Part 2 of a three-part exploration of how my leadership lens formed. Part 1 focused on wartime at the execution layer, where credibility and delivery determine the team’s relevance. This part moves deeper into ownership and the cost of stepping forward before a title grants permission.
Leadership is often seen as an exclusive club reserved for those with specific titles. But from my vantage point, it starts the moment someone chooses to take responsibility for the entire system, even if it is not part of their job description.
I learned this when I joined a team that was failing. There was no clear ownership, delivery milestones were repeatedly missed, technical decisions lacked a scientific rationale, and execution was crawling. My manager gave me a free hand to intervene, despite it falling well outside my formal role. He trusted me, and I chose to own the outcome.
Progress came quickly once someone took responsibility for the whole.
By stepping back and examining the system end-to-end: people, process, and technology, we established a decision process and journaling, and rebuilt trust with internal stakeholders. Within months, predictability in delivery and execution stabilized and gained the other team’s trust. It created friction, but we were aligned in the same direction. It reinforced my lesson in leadership that ownership compounds progress.
Why capable leaders hesitate
At this point, many capable professionals hesitate. It is not because they lack competence. It is because they have seen what happens to the last person who took ownership without formal authority. Progress creates visibility. Visibility creates friction because the biological survival instinct kicks in, and the friction can quietly turn into political risk.
Capable leaders recognize that ownership can come at a cost: goodwill cost, career risk, or silent resistance. Over time, this teaches people an unspoken rule: do your job well, but don’t overreach. This is not a lack of talent but being overcautious. I did not fully appreciate this dynamic until the next phase of my own journey.
As I pushed the team towards higher maturity, I overlooked something critical. Though execution improved internally, a few downstream stakeholders were negatively affected. Certain groups felt ignored, and others felt bypassed by decisions that affected their work.
The transformation was clean in theory but rough in reality. That realization was necessary and uncomfortable.
Anyone can drive results. Leaders own the consequences. I couldn’t ignore second-order effects. I had to slow down and rebalance speed with empathy. This is the distinction that separates early leadership from mature leadership.
My first lesson was that leadership begins when someone owns the whole system. My second lesson: leadership fails without empathy for those affected by change.
Leadership is not a destination one arrives at. The moment we believe we have “made it,” we often stop seeing the cost our actions have for others. Authentic leadership is the discipline of continuous self-improvement.
Before driving change, I map who gains and who loses: status, control, or relevance. I overcommunicate intent, anchor on collective outcomes, and consciously address the survival instincts that change brings.
Leadership lives in practice.