Real Leaders Take the Bullet So Their People Can Shine...

8 Apr 2026 · 2 min

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2:01

In this monologue, the speaker recounts his experience working at a bank undergoing multiple mergers and acquisitions, where his team spent most of their time traveling and had to deliver frequent report-outs to both their own executive board and the boards of acquired banks. He explains his leadership philosophy that the team members who performed the work should also present the reports, granting them exposure and recognition. When a superior demanded that the speaker take over the presentations to claim the glory, the speaker refused, insisting that his people continue to present. He acknowledges that this stance strained his relationship with the superior, but frames it as an example of servant leadership: willingly taking the "bullet" or criticism to protect and elevate his team, allowing them to benefit from the visibility while he absorbs any negative fallout.

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He had this attitude that everything had to be done his way. All right? Now, at that time, I was working for a bank and we were going through a large series of mergers and acquisitions. And we were traveling all over the country. My team was with me 75% of the time on the road. So, you can imagine we were worn out, right? But we had to do periodic report-outs to not only our executive board but the executive board of the bank that we had purchased. And my philosophy was my people did the report-out. Why? Because they did the work. They know the product. And they deserve the exposure. This guy had the audacity to come to me one day and say, you need to be doing the report-outs. I said, why? Because if you don't do the report-outs, then that makes the rest of us look bad. See, they wanted the glory, not for the people, for themselves. And I said, you know what? Tough. My people are going to continue to do the report-outs. Now needless to say, me reporting to him, me having that attitude with him made the relationship a little bit rocky. But you know, again, that's another one of the things as a leader. You are going to take bullets. You're going to take— Hits. But what you can do is you can look yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, I took that bullet, I took that hit for the right reason. And my team, my people are better off for it.