Results are never the problem. They are the mirror.

When teams or leaders engage me, the conversation usually begins with familiar language: trust, engagement, resilience, culture, communication.

Important concepts. But never my starting point. I start with results.

Not because leadership is only about numbers, but because leadership without outcomes is the same as having good intentions. Organizations do not exist to feel aligned; they exist to deliver value. To customers, to employees, shareholders and to society.

Peter Drucker captured this bluntly:

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
— Peter Drucker

Results are where leadership stops being theoretical. And that is exactly the reason I choose results as the starting point of the work I do with teams and individuals.

Results are the lagging indicator of leadership

In my work, disappointing results are rarely caused by a lack of effort, intelligence, or commitment. More often, they are the lagging indicator of leadership patterns that have become normalized. Harvard Business Review has made this point repeatedly. As Ram Charan wrote:

“Execution is not just tactics. It is a discipline and a system.”

Execution failures are not operational accidents. They reflect leadership choices, explicit or implicit, about focus, trade-offs, and accountability. That is why I always begin with questions such as:

• What must be measurably different in 6–12 months?
• Which outcomes are persistently not being achieved?
• Where does the organization say one thing but reward another?

Only when results are clear do we work backwards.

Leadership is revealed under pressure, not intentions

In stable environments, almost any leadership style appears effective.
In volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions (VUCA), leadership is seriously exposed. This is where many teams struggle. They are experienced. Capable. Well-intended. And still stuck.

Because pressure reveals patterns:

• Speed replaces judgment
• Harmony replaces accountability
• Activity replaces impact
• Expertise replaces leadership

As Ronald Heifetz put it in HBR:

“Leadership is not about answers. It is about taking responsibility for tough questions.”

Those questions are often uncomfortable:

• What decisions are being avoided?
• Where is ownership blurred?
• Which conflicts are disguised as alignment?
• What is no longer fit for purpose, but still protected?

This is not a culture issue first. It is a leadership issue.

Working backwards to what really matters

When we trace results back to their sources, a small set of leadership fundamentals consistently emerges:

• Clarity before motivation
  People cannot commit to what they do not understand.
• Direction before empowerment
  Autonomy without boundaries creates noise, not ownership.
• Accountability before harmony
  Trust is not the absence of tension; it is the presence of honest follow-through.
• Reflection before acceleration
  As HBR reminds us:

“Experience alone does not create learning. Reflection on experience does.”
— Chris Argyris

This is why my work is rarely about adding frameworks, tools, or competencies. Senior leaders already have enough of those. The real work is subtraction:

• Fewer priorities
• Fewer implicit assumptions
• Fewer unspoken rules
• Fewer behaviors that once worked, but no longer do

Because complexity is rarely solved by addition.

Individuals and teams: same logic, different scale

With individual leaders, the work often centers on:

• Where control replaces trust
• Where identity is tied too closely to expertise
• Where pace becomes avoidance

With leadership teams, the work often reveals:

• Artificial alignment masking unresolved differences
• Strong opinions without shared commitment
• Structural ambiguity that fuels personal friction

In both cases, the question is the same:

What leadership behavior must change for results to change?

Why this approach is demanding as well as effective

Starting with results removes hiding places. It prevents leadership development from becoming abstract, therapeutic, or performative. It anchors reflection in responsibility. As HBR has stated succinctly:

“The ultimate test of leadership is sustained performance.”

That does not mean neglecting people. It means taking them seriously enough to lead in ways that actually work.

This is the work I do with leaders and teams:
Not to make leadership sound better, but to make it matter more.