Capitolo 1
Breaking the Rules of Leadership
Imagine walking into a conference room where a billionaire CEO has just asked you a single, piercing question: "Do you need to be liked?" Your answer could determine whether you land a life-changing opportunity or remain stuck in mediocrity. This scenario played out for Daniel Houghton, who was offered the CEO position at Lonely Planet after answering "no" to Brad Kelley's deceptively simple question. In "Great Leaders Have No Rules," Kevin Kruse challenges virtually everything we've been taught about leadership, arguing that conventional wisdom often produces disengaged teams and mediocre results. The book has become required reading at companies like Microsoft and Marriott, with leadership experts like Marshall Goldsmith calling it "a game-changer for anyone looking to take their leadership to the next level." Drawing from interviews with over 200 leadership experts and his own entrepreneurial journey of both spectacular failures and successes, Kruse presents a counterintuitive framework for leadership that feels wrong but works remarkably well.
Capitolo 2
The Open Door Policy Paradox
"Got a minute?" These three innocent words strike fear into the hearts of managers everywhere. The traditional open door policy, while well-intentioned, creates a productivity nightmare that benefits neither leaders nor their teams. Research shows the typical office worker faces 50-60 interruptions daily, with only three minutes between them. Each interruption requires about 25 minutes to fully refocus on complex tasks, effectively destroying a manager's ability to complete meaningful work.
Beyond productivity concerns, open door policies often fail to achieve their intended goals of transparency and trust. Approximately half of employees withhold potentially beneficial information despite open door invitations. Why? Self-preservation. The perceived risks of speaking up feel immediate and personal, while organizational benefits remain uncertain. Many employees reference company "myths" about individuals who shared ideas and suddenly disappeared.
Even in environments where open door policies are official regulations, like the military, subordinates make careful risk-reward calculations before using them. Many view these policies as "trap doors" that will lead to indirect backlash. Going over your boss's head typically ends badly - either your superior sides with your boss (marking you as troublesome), or they override your boss (making you a target for subtle retaliation).
Open door policies also create unhealthy dependencies. Without clear boundaries, they invite what leadership expert Cy Wakeman calls "BMWs" - Bitching, Moaning, and Whining. The open door becomes "a portal for drama" that fuels victimhood and lowers morale. Some employees become overly dependent, afraid to make decisions without managerial approval. As one Australian manager discovered, his open door created "a culture of dependence" where stronger staff felt untrusted and weaker staff grew more dependent.
Rather than abandoning accessibility entirely, effective leaders implement structured alternatives. Scheduled "office hours" preserve the benefits while preventing flow interruption. This limited availability forces team members to trust their instincts on smaller matters and only seek guidance on truly important issues. Weekly one-on-ones eliminate the "unexpected" element while allowing both parties to prepare properly. These meetings belong to the employee - your role is to help them succeed with questions like: What's on your mind? What are your most important tasks? How can I help?
Beyond individual meetings, establish a rhythm of communication including weekly team meetings, monthly division meetings, and quarterly all-company town halls. This scheduled cadence provides information to all team members regardless of hierarchy. For group settings where people may hesitate to speak up, use anonymous index cards to collect questions. The more frequently you communicate and ask questions, the more your team will believe you care and feel safe bringing issues forward.
Capitolo 3
The Smartphone Addiction Destroying Your Leadership
Facebook doesn't provide a customer service phone number because users aren't customers - they're the product being sold to advertisers. Free apps employ teams of experts who run thousands of behavioral experiments to maximize user engagement through push notifications, red circles indicating new messages, endless scrolling feeds, and other "brain hacking" techniques designed to trigger dopamine releases in our brains.
Like pulling a slot machine lever, every phone check creates anticipation: what will we get this time? The variable rewards - sometimes boring posts, occasionally exciting content - create dopamine rushes that reinforce the checking behavior. Research shows we check our phones over 47 times daily, with young adults reaching 85 checks spanning five hours. The first check typically happens within five minutes of waking, and 30% check right before bed.
Beyond dopamine's pleasure pull, cortisol - our stress hormone - drives smartphone addiction through FOMO (fear of missing out). Research shows "constant checkers" experience 20% more stress than infrequent checkers, while weekend work-email checkers suffer 50% higher stress levels. Even being disconnected creates anxiety - "nomophobia" affects 53% of users who panic without their phones.
The cognitive impacts are shocking: even notifications without checking the phone triple error rates, and merely having a phone nearby drains cognitive resources. In a University of Texas study, participants with phones in another room significantly outperformed those with phones in pockets, who in turn outperformed those with phones on their desks. The mental effort of trying not to think about your phone actually depletes your limited cognitive capacity.
The consequences extend beyond productivity to safety. "Distracted doctoring" has become alarmingly common - from neurosurgeons making personal calls during brain surgery to heart monitor technicians texting during procedures. While smartphones enable medical professionals to access critical information, they also cause dangerous distractions that can lead to errors, injuries and death across many industries.
As a leader, your actions speak louder than words - your behavior influences others. Captain Sully Sullenberger suggests setting aside distraction-free time daily to build "creative reserves" - perhaps 30-60 minutes to think deeply without emails or texts interrupting. The radical solution: mute your phone and put it in your desk drawer, checking it just three times daily. For those concerned about emergencies, use office landlines. For note-taking, try pen and paper - research shows handwriting improves comprehension.
Capitolo 4
The Tyranny of Rules and Policies
Rules in organizations often begin with good intentions but quickly become problematic. When companies grow beyond the point where leaders can personally manage everyone, rules multiply to maintain quality and mitigate risk. Despite good intentions, these rules often create absurd situations: proposals delayed because the designated proofreader is sick, employees driving hours to find an approved motel, and managers obsessing over dress code minutiae.
Every rule takes away the opportunity to make a choice. When work becomes dictated by policies and regulations, employees feel less ownership and emotional commitment wanes. As Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski observes, "Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box...People set rules to keep from making decisions."
Rules typically punish the majority to protect against a small minority of offenders. Nick, an Australian business owner, implemented strict technology policies and software controls on company laptops, only to create "a productivity disaster" requiring constant administrator intervention. Similarly, Heidi's digital technology department ironically couldn't access social networks or research sites needed for their work without raising tickets and getting director approval.
When rules become impossible to follow, people resort to dishonesty. A US Army War College study revealed that commanders are required to put soldiers through 297 days of mandatory training each year, despite having only 256 days available. Officers routinely "pencil whip" requirements - having one soldier complete online training for everyone or filling out forms without doing the work. This "ethical numbness" creates a slippery slope where bending small rules can lead to lying about bigger issues.
Instead of rigid rules, successful organizations like Netflix build cultures based on "Freedom and Responsibility," focusing on hiring high-performers and maintaining a culture that rewards them while removing low performers. Their trust-based approach includes an unlimited vacation policy and a five-word expense policy: "Act in Netflix's best interests." Former chief talent officer Patty McCord explains that when you hire people who put company interests first, "97 percent of your employees will do the right thing" without needing extensive HR policies designed for the problematic 3 percent.
Ricardo Semler, who grew Semco from $4 million to $160 million without written policies or rulebooks, exemplifies guideline-based leadership. His approach was radical industrial democracy - letting employees set their own salaries using transparent information about company finances and peer comparisons. Guidelines educate rather than restrict, saying "Here's what works in most cases, but do what's best for the company," showing trust in employees' judgment while providing direction.
Capitolo 5
The Peril of Needing to Be Liked
The distinction between friendship and leadership is subtle but critical. In friendship, the relationship exists purely for social pleasure. As a boss, your relationship serves specific goals - closing sales, finishing projects, meeting production targets. Despite claims of equality ("I'm just like you with a different job"), a fundamental power imbalance exists. As Navy captain Ben Simonton notes, "Boss as a friend? It's one of the worst mistakes. Friends don't decide pay raises, train, coach, or rank their friends."
Some blame Yahoo's decline on co-founder Jerry Yang being "too nice" - unlike acknowledged tough leaders like Jobs, Ballmer, and Bezos. They argue Yang wouldn't lay off employees to save money, couldn't decide between being a media or tech company, and refused lucrative buyout offers from Microsoft and Google out of loyalty. While simplistic, the underlying concern is valid: needing to be liked impedes decision-making. Leaders must allocate scarce resources - budgets, headcount, offices, equipment - decisions that can be skewed by personal feelings or delayed while seeking consensus.
Managers with a compulsive need for approval notoriously avoid tough conversations. Whether it's giving constructive feedback or mediating disputes, conflict avoidance allows problems to fester, increases tension, and drives away top talent. Self-assessment questions include: How often do you give constructive feedback? Do you excuse substandard work? How long do you wait before addressing team conflicts? Do you inflate performance ratings?
Wanting to be liked isn't problematic - needing everyone to like you is. Even universally admired figures like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, and Mother Teresa had critics. You must shift from needing universal approval to being satisfied with enough people liking you, while focusing on being loved by those closest to you - your spouse, children, parents, and close friends.
Thinking everyone must like you is actually selfish. Michael Hillan, owner of DriveTrain Learning, explains his journey: "I grew up wanting everyone to like me... It was all my agenda to be liked instead of seeking to understand." The pivot came when he shifted to seeking respect by understanding others' perspectives first. Do football players need their coach to be their friend, or to push them toward excellence? Helping others become their best - even if they don't always like it - is the truly selfless act.
Doug Conant, former Campbell Soup Company CEO, demonstrates how to balance firmness with compassion. Taking over when the company had declining sales, lost 54% of market value, and had the worst employee engagement in the Fortune 500, Conant prioritized employee engagement: "To win in the marketplace...you must first win in the workplace." His leadership philosophy is simple: "Be tough-minded on standards, and tenderhearted on people." You don't have to choose between being results-driven or people-focused - you can be both tough and tender simultaneously.
Capitolo 6
The Revolutionary Power of Leading with Love
Tom Coughlin's transformation with the New York Giants demonstrates the power of leading with love. Initially known as "Tom Tyrant" for his strict discipline (including "Coughlin Time" where players were fined for not being five minutes early), he faced an ultimatum after a losing 2006 season: change or leave. While maintaining high standards, Coughlin worked to be more positive and show genuine care for his players. His transformation culminated before Super Bowl XLVI when he told his team, "You guys have taught us what love really is...I am man enough to tell you guys that I love you." The Giants won, and former critic Michael Strahan later wrote, "I tell people proudly that I love the man."
The love leaders should show isn't romantic but "agape" - selfless love for everyone. It's similar to what Wharton professor Sigal Barsade calls "companionate love" - an other-focused affection expressed through caring and compassion. As basketball coach John Wooden wrote, "I will not like you all the same, but I will love you all the same." This means loving team members as humans with lives outside work, not as soulless cogs in a production machine.
For 500 years, Machiavelli's advice that "it is better to be feared than loved" has influenced leadership thinking. Many leaders avoid personal connections, believing closeness undermines respect, prevents objectivity, and makes discipline difficult. But Machiavelli's full quote actually says "if you cannot be both" - suggesting both fear and love are possible. Leading with love may be harder than managing tasks, but produces better long-term results.
While fear-based leadership is common, it crushes creativity, shuts down communication, increases stress, and drives turnover. Research by Dr. Barsade found departments with cultures of love had lower absenteeism and burnout with higher satisfaction and teamwork. Gallup research identifies "My supervisor cares about me" as one of twelve key elements driving engagement. When love abounds, we feel safe - and safety with trust creates emotional connection, discretionary effort, and loyalty.
Leading with love isn't about grand gestures but small daily actions that show people they matter. Simple practices make a difference: asking about weekend plans on Friday and following up Monday, knowing family members' names, acknowledging birthdays and work anniversaries, and showing interest in hobbies or personal interests. These small acknowledgments demonstrate that you see team members as whole people, not just workplace functions.
Hold one-on-one career-path meetings every six months to show you care about team members' growth. Some managers avoid this fearing they'll lose talent, but executive coach Dov Baron explains the irony: "You will actually keep your talented people longer, the longer you get them ready for their next step." These don't need to be formal HR events - just grab coffee and discuss their one-year, three-year, and five-year goals, what they need to learn, who they need to know, and what experiences would help them advance.
Capitolo 7
The Time Management Revolution
I'm obsessed with time. My computer monitor displays "1440" - a reminder of the minutes in each day that never return once gone. My desk features a Time Timer that visually counts down minutes, and I've invested in expensive artwork declaring "The Time Is Always Now." This obsession isn't unique - the most successful leaders excel at both leading teams and getting things done efficiently.
Elite coaches like Mike Krzyzewski and John Wooden share an obsession with time management. Coach K's book chapters all begin with "Time to..." while Wooden meticulously planned every practice minute, documenting what worked and what needed improvement. NFL coach Tom Coughlin starts his days at 5:20 AM and schedules "every minute" - actually obsessing over seconds. Yet in business, McKinsey research shows half of executives don't align their time with strategic priorities, with a third actively dissatisfied with how they spend their time.
Traditional to-do lists are deeply flawed - research shows 41 percent of listed items never get done, while many completed items are simply added and crossed off the same day. Lists also trigger the Zeigarnik effect, where undone items flood our minds with uncontrolled thoughts, causing stress and insomnia.
Instead, great leaders schedule everything on their calendars - not just meetings and calls, but all tasks with specific dates, times and durations. This "time-blocking" ensures minutes align with values and goals. My own calendar reflects values like coaching (Monday one-on-ones), team alignment (weekly WAR meetings), writing (2-3 uninterrupted blocks weekly), health (daily exercise), family (homework help), and recharging (vacation blocks planned far in advance).
Effective time management isn't about time - it's about energy and focused attention. Our cognitive abilities vary dramatically throughout the day, typically peaking 1-2 hours after waking for about two hours before declining. As behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely notes, many people waste these precious high-cognitive hours on low-value activities like social media.
My personal system, the 3Cs, aligns tasks with energy states: Create in the morning (writing, analysis) when cognitively sharpest; Collaborate in the afternoon (meetings, calls) when social interaction is energizing; Connect in the evening (family, friends) to strengthen relationships while recharging. The more successful someone is, the more precisely they allocate time - thinking in minutes rather than defaulting to hour-long blocks.
When asked for his top productivity advice, billionaire Mark Cuban responded with characteristic brevity: "Never take a meeting unless someone is writing you a check." This focus on meetings as productivity killers is shared by many successful leaders. Research shows the average employee attends sixty-two meetings monthly, with half considered wasteful, consuming thirty-one hours of unproductive time.
For unavoidable meetings, standing up drastically shortens duration. The "daily scrum" format from software development keeps meetings to fifteen minutes by having participants answer three questions: what was accomplished since last meeting, what will be completed by next meeting, and what obstacles exist. Walking meetings, practiced by leaders from Barack Obama to Mark Zuckerberg, offer additional benefits - research shows they increase energy, focus, and creative ideation while eliminating typical office distractions.
Capitolo 8
The Art of Playing Favorites
The chapter opens with a story about Shawn, one of the author's direct reports, who was confronted by a team member accusing him of playing favorites. Rather than denying the accusation, Shawn surprisingly admitted to it, setting up the chapter's counterintuitive premise that effective leaders should indeed play favorites - though not in the traditional, unfair sense of the term.
Kruse distinguishes true favoritism from cronyism. While many managers believe treating everyone equally is fair, this approach ignores the reality that employees differ in talents, experiences, attitudes, and engagement. Playing favorites doesn't mean discrimination or changing performance standards - the rules apply to everyone, but consequences may differ. Treating different people differently is actually more fair than treating everyone the same.
Great coaches like John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski learned that treating team members differently based on their earned trust and performance history is more effective than rigid uniformity. Wooden evolved from believing impartiality meant treating everyone identically to recognizing each person deserves treatment they've earned. Coach K describes giving his trusted veterans more latitude while holding newcomers to stricter standards. NFL champion Gary Brackett applies this same principle in his restaurant business: "You don't treat everyone equal, you treat everyone fair."
Leaders should invest more time with their highest performers (about 20% of workers) rather than problem employees. Cy Wakeman advises "working with the willing" first - keeping engaged top performers who drive results. Ironically, most managers spend disproportionate time with the bottom 20% who complain and resist change. For the truly "actively disengaged" (16% according to Gallup), Kruse recommends compassionate termination rather than endless attempts to engage them. The opportunity cost of focusing on problem employees is the lost time that could be spent "re-recruiting" stars or developing middle performers into future stars.
Based on survey data from ten million workers across 150 countries, Kruse identified three universal engagement drivers: growth, recognition, and trust. While these drivers apply universally, how leaders activate them must be individualized. Everyone wants career growth, but a 25-year-old might need formal training while a 60-year-old nearing retirement might prefer mentoring opportunities. Similarly, recognition preferences vary - some employees thrive on public praise while others prefer private acknowledgment.
Dave Munson, founder of Saddleback Leather, believes in hiring people with natural strengths for specific roles - like choosing a Lab over a cat with credentials for fetching sticks. True strengths aren't just skills but things people "can't not do," like Ian who thrives on sales calls while introverts find them draining. Great leaders assign work based on innate talents and let people approach similar jobs differently. They uncover hidden strengths through observation and questions about what energizes team members. Like the Golden Buddha statue discovered beneath clay in Thailand, leaders can reveal talents people don't know they possess - sometimes encouraging career changes that lead to greater fulfillment and success.
Capitolo 9
The Transparency Revolution
Imagine sending a scathing email to your boss about their poor meeting preparation - then imagine that boss is Ray Dalio, one of the world's richest men. At Bridgewater Associates, Dalio not only tolerates but celebrates this radical transparency, sharing the critical email in his TED talk as an example of the company's culture. This approach stems from Dalio's early business failure, which taught him to build an environment fostering better decision-making through complete honesty. At Bridgewater, all meetings are videotaped and stored in their "Transparency Library" for any employee to watch, demonstrating their commitment to radical transparency.
Highly successful leaders increasingly embrace radical transparency, challenging the traditional notion that "information is power." In today's collaborative workplace, we succeed based on team strength, not individual achievement. Transparency provides three key benefits: it gives employees the situational awareness needed for quick decision-making, directly drives engagement by satisfying employees' desire for information, and builds trust in an era of institutional skepticism. When leaders only share good news, they create distrust through lies of omission. Full transparency enables both informed decisions and discretionary effort.
Even the military - traditionally hierarchical and secretive - has embraced transparency. General Stanley McChrystal transformed the Joint Special Operations Command by creating "radical transparency" to defeat the networked threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. By establishing "shared consciousness" through extreme information sharing, McChrystal empowered execution at the lowest levels. Similarly, Marine General Charles Krulak's concept of the "Strategic Corporal" recognized that frontline decisions can have strategic impact, requiring young leaders to have the same information as their generals.
When Kris Boesch took over a failing moving company with a toxic culture, she implemented open-book management by literally distributing dollar bills to demonstrate where company money went. This transparency transformed employees' understanding: "I'm not going to forget a moving blanket because that's twelve bucks, and that's two hours of profit." Jack Stack, who pioneered this approach in his book "The Great Game of Business," taught companies to know and teach the rules of business success, follow the action and keep score, and provide employees a stake in outcomes. This approach typically yields 30% financial improvement within a year by creating employee ownership of results.
The reluctance to share salary information stems from fears of jealousy and complaints, but these concerns only exist when compensation systems are unfair or subjective. Over time, without a structured system, salaries become inconsistent - programmers doing the same job might earn vastly different amounts based on negotiation skills or hiring circumstances. Many organizations already operate with transparent salaries: government workers follow published pay scales, nonprofits disclose executive compensation, and companies like Whole Foods, Basecamp, and Buffer share salary information internally or even publicly.
During tough times like layoffs, transparency becomes even more crucial. When communicating layoffs, leaders should address key questions: who's affected, why it's happening, whether more cuts are coming, and what the future holds. Buffer's CEO Joel Gascoigne demonstrated exemplary transparency when announcing their 11% workforce reduction, taking personal responsibility, explaining the decision-making process with a visual decision tree, and providing specific financial projections showing the path back to profitability.
Capitolo 10
The Strength of Vulnerability
Brandon Brooks, a Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman with a $40 million contract, missed games due to severe anxiety stemming from his obsession with perfection. After publicly revealing his condition and seeking help, Brooks learned to accept that mistakes happen, which ultimately led to stronger performance, a Pro Bowl nomination, and a Super Bowl win. His story illustrates how vulnerability, once considered a weakness, can become a strength in today's workplace.
While most successful people hide their failures, over half of business leaders struggle with being vulnerable. This reluctance stems from evolutionary biology - the weakest member gets eaten by the lion - and social conditioning where weakness is penalized from childhood through our professional lives. Yet despite these deeply ingrained instincts, there are compelling reasons to challenge this mindset in today's workplace environment.
The modern workplace requires vulnerability for four key reasons: it builds trust (which neuroscientist Paul Zak shows improves collaboration and retention); it increases employee engagement by strengthening connections; it drives innovation by normalizing the failure necessary for experimentation; and it's healthier, as perfectionism correlates with anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. As Brene Brown notes, "Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield" that prevents us from being seen, while "healthy striving" focuses on self-improvement rather than others' approval.
The "pratfall effect," coined by psychologist Elliot Aronson in 1966, demonstrates that competent people who make mistakes become more likable. His study showed that when a capable person spilled coffee during a recorded quiz bowl tryout, listeners rated them 45% more likable than those who didn't make the blunder. This occurs because mistakes humanize people who might otherwise seem distant or superhuman. Even robots are rated as more likable when they make mistakes, without being perceived as less intelligent.
The hero's journey storytelling structure is powerful for leaders sharing weaknesses. I transformed my boring presentations by starting to share my business failures - layoffs, being a terrible boss, demotions - before revealing how I overcame these challenges. This vulnerability immediately engaged audiences who previously gave only polite applause. The classic hero's journey follows three acts: the hero faces trouble, overcomes problems with help, and ultimately triumphs because they've been transformed by their trials.
While vulnerability builds trust, leaders must balance transparency with judgment. Former Navy SEAL officer Randy Hetrick advises that radical transparency works best when team members are equipped to handle it. Leaders should share weaknesses and limitations but maintain confidence about the future. Before sharing, ask yourself: What is your intent? Are team members equipped to handle the information? How close is your relationship with them? Will your disclosure violate anyone else's trust?
Capitolo 11
The Unavoidable Nature of Leadership
In the late 1800s, Gustave Le Bon - a French doctor, anthropologist, and physicist - wrote "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind," pioneering the concept of social contagion. Despite his misogynistic views, his work showed how emotions and behaviors spread between people like viruses, forming the basis for understanding leadership as influence. Leadership experts like Ken Blanchard and John Maxwell consistently define leadership as influence - nothing more, nothing less. This reveals that because of social contagion, you're constantly influencing others whether you intend to or not, making leadership unavoidable.
Our behaviors powerfully influence those around us through social contagion. Research shows children of smokers are twice as likely to smoke by age twenty-one, regardless of parents' stated attitudes about smoking. The good news is that quitting is equally contagious - when someone quits smoking, their immediate friends and family become 36 percent less likely to smoke, with the effect extending even to friends of friends (20 percent less likely).
At Radboud University's "Bar Lab" - a fake bar equipped with cameras and microphones - researchers discovered how powerfully we mirror others' eating behaviors. When paired with confederates secretly instructed to eat different portions, participants unconsciously adjusted their own consumption by about 10 percent up or down to match their dining partner. They even synchronized their biting patterns, typically taking bites within five seconds of each other.
The quality of parent-teen communication dramatically affects teen sexual behavior. In a ten-year study, researchers found that for every 10 percent improvement in parent-teen communication quality, the odds of sexual activity decreased by almost half. Similarly, teens whose parents discussed sexual risks were twice as likely to use condoms during their first sexual encounter - a critical metric since those who use protection their first time are twenty times more likely to continue using protection.
Family dinners powerfully influence teen behavior. A longitudinal Minnesota study found teenage girls from families that regularly ate dinner together were half as likely to use cigarettes, alcohol, or marijuana. An even larger study of nearly 100,000 teens found that in families eating together 5-7 times weekly, only 11.8% of teens reported being sexually active, compared to 30.2% in families eating together 0-1 times weekly.
Our influence extends in surprising ways. Research shows divorce can spread through social networks, increasing odds by 75% among friends and 55% among coworkers. Similar social contagion occurs in everyday behaviors: airplane passengers are 30% more likely to make purchases after seeing strangers do so, and twice as likely if traveling with friends. Even exercise habits spread - when runners add ten minutes to their workouts, their friends add three minutes to theirs.
You're a role model whether you choose to be or not. Your actions and emotions inevitably transfer to those around you. If you want teenagers to drive safely, never text while driving. If you want a spouse more grateful for what you do, freely express gratitude yourself. If you want punctual employees, always arrive on time yourself. Even when feeling unmotivated or sad, remember that's precisely when you should look around and consciously choose how you lead.
