Last week, I had the privilege of moderating a conversation with Leanne Caret, former President and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, in front of a room of Fortune 500 senior executives, on the top floor of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library.
One thing Leanne said halfway through our conversation stayed with me. Earlier in her career, one of her bosses told her:
“You smile too much to be a leader.”
And yet, she would go on to spend more than three decades at Boeing, rising up through finance, operations, and general management, to eventually become the first woman to lead one of its major businesses. At Boeing Defense, Space & Security, she stewarded a roughly $30 billion business and 30,000+ people across four continents.
She did all this without learning to smile less.
Rigor and levity belong together
We had quite a lot of fun with this conversation. So much laughter and stories pulled us down winding roads, and the room was brought together through wisdom authentically shared. Our time together made me appreciate Leanne more, because one of my favorite leadership polarities is rigor and levity. I believe deeply in the integration of both, and how powerful and robust teams and organizations become when the two are integrated.
Rigor allows teams to confront hard, sometimes brutal, truths with high standards, as they do work that matters. Levity creates space to breathe and innovate inside all that intensity.
Seriousness about the work does not require solemnity in how people relate to one another, and there may be no greater need for that bit of humanity than in our present moment.
Kindness is a high standard
“As a leader, you cannot affect a bad day,” Leanne shared, and I voiced my agreement.
Not because leaders are exempt from having difficult days, but because they have to be conscious of the environment their experiences create for others.
The most effective leaders I’ve advised, coached, and experienced have refused a sacrificial version of carrying the weight of consequential work. Choosing, instead, to invest in relationships, practices, and support to help them shoulder it. They also create the conditions for those around them to do the same. The goal is never to be untouched by leadership’s strain, rather it’s to ensure that everyone around them isn’t forced to live it.
Step into any organization and you’ll immediately sense an emotional climate that is predominantly shaped by what its leaders permit themselves to transmit and infuse within it. A CEO’s panic becomes everyone’s anxiety, their frustration widespread fear.
The opposite, however, is also true. A calm CEO creates capacity. Their humor restores perspective and their kindness makes space to confront truths that otherwise could feel too threatening to name.
When you consider the business Leanne led and turned around, you get a glimpse into why this matters. Boeing Defense, Space & Security operates at the intersection of technology, government, geopolitics, national security, and some of the most complex engineering challenges in the world.
It’s exactly the kind of environment that could reward a caricature of leadership that is hard, impenetrable, and unnervingly relentless.
Leanne made an intentional effort to never separate her humanity from how she operated the business. She lived the difference between being kind and being nice, sharing that niceness tempts us to protect people from discomfort when the truth needs to be spoken. Kindness requires a leader’s conviction to tell the truth, while preserving another person’s dignity.
There is nothing inherently soft about the discipline of leading with humanity and holding people to high standards without making them feel small.
This message feels especially relevant now.
Technology is accelerating the pace and changing the meaning of work. Economic models and certainty we once relied on for guidance now feel increasingly out of place. Domestic and global policy shifts leave unfamiliar environments in their wake.
In all this, leaders best serving their organizations must remain centered enough to exercise calm judgement, guiding their people courageously and with humanity through changes and towards a future that feels increasingly unclear.
A compass for what comes next
As we wrapped our conversation, Leanne shared her true north, the Four Gs:
Grit is continuing to practice and move forward despite the challenges you face.
Gumption is putting yourself out there, raising your hand, making the call, and moving before certainty arrives.
Grace is remembering that someone else’s success does not diminish your own, and that we all need understanding and forgiveness.
Gratitude is remembering that none of us gets there alone.
Decades have passed since her boss suggested Leanne smiled too much to become a leader. Yet, she led a workforce of thousands doing extraordinarily complex and consequential work with a smile on her face.
And she’s still smiling.
Now in her Career 2.0, Leanne’s ranching in Texas, serving on boards, advising one of the world’s largest investment firms, winning multiple ribbons in cake competitions, and sharing her insight with the world.
And when we exchanged emails about this piece, she still found time to rub it in my face that a roomful of people had sided with her preference for green bananas over my penchant for ripe ones.
I’m still not convinced they got that one right.
Joy doesn’t diminish gravitas, warmth won’t compromise authority, and laughter doesn’t make the work unserious.
In a world where the demands on leaders continue to intensify, may we bring the fullness of our humanity to the work. May we be witnessed exuding joy and embodying a presence that lightens the weight others carry in our pursuit of consequential work.
Grit. Gumption. Grace. Gratitude. Not a bad compass for what comes next.
