Episode Overview

Podcast: Build with Leila Hormozi
Episode: 11 Years of Top 1% Leadership in 18 Min (Ep. 335)
Date: February 12, 2026
Host: Leila Hormozi

Main Theme:
Leila Hormozi distills her 11 years of high-impact leadership into the five most underrated yet essential rules for building an unshakeable business and becoming a top 1% leader. Drawing from her rapid journey from a novice at age 22 to building a nine-figure portfolio and leading over 100+ teammates at acquisition.com, Leila details the actionable traits that make people trust, follow, and perform for true leaders.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Emotional Regulation

(00:37 – 05:50)

• Leadership requires calm under pressure:
  “Anybody can lead when things are stable. It’s much easier to lead when things are good. But when things are hard, you really need this skill to hone in on.” (00:48)

• The Social Contagion Effect:
  Teams mirror the emotional stability of their leader, especially during crises ("a dysregulated leader just creates a dysregulated team").

  • Example: During COVID, many businesses failed because leaders couldn’t stay calm (01:20–02:03).

• Leila’s practical tactic:
  She put a post-it on her computer that said “be neutral” to remind herself that her role was to be the anchor for everyone else (02:19).

• Clarifying Emotional Regulation vs. Suppression:
  “Suppression is ignoring and trying to avoid. Regulation is acknowledging, addressing, confronting and then moving on.” (03:34)

• 3 Key Practices:

  • Self-awareness: Name and recognize your emotions.
  • Pause before acting: Add buffer time between noticing emotion and reacting.
  • Maintain a neutral tone: Handle conflict with curiosity, not judgment.
    “If you just start with these three things. Awareness, pause, regulate how you speak, you will be so much further ahead than most people.” (05:36)

2. Sincere Candor

(05:51 – 10:35)

• The value of radical transparency:
  “At the beginning of my business partnership with my husband Alex, we had a mentor who told us, if you two have any space between you, you will not be able to make this business work.” (06:01)

• Transformative feedback exercise:
  Leila and Alex wrote down everything they were afraid to say to each other—then shared it. This cleared “the glass” between them, creating a feeling of real safety and trust (06:40).

• Candor vs. Critique:

  • Insulting is tying someone to negativity (“You’re always late”), while critiquing is about actionable improvement (“Here’s what you can do better”).
  • “An insult keeps them stuck ruminating on the past… a critique tells them what to do next.” (08:15)

• Best practices for candor:

  • State expectations upfront.
  • Give feedback immediately, specifically, and privately.
  • Always check: “Is there anything that I’m not saying that someone needs to hear?” (09:42)

3. Unimpeachable Character

(10:36 – 13:45)

• Trust trumps intelligence or work ethic:
  “It doesn’t matter if you’re smarter than everybody… What matters is this.” (10:40)

• Never vent down — only out:
  “You can’t emotionally vomit on your team about all the problems and shit you gotta deal with.” (11:04)

• Transparency without burden:
  Leila gives an example of being honest with her team about feeling off after a key team member’s abrupt departure—without dumping on them.
  "I just said, guys, I'm gonna be really honest with you. I'm feeling a little down because we parted ways with so-and-so and it didn't end how I wanted..." (12:10)

• Impact on trust and performance:
  When teams can predict your behavior, their trust (and therefore performance) rises. “Trustworthiness predicts team performance more than competence.” (12:50)
  Extend trust before demanding it.

• Self-assessment:
  “Would I follow me? Would I want to be led by me? Would I trust me?” (13:34)

4. Clarity

(13:46 – 17:09)

• The need for actionable direction:
  “Clarity is taking something very complex and breaking it down into bite-sized pieces.” (14:18)

• Combatting ‘corporate speak’:
  “The objective is not to sound smart… If you want people to take action, then they need to hear what you’re saying to understand.” (15:21)

• Leila’s hack:
  She edits every presentation in “third-grade language” using Hemingway or ChatGPT for maximum clarity (15:44).

• Focus on top priorities:
  Research shows people excel when they clearly understand 1–3 key priorities.

• Clarity as a skill:
  Ask, “Can you tell me what problem we’re solving or are we not?” to guide others to define their needs (16:26).

• Clarity is not enough:
  “Clarity without ownership just creates a bunch of people waiting for permission to do things…” (17:07)

5. Ownership

(17:10 – 21:45)

• Solving problems you didn’t create:
  Leila recounts how dealing with family issues taught her the ultimate lesson:
  “I understand that you didn’t cause the problem, but you do have to fucking solve it.” (18:24)

• True leadership is proactive, not just responsible:
  “Real leaders… take responsibility for the outcome, not even just the effort… even if they didn’t have full control over it.” (19:17)

• Decentralized responsibility:
  High-performance teams foster a culture where everyone feels ownership for problems and solutions—not just the “boss” (19:43).

• Avoid blame; focus on solutions:
  “A lot of people… spend way too much energy on blame rather than creating solutions…” (20:45)

• Actionable challenge:
  “The number one thing you can do today is look for a problem that exists, is not your fault, that you didn’t cause, and go solve it. That is what true leaders do.” (21:09)

• Memorable story:
  Leila recalls someone cleaning up a mess left by another team—without being asked or recognized.
  “Ownership isn’t just being a good person—it’s being indispensable.” (21:35)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "A dysregulated leader just creates a dysregulated team." (01:27)
• “Suppression is ignoring and trying to avoid. Regulation is acknowledging, addressing, confronting and then moving on.” (03:34)
• “An insult keeps them stuck ruminating on the past and what they did wrong already. A critique tells them what to do next.” (08:15)
• “Trustworthiness predicts team performance more than competence.” (12:50)
• “If you want people to take action, they need to hear what you’re saying to understand, which means you cannot say words they don’t understand.” (15:21)
• “Ownership isn’t just being a good person—it’s being indispensable.” (21:35)

Key Takeaways & Next Steps

• Start by identifying which of the five traits—emotional regulation, sincere candor, unimpeachable character, clarity, or ownership—is currently your weakest, and focus on building that.
• Leaders who develop and model these five traits set the tone for a resilient, high-performing, and self-sustaining team or business.
• Ultimately, leadership is about building trust, providing clarity, and fostering a culture of meaningful action well beyond your personal presence.

For more strategic advice from Leila’s team memos (“Leila’s Letters”), check the episode description for sign-up info.