LEADERSHIP ISN'T A PEDESTAL. IT'S A PLACE IN THE CROWD.

Published 25.11.2025

Here’s the truth no leader likes to admit: the higher up we go, the further away we get from what’s actually happening.

Not because we’re bad at our jobs, not because we don’t care, but because the higher up we go, the easier it is to quietly float away from the reality of the "floor."

You get buried in “senior work.” Endless emails. Investor chats. Expansion planning. Admin that apparently must be done by someone with a "Very Important Title". 

And before long, you’re not leading with your team. You’re leading near them. At a polite, convenient distance, instead of someone who leads from the floor.

You start “leading” from behind the CCTV app on your phone. The one you "absolutely needed" to install, obviously, for “visibility.”

You start relying on Excel reports so overbuilt you need a minor astrophysics qualification just to make sense of the first tab.

You convince yourself you’re engaged… because you’re watching and reading everything about your own business.

Who is this? This is founders, COOs, Operations Directors, Heads of People, senior GMs. Anyone with a title shiny enough that people start editing the truth around them. And while the “top” is drifting upward, the business keeps moving forward…FAST!

  • Standards soften.

  • Training blurs.

  • Culture gets interpreted instead of delivered.

  • And the heartbeat of the business, the actual people doing the work, slowly start to feel like dots on a rota instead of the humans who built the place with you.

This isn’t neglect. This is distance. And distance, in hospitality, is deadly.

Because my belief hasn’t changed in thirty years of doing this. Real leadership isn’t standing in front of the group.

  • It’s standing in the group.

  • Arm in arm. Shoulder to shoulder.

  • In the noise, the chaos, and the joy, not above it.

You can’t protect a culture you’re too far away to feel. And you can’t run a people business through a phone screen and a spreadsheet.

Ask yourself the following. You might not enjoy your answer

When was the last time you worked an actual shift? Not a “pop in,” not a “walkthrough,” but a proper shoulder-to-shoulder shift?

If you walked into one of your sites today, would it feel like the business you think you’re running?

How many layers now sit between you and the truth?

Is the training you approved still happening, or is it now a five-minute box-ticking exercise everyone pretends is robust?

AND HERE"S THE TOUGH ONE

Are you doing the work that matters or just the work that makes you feel important?

 

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