Leadership Lessons Learned from What Not to Do

Three moments across my career shaped how I think about leadership. One reinforced that accountability always flows up. Another showed how gatekeeping limits organizations. The third demonstrated what happens when leaders create space for people to apply what they already know. Together, they form some of the standards I still operate by.

Accountability Flows Up

When I was an enlisted soldier, our Executive Officer was known for keeping distance from those he viewed as beneath him. He rarely asked for help and tended to dismiss contributions that came from lower ranks.. One evening, as he prepared to attend a congressional dinner, his dress uniform was not properly pressed, and his brass was not shined. It would have reflected poorly on him and on our unit. 

I knocked on his open door and offered to help him press his dress blues and shine his brass. The offer was not received well. He took offense at the idea that an E4 would offer assistance and viewed it as a challenge to his authority. I was ordered to do push-ups and told I would be recommended for a summary Article 15 for insubordination.

The next day, I was called into the Commanding Officer’s office. Present were the CO, the XO, the First Sergeant, my Platoon Leader, Platoon Sergeant, and Squad Leader. The CO ordered push-ups. Two hundred each. Everyone in the room. Including himself and the XO.

Afterward, the CO explained the reasoning: 

If a problem reaches the CO without being resolved, leadership has already failed. Accountability does not stop at rank. It compounds as authority increases.

The XO was reprimanded in front of the group and warned never to discipline a soldier out of pride or embarrassment again.

That moment clarified something fundamental for me. Leadership means leading from the front and owning the environment you create. When people fail, leadership failed first. And sometimes individuals serve an important role by demonstrating what leadership should not look like.

Gatekeeping Limits Organizations

Years later, in a civilian organization, a peer shared his frustration with me. He served as a senior director for community outreach. He was effective in his role and deeply committed to the mission. Outside of work, on his own time, he had earned a PhD in organizational management.

There was no clear path for him to grow beyond his position.

At the time, I was leading several process improvement initiatives and saw an opportunity to leverage his expertise. I raised the idea with the CEO. The response was immediate and firm. I was told that I would not be authorized to matrix resources from other departments. Organizational management was her responsibility. If I needed assistance, I should come directly to her.

What stood out was not the decision itself, but the mindset behind it.

Instead of serving the mission, she put her own ego first. The organization had capability, motivation, and unused expertise. Yet growth was constrained by territorial ownership rather than by ownership of outcomes.

Over time, I have seen this pattern repeat. Gatekeeping does not protect organizations. It limits them. When leaders confine people to narrow roles, they reduce institutional capacity. When problem-solving is centralized instead of shared, bottlenecks form. When potential is measured only by current titles, organizations quietly train their people to stop bringing their best ideas forward.

Creating Space for Capability

In another role, we were facing a growing attrition problem. Engineering teams were working excessive hours week after week. Burnout was setting in, morale was slipping, and we were beginning to lose people we could not easily replace.

One of my managers, whose formal role was in network engineering, approached me with a proposal. He suggested that we step back and revamp our processes. His idea was to document what was working, identify what was not, and put practical guardrails in place so engineers could focus on meaningful work without constant interruption, while still leaving room for innovation.

What the organization had never fully leveraged was that he had earned several ITIL certifications on his own. He had the training and the perspective, but had never been given the opportunity to apply it.

The proposal aligned well with a broader roadmap we were building. But even without that alignment, I would have approved it. It was a thoughtful solution to a real problem and a chance for someone to contribute beyond a job description.

We moved forward.

The impact was immediate and lasting. Processes improved. Rework declined. Engineering teams regained focus. Attrition slowed. Just as importantly, that manager grew. He became part of the solution, gained confidence, and expanded his role within the organization. Others noticed as well, up and down the leadership chain, from the CEO to the engineering teams. The success helped shift the culture. Staying in one’s lane mattered less than contributing to shared outcomes.

What stood out was not the framework itself, but the outcome of creating space for capability to surface. The organization benefited, the team benefited, and the individual benefited.

The Common Thread

In each of these situations, leadership either failed or succeeded for the same reason. Whether ego took precedence over responsibility, or responsibility created room for others to contribute.

Strong leaders invite contribution, welcome challenge, and remain accountable for the systems they oversee. Weaker leaders protect status, restrict access, and confuse control with effectiveness. When someone brings effort, intent, and capability to the table, my responsibility is to create space for that contribution to matter. That is how trust scales. That is how organizations grow without breaking. And that is how leadership earns credibility over time.

AI as the Civic Moonshot: How Companies Can Profit by Building Toward the Public Good

A colleague recently suggested I read The Technological Republic by Alex Karp. Not long after, I came across Ross Andersen’s article in The Atlantic titled “Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End.” Karp writes as a chief executive working inside the technology industry. Andersen, a journalist and historian of ideas, explores the topic through a global and historical lens. Their approaches may be different, but their message is the same: when science and engineering lose their connection to civic purpose, we lose progress.

Civic purpose is the belief that progress should serve the public and improve lives. It keeps innovation focused on long-term value. Without this, even the most powerful technologies can lose direction, fall out of public trust, or even do harm. The real value of new tools comes not just from their capabilities, but from how they are used and who they serve.

Andersen illustrates his point through history. He traces the rise and collapse of the Soviet Union, showing how a country once rich in scientific achievement lost its edge. Early on, national vision and investment drove breakthroughs. Later, political pressure and authoritarian control stripped science of its independence and impact. Over time, authoritarian control strangled openness, and scientists who showed too much independence, such as the one Andersen profiles, were pushed out, even under Gorbachev’s reforms. After the Soviet Union collapsed, a new kind of threat emerged. Oligarchy drained resources from public institutions as state assets were rapidly privatized. Research centers withered, funding vanished, and many of the country’s best minds left for opportunities abroad. The decline did not happen all at once. Scientific work was slowly pulled into politics, then sidelined. Big ideas gave way to resource extraction, and the broader promise of knowledge lost its place in the public imagination.

Karp approaches from a different angle. He is not writing about state control or oligarchy, but he is just as concerned about what weakens long-term progress. In The Technological Republic, he focuses on how companies, especially in the West, often organize themselves around short-term targets. The pursuit of quarterly results shapes what gets attention and what does not. Complex or long-term projects tend to fall away. Over time, the larger sense of direction fades. Civic goals are not rejected outright; they are simply forgotten. Unlike Andersen’s account of stagnation under pressure from the state, Karp’s story is about stagnation through distraction. In both cases, ambition dries up.

Andersen and Karp both touch on something deeper that often gets missed: without direction, progress tends to stall. Science, when disconnected from public purpose, loses momentum. Business, when focused only on short-term gain, stops building anything meaningful. The question is not whether companies should choose between purpose and profit. The question is how to build a model where one reinforces the other. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) enters the conversation.

Artificial intelligence is a rare opening

It creates a chance to reconnect technological progress with broader public goals. Unlike past waves of innovation, AI is not a single invention or product line. It is a foundational shift, already underway, that can support large-scale outcomes. These systems are improving early detection of disease, helping reduce food waste through precision agriculture, and accelerating the development of clean energy materials. In practical terms, artificial intelligence is already delivering value in places that matter.

What will determine its impact now is how it is used and for what reason

Companies that align their use of artificial intelligence with broader public benefit do more than contribute to society. They also position themselves for longer-term strength. That strength shows up in how they attract talent, how customers view the brand, and how new partnerships take shape. These are not side effects. They are competitive signals.

The intent behind artificial intelligence matters. It is not just about what a system can do, but how it does it. Companies that build with privacy in mind, protect systems from misuse, make their tools accessible across communities, and explain how decisions are made will stand out. These principles are no longer optional. They are now part of what it means to build credibility in the market.

This is where alignment becomes a strategy

The market is already paying attention to public value, but what is often missing is integration. Most organizations have some kind of community engagement or cause marketing. Many speak up during cultural moments or awareness campaigns. These efforts may reflect good intentions, but they rarely shape core business decisions.

Artificial intelligence offers a more grounded path. It gives companies a way to center their capabilities on goals that stretch beyond quarterly results. That approach does not replace performance. It strengthens it.

When purpose becomes part of how a company operates, not just how it communicates, everything changes. Growth becomes more stable. Teams stay longer. Public support builds over time. And the business becomes harder to disrupt.

• A logistics company can use artificial intelligence to cut fuel use through better routing, reducing emissions and operating costs at once.
• A regional hospital system can partner with vendors to pilot diagnostic models that improve outcomes for underserved populations.
• A food manufacturer can use artificial intelligence to detect contamination patterns or optimize energy use across plants.
• A financial services firm can use intelligent automation to widen access to loans or improve fraud detection in real time.
• A construction company can use predictive modeling to prevent injuries, protect lives, and reduce insurance costs.
• A consumer goods brand can use generative systems to reduce time to market for product testing, while also lowering waste.

None of these requires a moonshot budget. They require intention.

Civic purpose does not mean charity

Karp writes that artificial intelligence will reflect the society that builds and trains it. If we aim it only toward monetization, that is what it will mirror. But when companies choose to shape these systems with shared values in mind, something better happens. The market responds to products and services that improve lives, especially when people see those outcomes clearly. That feedback loop (public value, visible impact, trusted brand) is profitable.

A civic-minded approach does not ask companies to sacrifice growth. It gives them a better reason to grow. And it creates room for more durable success than companies chasing isolated wins. Public support builds resilience. Employees stay longer when they know their work matters. Investors notice when a company is part of the solution to large problems. And as artificial intelligence becomes more central to how businesses operate, those who align early will shape the narrative.

What a modern civic pact looks like:

• Fund broad goals, not just marketing campaigns. Leaders should support internal teams that want to explore uses of artificial intelligence in service of public benefit. That exploration is not overhead. It is positioning.
• Track longer outcomes alongside quarterly ones. Boards can ask how capital is supporting multi-year bets. That transparency signals confidence, not drift.
• Keep the door open to global talent. Organizations benefit when immigration brings in new knowledge. Retaining that edge means building environments where people want to stay.
• Speak clearly. Companies that describe what they are building and why it matters do better in the public eye. The benefit is not in hiding ambition, but in connecting it to something larger than themselves.

The upside is real and durable

A civic-minded innovation strategy creates more than ideas. It attracts talent, builds resilience, and reinforces trust. And it does this while generating revenue and competitive advantage. That is not a tradeoff. That is the definition of durable growth.

Andersen ends his article by comparing American science to a crumbling empire. That outcome is avoidable. We still have the resources, the talent, and the tools. What we need now is the clarity and resolve to apply them with purpose.

Artificial intelligence can be that rallying point. But only if we build it not only to scale, but to unify.

The most effective organizations are those that root purpose in how they operate and govern. When purpose guides decisions from the project level to the boardroom, it becomes more than a message. It becomes part of the business. Companies that make this shift early help shape public trust and strengthen long-term value. Leadership that lasts comes from building what people can believe in.

The choice to lead this way rests with those shaping the future: scientists, engineers, founders, board members, and the communities they serve. And it begins with a serious question, asked before any major initiative:

Will this move the country forward, or only the stock ticker?

Answer well, and there is no need to pick between civic purpose and profit. You get both. And you build something that endures.

Leading from the In-Between: Serving Others While Between Roles

There’s a certain silence that follows after leaving a job, whether by choice or circumstance. The daily rhythm shifts. The email slows. And somewhere between your resume edits and late-night LinkedIn scrolls, there’s a question that lingers quietly: Am I still a leader if no one’s officially following me right now?

The answer is yes. Especially now.

Leadership Isn’t a Title

Leadership isn’t defined by a company badge, a title, or an org chart. It’s defined by your actions—how you show up for others, how you lift someone else when you’re still figuring out how to stand tall again yourself.

In fact, some of the most impactful leadership I’ve seen comes from people between jobs. Why? Because they choose to give without an official platform. They offer mentorship, make introductions, share job leads, and encourage someone else through their own storms—all while quietly facing their own.

That’s leadership at its most sincere.

The Opportunity in the Gap

Being “in-between” doesn’t have to mean being idle. This time can be fertile ground for service, growth, and surprising moments of connection. You’re not obligated to wait until you’re hired again to start helping people.

A few ways to lead during a career pause:

• Check in on former teammates — Not for networking, but just to see how they’re holding up. People remember kindness.

• Mentor someone earlier in their journey — You’ve learned things. Share them. They may be gold to someone just starting out.

• Create something useful — A blog post, a guide, a checklist, a script—something that makes someone’s day easier.

• Volunteer your skills — Local nonprofits, community orgs, and even solo entrepreneurs could benefit from your expertise.

• Keep learning — Not everything needs to be monetized. Growth itself is leadership.

You’re Still You

It’s easy to feel like you’ve lost momentum or identity when you’re not clocking in somewhere. But you haven’t lost your experience, your perspective, or your ability to make things better for someone else. You’re still you. And that’s more than enough.

The best leaders I know lead from wherever they are—even from in-between jobs.