The cost of leadership no one talks about
God didn't hand the crown to King David.
God handed David Goliath.
That's it. That's the whole story of real leadership.
The crown was never the point. Goliath was. The dips, the sleepless nights, the moments you wondered if you had what it takes.
Batman didn't become Batman without the Joker.
And you won't become who your family business needs without the cost that come from the journey you and I have embarked on!
A football coach named Kirby Smart, Georgia’s head coach, has been thinking about this longer than most.
He articulated the three costs of great leadership better than anyone I've heard:
You will MAKE HARD DECISIONS that negatively affect people you care about.
You will BE DISLIKED (maybe despised…)— despite doing your best for the most.
You will BE MISUNDERSTOOD — and won't always have the opportunity to defend yourself.
Read those again. Slowly.
These aren't warnings. They're the toll you must pay to great leadership.
The cost of HARD DECISIONS.
George Marshall had to recommend a commander for the most consequential military operation in human history.
He chose Eisenhower — passing over senior generals, close friends, men whose careers effectively ended with that decision.
Marshall knew what the choice would cost personally. He made it anyway.
The mission required it.
The cost of BEING DISLIKED.
Paul Volcker raised interest rates to 20%.
Congress despised him. The public despised him. Editorials called for his removal.
He held.
Inflation broke. The American economy recovered. Volcker is now regarded as one of the great public servants of the 20th century.
Time has a way of doing that.
The cost of BEING MISUNDERSTOOD.
In 1985, Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple. The company he started!
The narrative was humiliation. Instability. Failure.
He couldn't tell his side. He had to sit with it.
Twelve years later he returned. What followed was the greatest comeback in business history.
He let time do the work.
Here's what I’m learning from across industries and across generations of family business:
Most people in leadership positions have more talent than character.
They are overextended.
They avoid hard calls. They need to be liked. They need to be understood. They optimize for the short game because the long game is too expensive.
The greats are not overextended.
The greats have internalized what Heraclitus said 2,500 years ago:
"Character is fate."
Not talent. Not strategy. Not relationships.
Character.
The costs of leadership — the hard calls, the loneliness, the misunderstanding are not obstacles to the mission. They are the price of playing the long game in service to something worth building.
True stewards pay the cost.
Onward,
Matt
P.S. Which of the three costs do you find hardest to accept? I'd genuinely like to know.
P.P.S. This is why the meaning of our work matters because there is a cost. (The why keeps us going. No matter what.)
