Why the best leaders are “other-directed”

The people-first leadership mindset that builds more trust, talent, and joy

I’ll admit it.

Early in my own career, I wasn’t the leader I wanted to be. My goal was to be the best individual contributor in the room, and I saw everyone else as someone I needed to beat.

But as I started paying attention to the leaders I truly admired, I noticed something. They weren’t focused on themselves. They were focused on their customers, their teams, and the people around them. They had made the shift from “me” to “we.”

I’ve come to think of this as being “other-directed.” It’s a trait that shows up consistently in the happiest and most effective leaders.

On a day when we’re thinking about our elected leaders and the idea of public service, I’m realizing that some of the best insights about other-directed leadership come from leaders in the public sector who see their work as service toward a greater goal.

So today, I’d like to highlight three of them to show what it means to put others at the center of what you do.

Understand the stakes of being other-directed

People can tell when their leader is only looking out for number one. And nothing erodes a team’s trust faster than a leader whose chief concern is their own best interest.

The late General Ray Odierno led soldiers for 39 years – starting with a company of 150 and eventually becoming Army Chief of Staff. And he believed trust is the foundation of any organization. So when he surveyed a group of captains about the leaders above them, he wanted to know what was eroding that trust.

He expected complaints about micromanaging or poor treatment. Instead, they reported that the number one toxic trait was careerism: a leader who is out for himself and unwilling to take risks.

As Ray explained to me, the captains felt that kind of leader put his own advancement ahead of the unit and the mission. That left them in an environment where they didn’t feel safe doing what needed to be done.

We all have that instinct to take care of ourselves. But if that instinct is informing your decisions, it will hamstring your leadership and your team’s ability to execute well. That’s the cost of putting yourself first: you lose the trust of your team, and everything else depends on that trust.

Keep learning from General Ray Odierno

Actively look for the leadership potential in others

If you’re reading this, I bet you’re an extremely capable leader. You can probably step into a wide variety of situations and deliver.

Condoleezza Rice is a dazzling leader, too – the first Black woman to be named Secretary of State, fluent in Russian, and even a world-class concert pianist.

No doubt about it, she is a force in any room she walks into. But in her time in the diplomatic ranks, she knew she couldn’t do the work alone.

In our conversation on How Leaders Lead, she told me: “The important thing in leadership is to recognize leadership characteristics in other people.” As Secretary of State, she built a team of assistant secretaries who were respected in their fields, from Africa to Latin America. They went out ahead of her and laid the groundwork before she ever sat down at the table.

Being other-directed means spotting the people coming up behind you, giving them real responsibility, and letting them step in where you might have stepped in yourself. Ask yourself regularly who you could be teaching, and what you could hand off to make room for them to grow.

Keep learning from Condoleezza Rice

Remember that everyone can teach you something

Everyone around you is a wealth of insight and knowledge.

But when we get caught up in our own priorities and point of view, we don’t see them that way. And we end up missing one of the very best learning opportunities there is.

Joe Manchin, the former Governor and U.S. Senator from West Virginia, spent his career in rooms full of people who disagreed with him. Instead of vilifying or ignoring them, he tried to learn from them.

As he told me: “I’ve never had a campaign [where] I didn’t learn something from the other side.”

That’s a big part of being other-directed. It starts with the humility to recognize that your perspective isn’t the only one that matters. And it continues with curiosity: really trying to draw out what the people around you know.

You never know who might show you something that you need to hear. It might be someone you disagree with. Someone outside your industry. Someone with no seniority. But that other-directed mindset is how you find out.

Keep learning from Joe Manchin

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Being other-directed isn’t only good for the people around you. In my experience, it’s also where the most joy in leadership comes from. When your efforts pay off for other people and not just for you, you get to see the difference you made.

General Odierno, Secretary Rice, and Senator Manchin spent their careers in jobs where it would have been easy to look out only for themselves. They kept asking how to help the people around them instead.

On a day when so many of us are thinking about who leads us, it’s a good moment to ask the same question about ourselves. Whose interests do your decisions serve? Who are you developing? And who are you willing to listen to?

The more you can anchor your choices around others, the happier – and more effective – you’ll be as a leader.

Is there someone in your life who’s been a great example of other-directed leadership? Drop a comment (tag them if you can!) so we can all appreciate them with you.