Here’s the question that comes next.
If you’ve read Start with Why, you know the power of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle.
The idea is elegant. Most leaders communicate from the outside in. They lead with what they do, then explain how they do it, and rarely get around to why. Sinek flipped that. Great leaders start from the center, from purpose, and work outward. It was a revelation for millions of people, me included.
The Golden Circle tells leaders where to start. What it doesn’t fully address is who you need to become once you’ve found your why.
That gap is where leadership either takes root or quietly falls apart.
WHY gets you to the door. HOW opens it.
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, I got a call I’ll always remember. The young doctor delivered the news clearly and clinically. Then, he ended the call on autopilot with, “Have a nice day.”
I stood there holding the phone, processing what had just happened. When I hung up, I couldn’t help but laugh. Not because it was funny. Because I realized that he was likely tired after a long day of delivering both good and difficult news. He was human, and I couldn’t help but empathize.
The young man knew his why. He was in healthcare to help people. He knew his what: delivering test results. In that moment, however, his How failed to reflect the appropriate compassion.
How we do what we do matters more than most leaders realize. And I don’t say that as a critique of one medical professional on one difficult day. I say it because that gap between intention and delivery shows up everywhere: in boardrooms, in team meetings, in one-on-ones… and even at the dinner table.
I watched it play out professionally with a leader I supported on a Customer Experience team. Brilliant person. Deep expertise. Genuine commitment to improving the organization. His Why was never in question.
His How was another story.
He delivered feedback bluntly, often in group settings without any advance notice to the leaders involved. He rarely acknowledged what was working. His manner read as condescending, even when his points were factually correct. Over time, his own team lost confidence in him. Key people left. His leader couldn’t trust him to carry important messages. Eventually, his organization was dissolved and he moved on.
The organization certainly lost a knowledgeable leader, but one whose How undid everything his Why was building.
The self-awareness gap
Here’s what the research tells us, and it’s worth sitting with. Organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich, author of Insight, found that 95% of people believe they’re self-aware. The actual number is closer to 10 to 15%. As she puts it: “That means, on a good day, about 80% of people are lying about themselves—to themselves.”
The gap gets worse the higher you climb. CEOs and senior leaders are less likely to be in that self-aware minority, partly because the people around them stop giving honest feedback.
Pair that with what behavioral ethicists call ethical fading, a term introduced by researchers Ann Tenbrunsel and David Messick. It describes what happens when we’re so focused on other aspects of a decision that its ethical dimensions fade from view. Under pressure, under stress, buried in back-to-back meetings and weekend email, the values don’t disappear. They just get crowded out.
Most leaders experiencing ethical fading aren’t being consciously hypocritical. They genuinely believe they’re acting in line with their values. The problem is that belief and behavior have quietly drifted apart, and nobody around them is naming it.
Values hang on the wall. Virtue-driven action walks down the hall. The distance between those two things is where most leadership development work needs to happen.
Where Sinek’s framework stops and a new question begins
When Simon Sinek talks about How, he’s often referring to a company’s unique value proposition or proprietary process. That’s a legitimate and useful frame. Business processes matter and optimizing them is worth doing.
While I’ve heard him address the How of leading people, he could go deeper to the source: the virtue-driven actions that determine whether the person across from you feels seen, heard, and valued.
Here’s the question I kept returning to: think of the leaders who made you feel like you mattered. The ones you’d run through a wall for. What did they have in common?
When I asked that question of myself and of the people I’ve led and mentored, the answers weren’t about strategy or process. They were about character made visible. Patience in a tense moment. Honesty delivered with care and kindness. Seeing potential in someone before that person could see it in themselves and then naming it out loud.
Those are virtues in action. And that realization led directly to Lead with Light™.
What Lead with Light™ is, and where it fits
Lead with Light™ is a leadership framework and operating system built on a demanding premise: how you lead is inseparable from who you are. Character isn’t a soft add-on to strategy. It’s what everything else is built on.
The framework is organized around what I call the Infinity Loop of Leadership, 3 interconnected practices:
Calibrate your Compass
Know your values and act on them. Not occasionally. Not when it’s convenient. Consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable.
This is where most leaders underinvest. There’s usually a cursory awareness of personal values, but the harder work, translating them into specific, observable behavior, rarely gets done. Values hang on the wall. Virtue-driven action walks down the hall.
Cultivate your Character
Character is the root system of leadership. Grow the roots, and the leader stands strong in every storm.
Here’s what most people miss: you don’t wake up with patience. You don’t wake up with resilience or courage either. You grow those things like a gardener, season after season, through the hard things. Through the misunderstandings you had to work through. The moments you wanted to react but chose to respond instead.
Most leaders want to do this inner work. Not enough of us find the time. The dashboard-to-back-to-back-meetings-to-inbox cycle leaves almost no room to pause, reflect, and ask the question that actually matters: How am I showing up for the people in my care?
Illuminate the Path for Others
This is leadership made visible. It’s the outward expression of everything you’ve been building internally. When you Lead with Light, you’re not just pointing the way; you’re becoming the kind of person others genuinely want to follow.
That’s the shift that changes everything. Not a title. Not a strategy. A way of being that people can feel when you walk into the room and notice when you’re not there.
All 3 legs sit under one overarching idea:
How we do what we do—how we lead—is as important as what we achieve.
A relay, not a rivalry
Lead with Light™ isn’t a correction to Sinek’s work. His framework asks a question that genuinely changed how millions of people think about leadership. My honest read is that Lead with Light™ is the question his framework naturally invites but doesn’t fully answer.
Start with Why helps leaders find their purpose. Lead with Light™ asks what you do with that purpose once you’ve found it. Purpose without character is ambition with good marketing. The leaders who endure and ultimately succeed aren’t just clear on their why; they’re committed to their own becoming.
Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, wrote:
“Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.”
That’s the invitation Lead with Light™ extends to every leader. You were born for this. Rise to it.
What it looks like when you get it right
A physician’s assistant once called me courageous on a day in the middle of my cancer treatments when I was completely spent. She didn’t have to say that. It wasn’t in her job description. That single word landed differently than anything else I heard during that time. She saw something in me and named it out loud.
I’ve tried to do the same for others.
Over the years, I’ve mentored several young professionals. Many of them were extremely bright and capable but carried real self-doubt beneath a confident exterior. Early in those relationships, we’d spend some time on the What: navigating a difficult situation, communicating with more senior leaders, managing a challenging stakeholder.
But the more important conversations always shifted to the How. Not what to do but how to approach it, based on what they knew in their gut to be right. More questions than advice. More listening than telling.
Several of those young professionals went on to conduct themselves in senior meetings with more wisdom and confidence than leaders twice their age and experience. Not because I gave them a playbook but because I took the time to see what they couldn’t yet see in themselves and named it out loud.
That’s the Illuminate leg of the Infinity Loop in practice. And it’s available to every leader, in every conversation, on any given day.
Parting Thoughts
Leadership doesn’t begin when you step into a role. It begins the moment you decide to take your own becoming seriously. It’s also a journey that never ends and involves continuous learning.
Sinek gave us a powerful starting point. Knowing your Why provides you with insight into what propels you forward. But purpose alone doesn’t make you the kind of leader people remember. That requires the daily, unglamorous work of calibrating your compass, cultivating your character, and illuminating the path for those in your care.
The 3 legs of the Infinity Loop aren’t a checklist. They’re a commitment. Do that work consistently, and the How of your leadership becomes unmistakable.
You were created for this. Rise to it.
Think about the leaders who made you feel seen, heard, and valued. What did they do that made the difference? I’d love to hear your story. Drop a comment below, or reach out directly.
Be clear. Be kind. Lead with Light! ✨
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