Years ago, I heard a story from Earl Nightingale’s Lead the Field that stuck with me.
A father, sitting in his recliner after work, bourbon and newspaper in hand, was interrupted by his six-year-old son tugging at his leg. The boy wanted attention, but the dad wanted peace. Spotting a full-page picture of the world in his newspaper, he tore it into pieces and told the boy, “Put this together, and then we’ll talk.”
A few minutes later, the son returned: “I’m done.”
The father couldn’t believe it… a six-year-old completing a world puzzle that fast? “How did you do it?” he asked.
“It was easy, Daddy,” the boy said. “There was a picture of a person on the other side. When I put the person together, the world came together.”
That story hit me because, for years, I thought everyone else needed to get better: my team, my clients, my company. I was stomping around, frustrated they weren’t “getting it.”
And then it clicked: the world wasn’t going to come together until I did. Leadership begins with the person, with us.
From Managing to Developing Leaders
Most of us are good leaders already. But the next stage isn’t about being a better leader, it’s about developing better leaders. Because when your team leads better, everything changes. Client experiences improve. Referrals multiply. Google reviews grow. Your business starts to expand without your constant involvement.
Our mantra has to be simple: Lead Better Now.
But before we can develop others, we have to look inward. Are we playing the right game?
The Finite and the Infinite
Simon Sinek describes two kinds of games:
- Finite games have clear players, rules, and an end. (Think baseball.)
- Infinite games have known and unknown players, shifting rules, and no finish line. The goal is simply to keep the game going.
Business is an infinite game. You don’t “win” business. You just stay in it as long as you have the will and resources to play.
But within that infinite game, you play dozens of finite games: consultations, cases, marketing campaigns, hiring decisions. Each has a beginning, middle, and end.
The danger comes when we treat every part of business like a battle to win or lose. We live in constant fight mode (highs and lows, victories and defeats) until we’re exhausted. But the truth is, the game never ends. The real challenge is learning to lead from an infinite mindset while managing the finite systems that keep your firm alive.
Leadership Is Maintenance
Think of your law firm as a manufacturing plant.
Your machines can’t break down, so you maintain them. You grease, repair, and proactively care for them.
Now translate that to your business: your “machines” are your people. And the “grease” is leadership, the proactive maintenance that keeps humans from breaking.
Run your leadership reactively, and you’re always dealing with breakdowns. Run it proactively, and your people (and you) last longer.
Because here’s the truth: we’re not managing machines. We’re leading humans. And humans are messy, emotional, complex. They have good days and bad days, personal issues, wins, losses.
That’s what makes leadership hard and meaningful.
Trust and the Circle of Safety
Sinek says, “The real job of a leader is not to be in charge, but to take care of those in our charge.”
Leadership isn’t about authority. It’s about responsibility.
Our role is to create what he calls a Circle of Safety, an environment where people feel protected, seen, and valued. When people feel safe, they cooperate, take risks, and grow. When they don’t, fear and self-preservation take over.
As an example, one of our members had a paralegal stay for ten years; through law school, through passing the bar, etc. because she created a Circle of Safety. That’s what trust looks like in real life.
High Performance vs. High Trust
The Navy SEALs use a simple graph to evaluate team members:
Performance (on the battlefield) on one axis, Trust (off the battlefield) on the other.
Everyone wants the high performer / high trust team member.
Nobody wants the low performer / low trust person.
But the dangerous one, the one that destroys teams, is the high performer / low trust person.
That’s the toxic high achiever, the one who wins battles but poisons culture. In business, we often reward those people with promotions and bonuses, while the quiet, loyal, medium-performing, high-trust team member gets overlooked. But the SEALs, the highest-performing organization in the world, would rather have a medium performer they trust than a star who breeds toxicity.
You probably already know who the “asshole” is on your team. And if you don’t… it might be you.
The Cost of Leadership
Leadership comes with perks… the nicer office, the flexible schedule, the higher pay. But those perks come with a price: when danger comes, leaders must run toward it.
If you feel guilty taking a Friday off or leaving early because you think your team resents it, something’s off. In a healthy environment, your team celebrates your freedom because they trust that you want the same for them.
Trust and loyalty are born when people feel seen, heard, and protected.
In the military, a Marine can be dismissed not for failure of skill, but for failure of integrity. That’s what core values are for, they define how we behave when no one’s watching.
Your firm’s core values must serve as your leadership standards: the non-negotiables that shape trust and culture. They’re what protect your “circle of safety.”
It’s the Environment, Not the People
Sinek tells a story of two hotels in Las Vegas.
At the Four Seasons, the barista smiled, engaged, and loved his job. He asked why? Because managers regularly asked, “How are you doing? What do you need to do your job better?”
The same barista also worked at Caesar’s Palace. There, managers hovered to “catch” mistakes.
Same person. Two environments. Two completely different performances.
It’s not the people, it’s the leadership.
Create the right environment, and you’ll get “Four Seasons” behavior. Create the wrong one, and you’ll get “Caesar’s Palace” behavior.
People tend to good. They want to belong, to matter, to feel seen. But being a good human takes work, empathy, patience, and optimism. Leadership is the ongoing process of helping people rediscover their best selves.
When cynicism creeps in (and it will) remember that optimism isn’t naïve. It’s the belief that, if we take care of one another, the future will be bright.
Recruiting for the Right Kind of Hard
There’s a story about Marine recruiters visiting a high school.
The Air Force, Navy, and Army all gave polished PowerPoints exactly why you should join their respective groups.
But the Marine recruiter stood up and said, “I don’t think any of you are good enough to be Marines. But if you think I’m wrong, I’ll be at the back.”
He wasn’t selling, he was filtering. The Marines know what kind of person they’re looking for: someone who embraces challenge and service.
Your law firm should do the same. Don’t just hire people who can do the job. Hire people who can lead.
Lead Better Now
Most workplaces are wired to catch people doing things wrong. Start to flip it. Catch them doing things right and celebrate it.
Ask about their dreams. Post them on a wall. Help your team grow as humans, not just as employees.
When people feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves, they’ll do more than you ever imagined.
Leadership is messy, hard, and ongoing… kind of like raising kids. You don’t “finish” it. You grow with it.
The greatest joy in life comes from serving those who serve others. That’s our calling. That’s our purpose.
And like that little boy said… when we put the person together, the world comes together.
