Most leaders are chasing the wrong thing.
They're watching the scoreboard when they should be watching their people. They're protecting their position when they should be developing the person who might one day take it. They're measuring success in outcomes when the real measure is something harder to quantify and far more important. I have said for years, “Never celebrate bad tactics.”
There have been hundreds of operations my teams have gone to. Some more intense than others. At the end, there were often high fives and celebratory actions because the mission was accomplished successfully. But, in those instances, were we really successful as a team? Just because the end result landed where we wanted it, did we do it right? Often times, there were several issues with the tactics involved to get that result. We just didn’t get challenged in a way that particular day that would expose our failures. So as a leader, I needed to understand how and when to expose our failures and correct our path for the next challenge so it wouldn’t be the death of us.
Results are a byproduct of purpose. If you don't understand that, you'll spend your entire career winning in the short-term and losing everything that matters in the long-term.
The Leader Who's Threatened by Talent
I've seen it more times than I can count. A high performer joins a team and instead of being developed, they get managed down. Kept at arm's length. Given just enough to stay but never enough to grow because the leader above them sees talent as a threat instead of an asset.
That leader is destined to fail. Not only that, but they are also positioning their team to fail right alongside them. This won’t happen immediately. Maybe not even visibly for a while. But, eventually the talent leaves, the culture hollows out, and what's left is a team of people who learned that keeping their head down was safer than standing out. You can't build anything great on that foundation.
The best leaders I've ever been around did the opposite. They found talent, poured into it, pushed it, and genuinely wanted to see it surpass them. Not because it was good strategy (though it is), but because developing people was the whole point.
That's purpose. And purpose is what drives results that actually last.
What It Means to Lead with Purpose
Leading with purpose means you wake up knowing your job isn't to be the best person on the team. Your job is to make the team better.
It means every interaction is an investment. Every hard conversation, every standard you hold, every moment you choose to develop instead of just direct … It compounds. Six months later, a year later, five years later, the people around you are sharper, more capable, and more confident because you were intentional about building them up.
That's not soft. That's the hardest version of leadership there is. It requires you to check your ego at the door every single day and ask a question that most leaders never ask:
“Am I building people who will be better than me?”
If the answer makes you uncomfortable, that's worth paying attention to. A leader should be mentally exhausted at the end of EVERY day. Every person on your team is different. They have their own set of values, wants, morals, motivations, needs, desires and dreams. Every human being needs feedback consistently. Every person on your team has to be treated according to who they are. Every person on your team deserves a leader that is willing to develop them and be intentional on how they lead.
Results Will Follow. They Always Do.
Here's what I know from leading in environments where the margin for error is almost zero. When people are developed with purpose, when they're trusted, challenged, and genuinely invested in, they perform at a level that no performance review or incentive structure can manufacture.
They don't need to be pushed. They push themselves.
They don't need to be watched. They hold each other accountable.
They don't just meet the standard. They raise it.
And the results? They show up. Not because anyone was chasing them, but because a team of people who believe in what they're doing and trust the person leading them is simply hard to stop.
That's not a theory. That's what I have watched happen on the teams I’ve led. And it's what I see happen with every leader who commits to this way of thinking.
The Legacy Question.
At the end of your career, or even just at the end of this season of leadership, the scoreboard won't be the thing that defines you.
The thing that defines you is the people you built. The leaders who came out of your teams. The ones who took what you poured into them and went on to lead with the same standard and also had the same dedication to improvement and learning that you instilled in them. The largest success any leader will ever achieve is for their successor to do the job better than they ever could.
That's a legacy. Numbers on a scoreboard are not.
So, the question isn't whether you're producing results. The question is whether you're building people who will produce results long after you're gone.
If you are, everything else takes care of itself. If you aren’t, we are here to help.
Jeremy Edmonson is the founder of Forge Axis, a leadership coaching and development practice built on 20+ years of leading high-performance teams in law enforcement. He works with business owners, organizations, executives, and team leaders who are ready to develop highly efficient teams and long-term results.
