Category: Managing oneself

The Manager’s README: A Practice in Radical Honesty and Leadership Evolution

The Document as Mirror

The Manager’s README, sometimes called a personal user manual or leadership charter, has gained popularity as a transparency tool. But its true power lies not in the words themselves but in the accountability framework they create. When you articulate who you are as a leader, your preferences, and your values, you’re informing your team… and you’re lso creating a reference point against which your actions will inevitably be measured.

This isn’t documentation for documentation’s sake; it’s the creation of a mirror you cannot hide from.

Consider what happens when you write, “I welcome new ideas and constructive challenges to my thinking.” This statement, seemingly positive and progressive, carries significant risk. You’ve now established a standard by which your team will evaluate your reactions. Each time you interrupt a challenging perspective or dismiss an unexpected proposal, you create a dissonance between your stated values and your observable actions.

This dissonance of the README process is precisely its purpose.

The Data of Dissonance

Most leadership discourse frames feedback as something managers give rather than receive. The Manager’s README inverts this dynamic, creating a structured invitation for your team to reflect your behaviors back to you.

When a team member musters the courage to say, “You wrote that you value creativity, but I’ve noticed you tend to focus on potential problems whenever new ideas are shared,” they’re providing invaluable data about the gap between your self-perception and your impact.

This moment represents a critical juncture. Will you defend your intentions (“That’s not what I meant” or “You’re misinterpreting my questions”) or will you engage with the reality of your impact? Your response in this moment speaks volumes about your capacity for growth—far more than any carefully crafted value statement.

The discomfort of this feedback is a feature (not a bug). The Manager’s README creates a structured space for precisely this type of productive tension.

Visible Evolution as Trust Currency

Trust is built on demonstrations. When your team observes a disconnect between your README and your actions, they don’t immediately lose faith, but they’ll be watching what happens next.

Do you acknowledge the gap? Do you make visible adjustments? Do you follow up to check whether your changes are addressing the concern?

Trust is built on visible evolution. When your team witnesses you actively working to align your actions with your stated intentions, they experience something rare in organizational life: a leader whose growth happens in plain sight rather than behind closed doors.

Consider the manager who, upon receiving feedback about interrupting team members, acknowledges the behavior and also institutes a new practice in meetings: “I’ve been told I sometimes cut people off. If you notice me doing this, please say ‘I’d like to finish my thought.’ This will help me be more aware.” This visible commitment to change, and the vulnerability of making it public, creates far more trust than any aspirational statement about valuing all voices.

The Authenticity of Imperfection

Perfection is not a leadership goal. A leader who never makes mistakes, never has off days, and never shows frustration comes across as performative rather than real.

The Manager’s README shouldn’t aim to portray an idealized version of yourself, but rather to create a framework for understanding your real patterns—including your limitations. The document might include acknowledgments like “I tend to become more directive under tight deadlines” or “I sometimes need processing time before responding to unexpected proposals.”

These statements are context that helps your team interpret your actions more accurately while also holding you accountable to manage your tendencies.

The paradox is that acknowledging your imperfections makes your strengths more credible. When you admit to struggling with certain aspects of leadership, your team is more likely to trust your competence in other areas. Selective vulnerability creates space for authentic strength.

Intrapersonal Competency: The Meta-Skill

Leadership development typically focuses on interpersonal skills: communication, influence, delegation. The Manager’s README process highlights a more fundamental capability: intrapersonal competency. Your ability to evolve yourself intentionally.

This meta-skill encompasses:

  • Self-awareness: Recognizing your patterns, triggers, and impact
  • Feedback receptivity: Taking in potentially uncomfortable information without defensiveness
  • Intentional adaptation: Making targeted changes to align actions with intentions
  • Progress monitoring: Checking whether changes are having the desired effect

The Manager’s README documents who you are and it also creates conditions to develop who you’re becoming. The gap between your written intentions and your lived behaviors is the productive tension that drives growth.

The Practice, Not the Product

The value of the Manager’s README is in how it evolves. A document created once and left untouched becomes a monument to aspirations never realized. The README should itself evolve as you do—updated not just with new preferences but with new awareness gained through feedback.

Some managers track how their README evolves, noting shifts based on feedback. It shows a commitment to growth.

The Invitation

The Manager’s README represents an invitation to a different kind of leadership, one defined not by certainty but by curiosity. It challenges the notion that leaders should have it all figured out, offering instead a model where figuring it out happens collaboratively and continually.

This practice won’t eliminate the gap between who you aspire to be and how you actually show up, but it will make that gap visible, discussable, and addressable. And perhaps this is the most powerful leadership stance of all: not “I know the way” but “I’m on the way, and I welcome your help in getting there.”

Your README says who you think you are. Their annotations say who you really are. Which version is more accurate?

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The Math Behind Our Silence: What I learned about why we compromise at work

The only real negotiating power is the ability to walk away. I’ve seen it play out again and again: professionals weighing their next move, realizing their choices are already made for them.

Without a financial runway, choice is an illusion. The arithmetic of compromise shapes workplace decisions more than courage ever could.

Want to go deeper? A more comprehensive version of this essay is available on my blog: The Math Behind Our Silence: What I learned about why we compromise at work. There you’ll find additional insights on the structural forces shaping workplace integrity.

The Problem with “Leading by Example”: Rethinking Exemplarity as Being an Original

Leadership isn’t about setting a model for others to copy. It’s about being an original—sparking uniqueness over imitation.

For as long as I’ve been in management development, there’s one phrase that has never sat right with me: “leading by example.” You hear it everywhere, as if it’s the golden rule for managerial influence. I’ve even found myself repeating it on occasion, but each time I say it, it leaves a strange taste in my mouth. There’s an aversion there—a resistance that I haven’t quite been able to articulate until now. But reading Javier Gomá Lanzón on exemplarity, I started to find some clarity on why I’m uncomfortable with “leading by example.” What I realized is that this concept, while well-meaning, may actually work against the very authenticity and originality that true leadership requires.

Here’s how I got there.

The Initial Dilemma: A Skepticism Toward Leading by Example

The idea of “leading by example” seems straightforward enough: managers are advised to model behaviors they wish to see in their teams, setting a standard through their own actions. This is meant to foster trust and cohesion—if people see you demonstrating the values you espouse, they’re more likely to adopt them, too, right?

But what bothers me is that “leading by example” seems to emphasize performative alignment with a predefined set of behaviors rather than genuine, value-driven originality.

When I say “leading by example,” I feel like I’m advocating for something that might ultimately produce copies rather than individuals. And that’s where it rubs against the grain for me.

Enter a Spanish thinker: Exemplarity as a Call to Be an Original

Then I encountered Gomá Lanzón’s philosophy on exemplarity. He says it’s not about deliberate influence. It’s about being, not demonstrating; it’s an embodied authenticity that invites others to engage with their own values. He emphasizes a form of exemplarity that doesn’t present itself as a model to follow but rather as a presence that others might find inspiring for its genuineness.

The difference is subtle but significant. Where “leading by example” implies a transactional influence—“I show, therefore you do”—Gomá’s vision is organic and centered on integrity. It’s not about setting an example for the sake of others but about living out one’s values authentically and openly. Others may choose to follow, but the intention isn’t to direct or shape them. In fact, the most powerful kind of influence in Gomá’s framework comes from someone simply being an original.

Wrestling with Exemplarity: Being an Original vs. Leading by Example

With this new perspective, I started examining why Gomá’s distinction between “being” and “leading by example” felt so liberating. I realized that “leading by example” subtly promotes imitation. When leaders act as living templates, the focus shifts to emulation rather than self-exploration. This can inhibit the very originality that gives culture its depth. The outcome? A culture of followers rather than individuals, of adherence rather than authenticity.

Being an original, on the other hand, invites others to pursue their own authenticity. Gomá’s exemplarity doesn’t simply permit individuality—it calls for it. It isn’t about transmitting qualities for others to copy but about embodying values that might resonate with others, giving them the courage to explore what they stand for without pressing them into a mold. Here, exemplarity isn’t about direction but inspiration. It’s about existing in such a way that others feel empowered to become more themselves.

Practically Speaking: Exemplarity as a Presence, Not a Performance

Imagine a manager who embodies patience, curiosity, and resilience—not because they’re trying to lead by example but because those qualities are simply part of who they are. They’re not performing patience in meetings or resilience in challenges to set a standard. Instead, they’re living those qualities, creating a subtle but palpable influence that others might find grounding or inspiring. Their presence invites reflection, not imitation.

So, what does this mean for managerial influence? I think it calls for a shift from modeling behaviors to fostering an environment where people feel free to explore their own values. Exemplarity in Gomá’s sense encourages each person to be original—to bring forth qualities that are true to themselves, contributing to the collective culture without mimicking any individual’s traits.

Solving the Riddle: From Leading by Example to Being an Original

Ultimately, Gomá’s perspective helped me solve the riddle of my aversion to “leading by example.” It’s not that leading by example is inherently flawed—it’s that it can all too easily become a form of mimicry, where influence is wielded as a subtle directive rather than a quiet invitation. When we focus on being an original, we embrace an influence that’s not only less coercive but more transformative.

In place of “leading by example,” I’ve come to embrace “being an original.” It might not have the same symmetry, but it has more soul.

Exemplarity, when grounded in originality, invites others into exploration, free to find their values, rather than trying on someone else’s. This kind of influence doesn’t just foster trust—it cultivates the kind of authenticity that creates cultures of real depth and resilience.

The aversion is gone. And in its place, a framework that feels true to what leadership is all about: not creating copies, but inviting others into originality.

Before You Go

These reflections have not only helped me untangle my aversion to “leading by example” but have also clarified my resistance to *authenticity* as a buzzword.

Authenticity, often used to justify polished self-presentation, misses the mark if it’s just about appearing “real” for others to echo. Instead, both being an original and embodying authenticity mean standing as *a voice, not an echo*. This doesn’t aim to create replicas or followers; it’s a call for others to recognize and voice their own originality.

Ultimately, true exemplarity isn’t about providing a model to imitate but a presence that encourages others to uncover, not duplicate, their own. This may be the truest and most lasting kind of influence.

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Note:

Javier Gomá Lanzón’s thinking on exemplarity is unraveled over four books covering different dimensions of the topic: Imitación y experiencia, Aquiles en el gineceo, Ejemplaridad pública, and Necesario pero imposible. As far as I know, there are no English translations of his work yet.

 

See also my One more time: How do I lead by example?

[Update 2026: I followed this observation to its logical conclusion—and it led somewhere unexpected. See Abandon All Hope of Mattering.]

Orwell feared oppression. No need, said Huxley, triviality is what makes us irrelevant

From the Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public discourse in the age of show business (20th anniversary edition, by Neil Postman, Penguin Books 2006. First edition published in 1985.

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another–slightly older, slightly less well-known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be
drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

 

Advice to a 13-year old

Nick Cave:

Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too.

Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can.

Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world.

Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being.

A great start. Better being habitually awed than, you know, “serious”.

 

Inspiration: don’t wait for it

Simon Sarris:

Inspiration, the admixture of genius and motivation, is sometimes described as a force that strikes us after some patient lull or waiting period. This idleness is a mistake.

The Muse arrives to us most readily during creation, not before. Homer and Hesiod invoke the Muses not while wondering what to compose, but as they begin to sing.

If we are going to call upon inspiration to guide us through, we have to first begin the work.

So it is an error to wait around for inspiration, or to demand some feeling of readiness for an undertaking, or for a teacher or some other golden opportunity.

I think these slouching inclinations come partly from an overly-systematized experience during childhood school years, and partly from a fear of failure. In fact, when you stop waiting for others—for either their permission or instruction—and instead begin on your own, fumbling through, regardless of how ready you are, this could be considered one of the true beginnings of adulthood.

 

The American self-help industrial complex

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen in The Yale Review:

As Americans, we find ourselves in a culture that so fetishizes success that it cannot tolerate failure. So it deals with it in one of two ways.

The first is to view failure in individualized and atom­ized terms, blaming the losers for their losses.

The second, which is equally insidious, is to be so disdainful of failure that it insists that what looks like failure in fact is a mere “stepping-stone to success,” in the philosopher Costica Bradatan’s phrase.

Thus the platitudinous self-help bromides that we find adorned on a framed poster in a bank teller’s cubicle (“Failure is success in progress”) or shouted by a fitness influencer hawking protein powder on TikTok (“There’s no failure that willpower can’t turn into success”).

In a culture that demands overcoming against all odds, even failure has been commodified by the American self-help industrial complex: rebranded not as a devastating and possibly life-altering event but as a blip en route to a chest-thumping achievement, accomplish­ment, or acquisition.

It’s time to rewild your attention

When you read what everyone else is reading, you’re likely to think what everyone else is thinking. And you might only be reading what the algorithms are putting before you. It’s time to rewild your attention.

Big-tech recommendation systems (…) pose a (…) challenge for our imaginative lives: Their remarkably dull conception of what’s “interesting”. It’s like intellectual monocropping. You open your algorithmic feed and see rows and rows of neatly planted corn, and nothing else. (Clive Thompson)

Here’s a simple idea: go to a bookstore or a library, look for a book, and let serendipity (the books around the book you’re looking for) provide surprises and discoveries.

Creativity is not about “being creative”. It’s work. And it doesn’t have to be hard work.

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Highlighting content from my September 2021 newsletter.