Alexander the Great understood that loyalty isn’t demanded. It’s earned.
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One of the most dangerous myths in the corporate world is that a title makes you a leader. In my experience, a title is just a label on a door. True leadership is found in the trenches, forged through influence and presence rather than authority. I often tell my teams that if you have to remind people of your rank to get things done, you’ve already lost the battle.
This principle—leading from the front—is something I’ve carried with me since my earliest days as an intern, and it’s a lesson that echoes back to the very battlefields of Alexander the Great.
Alexander understood that loyalty isn’t demanded. It’s earned. He was a brilliant military and strategic leader. But he didn’t command his phalanx from a safe distance. Instead, he was right there, bleeding with them. During the punishing march through the Gedrosian Desert, when thirst was killing his men, his soldiers found a small amount of water and offered it to him. In a moment that defined his leadership, Alexander refused to drink because there wasn’t enough for everyone. By sharing their hardships, he showed his troops that he was invested in their world, not just their output. He demonstrated solidarity that ensured his men would, as I like to say in The Godfather parlance, “go to the mattresses” for him.
I learned the modern version of this lesson when I was a twenty-year-old intern at General Motors. I was a kid tasked with getting veteran union electricians—men double or triple my age who didn’t suffer fools gladly—to complete projects. I thought I’d just go in there and tell them my ideas, and we’d be good to go. That went about as well as you can imagine.
My father then gave me some of the best advice of my life: “Listen to people in the trenches and seek advice from them to solve problems.”
Instead of acting like a “boss,” I soon spent my time in the break rooms and on the manufacturing floor with them. I brought donuts and coffee, but more importantly, I brought questions. I asked for their expertise on designs and involved them in the problem-solving process. I quickly realized that technical expertise is never enough. You have to understand the human motivations and the “hidden cultures” of how work actually gets done. By showing them I wanted to be part of their world, I gained an influence that no formal title could ever provide.
This evolved into the “management by walking around” (MBWA) approach, initially made famous by the leaders of Hewlett-Packard1. Throughout my career, even as an executive, I’ve resisted the isolation of the corner office. During my years in energy trading, I kept a desk right on the trade floor, so I was visibly and dependably present. I wanted to be in the flow of the everyday workspace, where communication is quick, and decisions are made in real-time.
The true test of this “trench leadership” for me came during Winter Storm Uri. When the Texas power grid was minutes from collapse, I wasn’t merely directing from the helm of a battleship; I was in the fire with my team. We worked twenty-hour days together, fueled by vending machine food and pots of not-great coffee. Because we had years of pre-existing trust built through MBWA, my team didn’t need to be micromanaged. They knew I had their backs, which gave them the “pocket ace”—the psychological safety to act decisively without fear of blame.
Leading from the front means recognizing that the fate of the leader and the team are inextricably linked. Whether you are an intern at a car plant or an executive navigating a $2 billion financial loss, your most powerful tool is your presence. If you want a team that is fiercely loyal and resilient under pressure, you have to be willing to leave your office, walk the floor, and, when the storm hits, be the first one to pick up a shovel. Leadership is not a solo act.
Alexander the Great knew that to command respect, he had to earn it. And this is a lesson every leader needs to embrace.
1. David Packard, The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company (New York: HarperBusiness, 2006, reprint edition).