How We Show Up: The Beginning and the End of Leadership

There comes a moment in every leadership journey when you start seeing patterns you did not have the vocabulary for earlier. You realize that leadership is not defined by your strategy, your title, or the size of your budget. It’s defined by something much simpler and far more difficult to master: the way you show up.

Over the past posts, we explored values that form the architecture of Ethical Leadership. Congruence. Courageous Responsibility. Transformational Humility. Service Before Status. Shared Stewardship. These are not abstract concepts, but behaviors that influence the climate around us long before any major decision is made. They shape conversations, tone, trust, and the willingness of people to step in or step back. Most of the time even if they are not sufficient on their own.

But there is something important we have not examined yet:

What happens when these values are present, and what happens when they are absent.

It’s easy to imagine a perfect environment where everyone aligns around purpose, where egos do not interfere, where structures do not constrain, and where decisions always follow the ideal path from intention to impact. But we do not live in that world. We live in professional ecosystems shaped by history, personalities, egos, politics, resource pressures, personal ambitions, conflicting incentives, blind spots, and sometimes very human insecurities. And we navigate these systems while trying, imperfectly, to do the right thing and do it the right way.

In the first article of this series, we explored how freedom can slowly mutate into obedience when leadership drifts away from ethics and toward control. That reflection has lingered through every conversation since. Because the moment people stop feeling safe to question, challenge, or think independently, they no longer show up as contributors but as compliant performers. And when presence is reduced to obedience, leadership itself disappears. This new reflection builds on that initial insight: the way we show up determines whether people move with us freely, or follow us reluctantly.

When leaders bring congruence, people stop guessing and start trusting. When they carry humility, others breathe more freely. When they act with courageous responsibility, colleagues dare to tell the truth. When leadership is framed as stewardship, people grow instead of shrink and hide. And when service prevails over status, the workplace becomes more human and more effective at the same time.

I have seen this happen. Not as theory, but as lived experience.

I have also seen what happens when the values are not present. When leaders speak one thing and embody another. When responsibility evaporates under pressure. When humility turns into self-protection. When stewardship gives way to territorialism. When service is replaced by status preservation.

And the contrast is dramatic.

In some environments, values are not simply ignored. They are used decoratively, repeated in speeches, added to presentations, placed on posters, and never actually practiced. At that point, values stop being guiding principles and become tools of misdirection. This is the moment where a culture begins to fracture from the inside. And people notice the gap, especially if it’s a shift. They always do. And once they see it, trust collapses quietly long before it collapses visibly (Edmondson, 2019).

But, there is another consequence when values are claimed but not lived: It creates the perfect habitat for the worst kinds of behaviors to flourish.

Individuals who seek influence through proximity rather than competence quickly understand that serving the ego of the leader grants them protection. And once that dynamic settles in, the environment no longer rewards contribution or integrity. It rewards alignment with the insecurity of the person at the top. Healthy cultures should reject such behavior, but unhealthy ones give it power.

Sometimes that rotten core is hidden behind a shiny cover. Awards, polished branding, inspirational statements, etc. But these things rarely hold for long; all it takes is a quick look at employee feedback on platforms like Glassdoor to see the truth. People always tell the story the posters refuse to tell.

I have witnessed settings where leadership talked endlessly about empowerment and collaboration while decisions were made in closed circles and divergent opinions were treated as disloyalty. Many people have experienced environments where values were declared but never truly practiced, and they recognize the pattern instantly.

You cannot build a culture on declared values but on demonstrated ones (Schein & Schein, 2018).

This is also why the Integrity Model becomes essential (Lazar, 2016). Leadership requires constant choices. Some are easy. Most are not. And the model reminds us that every decision lives at the intersection of personal and collective ethics, situational constraints, and consequences. Integrity does not mean choosing the ideal path every time. It means being conscious of the compromise you are making, and why you are making it.

Integrity Model: What drives Decision-Making

We rarely choose between good and bad. We choose between imperfect options, under imperfect conditions, with imperfect information. Ethical leadership does not remove that reality. It simply prevents us from lying to ourselves about it.

And it reminds us that each of us holds responsibility, if not accountability, for our choices. When we evaluate an employer or a leadership environment against our own values, we must do so honestly. We must ask ourselves whether the compromises required align with who we want to be. Because the cost of misalignment is rarely theoretical. It’s physiological. Chronic stress activates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and triggers sustained cortisol release. Over time, elevated cortisol has been shown to contribute to inflammation, cardiovascular risk, weakened immune response, anxiety, depression, and disrupted sleep cycles (Sapolsky, 2004). Research from Stanford University and Harvard Business School demonstrates that harmful workplace practices significantly increase the risk of chronic disease and mortality, with toxic environments contributing to higher absenteeism, burnout, and measurable deterioration in mental and physical well-being (Pfeffer, 2018). The American Psychological Association similarly reports that prolonged job stress correlates with reduced engagement, impaired performance, and elevated health-related costs (APA, 2023). Put simply: no manager, no role, and no organization is worth your health, your peace of mind, or your sleepless nights. And I speak from experience, I had tears, I had nightmares and sleepless nights at some places, like many of us, as I’ve seen too many tears in the workplace. And it’s not weakness or lack of character; it’s a biological reaction to aggression.

This brings us back to examples from the real world. Consulting firms. Service companies. And let’s be clear I have nothing against consulting companies, I’ve worked for or with them most of my professional life and still do, and with pleasure. But they are workplaces where consultants spend most of their time with clients. In these spaces, we need to be honest about the nature of the relationship: people are employed by the consulting firm, but they really work for the client and leadership happens at the client’s office. The tie to the employer is primarily transactional. The firm focuses on billable days, resource allocation, and utilization rates. Development is minimal. Retention is secondary. And this is not shocking. It’s the design of the model. It’s not leadership in the deep relational sense. It’s management with a transactional purpose.

The real question is not whether this is good or bad. It’s whether the expectations are realistic and explicit. When you know the nature of the bargain, you can decide if it fits your values, your goals, and your current season of life.

But when a so-called “for purpose” institution, one that claims the banner of mission and service, declares that employee well-being is not its concern, or that people who express discomfort are simply “bad employees,” that is a very different story. Because the dissonance between words and actions here is not structural, it’s ethical. People feel that difference immediately (Maslach et al., 2001).

This brings us back to leadership presence.

How we show up is not only about who we are. It’s about what we permit, what we reinforce, what we tolerate, and what we choose not to challenge.

Leadership presence becomes culture, then culture becomes behavior, that becomes impact, which becomes history (Schein & Schein, 2018).

This is why showing up with integrity is not optional. It’s a basic foundation of any organization. Because here is another truth that appeared to me; in fact what we call “organization” doesn’t exist. It’s an idea, a concept that gathers people around that idea, but that’s all. It’s a gathering of people, human beings, you and me. I often hear that “the organization decides…”, or “the organization will allow (or not)” this or that… In reality, an organization doesn’t decide anything, it doesn’t allow anything… all of that is made by people… human beings. With people, by people, for people. If we ever forget that, then the so-called “organization” is doomed to fail.

Happy staff are productive. Unhappy staff are expensive.

And as I mentioned in a previous post, this not just about being nice and kind to each other (some people could argue that I’m not a specially nice or kind person myself, and I wouldn’t contradict them), it’s about building a resilient organization and a sustainable business model, especially in times of the “Rise of the Machines”, as my friend and mentor Michel Thiry called it once, when all communication happens instantly and when we’re not even sure if we’re talking to a robot or a living person, in those times where the whirlwind of changes is so fast that we do not take the time to make these human connections anymore. Workplaces where “unleadership” is applied instead of true and ethical leadership will simply disappear, as strong and big and reputable as they can be. “Happy employees are productive, unhappy employees are expensive.” People who are not engaged with their leadership are no more than mercenaries that will leave you at the first best opportunity (often to join your competitor) and possibly stab you in the back while doing so. Engagement drives performance, and you don’t get this with perks and high salaries. Even your clients are more engaged when proper leadership is applied. Gallup and Edelman didn’t make up their numbers (Gallup, 2024; Edelman Trust Barometer, 2024).

Gallup study - Relation between engagement and business metrics

So, when we show up well, we create space for truth, courage, humanity, clarity, and excellence. When we do not, we create environments where people minimize themselves, where fear grows quietly, where fatigue replaces purpose, and where talent slowly walks away.

Leadership does not begin with a decision; it begins with presence. And that presence is something we shape intentionally, or it shapes us unintentionally. It’s actually what shapes the Organizational Layer in the Cultural Configuration Model (Lazar, 2016).

Layers of the Cultural Configuration, the Organizational Layer is the one that grows organically.

So, the real question that sits beneath all these values, is simple but demanding:

What happens to the people around you when you show up?

Do they expand, or contract? Do they speak, or hold back? Do they feel trusted, or judged? Do they move toward the mission, or navigate your moods?

That is the essence of leadership. Not the role, the strategy or the title. The atmosphere we create by how we show up. And that atmosphere is what changes our world, one interaction at a time and shape the culture of the organization.

At the conclusion of my Leadership Development class, there is a slide that says: 

“Change the World!

• You can’t change the world…

• But you can change what you do and how you do it.

• That will change what and how someone else is doing…

• Which will change someone…

• And someone else…

• And someone else…

• And the World will change…”

And it concludes by a quote from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: « You must be the change you want to see in the world ».

So now, my question to you, what do we do to change that? Are you even ready to try to change it? If so, then stay tuned something is coming… soon.

References

• American Psychological Association. (2023). Stress in America: Mental health and workplace well-being report. https://www.apa.org

• Edelman. (2024). Edelman Trust Barometer. https://www.edelman.com

• Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace. Wiley.

• Gallup. (2024). State of the global workplace report. https://www.gallup.com

• Glassdoor. (2024). Glassdoor company reviews. https://www.glassdoor.com

• Lazar, O. (2016). The Integrity Model. Presented in the Advanced Leadership Development course, PMI Training (formerly SeminarsWorld), 2016–2024. Also discussed in Lazar, O. (2025, November). Cultural Configuration: Understanding people beyond behavior [LinkedIn article]. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cultural-configuration-understanding-people-beyond-olivier-lazar-bnqmc/. OL Leadership Strategies.

• Lazar, O. (2016). The Cultural Configuration. PMI SeminarsWorld conference, Orlando, FL 2019. OL Leadership Strategies.

• Maslach, C., Leiter, M. P., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422.

• Pfeffer, J. (2018). Dying for a paycheck. Harper Business.

• Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers (3rd ed.). Henry Holt.

• Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2018). Humble leadership. Berrett-Koehler.

• Thiry, M. (2015). Program management (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Referenced for the “Rise of the Machines” attribution.)