6 Pillars of Leadership Where Most of Us Struggle

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6 Pillars of Leadership Most Bosses Get Backwards

You can’t cheat the harvest. Not in farming, not in funeral service, and not in leadership. That’s the line I kept coming back to after tonight’s conversation with Jay Jacobson, author of Lead by Legendary Example — a book forged inside a profession with zero room to fake competence: funeral service. Forty years of leading people through the worst day of their lives taught Jacobson something most executive coaches never pick up in a classroom. Leadership isn’t a title, a slide deck, or a TED Talk. It’s what you do when nobody’s applauding.

Jacobson’s framework rests on six leadership pillars — Integrity, Presence, Vision, Servant Leadership, Adaptability, and Mentorship — and the mistake most bosses make is treating them like a checklist instead of a practice. They chase vision before they’ve earned presence. They demand loyalty before they’ve modeled integrity. Tonight, Jacobson walked us through a grandfather-and-grandson story that reframed what dignity in leadership actually looks like, and a piece of his own history — assisting families after the Sioux City air disaster and later testifying before the U.S. Senate — that shows exactly what these leadership pillars look like when the stakes are real and there’s no script to follow.

Here’s the part that stuck with me most: trust isn’t built in the big speech. It’s built in the routine call you actually prepared for. I tell my coaching clients and hockey parents the same thing — character shows up in the boring repetitions, not the highlight reel. If you run a team, a business, or a household, this episode hands you a mirror. Which of these six pillars are you skipping because it’s inconvenient, and which one is quietly costing you the trust you’re trying to build?

You don’t have to take my word for how it unfolds — watch it yourself. The full replay of tonight’s episode of A New Direction with Jay Jacobson is live now on YouTube and available everywhere you get your podcasts. If you lead people — at work, at home, or on a bench — block out 45 minutes and let Jacobson’s version of legendary leadership put yours to the test. Then tell me in the comments: which pillar are you getting backwards?

Jay Jacobson‘s book, “Lead by Legendary Example” is a combination of real stories, and practical psychological and behavioral practices that anyone can employ right now. You don’t have to wait to make things happen with these 6 pillars of leadership, you can start today, this very moment.

This book is also special because not only is it a book that you will read, but at the end of each chapter he has simple practical exercises that you can do to change you. And the second half of the book are 10 sessions that you can even train your team on.

The real point of the book however is one that many of us struggle to comprehend. Change does not come from performing better, real change occurs because we changed our internal selves. We make a choice through our mind, will and emotions to change the way think so that we can become the leaders and practice the leadership that can be within all of us…if we make that choice.

I loved this book. It read so fast. The stories are real and the insights that Jay Jacobson pulls out of them are relevant and poignant. This book is for everyone. Not simply “business leaders” it is for all of us who interact with others, because we are all leaders in one way or another. This book is for you and me!

Get your copy of Lead by Legendary Example by clicking here.

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ABOUT YOUR HOST

Meet Jay Izso

Executive Performance Coach | Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

Who I Am

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

Where This Comes From

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.