Leadership Lessons from Hard Places
Photo credit: Unsplash
Author: Melanie Cossette
What Bad Bosses, Broken Systems and Personal Crises Teach Us About Integrity, Resilience and Agency
Our HLG writing group straggled into an early session at the tail end of summer, and here was the prompt: “What’s a moment in your career when you realized something needed to change, either in you or around you?”
A handful of us had shown up, and the writing quickly turned personal. But these weren’t teachable career anecdotes about promotions or breakthroughs. They were stories about hard places. The moments when things broke so badly that we could no longer ignore it.
Here’s Melanie’s Story:
When Leaders Don’t Walk Their Talk
I was standing in an executive leader training, waiting my turn to deliver a session on creating an extraordinary patient experience. This was healthcare in the mid-2000s, and it was competitive. High costs with low profit margins spurred innovation not only in medical advancement and specialization, but also in experience.
What was the experience you would have when in this system? And how patient-centric was it? This organization spent time and resources on cultivating what research had shown mattered, differentiating themselves in the market. My team and I were responsible for cascading these values, skills and behaviors throughout the organization in a myriad of ways.
There were service trainings at both the departmental and organizational levels. There were physician empathy trainings. There were newsletters and portals with information. There were manager trainings with sound bites and strategies to engage employees in improvement. We also worked with outside survey organizations that produced volumes of data to track what was working and what still needed attention.
It was comprehensive, and I was the face of the department. I facilitated all the trainings, and I stood for and believed in these values to my core.
And then there was the day I stood on the sidelines at the executive-level presentation and witnessed behavior completely contrary to what I had been promoting. My heart sank. Leaders spoke harshly to one another, and the CEO arrived late - again - leaving everyone to speculate: was he spread too thin or just enjoying the grand entrance? He also claimed credit for the team’s hard work. What I saw was bravado where humility and service were most needed. Criticism before curiosity. Morale visibly suffered. I became acutely aware that these leaders who pushed 5,000 others toward certain behaviors didn’t walk their talk. It was devastating. I delivered my session, spoke with my leader, and left dispirited, my commitment waning for weeks.
I could no longer reconcile being the voice of that which was not supported at the highest levels of the organization. And within two months, I left.
Echoes from the Group
Melanie learned this: leadership without integrity collapses under its own weight, eventually. This hard place felt oddly familiar. During the read-backs:
One of us remembered working for a boss who shrieked, micromanaged, and even slammed doors and hurled a spiral notepad across the room over a forgotten detail. It took years to see that walking away wasn't a weakness but a leadership move.
Another told of sitting at a van seat “desk” in a scrappy auto shop during the pandemic, forced to prove her worth in an environment that didn’t know what to make of her. Over time, she realized that small shifts - patience, wit, asking good questions - were the real work of leadership.
Yet another described lying in a hospital bed, about to undergo surgery, only to realize how far she had pushed herself running schools during a pandemic. Leadership without self-awareness of her own dire health situation had nearly killed her. She was literally going to die if she didn’t make a change.
Different stories but a similar theme: leadership emerges from hard places.
Final Reflection
Growth is found in the hard places, when boundaries are pushed, integrity is tested, limits are reached and the gap between what we say and what we do can no longer be ignored.
Bad bosses, broken systems, and personal crises don’t just test us. They shape us. And in shaping us, they remind us what kind of leaders we want to be.
What the Hard Places Teach Us
Discomfort can be a great teacher. Growth doesn’t always come from breakthroughs, sometimes it’s the uncomfortable stretches - the roles we never would’ve chosen - that shape our adaptability and resilience.
Breaking points can be catalysts. The slammed notepad, the hospital ceiling, the meeting where values and behavior didn’t align. These moments of rupture often become the push we need to change.
Agency is leadership. Walking away, speaking up, slowing down or choosing a new path are not failures. They’re acts of leadership - reminders that we always have a choice, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Leadership takes shape in the hard places. Not in the glory of hitting numbers or delivering a project under the deadline, but in the difficult moments when our values, health and limits are tested and when we emerge stronger as a team.
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