The Problem With Most Leadership Advice
Most people talk about leadership in abstractions. Vision. Authenticity. Empowerment. These words sound right, but they don’t help you figure out whether you’re actually doing it well or whether the person in charge of your team knows what they’re doing.
I’ve worked in football operations across four different programs, from analytics at Dartmouth and Navy to recruiting at Georgia to training camp operations with the LA Rams. The environments were different, the roles were different, and the expectations shifted every time. But the one constant was this: I could tell within a few weeks whether the person leading a unit had it or not.
Good leadership isn’t mysterious. It has tells. And if you know what to look for, you can evaluate it in yourself and in the people you work for.
The First Tell: People Know What Matters
In a well-led team, everyone can tell you what actually matters this week. Not the mission statement. Not the long-term goal. The specific thing that needs to happen right now for the group to succeed.
When I worked in recruiting, the best coordinators made it obvious what we were trying to accomplish in any given stretch. This weekend, we need to get these three visits locked in. Next week, we’re focusing on film evaluation for the junior class. There was no ambiguity about priority.
Bad leadership feels the opposite. Everything is urgent. Nothing is more important than anything else. People are busy, but they can’t tell you what they’re busy for. That’s not a failure of effort. It’s a failure of clarity, and clarity comes from the top.
If you lead a team and your people can’t articulate the priority without checking in with you, you don’t have alignment yet. If you work for someone and you’re constantly guessing what matters most, you’re seeing a gap in their leadership.
The Second Tell: Decisions Get Made
Good leaders make calls. They don’t punt every judgment up the chain, and they don’t let decisions marinate until they’re irrelevant.
I saw this clearly in training camp operations. When you’re managing logistics for an NFL roster, dozens of small decisions come at you every day. A position group needs more reps in a certain drill. A meeting room conflict needs resolving. Equipment has to move between fields. The leaders who handled that well made the call, communicated it, and moved on. The ones who didn’t would try to gather consensus or wait for someone else to weigh in, and by the time a decision landed, the window had closed.
This doesn’t mean being reckless. It means understanding which decisions are reversible and which ones aren’t, and not treating every choice like it’s permanent. If you’re leading and you find yourself avoiding decisions, that’s worth examining. If you work for someone who can’t make a call without three layers of sign-off on low-stakes questions, that’s a leadership problem, not a process problem.
The Third Tell: Feedback Is Specific
Vague praise and vague criticism are both signs of weak leadership. Good leaders tell you exactly what you did well and exactly what needs to change.
When I worked in analytics at Navy, I learned quickly that the feedback I got was most useful when it was tied to a specific output. Not “good work on that report,” but “the way you framed the third-down data made it easier for the coordinators to use it in the game plan.” That told me what to repeat. The same goes for correction. “This isn’t working” doesn’t help. “The visuals here are too dense for a quick meeting; try limiting it to two charts next time” does.
If you lead people and your feedback tends toward generalities, you’re not giving them the information they need to improve. If you work for someone and you can never tell whether you’re doing well or what to adjust, that’s a leadership gap.
The Fourth Tell: Problems Don’t Fester
In a well-led environment, issues get surfaced early and handled before they spiral. In a poorly led one, people wait until something breaks.
This isn’t about having fewer problems. Every team has them. It’s about whether the culture allows those problems to be named without drama. I’ve been in rooms where bringing up a concern felt like starting a fight, and I’ve been in rooms where it was just part of the job. The difference was always leadership. Good leaders make it clear that surfacing a problem is not the same as creating one.
If you’re leading and people only bring you issues after they’ve become crises, ask yourself whether you’ve made it safe to flag things early. If you’re working somewhere and everyone tiptoes around obvious problems, you’re seeing a leadership failure in real time.
How to Evaluate Your Own Leadership
If you’re in a leadership role, here’s the simplest self-assessment: ask your team what the current priority is. If the answers are consistent and accurate, you’re doing well on clarity. Ask them what decision you made recently that they disagreed with but understood. If they can name one, you’re communicating reasoning. Ask them what specific feedback you’ve given them in the past month. If they can recall it, you’re being concrete.
These aren’t the only measures, but they’re honest ones. Leadership isn’t about having a philosophy. It’s about whether the people around you can do their jobs better because you’re there.
What to Do If You Don’t Have It Yet
Leadership is a skill. It’s learnable. If you recognize gaps in your own approach, the fix is usually straightforward. Get more specific. Make decisions faster on the reversible stuff. Create space for problems to surface early. Ask your team what they need from you, and then actually adjust.
If you work for someone who lacks these qualities, you have less control, but you still have choices. You can model clarity in your own work. You can make decisions within your scope. You can give specific feedback to peers. And you can decide whether the gap is temporary or permanent, and whether it’s worth staying.
Good leadership isn’t loud. It’s not about charisma or the right words in the right meeting. It’s about whether people know what matters, whether decisions get made, whether feedback is useful, and whether problems get solved before they metastasize. If you can see those things, you can evaluate leadership. If you can do those things, you can lead.
