Setting the Standard: The Microscopic Reality of Leadership
One Halloween, a highly functional team at a tech firm decided to dress up as their CEO. They all arrived wearing orange sweaters, jeans, and running shoes. While it was intended as a lighthearted joke, it revealed a profound truth: employees are always watching.
In his book Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary, Joel Kurtzman highlights how a leader’s influence permeates an organization in ways they might not even realize. He notes that:
People watch their leaders with microscopic detail.
Individuals working within a firm tend to copy their leaders’ style.
Leaders find that others copy their worst characteristics as well as their best traits.
Leaders must be disciplined to ensure they exhibit only the behaviors they want others in the company to share.
The Leader as the Cultural Amplifier
As communications professionals, we are often responsible for helping shape how a company leader is perceived. When we do our jobs well, we provide the senior counsel and support that ensures employees understand their company’s roadmap, how to best compete and what’s required of them to ensure success. We also help to drive transparency, increase team engagement and define what it means to be a member of a team.
We know all too well that the leader is the ultimate embodiment of the standard everyone in the company strives to achieve. Beyond town halls, AMAs, earnings calls, and client meetings, employees are watching, learning, and mirroring behavior that impacts their everyday choices, such as:
The Standard of Sacrifice: If a CEO flies coach to preserve the budget, the team views fiscal responsibility as the standard. If a CEO takes a massive bonus while the factory floor is struggling, that behavior sets a different, more cynical standard.
The Standard of Innovation: A leader who listens, elevates great ideas internally, and takes pride in the company's work can be a powerful amplifier of the company’s culture and common purpose.
The Power of the Outside Perspective
Sometimes, leaders are unwilling or unable to listen to in-house counsel; they may be too close to internal politics to see the microscopic impact they are having. Often, they need to hear the truth from an outside perspective.
At Fastrack PR, we have deep experience partnering with senior leadership to ensure they are comfortable and confident across internal and external audiences. We act as the objective mirror, ensuring that the traits your team is copying are the ones that lead to success.
Is your leadership team setting the right standard for your 2026 goals? Let’s talk about how we can align your presence with your purpose.
