From Pyramid to Circles: What if Leadership Isn’t About Being On Top?
How moving to the center multiplies your influence without sacrificing results
Last year, a creative co-founder looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm tired of just managing people. I want to actually empower them, help them grow… you know, be the kind of leader I wish I'd had."
His words hit me because they revealed something most of us feel but rarely say out loud: traditional leadership often feels hollow, even when it works. We follow the playbook, hit our targets, and still sense we're missing something essential.
That conversation sent me back to an idea from Frances Hesselbein that's been quietly revolutionizing how forward-thinking leaders think about power, influence, and human potential.
The Great Flattening: From Commander to Cultivator
Most of us grew up with leadership looking like a ladder. Someone climbs to the top, surveys the landscape, and tells everyone below what they see. Information travels up, decisions flow down, and power sits at the peak.
It's clean. It's simple. And for today’s environment, it's completely limiting.
Here's Hesselbein's insight: take that entire vertical structure and flatten it into concentric circles. Suddenly, the leader isn't standing above everyone - they're positioned right at the center, surrounded by expanding rings of influence and connection.
This isn't necessarily an organizational restructuring. But it's a fundamental reimagining of what leadership energy looks like. When you're at the top of a hierarchy, your job description is pretty straightforward: make the big calls, maintain order, be the final authority. You're the decision-making bottleneck that everything flows through.
But leading from the center? That's a completely different mindset.
From the center, you become less like a commander and more like a cultivator. Your job isn't to control growth - it's to create the conditions where growth happens naturally. You're not the source of all wisdom; you're the catalyst that helps wisdom emerge from everywhere.
Each circle around you represents not people to manage, but communities to serve. Your influence radiates outward, but so does energy, creativity, and insight flowing back toward the center. It becomes a living ecosystem rather than a mechanical hierarchy.
The Service Paradox
Here's where it gets counterintuitive: the more you focus on serving others' growth, the more your own influence expands.
When you lead from the center, everything revolves around one core question: "How do I help each person become who they're capable of being?" instead of "How do I get people to do what I want?"
The 3-Circle Practice: Imagine three concentric circles around each team member. The inner circle represents their current capabilities. The middle circle is their growth edge—skills they're developing. The outer circle is their untapped potential. Your job? Help them expand from inner to middle to outer circle through the right conversations, opportunities, and support.
This means creating environments where people can think out loud, make mistakes, and contribute their authentic perspectives. It means delegating not just tasks, but decision-making authority—even when you could solve things faster yourself.
Yes, you'll need to release some immediate control. But what emerges is far more valuable: a team that thinks strategically, innovates continuously, and operates at full capacity whether you're present or not.
The Energy Shift
I've watched this transformation happen with leaders brave enough to make this shift. Something magical occurs when people realize their leader is genuinely invested in their growth, not just their productivity.
Teams start taking ownership of challenges they used to escalate. Conversations become more honest because people feel heard, not just managed. Innovation increases because everyone understands they're co-creating something meaningful together.
That co-founder? He's discovering that when you serve from the center, you don't lose authority. You gain something better: genuine influence based on trust rather than title.
Modern leadership isn't about being the person with all the answers. It's about being the person who helps others discover answers they didn't know they had.
This essay was featured in Issue 004: Through You, Not About You: The Sacred Path of Service. Read the Full Publication
Marc Engel is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on helping creative professionals overcome barriers to authentic self-expression. You can follow him on Substack here.
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