James Laughlin argues that leadership integrity and congruency are essential, recounting an anecdote about a national political-party leader in the Southern Hemisphere who publicly preached fairness but privately abused staff and ultimately resigned after recordings and a staff report surfaced. Laughlin uses the story to warn against aggressive, incongruent leadership, urges leaders to self-reflect, and closes with calls to follow his interviews and community.
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I want to tell you about the shocking downfall of an incongruent leader. You know what? Leadership integrity really matters. It matters now more than ever. We need leaders to be congruent. Look, there was a leader of a national party, a political party in the Southern hemisphere, and this leader was, you know, wanted to obviously be running the country, but had major issues with congruency. So on field, when the cameras were on and on chat shows, was saying, you know, as people of the nation, we should be doing this and this is how we should treat each other, in equality and fairness and kindness, all these things, encouraging people to do that. But behind the scenes was treating their staff like absolute crap. That's right. Behind the scenes, being mean, being ruthless, being rude, being blunt, being unkind, and not seeing how the incongruency behind the scenes was really setting themselves up for disaster. And guess what happened? One of the staff members reported this behavior, this abuse. And let's face it, there is no room in our day and age of leadership for abusive leaders. It's just, there's no room for that alpha aggressive type of leadership. It's not going to pass. It's not going to work. Have you ever seen it work really well? Maybe in the short term you'll see some results, but long term it's not going to work. I was interviewing Barack Obama's former senior advisor and he said, james, there's one thing I want you to remember and that is this. No one, I mean, no one wants to work for a butthole. I laughed when he said that, but it's so right. Would you want to work for someone that treated you terribly? Would you want to work for someone that told you to do one thing, but then they did a totally different thing? I had a totally different set of standards. I'm guessing not. My challenge is to you, because you're watching this because you are a leader. You're watching this because you want to develop your leadership. What are you doing that's congruent with what you tell others to do? And what are you doing that's not congruent? Because we all do things that are incongruent from time to time. Where are they showing up for you? Look, to me, it's critically important. This leader I was telling you about a moment ago ended up having to resign, having to leave their post as a leader because it publicly came out and there were recordings of him slamming people in his organization, and there's just no room for that. And I'm sure he looks back with regret. I'm pretty positive he'll look back and go, wow, I wish I didn't do that. And that's great that as leaders we can learn. But imagine if we can learn before we make that mistake. And how do we learn? We learn from other people and what they do. How do I do that? I often interview great people, whether they've ran countries or companies, and I'd love you to check out some of those incredible interviews on the show. So if you're here on YouTube, hit subscribe, go and check out some of the other amazing interviews with the guests that I've had on in recent months and years. And if you're on our audio platforms, I hope you're enjoying it. Please continue to share this show with a friend, Please. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.
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