Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fellavaliedo.
Hello everyone, and welcome to this seven minute leadership podcast. It's episode five seventy seven. This whole week has been kicking off the new year with the Leadership Reset, and today I want to tackle a topic that sounds dangerous on the surface but is critical if you actually lead people. And that's why good leaders break their own rules. And that sentence makes some people uncomfortable, it should because week leaders use it as an excuse. Strong leaders use it
as a responsibility. And let me be clear right out of the gate, this is not about hypocrisy. This is not about leaders doing whatever they want. This is not about exceptions because you hold a title. Good leaders create rules for a reason, safety, fairness, consistency, trust, Rules protect people, rules create order, rules prevent chaos. But leadership is not about rule worship. Leadership is judgment. If you follow rules blindly, you're not leading. You are managing a checklist and an EMS,
aviation business, or any high stakes environment. Rules exist to guide decisions, not replace them. The moment you stop thinking and hide behind policy, you become a liability. Good leaders know the difference between breaking a rule and breaking trust. And here's the first truth. Most leaders avoid. Rules are written for normal conditions. Leadership shows up when conditions are
no longer normal. Think about the cockpit. There's checklists for everything, but pilots are trained on something even more important, when to deviate, not recklessly, intentionally, with full ownership. And the same applies to leadership. If a policy says one thing, but reality demands another, a good leader does not freeze. They assess risk impact in people, then they decide. Bad
leaders break rules to make life easier for themselves. Good leaders break rules to protect the mission in the people. There's a massive difference. Let's talk about why leaders need rules in the first place. Rules level the playing field. They remove favoritism, They create predictability, They give people clarity about what's expected. But rules can never count for every scenario, and when leaders pretend they can, teams suffer. I've seen leaders enforced rules that made no sense in the moment
because they were afraid of being questioned later. That fear based leadership costs credibility quick your team does not respect blind enforcement. They respect thoughtful decisions. And here's where most leaders kind of screw this up. They break a rule quietly, hope nobody notices, and they move on. That erodes trust. Good leaders do the opposite. They explain the exception, they own it publicly, then they explain the why. When you break a rule the right way, you teach judgment. When
you hide it, you teach politics. And let me give you a real world example. You have a policy about attendance, it's clear, it's fair. Then one of your strongest people calls you something happened at home, not a pattern, not an excuse, a real world situation. You have two choices. Enforce the rule to prove your consistent or apply judgment to prove your human Breaking the rule is not the risk breaking your values is. If your team sees you bend a rule to support someone who has earned trust,
they don't cry favoritism. They learn loyalty matters. Now flip it. If you bend the same rule for someone who is always a problem, now you've broken credibility. Same action, different leadership. That's why good leaders break rules selectively, transparently, and rarely another hard truth. Leaders who never break rules, usually lack confidence. They hide behind policy because policy can't argue back. Leadership requires standing in front of decisions and saying this one
is on me. That's totally red key leadership that I talk about all the time, high consequence moments where you cannot outsource responsibility. And here's a test you can use this year. Before you break a rule, ask yourself three questions. First, does this protect people, the mission, or both? Second? Would I explain this decision openly to the team without flinching?
Third?
Am I willing to own the outcome if this goes sideways? If you hesitate on any of those, don't break the rule. Rules exist to serve the organization, not to trap it. And another mistake leaders make is creating too many rules then spending their time breaking them. That's not leadership either, that's just poor design. If you constantly need exceptions, the rule is probably broken. Good leaders review their rules, They adjust them, They eliminate outdated ones. They do not create
policy clutter just to look busy. And as we reset into a new year, this matters more than ever. Teams are watching closely. They are tired of corporate bs. They want clarity and fairness, but they also want leaders who can think. If you want to earn trust this year, enforce rules consistently. If you want respect, no one to bend them, And if you want credibility, never pretend the exception didn't happen. Say it out loud, own it, teach the lesson. Leadership is not about being right on paper,
It's about being right in real life. So as you move into this new year, take seven intentional minutes and review your rules. Ask which ones protect people, which ones protect comfort, and which ones no longer make sense. The best leaders do not abandon standards. They apply them with judgment, courage, and accountability. That is how trust is built and how leadership resets actually stick. This has been the seven Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.
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