I’ve said my New Year’s resolution is to answer a bigger call, and I meant it. The problem is that Q1 doesn’t politely make space for transformation. It shows up with pressure, deadlines, and an endless list of reasons to default to old habits.
So if I’m serious about answering a bigger call this year, I can’t rely on motivation. I need lessons that hold up when the stakes are real and time feels compressed. These are the ones I’m carrying with me, pulled straight from the conversations at our Surrender to Lead Summit, where we focused on what leadership looks like when it’s under load.
1) Hold people accountable for results but not how they get there. – Scott Wine
Scott Wine put his finger on one of the easiest leadership mistakes to make in Q1. The tighter the deadlines, the more leaders start controlling execution. Not because they don’t trust their people, but because the pressure makes it feel safer to hold the wheel.
His point was simple and sharp: you don’t build ownership by hovering. You build ownership by being crystal clear about the outcome, then giving people room to use their judgment. The leader’s job is to set the standard, remove barriers, and hold the line when things drift. But when you dictate every move, you don’t get accountability. You get compliance.
Scott deserves real credit for saying this out loud because it’s the exact opposite of what most leaders do when the heat turns up.
2) Don’t overcomplicate accountability. – Scott Wine
Scott also delivered one of the most practical accountability reminders from the Summit: when accountability becomes complicated, it stops working.
In Q1, complexity doesn’t feel strategic, it feels like friction. It creates loopholes. It turns execution into process. It gives people endless places to hide inside “alignment” instead of producing results.
Scott’s lesson is a leadership filter I’m keeping close: keep accountability clean. One owner. One outcome. A clear check-in point. A real expectation of follow-through. The simplest version wins, especially when time is compressed and consequences show up fast.
3) Most leaders were trained for a world that no longer exists. – Janna Salokangas
Janna Salokangas said something a lot of leaders feel privately but rarely admit publicly. Most of us were trained for stability. For slower cycles. For a world where decisions didn’t compound at the speed they do now.
But that world is gone. Teams today don’t need leaders who default to control and caution. They need leaders who can create clarity quickly, build trust intentionally, and move with speed without turning everything into chaos.
Janna’s insight matters because it gives leaders permission to stop using old instincts as the standard. Not every “proven” leadership habit is still useful. In this environment, the ability to adapt your leadership style is not optional. It’s a performance requirement.
4) Trust is the only thing that moves faster than fear. – John Barrand
John Barrand gave one of the cleanest truths of the Summit. Fear moves fast, especially when expectations are public and pressure is high. It spreads quietly through hesitation, second guessing, and self-protection.
But trust can move faster, and when it does, it changes everything. Trust creates speed without panic. It creates ownership without constant oversight. It creates decision-making without paralysis.
John deserves credit because he framed trust as a real leadership lever, not a soft value. In Q1, trust isn’t something you hope you have. It’s something you build on purpose through what you reinforce, what you tolerate, and what you do when people take a swing and miss.
These lessons came straight from our Surrender to Lead Summit, because leaders are tired of pretending the pressure is “just part of the job.” People are burning out, execution is breaking down, and trust is getting sacrificed in the name of speed.
Q1 is going to test your leadership. The question is whether you respond with control, or respond with standards and trust.
Surrender to Lead releases January 27, and it goes on sale next week. Preorder to lock in access to our VIP Workshop, where we help you build the discipline and accountability to lead through pressure without taking your team down with you.
Preorder details are in the comments.
Elsewhere In Culture
https://www.businessinsider.com/captialism-sink-or-swim-era-work-2026-1
Business Insider just featured me in an article about America’s new “sink or swim” era of work, and I didn’t sugarcoat what’shappening. When COVID hit, the power dynamic shifted hard toward employees during the Great Resignation. Companies had to compete for talent, bend on flexibility, and prove they could keep people. That pendulum swung really far. Now it’s swinging back, and a lot of leaders are acting like the era of loyalty and perks never existed.
What I said in the piece is simple: CEOs are under intense pressure from investors and shareholders to keep growing, and that pressure gets pushed down onto employees. You can see it in stricter performance expectations, fewer safety nets, and the rising feeling that your job is only as secure as your last measurable impact. That might be “the market,” but leaders still have a choice in how they run their organizations inside that reality. You can raise standards without turning work into a threat response, and the companies that figure that out are the ones that will win Q1 and keep their best people once the pendulum swings again.
Andy Jassy’s comments on tariffs driving up prices are a reminder that most “culture problems” start as business problems. When costs jump and margins are thin, there’s nowhere to hide. Leaders have to make real decisions fast, and the pressure doesn’t stay in the boardroom. It gets pushed through the system, and employees feel it in the form of tighter budgets, higher performance demands, harsher tradeoffs, and less patience for mistakes. That’s when culture stops being a set of values on a slide deck and becomes the lived experience of doing more with less while trying to protect the customer.
This is where leadership either earns trust or burns it. Teams can handle hard realities when the priorities are clear and the decisions make sense. They lose confidence when leaders pretend everything is fine, communicate in vague optimism, or quietly shift the burden onto employees without acknowledging the cost. Tariffs might force higher prices, but they also force a clarity moment inside the organization: what gets protected, what gets cut, and what outcomes matter most. When leaders make those calls with honesty and consistency, culture becomes a performance advantage, because people know what winning looks like and they trust the plan enough to execute it.