We live in a world of constant crisis and increasingly rapid technological change. Many of today’s business leaders feel like no matter what they do, they are going to “get it wrong.” They are pulled in opposite directions on issues that I call cross-pressures—issues such as understanding the internal and external dynamics of their companies, simultaneously prioritizing execution and innovation, and managing people by both holding them accountable while also providing empathy in difficult situations. It can feel overwhelming to deal with the repeated whiplash of the daily news and the frequent upheaval that leaders confront every day.
For the last eight years I have taught a course on systems leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and have studied over 100 global executives on how they are handling many of these challenges.
So, what is systems leadership? I define it as the ability to master processes and strategies from different perspectives at the same time: physical and digital, breadth of market and depth of market, short term and long term, what’s good for the company and what’s good for its ecosystem. Systems leaders combine the IQ to understand their company’s technology and business model with the EQ to build effective teams and inspire them to new heights. They use short-term execution skills to hit their financial targets this year, while also driving changes that may not pay off for five or more years. They grasp the big picture and essential details simultaneously.
Critically, they understand how all the elements of an organization affect both internal and external stakeholders, and how interactions internally and externally shape a company’s outcomes.
As you set out to apply systems leadership, here are a few essential principles to keep handy.
Leader, know thyself. As far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, wise people have known how important it is to understand and work within their own strengths and weaknesses. This capacity separates systems leaders from others who react to challenges and provocations impulsively. An aphorism taught at GE’s Crotonville Center has stuck with me for many years: “Leadership is the ability to constrain a response to a given stimulus.” My greatest strength (my passion) is also my biggest weakness, and it took me years to stop sending counterproductive “flame emails” to colleagues who provoked my wrath. My struggle to constrain that response was difficult but essential. I’m not as good as I need to be, but I am better than I used to be.
Do the hard jobs yourself. You are never too senior or too important to get your hands dirty and model hard work for your team. This might include physically hard work, such as at a startup when everyone needs to load boxes onto a truck to make an urgent deadline for a customer. More likely, it will include emotionally hard work, such as deciding who will be laid off as part of an urgent cost reduction, and then telling the affected people directly. Don’t delegate such tasks to HR; even if a major layoff requires an experienced HR team to execute, you can volunteer to lead that team and communicate to everyone personally.
Be brave enough to say, “I don’t know.” Many leaders find it painful to feel ignorant, underprepared or vulnerable. Yet, especially during a crisis, it’s important to remember that no one has all the answers. It is okay to admit (both to yourself and your people) that you are not in control of what’s happening, and you need the team to work together to determine the best path forward. You want people to see you as a truth seeker, not a savant with all of the answers. Great leaders (especially startup founders) have a fierce desire to get it right but not necessarily to be right.
Listen to internal teammates you can trust. Leaders are often bombarded by suggestions and opinions, especially when serious trouble is brewing. It can be extremely tough to know which internal people you should trust. In my experience, while many mistakes stem from failing to listen to internal experts, others stem from listening to colleagues who are dead certain yet utterly wrong. Your mission is to surround yourself with a diverse team whose credibility is well established and who aren’t afraid to disagree with you—respectfully but, when necessary, firmly.
Find trusted partners outside the company. This is a corollary of acknowledging what you don’t know and being cautious about who you trust internally. Your peers, direct reports and even your bosses will often be inclined to tell you what you want to hear rather than share uncomfortable truths you need to hear. This problem only gets worse as you become more senior in an organization. That’s why trustworthy outside voices who understand your challenges are valuable. Consider reaching out to former mentors, teachers, members of your board or friends at other companies (as long as you’re not sharing material nonpublic information, of course).
Hold two truths at once. Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt often refers to the two essential truths that leaders must hold at the same time: Things can always get worse, yet there are always huge opportunities. Be wary if you find yourself believing only one of the two. Relentless pessimism will bring everyone around you down, but relentless optimism will make people question your grasp of reality. As Ecclesiastes, “the preacher,” wrote (and Ernest Hemingway titled one of his books): “The sun also rises.” No matter how good things are now, prepare for a challenging future. And no matter how bad things are now, take heart that bad times don’t last forever.
Watch where you spend your time, because the people who report to you are watching. There’s no clearer way to signal to everyone what you consider important than how you spend your days. No matter what adversity you’re facing at any moment, you still control your own calendar. Others will try to seize chunks of it against your will, perhaps literally, by sending unsolicited calendar invitations. Find the courage to push back and block time for whatever activities will create the most impact. For instance, if your best leverage comes from talking with your people, make it a priority to protect time on your calendar for critical interactions.
Be mindful of the difference between skill and luck. I’ll bet there have been times in your career when you succeeded because you were highly qualified, with the skills to make a valuable contribution to an organization. And there have probably been other times when you were simply lucky to be in the right place at the right time. The first thirty or so people hired at Google became wealthier than they could possibly imagine simply by holding on tight during that rocket launch. But their inordinate wealth had little connection to their contributions, no matter how valuable they were. I like to say that it’s better to be lucky than good, and it’s even better to be both. It will greatly help your perspective if you can acknowledge times when your luck mattered more than your skills. If nothing else, it will bring an awareness that the things you did during your lucky moments are not necessarily the playbook you should copy in the future. You actually have no idea if those previous actions were the ideal things to do in those situations.
Ask yourself if you’d rehire yourself today for your current job. I learned this concept from Stitch Fix founder Katrina Lake. She told my class that every year or two she asked herself and her leadership team: “If you were hiring for your job today, would you hire yourself? Are you the best person for the role now, rather than when you first got the job? If you’re no longer the best person, what are you going to do about it?” Such conversations are a powerful way to drive personal and professional development. But beware that they can be quite uncomfortable, especially if someone was outstanding when they reached their current position but now needs new skills for changing times.
Remember: You Have Free Will
Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky stirred up a flurry of conversations with his 2023 book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. His thesis is that we humans don’t really understand the “why” of most of our actions and decisions. What we consider free will is, he argues, some combination of instincts driven by evolution and chemical triggers. For instance, he reduces falling in love not to a magical spark of connection with someone else’s personality, intelligence or even physical attractiveness, but to how much we might simply enjoy another person’s smell. (For the record, I really like how my wife smells. But the coefficient of that variable is quite small compared to the many other attributes that have drawn me to her for three decades.)
Even if Sapolsky is right that we underestimate the impact of evolutionary biology—the extent to which we’re guided by subconscious imperatives to do whatever will help us survive and reproduce— I remain a stubborn believer in free will. My main counterargument: If there’s no free will, why would anyone choose to be a teacher? If everyone’s outcomes and decisions were predetermined, teachers would have very little impact on students, which I know isn’t true.
Most of us who stick with this profession see it as a higher calling—a deeply satisfying opportunity to give students the tools they need to be successful and to make a difference to their families, communities, companies and countries. This sense of a higher calling also applies to sports coaches. Consider basketball icon Doc Rivers, whom the NBA named one of the 15 greatest coaches in the league’s history. Interviewed for a documentary, Rivers said: “Some of the advice when I first got started was wrong. I was told, ‘Don’t get too close to [players] because some of them will let you down.’ Get close to them! Some do let you down, but so what? Your job is to coach them and make them better players, better people and better teammates. How to be tough, how to be compassionate, how to be a good winner and how to be a good loser. . . . I always tell them, ‘I am not going to coach you to who you are. I am going to coach you to who you should be someday.’”
Like Rivers, I embrace the joy of helping people become the best possible versions of themselves. And I believe my students have the free will to become whatever sorts of leaders they choose to be. Kind or bombastic? Empathetic or hard-assed? Ambitious or lazy? Working humbly to improve the world, or trying loudly and selfishly to grab the spotlight? The type who arranges for an NFL Hall of Famer to visit a sick employee, or the type who challenges a rival to fight in a cage match? All of those options and many more are open to them after learning about systems leadership—and to you, too, dear reader.
At least for now, science can’t conclusively resolve my debate with Sapolsky one way or the other. Nevertheless, I urge you to join me in believing in free will, now that you’ve encountered system leaders who have intentionally chosen how to steward their organizations. I hope you will remind yourself that how you act and react at any given moment is your choice. Your leadership style is not preordained, no matter what your mentors once taught you or what your bosses modeled early in your career.
Acting like a systems leader will feel hard sometimes, perhaps even impossible. But if you’ve gotten this far in this book, I have faith that you can incorporate these principles and strategies into your daily life. Just remember that you are not alone in accepting the higher calling of leading with gravitas, empathy, nuance, resilience, honesty, statesmanship, ambition and all the rest.
You can do this.
Adapted from THE SYSTEMS LEADER: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today’s Companies by Robert. E Siegel. Copyright © 2025 by Robert E. Siegel. Published in the United States by Crown Currency, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
