I have been chewing on something for a couple of weeks now, and I am not sure I have landed it yet, but here goes.

Every leader I actually admire spent years doing work nobody clapped for. Not as a warm up. Not as dues they paid before the real thing started. I used to assume the invisible years were just a prelude, you know something you get through. I don’t think that anymore.

The highlight reel is not telling you the truth

Think about the leader you most want to become. What isn’t about their career that is so appealing?

Now think about the other 90 percent of that same person's life, the part nobody ever posts about. The hard call they made that nobody will ever know was hard. The shortcut sitting right there, completely safe to take, that they just did not take. The same small task, done well, for the hundredth time, with absolutely nobody watching.

On a trip back from Maine this summer my wife overheard a CEO in business class boasting about an interview technique he uses: When they interview candidates they’ll intentionally leave a piece of litter in the hallway. If the candidate walks past the litter they dont make it through to the next stage of the process. But if they stop and collect it? It’s almost a sure sign they are a cultural fit. Why? They are building a culture of leaders who will do the unglamorous and unseen.

I have started to think that second version is not the boring part of the story. It might be the actual story. The success is just the trailer for a movie you never get to see.

I will admit I am wired toward wanting to matter, probably more than I would like to admit some weeks. I dont think that is a flaw exactly, it’s pretty much a job requirement if you are trying to lead anything. But it sets a trap. It is easy to treat the unglamorous stretch of work, the part with no audience, as something to survive rather than something to take seriously, because you are quietly waiting for the platform, or the exit, or the title that will finally make it feel real.

Here is what has helped me. The second you name that “pull” out loud, it gets weaker. Once you notice your own excellence quietly bending toward whoever happens to be watching, you can fix it, and the fix is not complicated even if it is hard. It’s about Getting good in the room with no cameras.

There is a word for excellence that needs an audience

The word is eyeservice, and I didnt know that word for most of my life, but once I learned it I could not stop seeing it everywhere, including in myself sometimes. It is excellence performed for whoever happens to be watching, rather than something offered because it is simply the right way to do the work. The Apostle Paul tells servants to work, in his words, not by way of eyeservice, as people pleasers, but as to the Lord. Read that twice if you are someone who has gotten fairly skilled at being watched. I know I had to.

What I like about that instruction is that it takes the pressure off. The standard was never impress whoever is in the room today. It was always something plainer and honestly more doable: be the same person regardless of who is watching. That is a bar you can clear on a random Tuesday when nobody would ever find out either way.

Composure under pressure was not built in the moment

Here is something I remind myself of often. The people who stay calm when everything is falling apart did not invent that calm on the spot. They built it earlier, in ordinary decisions nobody was tracking, and the crisis just showed everyone what was already there the whole time.

If you are in one of those invisible seasons right now, doing the work with nobody watching, it isnt wasted. The discipline you bring to something nobody will ever grade, that is not a delay before the real leadership starts. That is the leadership. It is just happening quietly, right now, whether anyone claps for it or not.

There is a particular danger in being the person who, seemingly, can handle everything.

Organizations tend to reward it. Families depend upon it. Colleagues admire it. When a decision must be made, a crisis managed, a difficult conversation held, or an overloaded system steadied, high-capacity leaders are often the ones who step forward. They see what ne…

Read more

The trip started well and spoiler alert, ended well.

The first room was fantastic until we settled in and I started to read. It was then that I heard the lapdog of Baskerville, barking at the slightest noise. The front desk decided to move us instead of talking to the dog owner.

Unfortunately, The second room resembled an Airbnb hospice.

By the third mo…

Read more

During my London days, I had a parishioner, a successful businessman, who regularly launched into an argument. It didn't matter what I conceded or how much active listening I deployed, the argument persisted. Until I said let's stop.

I've learned, slowly, sometimes expensively, that the most loving and most strategic thing a leader can say in these momen…

Read more

Every organization has one. You know the drawer I mean—the one in your kitchen that won't quite close, stuffed with dead batteries, orphaned keys, a rubber band ball, and that one manual for an appliance you no longer own. Nobody put it there on purpose. It just accumulated, one small deferral at a time.

Leadership has the same drawer. Except instead of …

Read more

With Father’s Day on the horizon I’ve been reflecting on this:

My father placed his signet ring in my hand at Woodman's Point, New Brunswick a few summers ago. No long speech. No formal ceremony. Just the weight of it, and what it meant passing from his hand to mine.

That moment did more for my formation as a man than most of the leadership content I've c…

Read more

From time to time, moments present themselves to us, where something is said, something is shown, something is wrong, and the room goes quiet in a particular way that means everyone felt it and no one is going to speak.

And you have to decide.

Not in an hour. Not after you've had time to pray about it or call your coach or sleep on it. Right now. In the r…

Read more

There's a lesson on Power in Pride and Prejudice that happens while Darcy is brooding.

It's the scene at Pemberley, when Elizabeth Bennet encounters Darcy's housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, and the woman says something quietly devastating: "I have never had a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him since he was four years old."

This is the testimo…

Read more

This article is part of an ongoing series: The Lost Art of Gentlemanly Leadership — a study of character, conduct, and the quiet disciplines that define those worth following.

The most important leadership happens in the dark.

Not in the shadows of moral failure, but in the quiet, costly space where the information is incomplete, the outcome is uncertain,…

Read more

There's a moment in Stevie Wonder's I Wish where he's letting someone else's memory of him become the truest version of the story.

"Looking back on when I was a little nappy-headed boy," he sings, and suddenly you realize: he didn't write that line alone. That line smells like his mother's kitchen. It sounds like his grandmother's voice. Stevie Wonder, a…

Read more

After a number of requests to share more about the church I help lead, (St Bartholomew’s Anglican Church) and so I offer you this recent vision piece that was prepared for this Easter season.

There's a scene in the Gospels that tells you everything you need to know about what a church is supposed to be.

Jesus takes his disciples on a walk — not to the t…

Read more

20 years ago, in the London Parish where I served, I once walked into a staff disagreement with the confidence of a man who had all the answers — and walked out having made it significantly worse. Nobody thanked me. Nobody needed to. The lesson was obvious enough on its own.

That was an expensive tuition for a simple truth: sometimes the most powerful mo…

Read more

20 years ago, in the London Parish where I served, I once walked into a staff disagreement with the confidence of a man who had all the answers — and walked out having made it significantly worse. Nobody thanked me. Nobody needed to. The lesson was obvious enough on its own.

That was an expensive tuition for a simple truth: sometimes the most powerful mo…

Read more

Some of the mistakes I’ve made as a leader looked like being thoughtful. Even considerate. I wasn’t being either. .

Never Say “No” For Someone Else

I’ve done this more times than I’d like to admit.

Someone comes to mind—sharp, capable, maybe ready for more—and within a few seconds I’ve already decided how the conversation would go.

“They’re too busy.”

“They’…

Read more

In an age that rewards specialization, our cultural moment is asking for something broader.

The best leaders can think, speak, build, discern, and adapt across more than one domain. They are like the old idea of a “renaissance man”. An approach to leadership that isn’t confined to one lane.

That breadth is not a distraction from excellence. It is often w…

Read more

I don't like running.

I want to be clear about that upfront, because what follows might sound like a conversion story. It isn't. I am not a runner. I don't experience the fabled runner's high in any meaningful way. My stretching is clumsy and uncomfortable. And training for a half marathon meant getting up before sunrise while coyotes were still conducti…

Read more

Twenty‑six years ago I stepped off a plane at Heathrow Airport with a suitcase full of ideas and zero clue how to navigate the quiet, tweed world of Oxford University. I thought I was ready for “academic rigor.” What I got was a masterclass in social rigor—one that taught me, the hard way, why etiquette isn’t just politeness; it’s the invisible operatin…

Read more

I learned this in the French Alps, which is perhaps the most expensive and scenic place on earth to discover that you are, in fact, not nearly as impressive as you imagined.

There I was, somewhere 5,000 feet above sea level, under the shadow of Montblanc, trying to “go for a run” with the optimism of a man who has confused confidence with preparation. I had brought myself, my shoes, and a vague sense of purpose. What I had not brought was enough humility, enough water, or apparently enough carbohydrate to prevent my body from filing a formal complaint.

It turns out that altitude has a way of making lies visible.

On paper, the idea was noble enough. I would go to the French Alps and start a running routine while on Sabbatical. I would return home with improved fitness, a clearer mind, and perhaps the kind of glow that makes people ask, “Have you been away?”

Instead, I discovered that running uphill at altitude is less a fitness activity and more an argument with reality. Every breath becomes a negotiation. And every passing local seems to know something I do not, which is usually everything.

At some point, with my lungs working like badly maintained bellows, I remembered that long-distance runners sometimes drink water. And eat food. During the run. Not as a reward afterward, as I had vaguely assumed, but as part of the actual activity. This was news to me. Apparently endurance sports are not powered by willpower alone, which is disappointing because willpower is much more flattering than gels.

I had approached the whole thing as though discipline were enough. AND THAT is a very leadership-shaped mistake.

Leaders do this all the time. We fall in love with the noble idea and assume the mechanics will sort themselves out. We admire the vision, announce the initiative, and then discover the inconvenient small print: the meetings, the follow-up, the systems, the pacing, the water, the snacks, the oxygen. We want the summit without the switchbacks. We want the outcome without the awkwardly human process required to get there.

And yet some of the best things in leadership begin as illogical ideas.

Not stupid ideas. Not reckless ideas. But ideas that do not initially justify themselves to the practical mind. Learning to run in the mountains while badly adjusted to altitude is not the sort of decision one recommends in a committee. Nor is starting a new business, making a difficult transition, writing a book, changing your habits, or taking on a role that exposes your limitations before you have had the decency to become competent. These things often look inefficient from the outside. They can even look foolish. That is part of their power.

Because the truth is that growth rarely arrives as a spreadsheet.

It arrives as a hunch. A burden. A holy irritation. A moment when something in you says, “This may be unwise, but it may also be necessary.” Leadership requires that kind of discernment: not simply choosing what is logical, but recognizing that some things worth doing cannot be justified by logic alone.

A leader who only does what already makes sense will eventually become very efficient at maintaining the status quo.

That is not always a tragedy, but it is often a limitation.

The same instinct that tells a person to try running in the Alps also tells a church to plant when it seems unlikely, a business owner to invest when the margin is thin, a parent to have the harder conversation, or a leader to pursue development that will be uncomfortable before it is useful. These decisions can look irrational in the moment because they require trust in a future you cannot yet see. They ask you to act before you have complete evidence. They ask you to move while still slightly unsure of the route.

Which is, come to think of it, not unlike running in the mountains.

I would love to tell you I handled this with grace and athletic dignity.

I did not. I looked like a man attempting to escape a mild inconvenience that had become a major theological event.

My breathing was theatrical. My pace was tragic. I had the distinct feeling that if I stopped moving, I might become part of the landscape. But in that embarrassment there was a gift: a reminder that leadership does not require invulnerability. Sometimes it requires the willingness to be seen struggling while still moving forward.

That may be the real lesson.

We have become fond of leaders who appear composed, calibrated, and endlessly certain. But the people who actually help others go somewhere difficult are rarely the ones who pretend difficulty does not exist. They are the ones who admit the cost, adjust the pace, take in the water, and keep going anyway. They know when to slow down. They know when to refuel. They know that aspiration without sustenance is just a dramatic way to collapse.

There is wisdom here. The illogical idea is not valuable because it is chaotic. It is valuable because it breaks the spell of overcontrolled thinking.

It reminds us that some callings will never feel entirely rational until after they have been lived. You do not always understand the mountain before you start climbing it. You do not always know whether your legs will hold. You do not always know whether the thing that seems foolish is actually the beginning of growth.

So yes, sometimes leadership means pursuing an illogical idea.

Sometimes it means learning the thing you have no proof you can do. Sometimes it means entering terrain that will expose your weakness. Sometimes it means making a move that only makes sense to the part of you that still believes courage matters more than comfort.

And sometimes it means remembering to drink water and eat something before your body stages a mutiny.

I returned from that Alpine run chastened, amused, and oddly encouraged. I would then repeat that run regularly over the course of a month. Running in the Alps did not turn me into an elite athlete. I did not conquer the mountain. But I was reminded that wisdom and foolishness are often closer than we like to admit, and that the line between them is usually revealed only in motion.

Leadership, at its best, is a kind of disciplined foolishness.

It is the willingness to step toward a worthy thing before you have perfected your understanding of it. To move with humility. To learn as you go. To admit that some of the most formative decisions in life and leadership do not arrive wearing sensible shoes.

They arrive wearing trail shoes you forgot to buy, asking whether you are brave enough to begin anyway.

There is a kind of person who confuses having an opinion with being obligated to share it. We all know at least one. Full confession: I was one of them. They fill every silence with commentary, offer unsolicited corrections at dinner tables, and mistake volume for authority. He is never at a loss for words — and that is precisely the problem.

Gentlemanly…

Read more

Why every leader needs a hobby that refuses to be rushed

I never meant to start SmokedMaple BBQ.

What happened is, I had a hobby that became a lifeline. Slowing me down and giving me life.

I started smoking Texas BBQ because I wanted something to do with my hands. What I didn't expect was that the smoke would teach me something the boardroom never could.

Th…

Read more