Radical Alignment: How to Have Game-Changing Conversations That Will Transform Your Business and Your Life

by Alexandra Jamieson

Manipulative and charisma-driven leadership are being replaced with empathy-building conversations. Some of the best leaders are, in fact, the most relational and the humblest. Although this might sound like touchy-feely nonsense to hard-nosed traditionalists, consider that General Stanley McChrystal—former leader of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and commander of the US forces in Afghanistan—advocates for leaders to become more like gardeners. This, he says, has more to do with tending and empowering people than it does with being directive, making decisions, and giving orders.2 Psychologist Terry Real sums up the mindset of the twenty-first-century leader like this: “You’re not above the system, you’re a humble sub-component part of the system. You live inside of it. And it’s in your interest to keep it clean and healthy.”