“If Leadership Doesn’t Change It, Nothing Changes”
Or So We Tell Ourselves
“If leadership doesn’t change it, nothing will.”
It’s one of the most common, and understandable, beliefs about work. We experience stalled initiatives, cultural contradictions, and well-intentioned change efforts that quietly fade away.
Over time, the message lands: my effort won’t matter unless leadership shifts first.
And leadership does matter. It sets priorities. It shapes conditions. It determines what’s rewarded, tolerated, or ignored.
But there’s a quieter truth we don’t talk about enough:
Even when leadership doesn’t change, our experience of work still can.
Not because we ignore reality, but because how we relate to our work plays a powerful role in whether work feels depleting, meaningful, or simply survivable.
Leadership Sets the Conditions, But Not the Entire Experience
Think of leadership as the waterline. It defines the environment we’re swimming in: expectations, resources, pace, and pressure.
That waterline matters enormously. Poor leadership can make good work harder. Strong leadership can make hard work feel purposeful.
And yet, two people can work under the same leader, in the same system, with wildly different experiences.
Why?
Because work isn’t shaped by conditions alone. It’s shaped by relationships.
The Overlooked Factor: Your Relationship With Your Work
Research on engagement and job crafting points to something both empowering and uncomfortable: our experience of work is influenced not just by what we’re asked to do, but by how we interpret and engage with that effort.
Three subtle factors play an outsized role:
1. How You Understand Your Own Effort
Is effort something that’s extracted from you or something you choose to invest?
When effort is experienced purely as obligation, it drains. When effort is connected to contribution, values, or learning, it tends to feel different; even when the workload hasn’t changed.
This isn’t about romanticizing overwork. It’s about meaning-making.
2. Where You Place Your Attention
What gets your care?
Some people spread their energy thinly across everything they can’t influence. Others anchor attention to one or two areas where their presence genuinely matters: a relationship, a standard of quality, a problem worth solving.
Attention is not neutral. It shapes what work feels like day to day.
3. The Story You Tell About What’s Possible
Not every system invites change. But many still allow choice in how we show up within them.
When the internal story becomes “nothing I do matters,” disengagement often follows, not as a failure, but as a form of self-protection.
When the story shifts to “some things still matter, even here,” agency quietly returns.
This Is Not About Ignoring Broken Systems
Let’s be clear: this is not an argument for personal resilience as a substitute for systemic responsibility.
Leadership must still lead. Organizations must still change harmful conditions. Burnout cannot be reframed away.
But waiting exclusively for top-down change often leaves people feeling powerless in the meantime.
Reclaiming agency doesn’t excuse poor leadership. It helps people survive it without losing themselves.
Small Shifts That Change the Feel of Work
When leadership doesn’t change, the question becomes:
What’s still within reach?
Not grand reinventions. Small, relational shifts:
Choosing one area of work to care about deeply, instead of resenting everything equally
Clarifying what “good work” means to you, even if the organization never defines it well
Reframing effort as contribution rather than depletion
Investing in relationships that make work feel human, not transactional
These shifts don’t fix the system, but they often change how heavy the work feels to carry.
A Different Kind of Influence
Leadership shapes culture.
But so do everyday choices: where attention goes, how effort is interpreted, and whether people believe their presence still has meaning.
Even in imperfect systems. Especially in imperfect systems.
So if leadership doesn’t change, it’s true that some things won’t. But not everything.
Because how we relate to our work still matters and it quietly shapes whether work wears us down, or remains something we can live with, learn from, and sometimes even care about.
When leadership doesn’t change, teams still need ways to stay engaged, connected, and human at work.
Through keynotes, workshops, and facilitated conversations, I help organizations build relational intelligence that supports meaningful work, even in imperfect systems.