The Leadership Code: How Great Leaders Use Head, Gut, and Heart
The three traits that separate good leaders from great leaders
One of my previous managers was so sharp technically that he could draw the architecture diagram of our entire domain from his memory. But when the team was under pressure and needed him to make tough calls, he would disappear.
Another manager I’ve worked with was extremely bold and courageous, and sounded confident in meetings, but when someone would ask him a deeper technical question, he wouldn’t know how to respond to it.
That got me thinking: what really makes a great leader? What’s the secret sauce of the top 0.1 or 0.01% leaders?
Over the years, as I observed leaders across all levels and industries, I came to one simple conclusion:
Great leaders are talented, experienced, and sometimes charismatic.
But the best leaders - the greatest of them all - have cracked what I call The Leadership Code. They lead not just with their head, but with their gut, and their heart.
What do I mean by that? Well, you’ll find out exactly that in this article. Plus, you will learn how this code works, and how you can apply it in your own leadership role.
Here’s what we will cover in this issue:
Part 1: Understanding the Leadership Code
Competence: Leading With Your Head
Courage: Leading With Your Gut
Character: Leading With Your Heart
The Power of All Three
Part 2: Cracking the Leadership Code
The Head-Gut-Heart Habit Builder
Real-Life Leadership Scenarios
The Leadership Code Worksheet
Part 3: Going from here
References
Final Thoughts
Ready to dive in? Let’s go! 🚀
Part 1: Understanding the Leadership Code
The Leadership Code is built on three timeless traits that show up in every great leader I’ve ever worked with:
Competence - leading with your head
Courage - leading with your gut
Character - leading with your heart
Let’s explore each one in a bit more detail.
Competence: Leading With Your Head
Competence is about knowing your field, your business, and your craft, and continuously learning as it evolves.
It’s your ability to make smart decisions, solve complex problems, and guide your team with clarity.
It’s about having a growth mindset, and being intentional about how you move forward.
It’s about acknowledging when you don’t know the answer, and giving your team space to lead and grow.
👉🏼 Great leaders stay sharp. They study their field, their business, and their people. They build real credibility by doing the work, not bluffing it.
Courage: Leading With Your Gut
Courage is about taking bold action, even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
It’s your ability to speak the hard truth, challenge old assumptions, and embrace the unknown.
It’s about taking calculated risks rather than always playing safe, and doing this consistently.
It’s about making decisions without all the data, and backing your team when things go wrong.
👉🏼 Great leaders don’t wait for permission. They lead with conviction, and move forward even when the path isn’t clear.
Character: Leading With Your Heart
Character is about doing the right thing, especially when no one’s watching.
It’s your ability to lead with integrity, show humility, and stay grounded in your values.
It’s about treating people with respect, owning your mistakes, and holding yourself to a higher standard than anyone else would.
It’s about always walking the talk, and being the kind of leader people trust.
👉🏼 Great leaders earn loyalty by leading with honesty. They hold themselves true to their values and principles, and always make decisions in alignment with them.
The Power of All Three
Each trait - Competence, Courage, Character - matters on its own, but when you overuse one and ignore the other, that leads to poor outcomes.
Competence without Character becomes arrogance. Remember the brilliant leaders who would butcher their way to release products at any cost?
Courage without Competence becomes recklessness. Remember the over-confident boss who led his team down the drain because he didn’t know what he was doing?
Character without Courage becomes passivity. Remember the leader who would see BS all around him but not have the guts to call it out?
But when you lead with head, gut, and heart together, you earn trust and build real momentum.
But how do you apply, or should I say, crack this leadership code in practice? That’s exactly what we will learn in the next section.
Enjoying the read? Hit the ❤️ button and share/restack 🔁 it with others who might find it helpful. You can also subscribe to The Good Boss for more posts like this every week. Thank you! 🙏
Part 2: Cracking the Leadership Code
Reading about the Leadership Code is one thing. Applying it when your calendar is packed and your team is buried in Slack threads is another.
In this section, you will learn how to crack the Leadership Code in your role as a leader.
We will start by reviewing The Head-Gut-Heart Habit Builder, an easy way to build the habits that help you apply all three elements of the code.
We will then discuss some common real-life leadership scenarios, and how you would apply the code in each of those.
Finally, we will make it real with the Leadership Code Worksheet, which will help you build your muscle in applying and using the code in your leadership role.
👉🏼 If you’d like to see how these tools, scenarios and worksheets fit together as part of a broader practice system, you can explore the ⚙️ The Good Boss Practitioner space - where leaders apply these frameworks in real situations.