The virtues of great leadership? Discretion and loyalty

On a hazy night, under the warm red sky of the Sturgeon Moon, in the recent past, the idyl was disrupted with recall of a lunch with one of our divisional CEOs. In truth, the occasion had been lingering in my mind.

Leadership is a funny business. Millions of words have been written and spoken about it, but often the TedTalk tone belies any practical real-world application. The unsung, un‑Instagrammable virtues of discretion and loyalty – aka what few self-help books cover enough.

The conversation with the divisional CEO troubled me. Candid indiscretion about the board and executive management team are rarely the markers of a flourishing culture. If leadership is the act of plotting a course, his version was lobbing the compass overboard and blaming the tide. And the question remained – how should I, as a fellow leader, act?

A pattern of leadership breakdown

This wasn’t an isolated incident. His tendency to lay all failings at the Group CEO’s door signalled a lack of strategic accountability. Flouncing off at the first setback tends to be action of the eager novice, not the seasoned hand guiding a team in a major strategic transformation. A true leader knows that progress is rarely linear and dignity lies in staying the course – never mistaking disappointment for defeat.

Second, I could suddenly see the alignment with his direct reports. What I’d previously dismissed as fatigue or lack of experience in these divisional senior leaders was in fact a kind of cultural mimicry. The same complaints, the same deflection, the same defeat chic laced with plausible deniability – all passed around like a hand‑me‑down raincoat.

Third, their hesitant, stop‑start tactics – a hallmark of this division, seemingly preferred to the grind of game changing strategy implementation – told of a deeper absence. That of empowerment and clarity. And compounded by low levels of accountability? Maybe. And this, all of this, in the division meant to power the company’s future growth. Oh dear.

The importance of loyalty, especially to marketers

Marketing demands risk. It’s a business of unmarked roads, where the best most effective, impactful journeys require courage and trust. Without emotional safety, boldness becomes an occasional day trip rather than the path of discovery on the road less travelled. Disloyalty from the top is like a landslide blocking the only mountain pass – nothing moves forward until it’s cleared.

How I and my team can support this division with a game changing marketing plan, requires a level of trust I am not sure exists within that function – let alone with a different one. This will become a major business challenge and barrier to future success.

Discretion is a leader’s key asset

I’ve always believed in “praise in public, critique in private”. As a leader you soon realise the more senior you become, the more visible your missteps are. Public shaming is not a motivator. And definitely not a recipe for bold creativity. Far better the calm, closed‑door conversation that sets a new course.

Yes, leaders can be infuriating; boards can be slow, pedantic and demanding. But their job is to scrutinise and challenge strategic weakness. Being worked over by the board isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a sign that they think the work is critical and they care. It certainly doesn’t justify jumping on a soapbox.

Speaking truth to power

There’s no shortage of ways to address uncomfortable truths to those more senior. Some, delivered badly, however, could be career‑limiting. In this instance I reflected on the two I deployed. Would they be enough?

First, I framed my point as a shared problem, not a personal failing, talking about broader cultural challenges and how my team – and others – were tackling them. It seemed to land.

Second, I smuggled in a sub‑text, telling an anecdote about a former colleague of both of us, who was always bemoaning recurring issues in her team and how – after several years – I remembered pointing out to her that by now they really were her problems to solve. At which point, nodding, he remarked that eventually the job of the leader is to own the problem.

Neither approach guarantees an outbreak of accountability. Perhaps the only way to do that is with blunt directness, or a direct appeal to the Group CEO so he can address it one-to-one. But for now, these two approaches may at least improve the odds that a penny may drop – and ideally not onto my head.