If I asked you whether leadership is about serving others or being served, you’d almost certainly give the “right” answer. Of course it’s about serving others – supporting the team, and putting the organisation first.
Most leaders I work with genuinely believe that’s how they operate.
And yet, over time, something subtle tends to happen.
As your role grows, your influence increases, and more decisions come to you, your focus can begin to shift – almost without you noticing.
Not dramatically. Not consciously. But gradually.
And the organisation feels it long before you do.
The quiet drift that catches good leaders out
There’s some well-known research suggesting that as people gain power, they tend to become more self-focused and less attuned to others.
You don’t need the research to recognise it – you see it in organisations all the time:
- Leaders who expect instant responses but don’t give them
- Decisions made in isolation, then “communicated”
- Priorities driven by personal preference rather than organisational need
- A growing gap between what is said and what is experienced
None of this starts out badly. In fact, most of it begins with good intent.
But over time, the effect is the same: people begin to withdraw.
Not dramatically. Not visibly.
But they stop:
- offering ideas
- challenging
- going the extra mile
They adjust their expectations… and their contribution follows.
This isn’t a personality issue. It’s an organisational one.
It’s easy to frame this as an individual leadership failing – an “ego problem”.
But that misses something important.
Because what really matters is not how you intend to behave as a leader.
It’s how your behaviour is experienced – and reinforced – by the organisation around you.
If your systems, structures and ways of working:
- concentrate decisions at the top
- reward individual success over collective performance
- tolerate poor behaviour from high performers
- avoid holding people to account
…then your organisation will drift towards self-interest, however strong your values are.
What your organisation is actually responding to
People don’t respond to your intentions.
They respond to what they see, consistently, over time.
- Do you create clarity, or do people have to second-guess you?
- Do you build others’ confidence, or do they feel they need to watch their backs?
- Do you step in to solve problems, or build capability so others can?
And perhaps most importantly:
Does your organisation make it easy for people to do their best work – or harder than it needs to be?
Because when it becomes harder, people protect themselves.
And when people protect themselves, performance drops.
A more useful way to think about leadership
Rather than asking whether leadership is about serving others, I’d suggest a more practical question:
“What does my organisation require from me as its leader in order to perform well?”
Sometimes that will mean:
- supporting
- encouraging
- developing
And sometimes it will mean:
- setting clear expectations
- holding people to account
- making difficult decisions
But in both cases, the focus is the same: enabling the organisation to function effectively – not reinforcing your own position within it.
A few questions worth asking yourself
If you want to stay grounded – and avoid that quiet drift – here are some useful questions to revisit regularly:
1. What does respect look like here – in practice?
Not just in your values statement, but in:
- how decisions are made
- how people are treated
- how performance is managed
2. Where does the power really sit?
Do decisions flow through you… or across the organisation?
If everything comes back to you, your team isn’t truly accountable – and your organisation isn’t scalable.
3. What fills your day?
Are you:
- firefighting
- checking
- correcting
Or are you:
- building
- clarifying
- enabling others to deliver
4. What behaviour does your system reward?
Be honest.
Do people succeed by:
- collaborating
- taking ownership
- delivering results
Or by:
- managing upwards
- avoiding risk
- staying in their lane
The irony (and the opportunity)
There’s a real irony here. The more leadership becomes about you – your control, your preferences, your involvement – the harder the organisation becomes to run.
The more it becomes about building others, creating clarity and distributing accountability, the easier it gets.
Not because people work harder.
But because the organisation starts to work properly.
Practical takeaways
If you want to keep your leadership grounded – and your organisation performing – focus on a few simple disciplines:
- Design your organisation, don’t just lead it Make sure roles, responsibilities and expectations are clear.
- Push accountability into the team Don’t let everything flow back to you.
- Align your systems with your values Make sure what you reward matches what you say matters.
- Pay attention to how you’re experienced Not how you intend to come across.
- Make it easy for people to do great work That’s the real test of leadership.
Final thought
Leadership isn’t about being selfless, and it isn’t about being in charge.
It’s about creating an organisation where people can do their best work – consistently, and without unnecessary friction.
When you get that right, something interesting happens.
- Performance improves.
- Engagement increases.
- And the organisation stops depending quite so heavily on you.
Which, ultimately, is the whole point…