The Core Leadership Differentiator
Why the Future Belongs to the Malleable
You (like I) have seen countless lists of skills or traits of what it takes to be a great leader. What they are all skipping over is the underlying trait, I have seen, that is required for any leadership development program or great leader to function.
Malleability
If you have it, you have the capacity to be a true leader. If you don’t have it, you can lead teams, you can have authority, you can be in charge, but you won’t be a great leader. In Emotional Intelligence (EI) malleability changes someone from self-aware to self-managed, socially aware, relationship managing, and EI executive presence. In Lominger Leadership Architect (LLA)there are 64 leadership competencies, but balancing them, and improving your effectiveness require a desire to absorb feedback and create change in behaviors (malleability.) Companies spend millions typing their people with DISC, Myers-Briggs, or Working Genius. I have found that self-awareness without malleability is just an excuse. A label isn’t a strategy. A malleable leader doesn't use their profile to justify their defaults; they use it to understand how they must adjust to bridge the gap with others.
When I discuss this with leaders and teams, there are typically two concerns people bring up. Let’s address them now, before we continue.
Are you suggesting we have to change who we are to be a great leader? No. Using LLA I did not change who I am to become proficient at conflict management. I was exposed to the impact of my overused skills behaviors. I used my intellectual engineering strength to rationalize that the outgoing behaviors I exhibited were having a negative impact on successful outcomes. (Winning the battle but losing the war.) Others choose to fix this skill by leveraging emotional, relationship-focused, political savvy, or confidence-building techniques. You use you and your traits to change the behavior to fix the behavior’s impact.
Working on my strengths seems more effective and positive. Why waste time focusing on my weaknesses? Understood. If team or company success was defined by your feelings and happiness, then leadership could be everybody going “all in” on their strengths. If leadership’s role is to make a cohort of individuals work together towards a common goal, then somebody needs to rise above personal preference or inclination and build what the system needs. Not change who they are, but see the tensions, see the imbalances, see the gaps, and actively work to fix them and build synergy.
Malleability is the desire to exhibit the behaviors and make decisions that create synergy and balance towards a shared purpose and intent. It requires observing and listening, deciding and acting, monitoring and reviewing, balancing adaptability and maintaining momentum, and knowing when it’s “good enough” vs. when it needs to be better. It’s an adaptable balancing act that observes, plans, and reacts to changing factors. At the root, it requires somebody who can admit they may not have all the answers and they may be wrong.
Other skills that are helpful:
Charisma and Savvy: It is true that people are more apt to follow somebody charismatic. But if they spend more time speaking than listening and observing they aren’t seeing the shifts or drags creating friction.
Intellect and Problem-Solving: Yes, being smart can help, but it can just as easily hurt your ability to lead. And being known as a problem-solver may mean you are doing and not leading.
Wisdom and Experience: Discernment, judgement, and knowledge all make sure you know what you are doing and what you need to do. But if you don’t figure out how to share and communicate with your team the vision is lost.
Listening and Empathy: These are critical to initiate malleability, but if it stops at the input, you’re missing the last three quarters. If you are taking that information to heart and figuring out what need to change, it isn’t leadership.
All of these are helpful or necessary skills that enhance your ability to lead. But the malleability, the ability to hear, process, understand, figure it out, and change how you approach something is mandatory and makes these better. I have seen numerous times in the people I’ve coached that these curious and malleable people are able to drive significant business growth or operational savings within weeks. When they’re shown how a behavior impacts the system and they work to reduce that negative impact the barriers slip away and things move quickly.
OK, how do I Start?
If you are thinking you may not be malleable, that’s ok. You’re not bad, and recognizing the gap and wanting something different is that first step. This only works if you are motivated to succeed by seeing success as mutually beneficial outcomes that provide benefit beyond just you.
Next, start noticing where your strengths may be being overused. You’re a great speaker. Do you ever shut up and listen to what others say? You’re a great problem solver. Can you choose to spend that energy and activity giving your team the same context, vision, and insights and allowing them to form a solution? You are great at winning arguments. What are you losing when you take on so many battles?
More than likely, you are leaning on a strength because you are not strong at something complementary. Many problem solvers are poor directors or delegators. Many high empathy and caring leads struggle with making tough or economic decisions. Once you see your overused strengths, look and see what gaps they have been covering.
To reiterate, you aren’t going to change your personality or who you are. You can choose to make slight behavioral modifications that leave room for a balanced approach to interactions and decisions. As part of being malleable you are choosing to collect and process feedback (good and bad) to ensure that the changes are having the desired effect. Even if you think you are absolutely right, there is always something that can be derived and learned from in a negative interaction or situation. You’re not perfect, you’re never going to be. Accept that you are a learning machine and choose to be a great learner (even of things you may not want to learn.)
What to do if the leader isn’t malleable
This is where you can choose to be the leader, even without the title. Leader of self, leader of others, and leader of leaders are three different styles of leadership. If you build it, people will see, people will gravitate, and other malleable managers will look to partner with you. You can be the change, you can be the integrator, stabilizer, or balancer.
Every high‑growth team I’ve ever worked with has the same dynamic. A few people who can absorb logic, adapt quickly, and integrate complexity. A larger group who can execute once the logic is clear. A small subset that resists change because it threatens their internal stability. The difference between these groups determines whether the organization scales or stalls. Because scaling isn’t about doing more. It’s about thinking differently.
The trick is understanding where these people lie within your organization. The threatened resistors may actually be in leadership positions. Typically, in change management practice we focus on the larger population laggards and resistors, but they exist at the top also. These are your fiefdom protectors. Their status is dependent on being right, being the smartest, and owning the flow of data. They thrive on an Information Moat. You can't change Joe, but you can build the Decision Architecture that routes the operating truth around him.
You choose to take the high road and understand the hidden intricacies. So, we know Joe is going to act like this. How do we modify our approach to not trigger his reaction? How do we learn to not be surprised and angry when that is his reaction? When dealing with a non-malleable executive, stop trying to convert them. Instead, change your engineering. Choose curiosity over certainty. Ask questions that expose the data rather than making assertions that trigger their defensiveness. Choose decision logic over task steps. Force them to align on the why before you accept the how. Own your reaction. Stop being surprised when a protectionist acts to protect their status. Read the room, map the friction, and design the bypass. This critical “stop thinking why they are the problem, and how you can be the solution” attitude has driven 3x sales growth and 40% reductions in operating costs for the teams I have worked with.
Closing
The most powerful people in any organization are not the ones with the most experience. They’re the ones who can be rebuilt: mentally, structurally, architecturally. They can update their worldview, integrate new logic, challenge the system without breaking it, learn faster than the environment changes, hold complexity without collapsing into chaos, shift from “what do I do?” to “how should I think?”
These people don’t just grow. They compound. The future belongs to the malleable. Not because they know more, but because they can learn faster than the system evolves. Not because they avoid mistakes, but because they update their logic when they make them. Not because they have the right background, but because they have the right architecture.
If you want to build a team that scales, don’t look for the people with the most answers. Look for the people who can change the questions they ask. Seeing these shifts and outcomes has been what I am most proud of. These diamonds in the rough exist on your team, let’s find them and polish them.
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