Ben MortonLeadership Trainer, Coach and Speaker

If you’re always in the weeds, you’re not leading.

4 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from a leadership talk, Ben Morton draws on his early Army training to illustrate a core leadership principle: a leader who is constantly immersed in day‑to‑day problem solving (“in the weeds”) loses strategic perspective and ends up merely reacting, akin to fighting rather than commanding. He warns that such firefighting mode undermines true leadership. Morton clarifies that this does not mean leaders should be completely hands‑off; there are critical moments when direct intervention is necessary. The segment emphasizes the balance between staying strategically detached enough to see the bigger picture while still knowing when to step in decisively.

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And this is something I was taught very early on in my Army career. If you're fighting, you're not commanding. And the same is true for us as leaders today, right? If we're constantly in the weeds, doing the doing, solving every problem and issue for our team, then we start to lose perspective. We too don't see the bigger picture. And then we just start reacting and become stuck in firefighting mode, and that means we're not leading. But, and this is important, it doesn't mean that leaders should never get involved, because there absolutely are moments and times when we need to step in.