Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

Document your non-negiotables, how you want to operate and lead based off of those principles!

2 Jan 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:01

In this concise leadership talk, the speaker advocates for principle‑based leadership by first documenting one’s core principles and non‑negotiables. He asks listeners to clarify what they stand for, how they wish to be perceived externally, and what legacy they want to leave, regardless of formal title or team size. By sharing these principles loudly and conspicuously—especially using the simple, easy‑to‑adopt "10 We's" framework—leaders can secure buy‑in and align their followers, making day‑to‑day decision‑making smoother and more consistent. The core message is that clear, publicly stated principles create a shared belief system that guides behavior and fosters followership.

Chapters

The beauty wasn't necessarily in the principles. The beauty in principle-based leadership and the success that I've found and the way I would encourage anyone to begin their journey in a similar fashion is to document those principles. What are the things that you stand for? What are your non-negotiables? How do you want to be known externally? What do you want your leadership legacy to be? And when I say leadership, it doesn't necessarily mean that I have a big team of direct reports or that I run some huge company. There are a lot of leaders in the world with no fancy titles and they have huge followership. So the point here is determine what it is that you want to be known for and how you want to operate, your non-negotiables, share them wide, share them loud, and be very conspicuous about them. And what I found to happen is when you do that and you get buy-in from people, especially when the principles are easy to get behind, and I think the 10 We's are incredibly easy to get behind. At the end of the day, by definition, a principle is a fundamental truth. It's something that we hold to be true or our system of beliefs. If once you get a team aligned around these principles very, very conspicuously, it's much easier in the day-to-day. It's easier when you face