Focus the organization and fuel the people. It’s easy for leaders in business to get caught up in managing others and accomplishing tasks over connection and introspection. As we learn in today’s episode, 77% of leadership comes from who a leader is, and not what they do. Our guest presents a case—backed up by industry data and statistics—for becoming inwardly sound and others-focused as the two key traits of the most efficient and effective leaders.

We have interviewed Tim Spiker, a leadership advisor, author of The Only Leaders Worth Following (2019), and the founder and President of The Aperio.

1) What role do systems and processes play in your who, not what principle?

There is a process by which people can grow and develop into better human beings. When we look at leadership development, our process is aimed at making people more well-developed human beings because it creates a better bottom-line result.

2) What’s the broad idea behind how “77% of leadership comes from who a leader is, and not what they do”?

I worked for a consulting firm, and we would put leaders through a series of leadership assessments and experiences on the West Side of Pike’s Peak. Inevitably, we’d get questions from them like, “What’s the magic mix of personality and natural ability that helps to create a more effective leader?” We had enough data to look into that question; so we crunched the numbers and discovered that there was no correlation.

However, our analysis did find some other correlations. We had eight aspects of leadership that were being measured on our assessment. What the software run had found is that just two of those areas were accounting for almost 70% of the variability on the assessment. If you divide a pie into eight pieces, any two pieces should only be worth 25%. Years later, when we had ten times the number of data points, another analysis was run and found that those two areas had gone up to 77% in accounting for the variability of the assessment.

I realized that those two aspects of leadership that were driving all of that variability were a function of who you are as a leader, as opposed to what you do.

3) What do you mean by “who you are”?

We have a whole lot of stereotypes around what the “ideal” leader looks like, most of which are true. By “who”, we mean inwardly sound and others-focused. These two traits materially impact everything that we do as leaders in a positive way. It’s not that what we do doesn’t matter. It’s that what we do is highly impacted by how inwardly-sound and others-focused we are. And a huge part of that is being secure in who you are as a leader.

4) What was the worst experience you ever had on your journey as an entrepreneur and leader?

There was once an opportunity where I was working in an organization, and the person that I reported to was part of the executive committee. One day, at an executive committee meeting, I was asked to do a presentation on somethings that we were working on, and there was a snippet of a detail where I had said something different than the person I was reporting to. This person was very concerned about how others in the room might perceive that difference, even if it was just a minor detail. My boss talked to me afterward and when we got to the topic of that part of the meeting and he got really quiet before saying that it was time for me to start protecting both him and myself. After that, I had to provide reports every single week detailing every single thing that I was doing. After a few years, I realized that I had to move on from this really unhealthy, insecure leader who was lacking in self-awareness.

5) What advice would you give to those who might be in a similar situation that you were in at the time?

The simplest answer to tell them is, “Hey, this isn’t going to get better. You might as well start looking elsewhere right now.” This brings to mind the quote: “When somebody shows you who they are, you...