What Is Principle-Based Leadership?

What is principle-based leadership—and how is it different from values or mission statements? 

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Kyle McDowell, bestselling author of Begin With We, shares how leaders can gain clarity by establishing a framework for how teams behave, collaborate, and succeed. We explore the origin of his 10 WEs, why clarity fuels accountability, and how leaders can set the tone for excellence—by defining the how, not just the what.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Kyle McDowell and here is why he is awesome. He's a bestselling author, international speaker, and leadership coach. His book Begin With We, 10 Principles for Building, Sustaining a Culture of Excellence. Building and Sustaining, gotta do both of those things, which was on the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling list.

It lays the foundation for a collaborative and inclusive approach to leadership. My personal favorite. From the book, he's developed and implemented the 10 WEs, a framework that has transformed leadership practices in numerous organizations. He's also a former Fortune 10 executive who led tens of thousands of employees around the globe, and now he's here talking with us about principles and inspiring a world of WE-ness.

If it's not a word, it should be. WE-ness leaders. Hello, Kyle.

Kyle McDowell: Good morning, Russel. Man, it is really great to be here. You are doing such an important thing with your show, so I, I'm honored to join and, and help kind of further the effort.

Russel Lolacher: I, I can't appreciate you enough for saying that. Thank you very much. My focus is all about having honest conversations and I have been very grateful to have guests that are very aligned with that approach. And so thank you for being yet another one of them. I thank you, sir.

Kyle McDowell: The pleasure is mine, sir. Thank you.

Russel Lolacher: But you, you know, you've been very sweet and kind to me to start off, but that doesn't mean you get away from the first question I ask all of my guests, Kyle. You're not off to hook that easy. What sir, is your best or worst employee experience?

Kyle McDowell: Oh wow. Ironically, the worst experience came before I was even an employee. True story. For a very senior position inside of a pharmaceutical firm, I went through 17 interviews in seven months. Including flying around the country to meet with various people, including flying to a consulting firm's office and doing role playing for an entire day. 17. I can't make it up. And the reason it sticks out is the worst experience. It should have been... I should have had all kinds of red lights and flags going off. It's like, dude, if you have to go through this many hoops, there's probably something inside or behind the curtains that's not gonna be ideal for you. And I, and that turned out to be the case actually.

So I would say that's the worst experience. And by the way, when you spend 30 years inside of, you know, big corporate America, there, there's a lot to choose from. But the, that's the one that jumps, jumps to the front of the list. The best experience, I think is also. It's interesting. We could look at this as the worst experience, but I actually consider it the best experience, and I talk about this a, a fair, fair amount.

Many, many years ago, my mother was approaching the end of her road fighting cancer. It was about a year long struggle that she had, and I, I had my boss at the time, guy named William, who I've grown to just love and we haven't worked together in well over a decade. He called, we had our regularly scheduled one-on-one, and right outta the gate I start going through my results, sharing updates as I usually do.

And he kind of interrupted me. He said, how you doing? I said, I'm good man. See, these numbers are pretty good. And I just kept, kept on the same talk track and he leaned in with such... he leaned in in such a caring way and he said, you know, I'm only asking because I care. And it's, and it just, I've never had a leader inside corporate America anyway, tell me they cared. And that was a, it was, it was a, it was a highlight of on the list of best experiences. But it's something that I've taken with me because that was the first time I'd ever heard it and it made it okay for me. Very senior guy. I was the COO of the organization,

Russel Lolacher: Fair.

Kyle McDowell: Which told me it was okay to behave that way and it wasn't a light switch for me, but it's something that I've worked on ever since then and have gotten better with over time, i'd like to think I.

Russel Lolacher: The reason I love that story is that what that leader did was use communication to remove assumption, especially as an a, a new employee who doesn't know why this person who has all this power is ask, like they'll jump to their own conclusions. I know I have my own narratives in my head. I'm like, why are they asking? Are they micromanaging? What, like, you're immediately telling yourself this story. But the like, he can care, but if he doesn't communicate that he cares, you're filling, you can you fill the void yourself.

Kyle McDowell: Right, right. Yeah. Thanks and, and thanks for allowing me to share it. I'm a big fan of this guy. As a matter of fact, he's become a client of mine. I gave a, I gave a talk with his leadership team a number of months ago, and we're going back sometime soon, hopefully in the spring. But it's just one of those things that it's never left me.

It's never left me. I remember like it was yesterday.

Russel Lolacher: That's one of the big reasons I ask this question is not only, well, first off, the reason I ask this question, everybody doesn't talk about stories from last week or last month. It's always like from decades ago, because good or bad, it shaped their own leadership journey, right? For, for that first one, how horrible of a first impression is it of, do you think I wanna work for an organization that wants to talk to me 17 times or ghost me?

Which is the most reoccurring theme with people that are

Kyle McDowell: Right.

Russel Lolacher: starting out and trying to get traction in a new role. So thank you for sharing both the good and the bad of it. It's interesting 'cause it does lead into our conversation pretty easily because we're talking about what principle based leadership looks like, and you showed a example of how horrible it can be with that first relationship that we're starting with these applicants, but also this very principled leader that was showing you sort of the way of how to engage and interact.

Kyle, how do you define principle-based leadership?

Kyle McDowell: Well, I'll, I'll give you the definition that drives me every day. And it's not my own, it's from, it's from Oxford Dictionaries. A principle, and I'm paraphrasing, but a principle is, is nothing more than a foundation for a system of beliefs or a chain of beliefs. It is our, and, and if, if I boil it down to Kyle's terms, it is something to which we align. Something around which we align.

And when I discovered this thing called principle-based leadership, it's not new. I didn't create it, but what it taught me was when you establish principles for a team, and I don't care if it's the, the, the bowling team, the chess team, the most senior team inside a Fortune 10 company when you can gain alignment with not just what we do, but more importantly how we do it, how we interact, how we treat each other as team members, how the leader is expected to treat us.

How the team is expected to treat the leader. When you establish those expectations very early on, it makes delivering excellence so much, so it, it almost is an afterthought because we know how we're gonna get there. We know when we're facing adversity, we lean into these principles. So when I discover principle-based leadership, candidly it came after I created the 10 principles because I just established those as kinda like guide rails. Here are the 10 things and it, I, I, I didn't start off with a goal of 10. I didn't start off with them being the 10 WEs. Just for some context for your audience, I just accepted a role to leave 15,000 employees, 11 locations, a $7 billion program.

The night before I was gonna meet with the top 40 or 50 leaders of my newly inherited organization. I just. I knew I needed to come with something they hadn't heard before, and I knew I needed to approach them in a way I'd never approached the team because to that, to that point, two decades into my career, the biggest emotion I was feeling was apathy.

Russel Lolacher: Right.

Kyle McDowell: And that's a real hard pill to swallow, man, when you realize the environments that you loath are the same ones that you created or had a ma, you know, a major role in creating them. So I had to do something different, be a leader that I'd never had. And that's when the principles came about, about midnight in Lawrence, Kansas. The night before meeting with this group.

I shared it with the team the next day, and my life has never been the same.