our own. In many organizations, blaming others is the cultural norm.
But doing so is a mistake. Waiting for others to demonstrate integrity before you do severely limits your influence and guarantees disappointment.
The Test of Leadership
There are no perfectly led organizations. The question isn’t if dysfunction will appear—it’s how you respond when it does.
This has always been the test of leadership.
Acting with integrity inside a flawed system isn’t naïve; it’s leverage. Saying that you know you can’t control the actions of others is only heard by the crowd when you demonstrate that you can control your own behavior.
In time, the example you set shifts expectations and makes healthier systems possible.
This is the heart of our upcoming Activation Session: How to Stay Aligned When Senior Leaders Aren’t, where my colleague Erica Emmett will share practices for driving greater organizational alignment, starting with your own high character.
5 Practical Steps for Your Team to Start Now
- Separate diagnosis from your response. There’s a gap between these two: widen it.
- Model one visible practice. Consistently create the experience where others begin to trust: “Our culture is different in this space.”
- Signal standards, not sermons. Name the specific impact of unhelpful behaviors, then propose a healthier approach.
- Build small accountability networks. Quit waiting for others. Find and partner with colleagues who will surface misalignments and test small, healthier remedies together.
- Tie culture change to business outcomes. Measure how teams that hold to high-road values perform versus the norm and use that data to iterate.
How can we make our world healthier if our view of it is toxic? The exam we give others is one we must pass ourselves.
Someone must model the way forward. When enough people say “it might as well be me” they discover they are not alone. And organizations begin to change.
P.S. This has proven to be effective: Bring the influencers in your network to our free Activation Session, THEN host a follow-up discussion to determine how you’ll move your organization forward.
