Letting someone go is difficult. Letting them stay with no shared vision is worse.

One of the harder lessons I’ve learned in leadership is that strong-arming your team into compliance might feel decisive in the moment, but often, it only causes more problems down the road.

In the past, I tried the hard-line approach. Telling someone, “Do it this way or find another team.” But that created resistance and frustration, not buy-in.

Since then, I’ve learned that real leadership looks like riding alongside people, especially in uncertain territory, and helping them navigate through it.

These days, when someone disagrees with our direction, I don’t lead with ultimatums. I ask: “What do you think the best course of action is, and why?” Then we walk through it together.

If we can’t find a path we both believe in, we part ways.

Because I’ve also learned that staying misaligned does more harm than good. When we’ve delayed those decisions in the past, we’ve paid for it, culturally and economically.

People felt the misalignment. Morale slipped, energy drained…and ultimately, we still made the difficult choice later, just with more damage to clean up.

At LANDCO NEXA, we build teams around a shared North Star.

That only works if everyone sees the same light – and is moving toward it.

Mark Lester, Principal, LANDCO NEXA