THE WISDOM ORCHARD
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Where healthy leaders grow healthy organizations.
The Day I became the Boss I Swore I'd Never Be
And what a man named Don Karns taught me about the difference between leading and bossing
I still remember the morning it happened. I showed up to work at UPS and everything looked the same — the package cars, the routes, the faces I'd worked alongside for years. But something fundamental had shifted overnight. My browns were traded in for a white shirt and a dark tie. I was the boss now.
UPS was a private company in those days, and they had a strict promote-from-within policy. That meant something. It meant the people handing me the title knew my work, knew my character, and believed I had what it took. I believed it too. Maybe too much.
My assumption going in was simple and, as it turned out, completely wrong. I thought the delivery teams would want to perform at their best for me. We'd been side by side. They knew what I was made of. Surely that counted for something.
What I didn't understand — what nobody told me and I hadn't thought to ask — was that the relationship changes the moment the title does. I didn't wake up as a colleague who got promoted. I woke up as the boss. They saw it before I did.
The relationship changes the moment the title does. I didn't wake up as a colleague who got promoted. I woke up as the boss. They saw it before I did.
When the performance I expected didn't materialize, the frustration set in fast. And frustration, I learned, is a dangerous fuel for a new leader. It doesn't make you better. It makes you reach for the nearest available model of authority — which, in my case, was the boss I'd worked under before. The one I had quietly promised myself I would never become.
I became him anyway. I started managing through pressure and consequence. I punished those who didn't meet expectations. I became, as I came to think of it later, a hard ass. Not because I wanted to be. Because I didn't know what else to do, and the pressure to prove myself was relentless. I had always needed to be the best performer in the room. Now the room was different and I had no idea how to win in it.
This is the part of the story that most leadership books skip over. The wreckage between the mistake and the recovery. The weeks where you know something is wrong but you don't know what to do about it, so you just do more of the thing that isn't working.
ENTER DON KARNS
Don was the division manager. He didn't have a lot of formal education, a fact I mention not as a footnote but as the point. Because Don Karns was one of the finest leaders I have ever encountered in forty years of working with executives, organizations, and some of the most respected thinkers in the field of leadership development. His education came from paying close attention to people, and it showed in everything he did.
Don saw what was happening with me. More importantly, he saw through it — past the bossing behavior to the person underneath. What he recognized, and what I couldn't yet name myself, was that the hard-edged managing wasn't ambition. It was anxiety. My need to outperform everybody, to be recognized, to prove I deserved the title — it had curdled into something that was costing me the very thing I was trying to earn.
His first piece of advice was simple and it reoriented everything: go for respect, not affection.
Those five words were not a reprimand. They were a reframe. I wasn't being asked to stop caring about my drivers. I was being asked to care about them differently. Respect is a longer game than affection. It requires consistency, honesty, and follow-through. It sometimes means disappointing people in the short term for something more sustainable. Affection, I was learning, can be bought and lost overnight. Respect has to be earned — and kept.
Go for respect, not affection. Those five words were not a reprimand. They were a reframe.
Then Don gave me something to do with that philosophy. He called it talk, listen, and act. Fifteen minutes, regularly, with each of my drivers. Not a performance review. Not a check-in designed to catch problems. A genuine conversation: how can we improve your job in a way that benefits everyone?
And then — this was the part that mattered most — I had to commit to act. If I could address something, I would. If it was beyond my authority, I would say so honestly: I can't do that, but here's what I can do. No empty promises. No deflection. Just a straight answer and a follow-through.
It sounds simple. It is not easy. Especially when you've spent weeks burning trust and you're starting from a deficit.
THE FIRST THING THAT CHANGED
When I started showing up differently — consistently, honestly, with genuine curiosity about their work — something shifted. Not in them. In me. I had to change first. I had to earn back what I'd damaged. And that process, uncomfortable and humbling as it was, taught me something I have carried into every leadership engagement in the forty years since.
The leader always goes first.
Not in the sense of working harder or staying later. In the sense that the culture of a team reflects the behavior of its leader before it reflects anything else. If you want trust, you have to be trustworthy before you can expect trust back. If you want people to show up fully, you have to show up fully first. You cannot demand a response you haven't yet earned the right to expect.
Don also did something for me that went beyond the advice. He saw my self-doubt and gave me something to stand on. He helped me understand that being the best leader — not the best performer, not the hardest driver, but the best leader — was where I could put my need to excel and actually have it serve others instead of consuming them. He gave me a version of myself I could grow into rather than a set of behaviors I was supposed to perform.
I made peace, slowly, with the fact that failure didn't mean I was crap. I learned I was human. That turns out to be a prerequisite for leading other humans well.
WHY THIS STORY BELONGS HERE
The Wisdom Orchard exists because of stories like this one. Not because the UPS story is exceptional — it isn't. Some version of it lives in almost every leader I have ever worked with. The new supervisor who becomes the boss they swore they wouldn't be. The senior executive who still hears the voice that says they don't quite deserve the room they're in. The leader caught in disruption who keeps reaching for playbooks that no longer apply.
What is exceptional, I've come to believe, is having a Don Karns. Someone who sees you clearly and tells you the truth with enough care that you can actually hear it. Someone who offers not just philosophy but practice — something concrete to do with the insight so it doesn't just evaporate.
The Wisdom Orchard is my attempt to distill what that accumulation actually produced. Not a catalog of frameworks. Not a set of best practices assembled from books. But the living, tested, sometimes hard-won understanding of what actually helps people lead better — gathered from forty years of being in the room.
It's organized around stories, because stories reach people before frameworks do and stay with them longer after. The UPS story is the first one. There are many more.
As you enter the Wisdom Orchard, think about the leader you became instead of the leader you intended to be. What was the gap — and what would it take to close it?
Services
I am proud to have a long term association with some of the best leadership development tools available. For nearly 30 years, I have been leading workshops, coaching leaders, and consulting using The Leadership Challenge®. This research and behavior based approach continues to be the gold standard for leadership development. I am also privileged to be a licensed consultant for the Extreme Leadership course, developed by best selling author and friend, Steve Farber. I also continue my decades long relationship as a Sr. Consultant for the Tom Peters Company.
Leadership is a Learned Skill
We all start from a different and unique set of circumstances and experiences. What is not different is the skill set necessary to lead others. My personal journey, both as a leader and my corporate responsibilities for leadership development, led me to the Leadership Challenge model. Two reasons made it the clear choice. First, it is based on research from ordinary people who produced extraordinary results. While there are great lessons to be learned by studying the great leaders in history, the truth is most of us need real practical advice from people like us. Second, it works. By increasing the frequency of the five practices identified in the research (and explained below), each of us can become the very best leader we can. The following description of the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® is from the website, www.leadershipchallenge.com.
The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® resulted from an intensive research project to determine the leadership competencies that are essential to getting extraordinary things done in organizations. To conduct the research, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner collected thousands of “Personal Best” stories – the experiences people recalled when asked to think of a peak leadership experience.
Despite differences in people’s individual stories, their Personal Best Leadership Experiences revealed similar patterns of behavior. The study found that when leaders are at their personal best, they habitually:
Model the Way
Leaders establish principles concerning the way people (constituents, peers, colleagues, and customers alike) should be treated and the way goals should be pursued. They create standards of excellence and then set an example for others to follow. Because the prospect of complex change can overwhelm people and stifle action, they set interim goals so that people can achieve small wins as they work toward larger objectives. They unravel bureaucracy when it impedes action; they put up signposts when people are unsure of where to go or how to get there; and they create opportunities for victory.
Inspire a Shared Vision
Leaders passionately believe that they can make a difference. They envision the future, creating an ideal and unique image of what the organization can become. Through their magnetism and quiet persuasion, leaders enlist others in their dreams. They breathe life into their visions and get people to see exciting possibilities for the future.
Challenge the Process
Leaders search for opportunities to change the status quo. They look for innovative ways to improve the organization. In doing so, they experiment and take risks. And because leaders know that risk taking involves mistakes and failures, they accept the inevitable disappointments as learning opportunities.
Enable Others to Act
Leaders foster collaboration and build spirited teams. They actively involve others. Leaders understand that mutual respect is what sustains extraordinary efforts; they strive to create an atmosphere of trust and human dignity. They strengthen others, making each person feel capable and powerful.
Encourage the Heart
Accomplishing extraordinary things in organizations is hard work. To keep hope and determination alive, leaders recognize contributions that individuals make. In every winning team, the members need to share in the rewards of their efforts, so leaders celebrate accomplishments. They make people feel like heroes.
Finding the right model for your organization is critical. Engaging the best facilitator is equally important. We are proud of our track record of producing results. As the owner and lead facilitator, I insist that we present the model from a real world, practical approach. All of the facilitators at Michael T. Neiss and Associates have led teams and been responsible for organizational results. Read more here:
And a Mindset
Based on the best seller, The Radical Leap, by Steve Farber. The Extreme Leadership experience takes the leader on a introspective tour of his/her desire and commitment to lead. Think about extreme sport's athletes. Not the posers who dress the part in baggy shorts and pads, but the real ones..the committed ones who we sometime think are crazy! Well, we have a lot of posers in the leadership world. They dress the part, they study executive presence, they know some fancy trendy management words..but they don't actually take the radical LEAP to lead.
LEAP is an acronym that stands for: Love, Energy, Audacity, and Proof. Great leaders love what they do, who they do it with and who they do it for. Fostering love produces the energy to sustain excellent performance. Audacious goals and ambitions bolsters the commitment necessary to succeed. Proof is observable evidence of the leader's commitment, often made visible through OS!M's or politlely, oh poop moments!
The workshop experience gives the participant an uplifting and practical experience that increases their ability to engage others. Much more can be found by following the link below to Steve's website.
I am proud to continue my association with the Tom Peters Company as their US Leadership Consultant. Our primary tool is based on Tom's life work buidling excellence. We have tools to help organizations and indvidual leaders in their search for excellence!
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