How to lead people and drive profit in ways that doesn’t make you a jerk

If you’ve been in the workforce for more than about five minutes, you’ve met them:

The boss who thought the title automatically made them brilliant – and would like you to know about it – the same one who called “urgent” meetings that could have been an email, or could have waited until next week. The one who thought feedback meant throwing a grenade into the meeting and walking off.

Maybe you laughed about them over Friday night drinks. Maybe you still wake up thinking of that time they made you redo the presentation at 10 p.m. because they “didn’t like the vibe of slide seven.”

Or maybe, just maybe … you’ve caught yourself doing something just as bad.

We’re not born knowing how to lead people.

Most leaders think they’re better communicators than they actually are. They confuse talking with communicating, and then wonder why everyone’s still confused.

Great communication isn’t about how many words you use – it’s about how much clarity lands on the other side. It’s also not about how well you understood your message. If they didn’t hear it, understand it, or believe it, you didn’t communicate.

The buzzword filter

A quick way to make sure your message doesn’t land: load it with corporate buzzwords.

We’ve all sat through the announcement that “we’re embarking on a synergistic transformation journey to optimise cross-functional alignment.”

Translation: no one knows what’s changing or why. And don’t start me on ‘pivots’.

Rule: If you wouldn’t use the word over dinner with a friend, don’t use it in a meeting at work. And if you think someone sounds like a – let’s say so-and-so – when they use a word, guess what? So do you.

“Buzzwords don’t inspire anyone but consultants. Try nouns and verbs your team already speaks.”

One-on-ones that actually matter

Too many leaders treat one on ones as optional – the first thing bumped for “urgent” tasks. That’s like canceling dentist check-ups because you’re too busy dealing with a toothache.

Tips for one-on-ones:

• Show up on time – it signals respect.
• Ask more than you tell.
• Cover both the work and the human: “How’s the project?” and “How are you holding up?”
• Close with clarity: “Here’s what I’ll do, here’s what I need from you.”
• Regular one on ones shrink half the psychosocial hazards – low support, unclear expectations, and simmering conflict – before they flare up.

Critically though, follow through on any commitments you make so that the time is seen as valuable by both parties. The most common reason that we see for why one on ones don’t work is that people keep cancelling them. The second most common is that they are just a ‘chat’ and don’t drive any action of behaviour. If you book the time, make sure it drives outcomes.

Feedback without the flinch

Most leaders dread giving feedback almost as much as people dread receiving it. So they avoid it … until a small performance niggle grows teeth and needs an HR intervention.

Feedback is not a special occasion. It’s leadership in its most basic form: “Here’s what’s working, here’s what needs to change.” It’s also a two way street. Anyone who gives feedback must also be open to receiving it themself – without defensiveness, and ideally with a great deal of curiosity about how we can all be better. The more normal you make it, the less everyone flinches.

The ‘no surprises’ rule

No-one should ever walk into a formal performance review and discover something bad for the first time. That’s not feedback – that’s ambush. It’s also entirely useless, as people are less likely to hear and accept it, and the time for effective intervention has probably passed.

Leaders who build a culture of no surprises:

• Give bite-sized course-corrections in real time.
• Balance positive with constructive so no one feels singled out.
• Make praise specific: “Great job running that client call – you nailed the tough questions,” not just “Good job.

Scripts for the ‘tough stuff’

Here’s a simple frame we teach in workshops – think of it as kind candour in four beats:

• Observation: “I noticed the report was two days late.”
• Impact: “That pushed the whole team’s schedule back.”
• Expectation: “We need reports on time so we can hit client deadlines.”
• Support/Next step: “What do you need to make that doable next time?”

Short, specific, respectful – and not a lecture or moralising the issue.

Just simply, that performance needs improvement because the organisation cannot function that way. What’s in the way and what do we do in the future?

If you only give feedback once a year, don’t be shocked when you get a year’s worth of bad habits.

Feedback as a trust-builder

Done well, feedback is a sign of respect – it says, “I believe you can do better, and want to support you in doing that.” Done badly, it’s a scar.

Leaders who offer clear, timely feedback reduce the psychosocial hazards of uncertainty and perceived unfairness, and they build trust instead of fear.

Inclusion and fairness in daily practice

You can’t lead people well if only a few feel they belong and the rest feel like extras in someone else’s movie.

Inclusion isn’t just about diversity check-boxes; it’s about how you run the day-to-day so everyone has a fair shot to do their best work.

Fair ≠ Identical

Leaders sometimes believe that treating everyone exactly the same is the fairest approach.

In reality, that often means treating everyone equally badly. Fairness means understanding that different people need different things to succeed:

• Some thrive on public praise, others would rather walk across Lego than stand up in front of the team.
• Some need a quiet space to think, others need to talk it out.
• Some can stretch a deadline, others crumble if they don’t know expectations up-front.

Your job isn’t to create clones; it’s to remove the friction that keeps people from performing.

And including diverse viewpoints has been consistently shown to generate better quality ideas, more agile teams and more profitable organisations.

Spotting everyday bias traps

Leaders often unintentionally reward:

• The loudest voice in meetings.
• The person who stays latest in the office.
• The one who talks a good game (even if delivery is patchy).
• The people who are most like themselves.

That sends an unspoken message to everyone else: “You don’t count.”

A client once said to me:

“The squeaky hinge gets the oil” – meaning that the people speaking up were the most valuable and should be given the most resources.

I said to him – “Or people can choose to use a different door.”  We live in a society that values the extrovert, values visible busyness and values sameness.

How these are not the things which make teams successful.

Left unchecked, it’s a psychosocial hazard – perceived unfairness – and it corrodes trust faster than a gossip-fuelled Slack thread.

Recognition matters (more than you think)

Recognition isn’t about handing out gold stars or pizza Fridays (although sometimes it is, but it doesn’t have to be).

It’s about noticing:

• the new analyst who quietly fixed a recurring system bug,
• the shift-lead who covered for someone’s emergency without drama,
• the hybrid team member who dialled in at 6 a.m. from another time-zone because there was an urgent need

A simple, specific “I saw that – thank you” goes further than a gift card.

If your team only hears from you when something’s wrong, you’re not leading – you’re lurking.

Fair workload = real inclusion

Inclusion also means protecting people from chronic overload. If one person is the unofficial “go-to” for every urgent job because they always deliver, that’s not a compliment – it’s a slow-burn stress injury often referred to as a ‘competency tax’.

Balanced work allocation, clear role boundaries, and predictable recognition aren’t soft skills – they’re core hazard controls.

Leaders who practise daily fairness and inclusion see stronger trust, steadier engagement, and fewer grievances. It’s not complicated – it’s just often overlooked.

Do this well and you remove one of the biggest psychosocial hazards hiding in plain sight.

Leadership is a skill. A learnable, improvable, practical skill – but only if we stop pretending it’s about charisma or PowerPoint slides.

* Karlie Cremin is the CEO of DLPA and Crestcom Australia, organisations dedicated to helping businesses solve complex people challenges with practical, real-world solutions. This is an edited extract from her book, Don’t Lead Like A Jerk: How To Lead People, Drive Profit, And Actually Get Stuff Done. Available for purchase now via Amazon AU.