Corporate leadership on a bad day, (everyday for some) is built on a contradiction over leadership and the reality of emotional relationships. Corporations are legal entities but they are not people, and yet how might they be in an AI future? Some have justified Theory X, mistrusting of employees commitment to do good work, and yet Theory Y organisations exist. Organisational psychology theories exist to explain all aspects of work and its success or otherwise. In my own recent research into how military leaders transition into civilian leadership positions there was quite a bit of dissonance about leadership and what it means. That is why I want to dig a little deeper into the beating heart of leadership, to perhaps re-emphasise the relationship that exists between people as they lead and follow in organisations, between sales and customers. Who trusts who and why? And the unwritten psychological contract. While I am going to be quite critical, I will conclude with some case study examples of optimism that are also successful brands.
Organisations demand loyalty, commitment, and trust from employees. This. is understandable to some degree for the protection of intellectual property or a competitive advantage, discertion is necessary. Yet at any moment, many can, and do, fire those same employees without hesitation.
This fundamental asymmetry, a system that preaches belonging but practices disposability, is at the heart of why so many workers feel disillusioned, disengaged, and, ultimately, betrayed. Their identity and livelihood are all changed, and they may even have to move their family just to get work. No wonder any sense of betrayal will cut deep.
However, perhaps this is not just a failure of individual leaders, who are human too. Perhaps it is a systemic flaw in the very structure of corporate leadership itself? As we move rapidly towards engaging with AI how can we get corporations back on a solid ethical foundation of relationships and leadership?
Loyalty in One Direction: The Corporate Contradiction
Modern corporations increasingly speak the language of vision, purpose, and culture, but quite often they operate on utility, cost, and risk. Treating Humans like other company resources.
- They expect or demand employees to give their best effort, invest in the company’s future, and show deep commitment, developing company specific skills and experience.
- However, they reserve the right to let them go very quickly.
- Employees may hold back some of their commitment and exercise quiet quitting or moonlighting and side hustles, and even other more disruptive behaviour may occur too.
🔹 A leader tells their team, “We’re a family.” But families don’t have layoffs.
🔹 A CEO tells employees, “We care about people first.” But people aren’t first when profit margins shrink.
🔹 A manager says, “Trust me.” But the employee has seen what happens when trust is broken.
This contradiction may create a silent but pervasive culture of fear. Employees watch, learn, and adapt, not by listening to leadership rhetoric, but by observing how power is actually exercised. Culture is a function of values and beliefs espoused versus the behaviours exhibited. Contradiction of behaviour are seen in everyday lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in our workplaces. The spaces where we spend a significant part of our lives.
What we can all see is often quite clear.
Loyalty is not mutual.
The Survival Instinct of Corporate Leadership
At the heart of this dynamic is a simple, human response of self-preservation, but. it is not always clear what comes first. Lets agree for now that the company is exercising an unbalanced power dynamic in its favour, for a start it controls the reward systems.
🔹 When redundancies begin with or without warning, do senior leaders sacrifice their own jobs first? No.
🔹 When budgets are cut, do executives take the biggest pay reductions? Rarely.
🔹 When failures occur, does accountability move upwards or downwards? Too often, it rolls downhill.
Managers, knowing they operate in a system that discards people at will, begin to act accordingly, perhaps due to an allegiance to transactional leadership.
- They may distance themselves from their teams to ensure they are not the ones sacrificed and to limit the emotional damage of friendships lost.
- They justify hard decisions as necessary for “business survival,” but may not take responsibility for their part in hitting the iceberg
- They frame loyalty as a one-way street, demanded from employees, but optional for the company.
Employees, in turn may respond with their own self-preservation tactics:
- They withhold full engagement, because why invest deeply in something that can discard you overnight?
- They distrust corporate messaging, because they’ve seen the gap between words and actions.
- They seek outside options, because they know the company will not protect them when it matters most.
The result? A workplace culture suffused with quiet betrayal, by everyone of each other!
Betrayal: The Deepest Human Wound
Psychologists have long understood that betrayal is one of the most deeply felt human experiences, more than anger, more than disappointment.
🔹 Evolutionary psychology tells us that human survival depended on group trust. Betrayal wasn’t just painful, it was dangerous.
🔹 Organizational psychology shows that employees who feel betrayed are more disengaged, less innovative, and more likely to leave.
🔹 History tells us that broken social contracts lead to revolutions or mutiny. When people no longer believe in the system, they disengage, or they fight back.
Corporate leadership can systematically violate the basic human expectation and psychological contract of reciprocal trust. It promises belonging but delivers via conditional acceptance. It speaks of purpose but operates on expendability.
And employees, whether they say it aloud or not, feel it in their hearts.
The Paradox of Corporate Leadership
So why do employees stay? Why do they continue to work in systems that can discard them so easily?
Because corporate leadership is often a coercive model, not a relational one.
- Fear of loss: Employees need their income, so they remain in systems they do not trust.
- Social conditioning: The myth of “corporate loyalty” has been ingrained in workers for decades.
- Lack of alternatives: Employees are often given the false choice between trusting the system or risking everything.
Leaders within this system, even well-intentioned ones, often become enforcers of this coercion:
- They tell employees to “think like owners” while knowing ownership is not truly shared.
- They encourage risk-taking and innovation, while making it clear that mistakes are punished.
- They expect employees to be honest, while knowing that honesty about dissatisfaction often leads to career consequences.
In the worst examples, this is not leadership in any meaningful sense. It is a system of control, managed processes dressed up as inspiration hoping to hook on to any other emotional or intrinsic motivation that may exist.
The Alternative: Leadership as True Relationship
We may need to resolve some elements of this well known quote:
"We, the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
We have done so much for so long with so little.
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing." Anon
If leadership is to mean anything beyond corporate utility, it must be rebuilt on the foundation of real relationships and recognising the enormous opportunities ahead of us
This means, for managers and those in formal and informal leadership roles, at every level need to exercise good judgment to create justice and equity for all.
✅ Reciprocity over rhetoric: If a company expects loyalty, it must show loyalty, even when inconvenient. Trust will build and be reciprocated internally, creating resilience from competition.
✅ Transparency over coercion: Leaders must be honest about how power operates in an organisation. Employees are not naïve; they know when they are being misled. Power is valuable and effective, created from collaboration and political activity, its misuse, sometimes for ambitiously aggressive personal ends demonstrates misaligned behaviour. Values and beliefs are judged by behaviours.
✅ Protection over exploitation: Real leadership means shielding employees from unnecessary harm—not exposing them to it while claiming it’s for their own good or a some greater good that does not consider them any more.
Like a great relationship, a leader’s true test is not how well they inspire in times of growth, it’s whether they stand by their people in times of uncertainty, still providing the guiding light. Remember that every employee has given up something to come and work with your organisation. They may be well rewarded in many ways
Imagine this:
"We the willing, led by the knowing, are doing the impossible for the grateful.
We have done so much for so long with so little.
We are now qualified to do anything."
The Trust Reckoning
Trust, once broken, is nearly impossible to rebuild.
Corporations may continue using the language of leadership, vision, and culture, but employees are no longer fooled by words alone. Access to information outside of your organisation has never been easier to find and compare. Companies may not provide the protection they once did, just like ancient castles become redundant.
The future of work will not be shaped by leaders who demand trust without giving it. It will be shaped by those who recognise that true leadership is not a position, it is a healthy relationship that is judged by your actions. Leaders are always being observed.
Good and healthy relationships are not built on coercion. They are built on mutual trust, shared risk, and reciprocal loyalty.
Therefore anything less is not leadership any more. It may be a an understandable survival instinct being exercised.
It may be a power play.
And people are no longer willing to mistake one for the other.
For decades, corporate leadership has been about control, defining strategy from the top, enforcing rules, and ensuring compliance by coercive means.
However, the best organisations do not necessarily thrive on command and control. They thrive on trust and connection.
While some companies still operate on outdated leadership models that treat employees as expendable, others are proving that workplaces built on real relationships, rather than rigid hierarchies, perform better, innovate faster, and inspire more loyalty.
Let’s look at the companies leading this shift, and the lessons we can learn from them.
The Everybody Matters Approach: People First, Always
Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and author of Everybody Matters, believes that business should be about caring for people, not just making money.
His company, a global manufacturing firm, operates under a radical philosophy:
✅ Leaders are stewards, not bosses – Their role is to serve, not control.
✅ Employees are treated as family – The company does not do mass layoffs, even during downturns.
✅ Decisions prioritise human impact – If a choice would harm employees, they find another way.
During the 2008 recession, most companies resorted to layoffs. Barry-Wehmiller didn’t. Instead, they implemented shared sacrifice, each employee took a temporary pay cut so that no one lost their job.
The result? Employees felt valued, engagement soared, and the company emerged stronger.
📌 Lesson: When employees feel safe and valued, they give their best effort, not because they have to, but because they want to. Would you?
Humanocracy: Breaking Free from Bureaucratic Leadership
Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini’s book Humanocracy argues that bureaucracy, layers of control and rigid leadership structures, is killing innovation and engagement.
They propose a new model of work, where:
✅ Decisions are decentralised – Employees at every level have authority, not just executives. Push decisions to where the information is, as demonstrated by David Marquet in Turn the Ship Around
✅ Compensation is fairer – Pay gaps between leaders and workers are smaller.
✅ Work is built on passion, not just productivity – Employees have freedom to contribute beyond their job description.
Case Study: Haier’s “Microenterprise” Model
Haier, the Chinese appliance giant, operates without traditional managers. Instead, it is structured as 4,000+ self-managed teams, each running like a small business.
- Employees set their own goals and budgets.
- Teams choose their own leaders—there is no forced hierarchy.
- Success is based on collaboration, not pleasing a boss.
📌 Lesson: When people are trusted with autonomy, they take ownership of their work—and the entire organisation benefits.
More Companies Putting People First
1. Patagonia: Values Over Profits
Patagonia is famous for its commitment to both employees and the planet.
- It offers on-site childcare, flexible schedules, and pays employees to volunteer.
- Instead of maximizing profits, it invests in sustainability and employee well-being.
- CEO Yvon Chouinard even gave the entire company’s ownership to an environmental trust—ensuring its mission will outlast leadership changes.
📌 Lesson: When a company puts values ahead of short-term gains, it earns deep employee and customer loyalty.
2. Morning Star: No Titles, No Bosses
Morning Star, a tomato processing company, operates with zero traditional managers.
- Employees negotiate their own responsibilities with colleagues.
- Everyone has equal say in company decisions.
- The system is based entirely on peer accountability, not managerial authority.
📌 Lesson: Trust replaces hierarchy when employees are given control over their own work.
3. Southwest Airlines: Culture as a Competitive Advantage
While many airlines struggle with labour disputes, Southwest thrives by prioritising employees.
- It has never fired workers en masse during financial downturns.
- Employees are encouraged to have fun at work, leading to famously great customer service.
- Even during challenges like COVID-19, leadership took pay cuts to protect frontline staff.
📌 Lesson: A culture of trust creates lasting resilience.
How to Build a Relationship-Driven Workplace
These companies prove that great workplaces don’t rely on control, fear, or hierarchy. Instead, they invest in:
🔹 Psychological safety – Employees need to know they won’t be punished for speaking up. A just culture.
🔹 Shared accountability – When people are trusted to manage themselves, they rise to the challenge when supported by training and skills acquisition.
🔹 Human-centred leadership – Leaders should serve to take followers to a vision of a better place, not dictate their view as if every challenge is a crisis.
Instead of treating employees as costs to be minimised, these companies prove that investing in relationships creates loyalty, innovation, and long-term success.
Interestingly, the military may seem to have an envious position for some, with a highly structured and enforceable coercive hierarchy well established. However, the best of modern military, recognising their diverse skills and novel situations, builds trust and consensus to ensure that orders, when given, are not rejected or sabotaged from within.
Employees may need to renew their own trust too, be less cynical and exercise dissent in a loyal and respectful way.
Final Thought: The Future of Work Is Human, But AI is also coming to Work
For too long, corporate leadership has been about power and control.
How does that look in an AI future?
What happens if the most successful organisations, using ethical AI approaches, reject outdated leadership models in favour of something more sustainable:
🔹 Trust over control. And verify
🔹 Collaboration over hierarchy. And exercise loyal dissent
🔹 People over processes. And continually improve
The future of work isn’t leaders vs. employees. It’s humans working together, and with technology like AI to build something meaningful.
None of this is simple and this position may not be the answer. It is its nuanced complexity that requires our best minds attention to address it again, yet perhaps that future starts with simply better relationships.
Let’s Discuss:
- Have you ever worked in a company that prioritised relationships over rigid leadership?
- What would happen if more businesses operated like Barry-Wehmiller where Everybody Matters or Haier?
- What’s one change your workplace could make to build stronger relationships?
- Have you ever felt betrayed by a company that preached loyalty but acted otherwise?
- Can corporate leadership ever be truly ethical, or is it always a tool for control?
- How should organisations rebuild trust in an era of rising worker skepticism, and remain profitable?
- How might we embrace the dawn of AI to improve our relationships with our corporations and each other?
🔄 Share this with someone who has seen corporate leadership from the inside.
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