The Hard Truth About Leadership: It’s About What You’re Willing To Give Up
By Mark Nevins
The leadership behaviors that feel hardest in the moment are often the ones that create the most durable trust and performance.
Leadership is often described in terms of vision, strategy, and decisiveness, but in some ways, these are the easy parts. Anyone who has led people through uncertainty knows that the job is defined by heart and guts just as much as head, and leading through difficult situations often comes down to what leaders are willing to give up.
At its core, leadership is a series of sacrifices: of ego, of speed, of personal preference, and often even of comfort. These sacrifices help make sustained followership possible: what you are willing to give up often draws people to a cause, goal, or yourself personally.
These themes emerged in recent conversations with two of my friends and colleagues Velvey Blocker, Director of Executive Coaching at Black & Veatch, and Jacques Saint Fleur, a Navy veteran and regional sales manager at AT&T Business.
The Sacrifice of Ego
One of the first conceits leaders must abandon is the need to be seen as the smartest person in the room. Expertise and sharp analysis go a long way in the early stages of a career, but as professionals advance, their leadership depends less on having all the answers and much more on creating conditions where others can collaborate effectively to contribute their best.
Velvey noted that some of the most effective leaders he has worked with are those who ask more questions than they answer. They resist the urge to dominate discussions, instead drawing out perspectives and building alignment. This approach requires not just self-restraint but making room for others. It means sharing or even foregoing credit—a meaningful sacrifice for ambitious professionals.
The Sacrifice of Speed
Leaders must resist the urge, regularly, to leap into action themselves—and instead move more deliberately to bring others along. Leaders typically have more context than others and quickly see the path forward. But speeding ahead risks leaving teams behind.
Jacques describes a practice shaped by his military experience. Throughout his Navy career, teams were constantly changing, with new personnel joining high-stakes missions already underway. The better leaders learned to communicate as if they were speaking to the newest person in the room, providing context, clarifying goals, and making sure every person understood the assignment.
This kind of discipline carries into business: when leaders take the time to set (and reset) the context and cultivate the “why,” it may feel like they’re repeating themselves. But this is actually a deliberate leadership choice: investing in clarity, alignment, commitment, and preparation paves the way for focused, efficient, and effective action. Over time, this kind of consistent rigor signals steadfast dedication to the team and the mission.
The Sacrifice of Personal Preference
Good leaders must often set aside how they personally like to work. Some executives prefer informal, fast-paced environments, while others thrive in structured, analytical settings. Effective leadership often requires leaders to adapt their style to what the team and the situation need from them.
Good leaders must often set aside how they personally like to work.
Velvey observed that leaders sometimes let their authenticity harden into rigidity, leaving little room to adapt and rise to the moment. Being authentic doesn’t mean operating only within the boundaries of your preferences; it means being rooted in clear values while remaining flexible in your approach. This flexibility can feel like a sacrifice when leaders have to adopt processes or rhythms that don’t come naturally. But when leaders can’t adapt, teams struggle to align and act.
The Sacrifice of Momentary Comfort
Finally, leadership often demands short-term discomfort in service of longer-term stability. Difficult conversations, confronting problems early, and candid feedback are rarely pleasant in the moment. Yet avoiding such issues almost always compounds them, erodes credibility, and weakens trust.
One practice Jacques shared is name it early and name it small. The idea is to surface concerns while they are still manageable, before positions harden and narratives take hold. Leaders who address issues early, even when it’s uncomfortable, demonstrate a form of stewardship: they’re showing that protecting the integrity of the team and advancing the mission are more important than pretending everything is fine. Over time, this pattern creates an environment where issues surface quickly rather than fester, and where people trust that their leaders will not leave them hanging when things get hard.
Why These Sacrifices Matter
Leaders’ sacrifices aren’t grand gestures. They instead quietly appear in small, repeated actions: preparing well for meetings; consistently closing loops; slowing down to pay attention; and addressing problems before they escalate. None of these are glamorous. All of them require discipline.
Leadership, then, is not primarily a function of authority or charisma. It is a practice of consistently choosing what benefits the team over what’s easiest or most personally satisfying.
Leadership, then, is not primarily a function of authority or charisma. It is a practice of consistently choosing what benefits the team over what’s easiest or most personally satisfying. Leaders who make these tradeoffs again and again are the ones who successfully generate followership and lead lasting change.
In the end, leadership is especially hard when it asks people to set themselves in a broader context before they act. But it is in precisely these moments and choices—to set aside ego, speed, preference, and comfort—that the best kinds of leadership emerge.