My Mount Rushmore of Leadership

If you could carve four faces into a mountain to represent the leaders who shaped how you show up at work, whose faces would be on it?

I get asked a lot about where my leadership style comes from — mentors, bosses, hard lessons learned the hard way. All of that is true. But if I'm honest, four authors have done more to shape how I lead than almost anyone I've worked directly for. I've never met any of them. I've read their books, underlined them, incorporated their ideas into presentations and meetings, and tried (imperfectly) to live them out.

So here's my "Mount Rushmore" of leadership — the four thinkers who are permanently carved into how I lead.

Kim Scott: Kindness Is Being Direct

I've written before about how Kim Scott's Radical Candor changed how I think about feedback, and she still earns the first spot on the mountain. Her core idea sounds simple — care personally, challenge directly — but it flips a belief most of us grew up with: that being nice means staying quiet.

Kim's work, and her follow-up book Just Work, taught me the opposite. Silence isn't kindness. Withholding the thing someone needs to hear because you don't want to see them uncomfortable for thirty seconds isn't compassion — it's avoidance dressed up as niceness. As a Midwesterner raised by a strong Southern mom, Kim's perspective challenged my core upbringing. I learned, with practice, that the kindest thing I can do for anyone I care about is tell them the truth, with care, while it's still useful to them.

How this shows up for me: Before I skip a hard conversation, I ask myself who I'm actually protecting — them or me. Nine times out of ten, it's me. My mind wants me to do the easy thing and say nothing. But if I care about the other person — and I care about 99% of people — I know the right thing to do is say something.

Simon Sinek: Leadership Is a Responsibility, Not a Reward

Simon Sinek earns his spot for reframing what leadership actually is. Between Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, his work strips away the idea that leadership is a title, a corner office, or a reward for doing good individual-contributor work. It's a responsibility you take on — for the people, not over them.

The phrase "leaders eat last" has stuck with me longer than almost anything else I've read on leadership. It traces back to Simon's study of military leaders and how they insist their troops eat first. It serves as a reminder that the job changes when you become responsible for other people's growth, safety, and success. You don't get to lead and still put yourself first. The moment you accept a leadership role, you've signed up to put your people first.

How this shows up for me: When things get hard, I try to ask "what does my team need from me right now" before I ask "what do I need right now."

Adam Grant: Flexible Thinking Solves the Problems Certainty Can't

Adam Grant is on the mountain because he gave me permission to change my mind — and taught me that's a strength, not a weakness. Think Again and Originals both make the same underlying case: the leaders who solve the hardest problems aren't the ones who are most certain. They're the ones willing to think like scientists — treating their opinions as hypotheses, not identities.

This resonated with me because, before I wanted to be a marketer, I wanted to be a scientist. In fact, one of the clearest scientific ideas that stuck with me from those days was that a scientist can never prove something is 100% true — only that something is wrong.

Before Adam Grant, I confused conviction with competence. I thought a good leader had a firm answer for everything. Now I think a good leader holds their answers loosely enough to update them when the evidence — or the team in the room — says something different.

How this shows up for me: I try to make "I changed my mind because..." a normal sentence on my team, not an admission of failure.

Brené Brown: Courage Is a Practice, Not a Personality Trait

Brené Brown rounds out the mountain because she made courage practical. Dare to Lead is built on research, not platitudes, and it breaks down bravery into specific, learnable behaviors — rumbling with vulnerability, living into your values, braving trust, and learning to rise. That framing matters to me because it means courage isn't something you either have or don't. It's something you build, one uncomfortable conversation at a time. Like a doctor's practice, it's about progress, not perfection.

Her newest book, Strong Ground, takes that same idea and points it at this exact moment — leading well when bluster and cruelty are increasingly mistaken for strength. It's a good reminder that the practice of courageous leadership isn't a one-time lesson from a decade-old book. It's ongoing work, and she's still doing it in public.

Her work also gave me language for something I'd felt but couldn't name: that armor — perfectionism, cynicism, knowing it all — feels safe in the moment but quietly erodes trust over time. Authentic leadership means taking the armor off on purpose, even when it's easier to keep it on.

How this shows up for me: I know and trust my values and continuously practice the courage to be vulnerable at work and at home, so that I may be more authentic to who I am.

Four Faces, One Mountain

None of these four ideas stand alone for me anymore — they've merged into something closer to a single philosophy that shows up in how I lead at home, in my community, and at work. Be direct because it's kind. Lead because it's a responsibility. Think flexibly because certainty is the enemy of good problem-solving. Be courageous on purpose, because it's a practice, not a personality trait.

Fittingly, two of my four aren't strangers to each other — Brené and Adam have sat down together on her The Curiosity Shop video podcast. It's a good reminder that the best leadership thinking rarely happens in a vacuum; it's built in conversation, questioned, and refined out loud.

I'd love to know — who's on your Mount Rushmore?