Ep217: The Leadership Pyramid

David talks about Humanergy's Leadership Pyramid and how the best leaders are oriented to the bottom four steps... Authentic Respect, Listing, Summarizing and asking powerful questions

Transcript

David Wheatley (00:10)
Welcome to this episode. I'm your host, David Wheatley, and today I want to talk about the Leadership Pyramid. If you want a graphic of this, I encourage you to go to humanergy.com. You'll see that there's a Freebies/Tools dropdown, and you’ll find a great graphic of the Leadership Pyramid there.

Basically, it’s seven things. If I start from the bottom of the Leadership Pyramid, the first one is authentic respect—being genuinely who you are and respecting the people around you.

Next up is listening.
After that is summarizing understanding.
The fourth one up is asking powerful questions.
The fifth is sharing a perspective.
The sixth is giving advice.
And the seventh, at the very top, is telling people what to do.

What we’ve found with these seven things is that all leaders do all of them. But there’s a difference. You can have a pyramid with a strong base—broad at the bottom where authentic respect is—and a very small peak at the top where telling sits. That’s what we call a greater-good-oriented pyramid.

That means I’m going to spend more time doing the things at the bottom of the pyramid than the things at the top. This greater-good orientation aligns with our Four Choices of Leadership. It’s about recognizing the interconnections between us and all the other stakeholders in a situation. When we do that, we tend to operate significantly more from the bottom of the pyramid—especially the bottom four elements: authentic respect, listening, summarizing understanding, and asking powerful questions.

Most of the great leaders I’ve worked with spend—I’d say—99% of their time in those bottom four elements.

However, there’s also an inverse version. Imagine a pyramid standing on its tip, with the broad top now representing the most-used behaviors. That version means we’re doing a lot more telling, advising, and sharing perspectives—and a lot less listening, summarizing, and building respect. That’s what we call a self-focused or control-oriented way of leading.

This is a tendency we see in people early in their leadership careers. They often default to advising or telling because they’re the expert or the new leader, and they feel obligated to give direction. But the higher up they go, the more they realize that effective leadership works the opposite way.

What’s critical is that solid base of authentic respect. Then, most of what you're doing is listening—deeply listening—to people. You summarize what you understand, and if you ask the right question, you unlock the thinking of the people around you. You don’t need to tell them what to do, give them advice, or share your perspective—if you know the right question that helps them unlock their own next step.

And those powerful questions? They’re not judgmental. They’re not yes-or-no. They’re open-ended. They make people pause and think. They’re also not just advice disguised as a question—like, “Have you thought about doing this?” That might sound like a question, but it’s really just advice.

Instead, they’re genuinely curious, open questions—the kind we ask when we truly don’t know the answer.

The Leadership Pyramid has been a fundamental tool in our coaching at Humanergy for the last 25 years. I believe it’s fundamental for any leader who wants to build critical thinking on their team. They must be oriented to the greater good—and the green pyramid, if you're looking at the graphic, is the model to aim for.

If you find yourself telling, advising, or sharing perspective too often, you may be operating from a self-focused, control-oriented mindset. It's time to shift that pyramid.