Key Takeaway: Intelligent Leadership means facing reality, taking ownership, and using what you have — with your people, not instead of them — to get results.

Context

Intelligent Leadership is the disciplined practice of leading from reality, not fantasy — choosing ownership over victimhood and collaboration over control — and creating results with the resources you actually have through an intentional cycle of Prepare, Perform, and Prevail.

In plain language, an intelligent leader:

• Works with what is, not what they wish they had (Marcus Aurelius).

• Refuses the victim role (“You cannot be a victim and a leader at the same time” – Sharma).

• Resists the stress reflex to pull power in and shut people out.

• Creates with constraints, instead of fixating on what’s missing.

In times of stress you have a proclivity to pull power to yourself and keep workers out. For some this is already a tendency to micromanage. For others, it is a lack of trust that others can do it, or do it as well as you can.

Some Leaders also have a tendency to fixate on what they don’t have or what they think they must have to be successful at their project, program, tasks, etc. Go create what you want with what you have.

Framework

Phase 1 — PREPARE

How we set up the game.

Mindset: Reality-based, non-victim, inclusive.

• Clear objectives / rules

• Surface constraints and make them explicit

• Expectations / accountability

• Plan to debrief

Key Questions for Phase 1:

1. Reality check

• What is actually true about:

  • Time?

  • Budget?

  • People?

  • Authority?

• What are we assuming that might not be true?

2. Clarity and rules

• What does “success” look like in one sentence?

• What are the non-negotiables? (Ethics, safety, compliance, etc.)

• What decisions can the team make without coming back to me?

3. Expectations & accountability

• Who owns what, by when?

• How will we know if we’re on or off track?

• What accountability rhythm will we use? (Daily huddle, weekly check-in, etc.)

4. Constraints as design inputs

• What resources are we unlikely to get?

• Given that, how else could we still achieve the outcome?

Phase 2 — PERFORM

How we show up while the work is happening.

Mindset: Engaged, collaborative, non-controlling — especially under stress.

Key questions in Perform:

1. How do I stop the “power grab” under stress?

• When things get tense, ask yourself:

  • Is my urge right now to help or to control?

  • Is this decision better made at the level closest to the work?

  • What’s the smallest decision I can give back to the team?

2. How do we respond to constraints in real time?

• Given we don’t have X, what’s one creative way to still progress?

• Who else has a perspective that might open up a new option?

• Are we stuck because of an actual constraint, or a story we’re telling?

3. How do we keep people “in” instead of shutting them out?

• Who needs visibility into what’s happening?

• Where can I ask instead of tell?

• Where can I coach instead of rescue?

Phase 3 — PREVAIL

How we learn and get stronger because of the experience.

Mindset: Curious, non-defensive, focused on building better systems, not finding better excuses.

Key questions in Prevail:

1. What did we actually achieve?

• Did we hit the objective we defined in Prepare?

• Where did we fall short, and what did we learn?

2. How did we handle constraints and stress?

• Where did we slip into fantasy (“we’ll just magically get more resources”)?

• Where did we slip into victim (“we couldn’t do anything because…”)

• Where did I pull power in and unintentionally shut people out?

3. What will we keep, start, and stop?

• What practices helped us win under constraint?

• What patterns hurt us? (Overcommitting, unclear roles, avoiding conflict, etc.)

• What system or habit will we put in place so we don’t repeat the same mistake?

Final thoughts:

You are human, and as such there will be times you fall into the victim mentality. Give yourself the grace to understand what is happening, face it, and then change it. DON’T DWELL THERE.

• This builds on several Leadership models. As I have stated use the systems or parts of systems that work for you.

  • It’s Pragmatic Servant Leadership: serving people by giving them clarity and power instead of rescuing them.

  • It’s Adaptive Leadership in plain clothes: mobilizing people to face reality and solve problems without waiting for perfect conditions.

  • It’s Emotional Intelligence under pressure: noticing your stress reflex and choosing a better response.

Call to Action
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Book an Introduction Call 👉 Jeff Hill Consulting 15m Introduction

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