Most organisations don’t fail because they lack strategy. They fail because of how leaders show up with their people.
Gallup has found that managers account for around 70% of the variance in team engagement, making leadership behaviour the single biggest lever for performance.
Yet under pressure, many leaders revert to one-wing flying:
High strength, low kindness – tough, decisive, but cold. This is the classic Command & Control style. It gets short-term compliance and long-term burnout.
High kindness, low strength – caring, supportive, but unclear. People feel safe, but drift and underperformance go unaddressed.
Low strength, low kindness – absent leadership. Decisions are delayed, issues are avoided, and your best people quietly exit.
The future isn’t about choosing between strength or kindness. It’s about integrating both.
Neuroscience confirms what your people are already feeling.
David Rock’s SCARF model shows that threats to relatedness (connection) and fairness (accountability) trigger the same brain networks as physical pain.
In other words:
When leaders are strong without kindness, people feel controlled and unsafe. They’ll protect themselves instead of contributing.
When leaders are kind without strength, people feel uncertain and unmoored. They may like you, but they won’t fully trust you.
Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety backs this up: teams that feel safe to speak up and admit mistakes perform better, learn faster and innovate more.
The Strong & Kind Leadership Lens maps four zones: People Pleasing, Command & Control, Absent, and Empowered Leadership. Only the top-right – Empowered Leadership – combines high strength and high kindness.
In this zone, leaders:
Set clear expectations and hold people to them
Give timely, specific feedback
Listen deeply, acknowledge emotions and create psychological safety
Invite people “above the line” – to own problems, co-create solutions, and grow
Start with regulation, not reaction
Research by Daniel Goleman underscores self-regulation as a critical leadership skill. It’s what prevents strength from becoming aggression and kindness from becoming avoidance.
Build simple pause rituals before big conversations
Name what you’re feeling (“frustrated”, “anxious”) to reduce its grip
Decide: What outcome do I want for us – not just for me?
Use the dual-lens question
Before your next meeting, ask:
Strength: What needs to be clearer, firmer, or more accountable?
Kindness: How can I acknowledge, listen, or create safety while I do this?
If you can’t answer both, you’re out of balance.
Practise in micro-moments
Strong and kind isn’t built in one offsite. It’s built through:
15-minute check-ins that focus on what’s working and what’s stuck
Quick course corrections in meetings (“Let’s pause. Here’s the standard we agreed on…”)
Small acknowledgements that people are human, not just headcount
When leaders consistently balance strength and kindness, you see:
Higher trust and psychological safety
Faster decision-making
More honest conversations
Better retention of your best people
Purpose-led organisations that align leadership behaviour with clear direction outperform their peers on growth, engagement and return on invested capital.
This isn’t just “nice leadership”. It’s a performance strategy.
If your leadership team is flying on one wing – strong or kind – it might be time for a reset. My Best Year Yet program helps executive teams reconnect their purpose, people and processes in one focused day and embed it across the year.
