You have felt it, have you not?
You walk into the room and the mood shifts. People glance up. Some tense. Others come alive. Whether you realize it or not, you are not just leading a company — you are setting the emotional climate.
That is why I say: Leaders bring the weather.
And if you are the founder, CEO, or top executive? You are the weather system itself.
And from my heart to yours... I personally have not brought the best weather through my mindset, my anxiety, and the my team is my family mindset - especially in the early days of my business - I did not know enough to adopt solid frameworks and systems.
So I have been there myself.
You are not simply a strategist or decision-maker. You are the emotional thermostat. Your energy, pace, tone, and even silence ripple through the business.
When you show up reactive, distracted, or intense, your team absorbs it. That friction multiplies. Clarity fades. Execution stalls. You start getting “yes” without follow-through and meetings that burn time but not results.
Too many leaders try to fix that with more process. More dashboards. More headcount.
But here is what I have seen time and again: you cannot operationalize over dysfunction at the top.
If you want durable performance, it starts with disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. That must begin with you.
A CEO once asked me, “Why will my team not take ownership?”
I asked him back, “Why are you still doing their thinking for them?”
Here is the hard truth: if your team lacks clarity, ownership, or urgency, it is reflecting your leadership posture. Culture does not come from the values poster. It comes from your behavior.
If you show up inconsistent, people default to self-preservation. If you lead with control, they hold back. If you avoid truth, so will they.
The Rockefeller Habits get this right: “The executive team is healthy and aligned” is the very first condition for execution to work.
But alignment is not surface-level agreement. It is built on trust. Trust that allows for pushback, dissent, and candor. Without trust, you get silence. Then artificial harmony. Then avoidance. And eventually, a quiet drift into mediocrity.
If you want performance, do not look at their to-do lists. Look at the climate you create.
Here is how we help clients reset the atmosphere, starting at the top.
Daily huddles. Weekly tactical meetings. Monthly issue resolution. Quarterly resets. These rhythms are not bureaucracy. They are focus systems. They replace chaos with cadence.
Each quarter should revolve around a single Critical Number. Choose it carefully. Build your top three to five priorities around it. Make it visible. Revisit it weekly. Without a clear goal, you get scattered effort and diluted progress.
This one changes everything.
I worked with a CEO named Bill. Brilliant, driven, and deeply committed. But he operated at 100 miles per hour. Meetings felt like collisions. His team could not keep up. Eventually, they stopped trying. They braced themselves instead.
I asked him to pause. Before speaking. Before reacting. Before assigning. Just pause.
In that pause, he could ask himself:
“Do they understand what I am saying?”
“Are they already overloaded?”
“Have I given enough context?”
That moment gave him control, not just of what he said but how he showed up. Without that self-awareness, no executive can lead with intention.
Composure is not passivity. It is focused power.
Discipline requires truth. Truth requires trust.
Hold regular Start, Stop, Keep conversations. Ask for real feedback. Encourage people to challenge your assumptions. Make it safe to disagree. The same applies to customer input. If truth is filtered or delayed, decision quality drops.
Performance must be visible. Everyone should know whether they are winning or drifting. Use dashboards. Track progress. Display priorities. Do not expect buy-in without visibility. People follow clarity, not ambiguity.
You do not need to be perfect. But you do need to be composed. Consistent. Clear.
Your team does not need more motivation. Your team needs a stable signal in the noise. Someone who brings clarity, who models discipline, and who creates space for others to think and lead.
If you hesitate, they stall. If you overreact, they retreat. If you drift, they lose the plot.
Leadership is not about controlling people. It is about shaping the environment in which performance happens.
So ask yourself: What weather did I bring into the room today?
Because your team will not outperform your presence. And your business will not outgrow your leadership clarity.
You are responsible for the psychological environment in which people work, decide, and execute. How you show up matters. Everything you do shapes the individual and collective mindset of your people and company. Growth depends on stability. Performance depends on clarity. And both begin at the top.
Bring the right weather. With control. With conviction. Every single day. And when you fall off the horse (you will) - get right back on.
The best is yet to come.
Chris Young is a Trusted Advisor To Founders / CEOs | Certified Scaling Up Coach | Builder of People, Leaders, Teams & Economic Moats | Strategist and proud founder of The Rainmaker Group.