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03.20.26
I Stopped Wearing the Corporate Costume — and My Business Exploded
A former rancher turned finance leader explains why the “costume of conformity” is costing you clients, credibility, and the career you actually want. EARLY in my finance career, a client and I hit it off over the phone. We had a natural personality match — easy conversation, good rapport, real trust building in real time. When he came to my office for a face-to-face consultation, he saw me from across the room before we’d been formally introduced. He walked out. Didn’t say a word. He wasn’t going to trust the largest transaction of his life to what he saw as an immature individual who didn’t look the part. At the time, I was doing everything I’d been told to do. I’d come into finance from cattle ranching, welding, heavy equipment, truck driving, and underground mining — environments where you dressed for utility, not appearances. When I entered the corporate world, I was subjected to constant scrutiny: how I talked, how I groomed, how I dressed, how I stood. All of it presented as a necessity of success. So I conformed. I put on the costume. And I lost a client anyway — not because I was being myself, but because I wasn’t. That experience, and several like it, taught me something that changed the trajectory of my career: authenticity isn’t just a feel-good buzzword. It’s a business strategy. Here’s why. The People Who Told Me to Conform Didn’t Stick Around Not long after I started dressing and grooming the way I was told to, every single one of the people who insisted their way was the path to success had disappeared. They left the business. They weren’t successful. And there I was, sitting alone in an office, “dressed for success” according to the standards of people who had failed. That forced a hard question: if the people prescribing the formula couldn’t make it work for themselves, why was I following their playbook? The advice we accept about how to present ourselves often comes from people who haven’t achieved what we’re trying to achieve. Before you take someone’s word on what success looks like, check whether they’ve actually built any. The Costume of Conformity Creates a Mismatch — and People Can Feel It Here’s what I figured out from losing that client: the problem wasn’t that I didn’t look like a finance professional. The problem was that I looked like one on the outside and sounded like something completely different on the inside. My words and personality created one impression. My appearance created another. The mismatch made people uneasy, even if they couldn’t articulate why. I was essentially lying with my appearance. When your outside doesn’t match your inside, people sense it — and any trust you built through conversation gets undermined the moment they see the disconnect. Conformity doesn’t build trust. Consistency does. Authenticity Is the Fastest Way to Sort Through People When I finally made the decision to let my outward appearance match the person inside, something unexpected happened: I started saving an enormous amount of time and resources. If someone took issue with the honest representation of who I am before we ever discussed business, neither of us invested time that would result in a loss. No deep personal analysis across multiple meetings just to discover we weren’t a fit. No weeks of small talk built on a false first impression. Showing up as yourself is the most efficient filter in business. The people who can’t get past how you look were never going to be the right clients, partners, or colleagues anyway. Better to find that out in the first thirty seconds than the first three months. Walls Come Down When the Costume Comes Off The flipside was just as powerful. When I stopped conforming, the people who were a fit connected with me faster and deeper than they ever had before. Walls came down. Conversations were more open and relaxed. There was no scripted small talk, no rehearsed objection-handling techniques taught by industry trainers. Just two people having a real conversation. I’ve found that the greatest way to overcome objections is to develop an actual relationship with a person — to truly care about them. And the best way to evidence that care is by being authentically yourself. Any sort of fakeness, no matter how polished, brings everything into question. If someone suspects you’re performing, they’ll wonder what else you’re hiding. Being Yourself Is a Risk — Take It Anyway I won’t pretend this is easy. When you stop conforming, you will lose people. Some clients will walk. Some colleagues will judge. Some opportunities will close before they open. That’s the cost, and you have to be willing to pay it. But here’s what I’ve learned over decades in this business: the opportunities you lose by being yourself are always smaller than the ones you gain. The clients who stay are better clients. The relationships are deeper. The referrals are stronger. And you get to wake up every morning without dreading the performance you have to put on. If you’re going to be judged for your appearance either way, you might as well make sure what people are judging is actually you. Drop the Costume The choice is simple, even if it’s not easy: you can keep hiding behind the costume of conformity, hoping it earns you approval from people who may not even be around next year. Or you can show up as the best, most honest version of yourself and let the sorting happen naturally. Be authentic. Be kind. Be excellent at what you do. And if someone can’t get past the packaging to see the substance, that’s not a client you lost — it’s time you saved.    Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:13 PM
03.19.26
Leading Thoughts for March 19, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: John Kenneth Galbraith on power: “An important tendency in all modern political comment is to exaggerate the role of personality in the exercise of power. What rightly should be attributed to the property or organization surrounding them is thus accorded to their personality. Vanity also contributes to the exaggeration of the role of personality. Nothing so rejoices the corporate executive, television anchorman, or politician as to believe that he is uniquely endowed with the qualities of leadership that derive from intelligence, charm, or sustained rhetorical capacity—that he has a personal right to command. Divorced from organization, the synthetic personality dissolves, and the individual behind it disappears into the innocuous obscurity for which his real personality intended him.” Source: The Anatomy of Power Jeffrey Sonnenfeld on bouncing back: “William Shakespeare penned the immortal words ‘Some men are born great, some men achieve greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them.’ But perhaps what marks greatness above all else is the ability to be great again—to reachieve greatness when greatness, however initially gained, is torn from our possession. It is the ability to bounce back from adversity—to prove your mettle once more by getting back into the game—that separates the lasting greats from the fleeting greats.” Source: Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:25 PM
03.18.26
4 Ways Leaders Can Turn Difficult Experiences into Clarity
LEADERSHIP clarity rarely comes from comfort. More often, it’s found in moments of disruption, when certainty disappears and only what truly matters remains. For more than four decades, I’ve helped leaders learn through experience rather than theory. Across more than 50 countries, I’ve designed leadership development programs built around challenges: ropes courses, night orienteering, search-and-rescue scenarios, scuba expeditions, and even dogsledding in remote environments. The approach draws heavily from the experiential leadership model used by Outward Bound, where I served as both an instructor and board trustee. The premise is simple: place people in unfamiliar situations, require real decisions, and then reflect deeply on what happened and what they learned from the experience. Over time, however, I began asking a more personal question: What if the most powerful leadership lessons don’t come from simulations at all, but from our own lives? When I was 18, I traveled across 11 African countries on an overland expedition. What was supposed to be a four-month journey stretched into six as we navigated breakdowns, border delays, and unpredictable conditions. Along the coast of Cameroon, on the volcanic sands of Batoke Beach, I contracted malaria. I was living in tents in a swamp, thousands of miles from home, with no nearby hospitals and little certainty about treatment. The situation was frightening and uncertain, and the small group of travelers around me suddenly depended on one another in ways we hadn’t anticipated. Years later, I realized that experience had quietly shaped how I approach leadership challenges. The lesson was simple but powerful: If I could get through that, I could get through anything. That belief didn’t make me reckless. It made me grounded. It changed how I viewed risk, adversity, and uncertainty. What struck me later was how often leaders overlook the insights buried in their own experiences. We rush past difficult moments and move on. But leadership growth doesn’t come from the experience itself; it comes from the meaning we extract from it. 4 ways leaders can turn difficult experiences into clarity:
When leaders take time to reflect on difficult moments, they build an internal library of insight that is far more powerful than any case study. Every challenge becomes a potential leadership lesson. In today’s volatile environment, marked by rapid change, economic pressure, and constant disruption, that perspective matters more than ever. The ability to remain steady doesn’t come from having all the answers. It comes from knowing that you’ve faced uncertainty before and learned from it. Your defining leadership moment doesn’t have to involve malaria. But it does require reflection. When leaders take time to revisit the experiences that shaped them, they often discover that the clarity they’re seeking is already there. Peter’s book, The Epic of You: Reframe Your Past to Navigate Your Future, invites readers to see their lives in a new light. By reframing past experiences, Peter discovered “honey to my heart” in the hardships that deepened his compassion, and “strength to my arm” in the challenges that built resilience and fortitude. He believes every choice (made or missed) shapes who we are, and that viewing life as a Heroic Journey can help anyone reclaim authorship of their story and live a richer, more purposeful life. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:59 PM
03.12.26
Leading Thoughts for March 12, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Tim Elmore on balancing confidence and humility: “Leading today requires combining these two attributes—confidence and humility. Reality changes so quickly, leaders cannot become arrogant, but must remain in a learning posture. At the same time, team members long for their leader to inspire them with confidence. Bob Iger said, “There’s nothing less confidence inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.” Source: The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership: Embracing the Conflicting Demands of Today’s Workplace Hasard Lee on decision-making: “When we rashly turn over our decision-making to external aids, such as committees or computers, we lose the ability to bring the full power of our brain to bear on a problem. We, in essence, have carved out a hole in our understanding and replaced it with someone else’s solution. If we don’t learn the underlying concepts behind that new infor-ation, then we’re blindly trusting that it’s correct. We lose the ability to quickly reconfigure concepts into creative solutions, which is one of the great strengths of the human mind.” Source: The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot’s Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:57 PM
03.10.26
The Common Leadership Practices That Cultivate (Or Crush) Hope at Work
THE gap between what leaders say and what they do may be the single greatest destroyer of hope in organizations today. I learned this the hard way—by being that leader whose midnight emails contradicted my daytime messages about work-life balance. Often, without realizing the impact, organizations reinforce hopelessness across culture, policy, and procedure. From leaders and employees alike, I’ve heard consistent stories about what creates hopelessness in organizations. Frequently, it begins with the signals leaders send through their actions, including:
Leadership patterns influence organizations, quietly shaping what people believe is achievable. I noticed this dynamic unfold while coaching a new director. When our work together began, she approached her role with creative ideas and genuine enthusiasm. She would share thoughtful solutions in leadership meetings and engage her team in meaningful initiatives. Over the next several months, however, I noticed a change in her approach. She started introducing her suggestions with phrases like, “I know this might be challenging, but…” and became more selective about which ideas she brought forward. During our coaching conversations, she would cautiously assess which situations merited her advocacy. This shift wasn’t a reflection of her abilities. Rather, it seemed to develop through repeated exposure to subtle organizational signals suggesting that innovation, while publicly encouraged, faced numerous obstacles in practice. She had observed how established executives often highlighted potential problems with new approaches, had seen how resource allocations didn’t always align with stated innovation goals, and now recognized that maintaining current practices often received more positive attention than proposing change. When there’s a disconnect between what’s communicated in formal settings and what’s reinforced through daily decisions and recognition, even the most highly motivated leaders may begin to question the potential for meaningful progress. I recognized this same pattern in my own leadership. I found myself regularly telling my team to maintain work-life boundaries that I myself ignored. I’d send emails about wellbeing at midnight, speak about psychological safety in town halls while reacting defensively to challenging questions in private sessions, and emphasize the importance of rest while visibly exhausted. The realization was uncomfortable: what I said and what I did didn’t align, and this gap was gradually eroding my team’s trust in meaningful change. Even more troubling was the unintended message I was sending: if you want to advance to a role like mine, you too must sacrifice balance and authenticity. Without realizing it, I was modeling the very behaviors I claimed to want to change. This insight transformed my approach. I began to see that creating hope means empowering others to do things differently — and perhaps better — than I had done. True leadership isn’t about demanding what we ourselves can’t demonstrate; it’s about creating conditions where others can surpass our own limitations, building environments more balanced and humane than the ones we inherited. The path out of hopelessness isn’t paved with motivational posters or forced optimism. It begins with the step of acknowledging reality exactly as it is — including the legitimate reasons for feeling hopeless. It’s not only okay to feel hopeless at times, it may be necessary. Hopelessness isn’t failure; it’s an honest recognition of reality that creates the possibility for authentic hope to emerge. Leadership expert Margaret Wheatley calls this “facing reality without fear.” It’s the difficult but essential practice of seeing clearly without becoming paralyzed. Hopelessness can coexist with hope — sometimes within the same hour or meeting. This paradox confused me until I recognized that both stem from how we make meaning of our experiences. We can hold serious concern about climate change while feeling authentic hope about specific environmental programs. We can understand the shortcomings of current structures while building pockets of effectiveness within them. This coexistence isn’t a contradiction — it’s a natural aspect of human experience. Many people find that during recovery from professional challenges, they can hold both perspectives simultaneously. While recognizing limitations in certain organizational areas, they often discover new possibilities for contribution by shifting focus to areas where impact remains possible. The concerns don’t disappear, but they no longer define one’s professional approach. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:26 PM
03.05.26
Leading Thoughts for March 5, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Alan Stein on self-awareness: “It’s called “self” awareness, but the people you choose to surround yourself with play a part in that. A self-aware person is going to invite healthy criticism, and one way to do that is not to shy away from hearing the truth. It’s important to have supportive people who aren’t afraid to tell you things that you need to hear instead of the things that you want to hear.” Source: Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best Patty McCord on sharing information: “If your people aren’t informed by you, there’s a good chance they’ll be misinformed by others. If you don’t tell them about how the business is doing, what your strategy is, the challenges you’re facing, and what market analysts think of how you’re doing, then they’ll get the information elsewhere – either from colleagues, who will often be equally ill informed, or from the Web, which loves nothing so much as a rumor of doom or a juicy conspiracy theory.” Source: Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:51 PM
03.03.26
Resolve Your Personal Dilemmas with Greater Confidence
WHILE we all seek expert advice to increase our chances of success, we also encounter situations in which no expert advice can uncover the right decision to make. For example, expert advice can’t tell someone how to decide between a position in the public sector or a private sector position that pays more but serves the public interest less. Such decisions represent dilemmas — situations that involve competing goals, aspirations, and demands. Moreover, dilemmas such as this career choice involve values and intrinsic motivations, which expert advice can’t address. An expert can’t tell you how to live out your values. Ultimately, only you can determine how to enact what you see as right, given your choices. Arriving at the right answer in such dilemmas involves introspection. It requires examining your values and relying on your sense of personal judgment — not only weighing information and drawing conclusions, but also evaluating the ethical aspects of a situation. A key means to enhance your personal judgment is to understand frames of reference, perspectives, and principles that can balance the competing — and potentially good — outcomes that compose a dilemma. Employing these six questions enables you to capture perspectives that can enhance your personal judgment when addressing dilemmas:
Let’s apply these questions to a specific dilemma: Imagine you are tasked with funding executive MBA programs for three employees in your firm. One employee, a rising star, has been accepted to an Ivy League program. Equipping this employee with a competitive MBA degree would assuredly be a financial benefit for your organization. Two other long-term, loyal employees who you want to retain have been accepted into a local executive MBA program. Funding their MBAs will reward them for their engagement and commitment. The cost of the Ivy League MBA program, however, translates to three executive MBA spots at the local institution, which is the amount your budget can cover. You face a dilemma: fund one high potential person and decline assistance to the two loyal, long-term employees, or reduce assistance to the rising star in order to fund all three. As you apply each of the questions above to your dilemma, you consider:
As you can see from this case, applying the questions intended to clarify your perspective leads you to conclude that privileging one individual with a degree at the expense of two other employees doesn’t uphold your organization’s values or the virtue of fairness. You resolve the dilemma by offering the employee accepted to the Ivy League program tuition assistance in the amount equivalent to full tuition at the local university, while also fully funding the two additional employees pursuing their MBAs locally. This solution allows you to recognize the high potential of the one employee seeking the Ivy League degree and reward the loyalty of the two longer-term employees accepted to the local program. It also respects their right to equal access to company resources. As this scenario illustrates, exploring a dilemma through six perspectives enables you to exercise refined personal judgment. (If you “pull back the curtain,” you’ll find that these six questions represent six types of philosophical ethical theories.) Today, we’re increasingly expected to navigate gray areas in which expert advice doesn’t necessarily pertain. Applying the approach outlined here to refine personal judgment calls will help you master this crucial skill for success in business — and more broadly in your life. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:47 PM
03.01.26
First Look: Leadership Books for March 2026
HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in March 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.
Innovation doesn't just happen. You need to lead it. Discover the three critical roles leaders must play in driving—and scaling—innovation. Constant tech disruption. Unrelenting economic volatility. Radically shifting demographics and work norms. More than ever, we need to innovate amid these daunting global challenges. But do we have the leadership it takes to make this innovation happen successfully? Genius at Scale breaks new ground, showing how moving from generating new ideas to actually scaling them involves cocreation—collaborating, experimenting, and learning with others both inside and beyond the boundaries of the organization. This requires three distinct types of leadership: Leader as Architect, Leader as Bridger, and Leader as Catalyst.
A powerful collection of over 50 adaptable strategy frameworks to solve today's most complex business challenges. In Leading With Strategy veteran executive coach and strategy consultant for Fortune 500 firms Timothy Tiryaki delivers a transformative guide that clarifies the complex tradeoffs in today's AI-enabled business environment. Dr. Tiryaki explores the contemporary maze of undiscussed leadership dilemmas that have been surfaced by the latest generative AI technologies and provides unique perspectives on strategic thinking and leadership. At the core of Leading With Strategy are 50 practical visual frameworks. They're dynamic tools designed as adaptable tools for creatively tackling diverse challenges and obstacles. These frameworks go beyond staid, one-size-fits-all approaches to common business problems and help you master essential strategic thinking and execution skills.
“Almost Reckless is not just a book, it's a permission slip. It's about the courage it takes to step off the algorithm's path, the clarity that comes from defining your own principles, and the joy of building something that feels unmistakably yours” saysWill Guidara, bestselling author of Unreasonable Hospitality. Amy Smilovic's cult fashion brand, Tibi, was a thriving $70 million business when she realized she was working toward someone else's idea of success. So she threw out the rulebook of how things should be done and went with her gut instead. Today Tibi is more successful than ever, and all on Smilovic's groundbreaking entrepreneurial terms. In Almost Reckless, she invites you to get comfortable with embracing smart risks in pursuit of your own vision. Sharing her story and drawing on her years of helping others identify their values and principles, Smilovic teaches you to hone your gut, and your trust in it.
From a former President of Tesla comes The Algorithm—the first book written by any of Elon Musk’s direct reports—a transformative guide for leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators who want to emulate the paradigm-shattering approach Musk used to launch Tesla and SpaceX to meteoric success. Jon McNeill had already founded and sold six startups when Sheryl Sandberg introduced him to Elon Musk, who was looking for help at Tesla. McNeill was steeped in the lean principles that had made Toyota a global powerhouse—principles focused on achieving efficiency and optimization by incrementally improving existing systems and processes. What he learned from Elon at Tesla was its antithesis, an approach that required radical rethinking to explode the status quo, attack complexity, and set seemingly unrealistic goals. Elon called this five-step framework “The Algorithm.”
Most of us are just one event away from leaving our job. Conventional wisdom and lists of the “top reasons people quit their jobs” would have us believe that people quit when the toxic elements of their jobs grow too big or when they spot a better professional opportunity. But that’s only half the story. In reality, quitting is often triggered by a single event, inside or outside our jobs, that stops us in our tracks and causes us to rethink our relationship with work. These events are what organizational psychologist Anthony Klotz calls “jolts,” and they are the most underacknowledged realities in our work lives today. Jolts represent pivotal moments in our careers, and yet all too often, we respond to them in ways that harm our well-being and success. In Jolted, Klotz breaks down the different types of jolts we encounter and provides a road map to help us navigate them in ways that improve, rather than derail, our pursuit of the good life through our work.
Every day, powerful forces work to narrow your thinking and constrain your options. Institutional gatekeepers, social pressures, misleading narratives, and internal doubts create false either-or scenarios that trap you in cycles of mediocrity and compromise your authentic purpose. Rey Ramsey reveals how to recognize and overcome these thought tyrannies. Through compelling personal stories and proven frameworks, he shows how to harness essential virtues like humility, courage, and perseverance to expand your possibilities and make decisions aligned with your deepest values. This practical guide provides methods for critical thinking, moral compass navigation, and building resilience against manipulation tactics. Whether facing institutional resistance, conformity pressure, or limiting beliefs, you'll discover how boundary-crossing leaders break through barriers and create meaningful change.
   
“I read books because, at their best, they make me better, more empathetic, more socially aware, more in tune to the stranger beside me. They help me imagine a better future, provide me with answers to my insatiable questions, take me to places I’ll never get to go. ” — Annie B. Jones
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:46 PM
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Genius at Scale
Leading with Strategy
Almost Reckless
The Algorithm
Jolted
The Tyranny of False Choices
