With over 20 years in the profession, I’m rarely surprised. But when this CEO welcomed his 12-person team to our two-day offsite meeting, it felt as though time stood still. Did I just hear what he said accurately? Did he say, “We need more rage-based leadership”?
Time slowed as I replayed his words. Shock transformed into curiosity, which quickly morphed into creativity. Yep, that’s what he said. How will I recover this introduction to align with our agreed-upon priorities? Off to an unexpected start, I wrapped context and conditioning around his comments to regain my footing.
As a first-time CEO, he grew up in a rough, tumble, bottom-lined, cutthroat business environment. He had the “smarts” to map business strategy, and now he desperately wanted to prove his worth by delivering results. Having operated nearly his whole career in this industry, he witnessed the bottom-line impact of “rage-based leadership.” He revered a mentor who was known for accidentally sending a scathing email to the entire company.
He had learned to associate success with assertiveness, even at the cost of decorum. He held an inner respect for outcomes over the methods. Was he grappling with inner conflicts, inner tension between personal values and learned behaviors? Or had the system created what he would know forever as the way to lead?
We are wired for survival
It is hard for anyone to be emotionally engaged, connected, and fully present when witnessing or feeling the costs of rage. To survive, they disassociate, disconnect the head and heart, and disengage.
This leads to a detached way of operating, driven by logic, financial metrics, and dispassionate decision-making. It is a way of operating that often lacks a holistic, integrated approach that balances intellect and emotion. It creates a system of disconnection and what I came to call “cortisol-based leadership” — a leadership style fueled by stress and reactivity, focused only on results.
We repeat what we know
Just as history repeats itself, we are creatures of habit. We learn from those around us. Having witnessed how rage can activate, catalyze, and drive urgency, it is understandable that this CEO adopted harsh actions to drive impact. We become accustomed to the environments we operate within. Conditioning would have resulted in a patterning of emotional withdrawal, disassociation, and disconnection. He never saw compassionate, engaged, impactful leaders…. and he defaulted.
The overlooked costs and consequences
We often overlook the costs and consequences of rage-based leadership: stress, cortisol, and adrenaline flooding through people’s systems. If individuals truly understood (on an emotional level) the short- and long-term costs, as well as the direct and indirect consequences of rage, perpetuating it would become unthinkable.
Yes, there may be short-term results and financial returns. But at what cost? The emotional, physical, and psychological toll on people is immense, and it’s unsustainable. Treating people in this way creates lasting harm, both individually and collectively.
I suspect this CEO lacked the pattern recognition to identify what compassionate, motivated engagement looks like. He had likely never seen firsthand the results of a company driven by such principles.
The patterns of pressure
Examining this experience of “rage-based leadership” sparked a deep curiosity in me. As an optimist, I tend to believe that people want to do the right thing. In this case, however, the CEO (feeling intense pressure from the board and Wall Street) lacked the pattern recognition or belief that results could be driven without resorting to rage-based tactics. I think he genuinely wanted to ask: How can we engage, ignite, inspire, activate, and move forward with urgency?
Be careful what you surround yourself with. The environments and behaviors we normalize shape our mindset and actions. Stay alert to what you are conditioning and what you are unconsciously becoming accustomed to believing. Be connected to your values, beliefs, feelings, and intuition.
Most of us know the difference between right and wrong. But too often, we detach and disengage to avoid the tension of cognitive dissonance. This avoidance comes at a cost—to ourselves, to others, and to the culture we create.
Leadership Essential Reads
Metrics matter
The more financially driven someone is—the more aligned they are with Wall Street metrics or the private equity persona—the more likely they are to default to whatever is necessary to achieve the outcomes.
Many great people rise through the ranks wanting to do meaningful work, yet they often lack the skills to motivate, communicate, engage, and inspire those around them. This gap prevents them from activating teams from a place of agency and purpose.
Build bridges
Be your best self by first integrating within yourself. Building a bridge between your head, heart, and body engages a more aligned, integrated, systemic response. Above all, do no harm.
Furthermore, the challenges of disconnection—geographical dispersion, lack of personal relationships, and the absence of a “name and face” connection—exacerbate the problem. Leaders need altitude to truly see what is happening and to recalibrate their approach.
Aligning outcomes and incentives
We need to move beyond urgency and the constant pursuit of short-term results to focus on sustainable, aligned outcomes that benefit both people and businesses. Too often, business results focus on compensation without compassion. While we are deeply committed to driving outcomes, we frequently reward individuals for achieving results while turning a blind eye to how they went about it. This disconnect perpetuates a culture of “profit over people.”
The chicken or the egg
In a disconnected and disembodied state—primal instincts take over. People rationalize their actions, often saying, “I need to do this for my family.” Logic prevails over empathy. Yet what if we could shift the paradigm? What if servant leadership, ignited collaboration, and aligned teams—operating with urgency but grounded in purpose—became the norm?
The new CEO desperately wanted his team to be activated, mobilized, inspired, and aggressively moving toward the new market imperative. Having grown up in a business culture dominated by rage-based leadership, he found it inspiring and effective in his own experience. Without exposure to alternative models, he lacked the vision of what compassionate, aligned, and sustainable leadership could achieve.
When we shift our leadership style to adopt a more grounded approach, we see this shift within the organization. We see an environment emerge where productivity flows naturally, allowing space for new innovations to come from alignment, clarity, and purpose versus stress and pressure.
Believing in humanity, good intentions, and the notion that people want to do the right thing, we recognize that we all stumble. Recovering is about returning to our core. Start with yourself first —and if you have a little extra patience, empathy, or understanding, offer it to those around you. Leadership that embodies trust and authenticity creates a ripple within their teams.
