The Leadership Manifesto
Why Most Leaders Are Destined to Fail
and How to Make Sure You Don’t
This page exists as a companion to my book on leadership and loneliness at the top.
If you’ve found your way here, you’re likely not looking for tactics, frameworks, or performance hacks. You’re probably sensing that something deeper is at play. This is an attempt to articulate the philosophy underneath my work and the book you’ve just read, and to offer a lens through which leadership, life, and self begin to make more sense as one thing.
“Knowing how to lead doesn’t create a leader just like knowing how to play chess doesn’t create a chess master. It’s the basic requirement for entry.”
“Recognition of each behaviour you hold and have consistently failed to change is the beginning of understanding what leadership is.”
“The energy that you default to when YOU err is the same energy you give off when THEY do.”
“Behaviours ignored or tolerated are behaviours approved.”
Welcome
As I write this, I’m sat in a wing-backed chair my wife bought me.
It’s nearly four in the afternoon.
It’s grey outside here in Copenhagen.
The nights are drawing in.
Candles are lit.
There’s stew on the stove.
Hygge is the Danish word. Cosy might be the English.
I’ve invited you here to read my philosophy on leadership, or more accurately, self-leadership. Thank you for coming.
There are many books on leadership. Many contain genuinely useful insights.
The challenge, as I see it, is that insight rarely leads to behavioural change.
Information is not transformation.
If it were, every LinkedIn post, every book, every podcast would change how we live and lead. New insight often feels good. There’s a dopamine hit. But how often do you implement it? And how often does that implementation become a habit?
Very rarely.
Leadership strategies matter. But the deeper question is not how do you lead?
It’s how do you become someone people naturally follow?
The Four Questions
Most leadership conversations eventually orbit the same territory:
Who am I?
Who am I going to be?
Who am I in relation to my world?
Who are they in relation to me?
These words are often followed by values: honesty, empathy, kindness, transparency, trust.
All good. All necessary.
And yet, when pressure is high, time is scarce, and consequences are real, these ideals are the first to collapse.
So the question becomes:
How do you show up as the best version of yourself regardless of what’s happening?
What I’ve learned is that it requires telling as much truth as possible in response to these four questions.
Let’s explore them.
1. Who am I?
The brain doesn’t see objects and then layer meaning on top.
It sees meaning.
If you pause to decide whether the shape in the corner of your eye is a snake or a stick, you’re dead. The brain must assume snake. Threat. Worst case.
Now imagine you’re seven years old.
You raise your hand in class.
You answer a question.
You’ve misunderstood it.
The class laughs.
The teacher laughs.
You feel stupid. Unsafe.
Your nervous system records that moment and builds meaning around it. Perhaps you learn it’s dangerous to speak. Perhaps you learn you must be right to be worthy.
Fast forward thirty years.
You’re competent. You’re prepared. You’re a leader.
And still, before speaking, your body reacts as if you’re seven again.
Impostor syndrome isn’t a flaw. It’s a protective pattern.
Every story you were told about yourself.
Every criticism.
Every moment of shame.
They bind to identity.
The work here is not self-improvement. It’s unlearning what was never true.
2. Who am I going to be?
Have you ever met someone whose presence immediately calms or energises you?
That’s not charisma. It’s coherence.
You can choose who you’re becoming. But you cannot become it until you define it. And you cannot define it without also defining what it is not.
This doesn’t require grand gestures.
Decide you want to be more curious.
Write one genuine question for each meeting tomorrow.
Ask them.
Notice the effect.
Document it.
Your brain updates its identity through experience.
This is how becoming happens.
3. Who am I in relation to my world?
There are no non-limiting beliefs.
Everything holds meaning: money, leadership, marriage, sex, health, politics, responsibility.
Those meanings were not chosen through critical thinking. They were absorbed.
Indoctrinated.
Money is a simple example.
What were you shown?
What emotions does it carry now?
Scarcity? Guilt? Avoidance? Control?
Change the belief, and behaviour follows naturally.
This is not motivation. It’s alignment.
4. Who are they in relation to me?
There’s a part of the brain that constantly scans for status, acceptance, and threat.
It makes assumptions:
They think I’m stupid.
They think they’re better than me.
They don’t care.
Those assumptions drive behaviour:
Over-explaining. Avoiding. Micromanaging. People-pleasing. Withdrawing.
These are not personality traits. They’re protective responses learned early, when approval meant survival.
The moment you see this clearly, something shifts.
You stop making other people’s emotions your responsibility.
You stop needing praise.
You stop fearing criticism.
And as you soften internally, others feel safer around you.
Culture stops being something you impose.
It becomes something that emanates.
A Closing Thought
If you’ve read this far, you’re likely someone who is already questioning old patterns and exploring what’s possible beyond them.
You may decide this was simply a reflective pause.
Or you may decide to turn insight into action, and action into habit.
Both are fine. It’s your life.
If at some point you feel ready to explore these questions in conversation rather than alone, you know where to find me. Send me a DM or reach out through the contact page.
For now, it’s enough to notice what resonated, and what didn’t.
That noticing alone is already leadership.
