The Four-Letter Word Leaders Should Have on Their Radar

There’s a four-letter word we rarely associate with leadership. Yet it may deserve far more attention than it gets.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, “What Companies Can Learn from Their Biggest Fans,” researcher Marcus Buckingham challenges a deeply ingrained organizational habit: our tendency to focus on what isn’t working.

Where are the gaps? Who needs to improve? What problem needs to be fixed?

Buckingham suggests turning that equation around. Instead of concentrating primarily on deficiencies, study what people love—the experiences that generate extraordinary commitment, energy, loyalty, and performance—and intentionally create more of what is already working.

There is an important leadership lesson here that extends beyond employee and customer experience.

If You’re Charged with Behavior Change, Start with Your Own

Buckingham begins with a fundamental premise: one of the primary responsibilities of a leader is to effect behavioral change—to move people toward outcomes that matter.

I agree. But I would add something.

Before leaders can effectively influence the behavior of others, they need to be more “in charge” of their own.

That sounds obvious. In practice, it’s anything but.

Under pressure, our behavior often becomes less intentional. The leader who values collaboration starts controlling. The high achiever who values excellence becomes impatient. The relationship-oriented leader avoids the difficult conversation. The strategic executive gets pulled into the weeds because solving the immediate problem feels more urgent than stepping back to address the systemic one.

None of these leaders wakes up intending to behave this way.

The inside drives the outside.

What we believe, value, fear, prioritize, and tell ourselves internally inevitably influences how we behave externally. And when we don’t understand those internal drivers, they can begin driving us.

That’s why sustainable behavior change starts on the inside.

Awareness → Alignment → Agency → Action

Awareness comes first.

What drives me? What triggers me? What strengths do I bring when I’m at my best? What patterns emerge when pressure rises? Where might a strength become overused and begin working against me?

But awareness alone doesn’t change behavior.

Awareness creates the opportunity for alignment—examining whether how we are showing up actually reflects who we want to be as a leader. Are my behaviors aligned with my values, strengths, priorities, and the impact I intend to have?

Alignment then creates agency.

When we can recognize what’s happening internally and see the choices available to us, we become less captive to automatic reactions. We regain the ability to choose rather than simply react.

And agency enables intentional action—the deliberate behaviors that others ultimately experience as our leadership.

The progression matters:

Awareness → Alignment → Agency → Action.

The more effectively we lead ourselves through that sequence, the more effectively we can influence others.

Stop Fixing. Start Leveraging.

This is also where Buckingham’s work offers another important challenge.

Leadership development has traditionally focused heavily on deficits: identify weaknesses, close gaps, fix what’s broken.

But what if development also focused more intentionally on what is already strong?

When are you at your best?

What strengths are present when people trust your judgment, seek your perspective, follow your lead, or do their best work around you?

What do you naturally bring that creates energy, confidence, connection, or momentum?

And how intentionally are you leveraging it?

Growth certainly requires addressing behaviors that limit effectiveness. But leadership development becomes far more powerful when we stop treating people as collections of deficiencies requiring repair.

Your strengths aren’t simply things you’re good at. Properly understood and intentionally deployed, they are leadership assets.

And That Four-Letter Word?

Love.

Buckingham’s research suggests that what people love can tell organizations far more than what merely satisfies them.

Perhaps leaders should pay attention to the same signal.

What do you love about the leader you are when you’re at your best?

What do others value most about working with you?

What strengths deserve to be amplified rather than repaired?

And what gets in the way of consistently showing up that way?

Those questions take us back inside—because the inside drives the outside.

That is precisely the work we do through the Metamorphosis Method: helping accomplished leaders deepen awareness of their Values, Motivators, Strengths, and Saboteurs so they can create greater alignment, exercise greater agency, and translate both into intentional action.

Because changing how you lead doesn’t begin with fixing what’s broken.

It begins with understanding—and leveraging—what’s already inside.

Inspired by Marcus Buckingham’s “What Companies Can Learn from Their Biggest Fans,” published in the May–June 2026 issue of Harvard Business Review.