The leadership moment I didn’t see coming

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THE ART & SCIENCE OF LEADING SELF
The Power of Culture

My friend, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately. 🧐

One point of reflection has been about the different forms leadership can take. It doesn’t always look like taking the stage, issuing a directive, or speaking with volume. Sometimes it looks like something quieter.

Something so culturally rooted that the moment doesn’t need explanation. It only merits recognition.

That’s what today’s issue is about.

Leadership on a Road in South Korea 👁

It was late afternoon in the spring of 2001. Stationed in Taegu, South Korea, I was driving home after a long day. When I got to the traffic light a few blocks from my apartment, I called my dad.

As we were chatting, at a merge point in the oncoming lane, one car rear-ended another. What happened next was fast and jarring.

The driver who was rear ended got out, stormed back to the other car, yanked the driver’s door open, and started punching the man inside. Over and over.

I froze, watching it unfold through my driver’s side window. No one else got out of their vehicles. No one honked. No one yelled. The street felt suspended in silence.

Then, something unexpected happened.

The driver behind them, an elderly gentleman, maybe in his early 70s, quietly stepped out of his car. He walked toward the fight, not with force, but with a calm presence. He spoke in a low tone I couldn’t hear.

What I could see was the effect.

The punches stopped immediately. The aggressor bowed to the older man. Next, he turned and bowed to the man he had just attacked. The other driver stepped out of his car, bowed to the older gentleman, and nodded at his aggressor. A few seconds later, everyone got back in their cars and drove away.

No shouting. No police. No physical restraint. No drama.

Just a moment of human escalation and a single voice that diffused it.

I sat there stunned. Then, I relayed what I had just witnessed to my dad.

We spent the rest of my drive home talking about the leadership the older gentleman embodied. We discussed how he didn’t demonstrate authority by force. What he modeled was authority by culture.

Culture Doesn’t Just Shape Countries. It Shapes Leaders 🌍

When I think back on that moment, I’m fairly confident the older gentleman didn’t intervene because he viewed himself as the strongest, the loudest, or the most powerful person in the street. He intervened because the culture he lived in had already granted him permission to lead.

In South Korea, respect for elders is deeply embedded. It isn’t a slogan on a plaque. It’s a mindset that is lived. That’s what made the moment work. The culture itself carried the authority.

As I revisited this memory, I found myself pondering a new question:

What did the culture I grew up in teach me about leadership?

If you pause and look back, you’ll notice something: you’ve lived inside more than one culture. The one you were raised in. The ones you were rewarded in. The ones you adapted to so you could belong.

Each one left a different imprint on how you see leadership and on when you feel free to act.

So let me ask you:

• In the world you were raised in, who was “allowed” to speak up?

• Were you taught to defer or to challenge?

• Did leadership look bold, quiet, positional, relational, self-sacrificing, or self-protective?

After all, you didn’t develop your leadership instincts in a vacuum.

They were shaped long before you ever put “leader” in a bio.

The Culture You Lead Inside ✨

Now, like holding a prism up to the light, let’s explore a new facet.

👉🏽 If early culture shapes your internal lens, organizational culture shapes your behavior.

How does this show up? Every company, whether it admits it or not, has silent rules that govern leadership:

✅ Who interrupts without consequence

✅ Who hesitates even when they’re right

✅ Who takes risks and gets praised

✅ Who takes risks and gets punished

✅ Who feels responsible for stepping in when things go off-course

All of this reinforces that your team is not just following the values statement on the wall.

They’re watching what is rewarded, ignored, shut down, or quietly admired and recalibrating behavior based on that.

And that brings us to mindset, the foundational leadership capacity.

Mindset Is Not Separate from Culture. It Grows Inside It. 🔗

Think of culture as what hands you your starting script. It’s the first set of rules you learned about who leads, who speaks, who waits, and what “good” looks like.

Mindset is what happens after that. It’s the belief that orients the way you handle situations and make sense of what is going on.

But here’s the turning point: mindset work is a function of mindfulness, aka M = f(m). You cannot shift your mindset until you can first see it. You have to notice the beliefs, reactions, and instincts you’re operating from before you can question them.

Without that awareness, culture leads. You follow.

With awareness, you begin to choose instead of running old patterns on autopilot.

And that is the work of self-leadership. It’s about consciously shaping the leader you are becoming rather than just reacting to the world that formed you.

So, here’s a question for reflection:

What cultural lens gives you permission to lead?

Clarity there will help you see the cultural lenses quietly keeping you from stepping forward when your leadership is needed.

*Enjoyed this story? Follow me on LinkedIn and click the notification bell in my profile. Every Thursday for 52 weeks (46 remaining), I am sharing stories of my lived experiences that illustrate “Brights Spots” in humanity. Why? Because the news and social media have a bias towards the awful, so I’m sharing my experiences as a counternarrative. 🙂 

I drew on this Bright Spot story that I shared — with a different focus — on LinkedIn, but revisiting this here was the exception, not the rule. Bright Spots lives on LinkedIn, not in the newsletter.

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD 📢

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