Lessons - Bad Leadership vs Good Leadership - The Truth | Alain Hunkins - Fortune 100 Advisor

Summary

Success Story with Scott D. Clary – "Lessons: Bad Leadership vs Good Leadership – The Truth"

Guest: Alain Hunkins (Fortune 100 Advisor)
Date: September 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Scott D. Clary sits down with leadership advisor Alain Hunkins to explore the crucial differences between bad and good leadership. The conversation examines why many organizations default to control-based management, why such approaches often fail, and how leaders can make an impactful shift from focusing on numbers to focusing on people. Alain shares real-world stories, research insights, and actionable strategies for developing genuine leadership and influencing change both laterally and upwards in any organization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bad Leadership: The Command-and-Control Mindset

• Definition & Manifestation

  • Bad leadership is rooted in a top-down, control-based approach where the leader acts as the sole "fixer" of problems.
  • Leaders default to directing and micromanaging rather than enabling or empowering their teams.

• Example: The Story of Matt (Fast Food District Manager) [02:13]

  • Alain shares Matt’s transformation from a low-ranked “fixer” to a top-performing leader by changing his approach:
    • Initially, Matt believed his job was to “fix” everything. Daily, he would review his “hot list” of poor metrics and then rush from store to store telling staff, “This is wrong, you need to fix this.”
    • This micromanagement led to high stress, disengagement, and little improvement:

      “I was struggling, and I sucked. Like things were not getting better. I was working my tail off and things were not getting better.” — Alain Hunkins, paraphrasing Matt [03:23]

    • After mentoring, Matt shifted his focus to building real relationships, learning team members' names, and collaborating on solutions.
    • New approach: Instead of dictating fixes, he asked, “Here’s the data. What do you think we should do?” and worked with the team to create action plans.

      “The shift for me was I started focusing on the people, because surprise, surprise, it’s the people who make the numbers.” — Alain Hunkins as Matt [04:24]

    • Outcome: Less stress, better results, and more enjoyment for everyone.

2. Good Leadership: Servant Leadership & Relationship-Building

• Servant Leader vs Taskmaster [05:22]
  • Scott highlights how servant leadership emphasizes enabling rather than controlling, and this approach is increasingly seen among forward-thinking leaders.

    “It’s such a better way to lead...not being that taskmaster, you know, cracking the whip.” — Scott D. Clary [05:22]

  • Good leaders prioritize trust, listening, and coaching, viewing performance issues as opportunities for collaboration rather than criticism.

3. Why Command-and-Control Persists [06:12]

• Barriers to Change

  • Organizational inertia: “What gets measured and rewarded is what gets done.” Leaders stick with what they've always known unless change becomes urgent.
  • Lack of self-awareness: Most leaders overestimate their own self-awareness, which prevents necessary evolution.

    “Literally only like 8 to 10% of people are self aware. Though like 70% say they are, which is pretty scary.” — Alain Hunkins [06:55]

• The Need for 'Alarm Clock Moments'

  • Citing Tasha Eurich's research, Alain describes how leaders rarely change until they experience wake-up calls or "hit bottom" moments.

• Organizational Impact

  • Without urgency and support from the top, meaningful change rarely happens:

    “Every organization is limited by the level of the self-awareness of the leaders at the top of the hierarchy.” — Alain Hunkins [07:42]

4. Managing Up: Strategies for Influencing Those Above You [10:14]

• Applicability Beyond Business

  • Leadership and “managing up” applies in schools, community organizations, sports, and more—not just corporate settings.

• Effective Tactics

  • Don't confront leaders head-on with criticism (“Hey, you’re sucky at this” doesn’t work).

  • Find alignment: Identify shared goals and frame suggestions in light of mutual benefit.

  • Use tact and finesse—what Alain likens to “aikido,” using their energy to guide them toward change:

    “How can you position and frame what you’re going to tell them in light of ‘this is going to help you help us be better’?” — Alain Hunkins [11:26]

  • Build credibility over time by supporting existing initiatives before proposing changes. This establishes trust and increases the likelihood your feedback will be welcomed.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Poor Leadership:

  “People don’t want a fixer, they want a leader.” — Alain Hunkins’ mentor, relayed by Alain [03:05]

• On Results:

  “I worked so much harder and I was so much more stressed out then than I am... and I’m delivering number one results now. So not only are we delivering great results, we’re having so much more fun.” — Alain Hunkins as Matt [04:45]

• On Self-Awareness and Change:

  “Unless you have that wake up call, that hit bottom moment, that ‘holy crap, what I’m doing is not working,’ you’ll stick with it.” — Alain Hunkins [07:18]

• On Influence:

  “This is all of those great political skills of how do you couch your message in a way that people can hear come into play?... There’s an art to managing up.” — Alain Hunkins [12:34]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:13] – Matt’s story: Fixer mentality vs. relationship-building leadership
• [04:24] – Shift from numbers to people; resulting performance improvement
• [05:22] – Discussion of servant leadership vs. command-and-control
• [06:12] – Why traditional leadership persists; self-awareness data
• [07:42] – Organizational change limitations & need for urgency
• [10:14] – Managing up: Strategies, alignment, and practical “politics”

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Summary Takeaways

• Bad leadership is characterized by micromanagement, focusing solely on metrics, and a lack of personal connection. This approach rarely leads to long-term improvement.
• Good leadership puts people first—building relationships, fostering collaboration, and enabling teams to find and own solutions.
• Self-awareness and a willingness to evolve are rare but essential qualities in effective leaders. Change often requires a personal or organizational wake-up call.
• Influencing those above you (managing up) demands patience, alignment with shared goals, credibility, and nuanced communication.
• Effective leadership is a universal skill, transformative across industries, organizations, and even community groups.

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This episode provides practical advice and real-world stories to help listeners recognize and break free from old paradigms of ineffective leadership—whether they’re in charge of a team or seeking to create positive change from the middle.

Transcript

[A]

Success story is a Square partner now your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. You know, I was just at Panther Coffee here in Miami last week. And beyond the incredible cortado, what struck me was watching them seamlessly handle the morning rush the barista mentioned they've been using Square to manage everything from inventory to building their loyal customer base. It's so much more than just that little white card reader that we all recognize. Square knows that local businesses can be big businesses. And as things get more complex, Square meets you at every opportunity. So whether or not you're expanding, expanding to new locations, building a loyal following, even covering cash flow gaps, Squares powering all the behind the scenes stuff that matters. They knock out today's to dos and they unlock tomorrow's what ifs. If you're ready to see how Square can transform your business, go to square.com go/success to learn more. That's square.com go/success square. Meet you there. This is the story of the one as a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Granger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. In this lesson's episode, explore why poor leadership rooted in control and fixing problems often fails to inspire lasting results. Discover how shifting focus from numbers to people transforms performance and culture. Understand why self awareness and wake up calls are critical for leaders to evolve and uncover strategies for managing up by aligning with shared goals and delivering feedback with tactics. Foreign let's discuss what bad or poor leadership is before we talk about what's good leadership. So people may be trying to understand if the like not everybody knows what the command and control structure is. So what is bad leadership? How does it. How does it display in 2020?

[B]

Sure. I'll tell you a story that really brings us to life. This is about a guy named Matt and Matt is a district manager and he works in a pretty traditional industry, works in the fast food industry. He works for food franchise now. When I met Matt, Matt was one of a hundred district managers in the whole company. He happened to be ranked number one out of all 100. So I asked him if he was always a top performer. He said no way. When I started I was like 84th on this list. And I struggled for a while. So I asked him what changed. And I think Matt's story is really indicative. So the way he described it is that when he started, he described himself as a fixer. He thought his job, the district manager and my job is to fix what's wrong and make sure things were working right, which seems like an honest enough thing to do. So every morning, they would get a printed out report with their key performance metrics. They called it the hot list. And so he'd scan the hot list, and the first thing he'd do is look for what was in red, what wasn't measuring up. Then he'd go, as he called it, into firefighting mode. He would hustle from one store to the other, and he'd basically go around and say, this is wrong. You need to fix this. You need this wrong. You have to fix this. Go do this, do this. And he was struggling, and he was doing this way for years. And he said, and I sucked. He said, I sucked it. Like things were not getting better. I was working my tail off and things were not getting better. And finally he had a mentor. He said, look, Matt, people don't want a fixer. They want a leader. So Matt changed his approach. So instead of going in with the hot list and saying, you need to do this, he stopped and he went, okay. When he goes into stores now, he actually builds relationship with people. Hey, Scott, how are you? How was your weekend? What you're up to? And so he would listen and talk with you and ask you about that and build personal relationships with the people. Before, he had seen everyone as these employee worker bees where he said literally, people would turn over in the stores and he didn't even know their names, coming and going. So disconnected from what was going on because he was so focused on the tactics of his hot list. So he'd start with that build relationship. The next thing he'd do is pull out the hot list. But instead of saying, this is wrong, you need to fix this, he would show people the hot list and say, here's the data. What do you think we should do? So very different approach. Suddenly, he's now communicating and seeking to understand their point of view. And then together, they'd figure out a game plan for what they needed to work on so they would collaborate. He said the shift for him was I stopped thinking about trying to make the numbers by focusing on the numbers. He said, the shift for me was I started focusing on the people, because surprise, surprise, it's the people who make the Numbers. And he said the coolest part about all this. He said when I was number 84, I worked so much harder and I was so much more stressed out then than I am. And I'm delivering number one results now. So not only are we delivering great results, we're having so much more fun. So I think Matt's story is a really good example of that shift from kind of old school, mediocre fixer mentality, I'm the superhero to no, actually you're facilitating the work of other people.

[A]

I like that story a lot. It shows the dichotomy or just the juxtaposition, sorry, that's probably the better word. Between the old school mentality and what you should be doing and how you should be enabling and being that servant leader, not being that taskmaster, you know, cracking the whip. That's, it's just, it's such a better way to lead and it's probably the way that I see a lot of forward looking leaders strive to, to lead and enable because you don't want to be. And I think that I'm actually curious as to your opinion on why you think that that command and control fixer mentality is still so prevalent in many industries. Not all, of course, but in many, it's still quite the status quo.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting. Great question. So, you know, we like to say, you know, what gets measured and rewarded is what gets done. And the fact is, unless there is a compelling reason for people to change, change is hard. And if what you have been doing, if you think it works for you now, your people can think you're crap. But if you think it's good enough and I have the job and there's no compelling thing that's going to make me change, you'll stick with what you know, you're not going to be an evolved person. You know, my colleague Tasha Urich has got this great book called Insight where she talks about the number one skill we need is to be self aware. And her research has found that literally only like 8 to 10% of people are self aware. Though like 70% say they are, which is pretty scary. And one of the things that she suggests is that one thing we need to do to become more self aware is have these, what she calls these alarm clock moments, these wake up calls. And unless you have that wake up call, that hit bottom moment that holy crap, what I'm doing is not working, you'll stick with it. And I think so many industries and I've had conversations with many, many, many Mid level managers who say, you know what, we kind of try to change things around here, but the people at the top, they're all happy with it and they're not going to change. So if they don't, things around here won't change. And so there's gotta be that sense of urgency. You know John Kotter talks about. You know, the first core to leading change is you need to have a deep sense of urgency. If it's not important to the leaders in the organization, it's not gonna happen to the extent that it can now. Yes. Can you do things you in your own sphere and with your own teams? Yes. And ultimately I believe every organization is limited by the level of the self awareness of the leaders at the top of the hierarchy.

[A]

Success Story is a Square Partner now your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. You know I was just at Panther Coffee here in Miami last week and beyond the incredible cortado, what struck me was watching them seamlessly handle the morning rush the barista mentioned. They've been using Square to manage everything from inventory to building their loyal customer base. It's so much more than just that little white card reader that we all recognize. Square knows that local businesses can be big businesses. And as things get more complex, Square meets you at every opportunity. So whether or not you're expanding to new locations, building a loyal following, even covering cash flow gaps, Square's powering all the behind the scenes stuff that matters. They knock out today's to DOS and they unlock tomorrow's what ifs. If you're ready to see how Square can transform your business, go to square.comgosuccess to learn more, that's square.com go success square. Meet you there. The HubSpot Podcast Network is a success story partner. Now the HubSpot Podcast Network has great podcasts like the Ops Authority. If you are constantly putting out fires in your business instead of focusing on growth and innovation, listen to the Ops Authority. Hosted by Natalie G and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Natalie speaks about actionable strategies that actually move your business forward. So every week Natalie shares some transformational stories from real business owners who've mastered their backend systems so they can focus on what really matters. So get your OPS in order, get your business running smoothly so you can scale and you can really build something meaningful. Stop letting all this chaos steal all of your energy and listen to the Ops Authority wherever you get your podcasts. This is the story of the 1. As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must Always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the H Vac is humming, and his facility shines with Grainger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces. Plus 24. 7 customer support. His venue never misses a beat.

[B]

Call clickgrainger.com or, or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[A]

And in following up on that point, is there a best practice to manage up? Let's assume that it's an optimal circumstance and there could be some change. But how would you suggest somebody manage up to leadership? And when we say leadership, I really want to clarify that it doesn't always have to be in a corporate setting either. It can be in a community setting, it can be in a sports team setting. Like, there's so many different ways that you can apply these principles to be effective in your, in your specific instance. So of course most of this is going to be in business context, people that are trying to understand how to manage and lead. But there's a lot of other ways. But still, how do you manage up? So how do you. Because I've always been told, and I also agree that managing up is probably the hardest part of, of a leader's or manager's job. Getting people above you to change their mind.

[B]

Yeah, it is. And it's funny, I was just having this conversation with someone yesterday who was asking, she's actually on a school board and talking about the head of the school board and that they weren't particularly open and open to change. So same, same question. And it's interesting because what it takes is it takes a little bit of gymnastics and flexibility to do it because you can't just go direct and say, hey, you're sucky at this. Can you change? Because that doesn't really work, is you have to align yourself with what is our mutual common goal. And so you need to step back and see the big picture. What is that leader who is up above you? What are they trying to achieve? So starting from that place and then figuring out how can you position and frame what you're going to tell them in light of this is going to help you help us to be better. So that takes a little bit of like aikido, right? It's like that martial arts, using their energy to get them there. So if you can get them to agree that we are aligned and wanting to get there, great. Would you be open to some feedback on some other alternatives and see if they're open to alternatives about how we could get there and then they have now opened the door to see that the feedback is actually going to help them in some way. And then can you deliver feedback around? I think if we did things differently, this is all of those great political skills of how do you couch your message in a way that people can hear come into play? Which is why I think what you're saying. This is why it's such a difficult thing to do. Because it does take a level of tact and finesse to notice what's working. How do I have to slightly adjust and change my approach so that the person really hears me and that they know that I'm on their side? Certainly some things that we can do in advance is if we have demonstrated that we have done what we can to make our leaders look good and support what they've done in the past, that's going to go a long way to building our credibility as opposed to us coming out of left field and saying, hey, you know, I've got some feedback for you. So that's why I think there's an art to managing up.

[A]

Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description Description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one. Success Story is a Square Partner now your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. You know, I was just at Panther Coffee here in Miami last week. And beyond the incredible curtado, what struck me was watching them seamlessly handle the morning rush the barista mentioned. They've been using Square to manage everything from inventory to building their loyal customer base. It's so much more than just that little white card reader that we all recognize. Square knows that local businesses can be big businesses. And as things get more complex, Square meets you at every opportunity. So whether or not you're expanding to new locations, building a loyal following, even covering cash flow gaps, Square's powering all the behind the scenes stuff that matters. They knock out today's to dos and they unlock tomorrow's what ifs. If you're ready to see how Square can transform your business, go to square.com go success to learn more. That's square.com go/success square. Meet you there. Monarch Money is a Success Story Partner now. You know what's weird? I'm doing well financially, but I have this constant low level financial anxiety that I was missing something because I have crypto on all these different exchanges. I have multiple investment accounts, old 401ks savings scattered everywhere. See, I knew the pieces were fine, but I had no idea if the whole picture made sense. I finally got Monarch Money to pull everything into one view and the first thing I noticed I had $10,000 sitting in a temporary savings account from eight months ago when I sold some stock. That's eight months $10,000. It could have been working instead of just waiting for me to remember it existed. Also, it showed me that I was spending tons monthly on all these subscription services that I couldn't even remember I signed up for. Every Sunday morning. It takes me five minutes to check everything. All my financial stuff in one place. No more wondering. No more anxiety. The Wall Street Journal just named it the best budgeting app of 2025. But honestly, it's more about finally having control. So don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code successonarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch money.com with code success.