Latest / Lead With Clarity: Practical Insight for Senior Leaders / The Formula Nobody Talks About
Transcript
- Blake Holman: Welcome to Lead with Clarity. This is a space for leaders who want to grow without losing themselves in the process. Each episode is a short reflection on leadership, influence, and the inner work that shapes how we show up for others. Not hype, not noise, just clear thinking for the journey of leading well. Today's episode is entitled The Formula Nobody Talks About. Here we go. There's a question I ask every executive I work with early in the coaching relationship. Not about their strategy, not about their numbers, but I ask them this. How are your relationships? Not surface level professional relationships, real ones. The kind where people tell you the truth. The kind where your team would run through a wall for you if they needed to. Most leaders pause at that question. Some get uncomfortable. That pause tells me everything I need to know about where we start. Today's conversation is about something foundational, something that predates modern leadership theory, emotional intelligence frameworks, and every management model you've ever encountered. Theodore Roosevelt said it over a century ago, and it has not aged a day. The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. Not one of the important ingredients, the most important single ingredient. Roosevelt was a president, a commander, a statesman. He had access to every level of power available to a human being, and he pointed to this. I think about a client I worked with a few years back, brilliant strategist. Technically exceptional in his field. His team respected his intellect completely, but they didn't feel connected to him. They would execute his directives and then they would stop. No initiative beyond the assignment. No ownership. No energy beyond what was required. We spent several months working on one thing: not strategy, not communication frameworks. We worked on genuine curiosity about the people around him, how they think, what they care about. what concerns them at work and frankly outside of it. Over time, his team transformed. The work did not change, the relationships did, and the results followed. That is not an anomaly. It's a pattern. Consistently. Now here's where most readers get this leaders get this wrong. They hear get along with people and they translate it as be agreeable. Keep the peace, avoid conflict, make everyone comfortable. That is not what Roosevelt meant. And that mindset actually produces the opposite of what he was describing. Getting along with people in a leadership context does not mean softening every truth. It doesn't mean avoiding hard conversations. It doesn't mean prioritizing harmony over accountability. Leaders who interpret it that way end up being liked in the short term and ineffective in the long term. Their teams sense the avoidance. Trust erodes quietly. What Roosevelt was pointing to is something more demanding. The ability to be honest and kind at the same time, direct and respectful simultaneously, to hold someone accountable in a way that communicates belief in them, not contempt for them. Think about the leaders you've worked with who actually changed something in you. I would bet every one of them told you a hard truth at some point. They challenged you. They pushed back, and you received it. Because the relationship was strong enough to carry the weight of that honesty. That is getting along with people. Not niceness. Genuine connection, built with intention, that creates the trust required for real leadership to happen. It's a skill. It's built through consistent small choices. Asking one more question. Staying in the conversation a little longer. Remembering what someone told you two weeks ago and following up on it. None of those actions are dramatic. Collectively, though, they're transformative. This week I want you to think about one relationship in your professional world that is not where it needs to be. Not a toxic one necessarily, just one that's drifted. One where the connection feels transactional rather than genuine. What is one step you can take toward that person this week? Not a performance, but a real step, a conversation, a question, an acknowledgement. Roosevelt's formula is simple on the surface. It takes real commitment to live out. The leaders who endure, the ones who build things that outlast their tenure, they're not always the smartest people in the building. They're almost always the ones who figured out how to genuinely connect with the people around them. They lead through relationship, not just through role. Skill, strategy, vision, those all matter, but none of them move without the people willing to carry them forward. And people move for leaders they trust. Know how to get along with people, not as a tactic, but as a practice, as a commitment to the human beings your leadership affects every single day.