It would be hard to imagine a CEO more loved by employees than Arthur T. Demoulas of Market Basket, an iconic 71-store chain of New England grocery stores. In August of 2014, several hundred workers at family-owned Market Basket walked off their jobs in protest after Demoulas was ousted by his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, and other family members. Thousands more employees attended rallies and protests to demand Arthur T.'s return to the helm of the chain.

How did Arthur T. Demoulas become so popular? In addition to earning a reputation as a fair-minded CEO, Demoulas insisted his employees be paid 20 to 30 percent more than industry rates. And he spearheaded a 100 percent company-funded profit-sharing retirement program that was the envy of employees in the grocery industry.

When other shareholders demanded a change in management, in large part to ready the company to be bought out by a private equity firm, the board took Arthur T. and his executive team out. This prompted the nonunionized employees to walk off the job. The impasse, which also included a widespread customer boycott, ended with an announcement that Arthur T. had bought out his rival family members for $1.5 billion—a deal that would allow him to resume day-to-day operations of the company.

I have tried to imagine being a leader so beloved that my employees would walk off the job to support me in a time of need. It's a remarkable expression of loyalty and affection. Although “being loved” is not necessarily part of a CEO's job description, there is no doubt that a loyal workforce is a great advantage in any competitive industry. Unfortunately, far too many CEOs are estranged from their workers, either because of their management style or because they are reaping pay and benefits that are completely out of whack with what employees are making.

Demoulas's story is important for all leaders because there was not just one thing that created all that loyalty. He was a CEO who earned the respect of his employees over a long period because of a number of important initiatives and measures. Yes, the profit sharing was a big part of the relationship he had with employees. But many of the workers who walked away from their jobs to protest Demoulas's firing said they were doing it because they loved their company and wanted to protect its unique culture.

Would your employees put their jobs on the line for you?

That's a high bar to set for a CEO or any leader. But it's one of the fundamental truths I have learned about leadership.

As humans, we instinctively hold anyone in a leadership role to a higher standard of behavior. It's hardwired in us as humans to expect more from our leaders.

Think about this for a moment. If you see someone in a leadership role, you automatically expect more from him or her. It doesn't matter what the leadership role is: teacher, pastor, coach, politician, CEO, high-profile athlete, or celebrity. You expect more, and if these people let you down, you then feel a sense of disappointment. If their behavior is really bad, you may even feel disgusted and disillusioned.

This point was really made clear to me during a business trip I had to Brazil in the spring of 2016. I reference this story briefly in Chapter 1. As my flight was landing in São Paolo early Sunday morning, millions of Brazilians were taking to the streets to protest and demand the resignation of President Dilma Rousseff. They were reacting to a corruption scandal that had ravaged the government and caused a serious decline in the country's economy.

What a backdrop for my trip and the many discussions about leadership that I would have over the next three days.

The first of those discussions was actually with the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport and drove me to my hotel. During the ride, he went on and on about the poor state of the country's leadership. By the time we finally got to my hotel, he admitted he was “disgusted” by what was going on.

While the protests were taking part quite some distance from my hotel, I could still hear people yelling and cars honking all afternoon. When it was all said and done, an estimated three million Brazilians participated in the protests. It was a peaceful demonstration involving a wide swath of Brazilian society, including the young and old and families with children.

What would cause so many Brazilians to protest in the streets? Brazil has been gripped by a story of corruption and scandal that has been unraveling over the past several years.

A police investigation—dubbed Operation Car Wash—has revealed that many of President Rousseff's supporters, donors, and members of her government's inner circle were involved in bribery and kickback schemes that may have reached all the way to the president's office.

It appears that key political and business leaders in Brazil twisted or broke rules to help the government win elections and enable high-profile companies to gain exclusive access to government business. In the final analysis, there is much that is rotten in Brazil's government, including Rousseff, who seems to have betrayed the trust of her people.

So I could understand the deeply emotional reactions I would hear in the many conversations I had during my trip. Many Brazilians I spoke to were proud the protests were peaceful and hoped this would encourage the bad leaders to admit their mistakes and either step down voluntarily or face impeachment.

Other people I spoke to were full of anger and disappointment. They were completely disillusioned with senior government officials and business leaders.

I've seen many of these same reactions from employees who worked in companies embroiled in scandal. The emotions in these scenarios can be intense.

In companies, employees rarely protest to show their disgust or disappointment. Instead, they will engage in a silent protest. Some disillusioned employees will simply check out and begin to neglect their work. When they see their senior leaders behave badly and betray their trust, they think to themselves “Why should I even care or bother?”

We expect a lot from our leaders. When they live up to our expectations, they earn our loyalty the way Arthur T. Demoulas did. When they let us down, the disappointment we feel is visceral. And as our world is getting more and more complex, our expectations of leaders are only growing.

So what is a great leader? What makes a leader like Demoulas someone we truly admire and want to work for? I've come to learn that a great leader is, fundamentally, an accountable leader—someone who understands and respects the fact that he or she answers to his or her customers, community, and employees.

An accountable leader demonstrates a bias for getting important work done in the organization. He or she is fully committed to moving things forward. Ultimately, an accountable leader takes personal ownership for his or her role, words, and actions. When this high level of accountability is missing, leadership becomes lame and mediocre—or even corrupt.

Before you move on to read the rest of this chapter, take a moment to answer the following questions: Are you living up to the high standards of behavior we all naturally set for leaders? Do you own your entire leadership role?

The Leadership Contract and Its Four Terms

A client of mine, a CEO, was about to unveil a new strategy he and his executive team had been working on with the board of directors. It was a departure from the past and would have required a significant step-up in leadership. The CEO and the executive team wanted to make sure that leaders in the organization understood the new strategy and, more important, that they understood what it would now mean to lead in that organization. The CEO said, “I need to know that I have leaders who are fully committed to our strategy and to taking their leadership to new levels. I can't have ambivalent leaders who are just going through the motions. Those days are gone.”

I explained to them some of the ideas I had been working on about leadership accountability, and they engaged me to set up a process to help their leaders understand these new expectations and reflect on whether they were ready to accept them. In essence, the board members were being asked to understand and accept a set of new leadership expectations for that organization. A new set of terms was established, and leaders needed to sign up.

We should all go through a process like this when we take on new leadership roles. Our organizations need strong leaders to drive success. When you sign the leadership contract, you enter into an agreement: You commit and promise to be the best possible leader you can be for your organization and for your employees.

But there's more. Since first launching the book in 2013, I've seen more and more companies at critical inflection points. They are working hard to transform themselves to remain relevant in a fast-changing and disruptive world. What this means is that all of us in leadership roles may find ourselves having to sign a new leadership contract because our context has changed. Your company may be launching a new strategy. Your company may have just completed a merger or acquisition. Or maybe your company has been acquired or merged with a competitor. Whatever the trigger, more of us will find ourselves in situations where our business environment has changed. We then need to ask ourselves: Am I committed and prepared to sign up to be an accountable leader in this new context?

Regardless of whether you change your role, or your world changes in front of your eyes, you need to sign the leadership contract. Before you sign up, you need to understand the four terms as presented below (Figure 4.1).

Leadership Is a Decision—Make It

Do you aspire to be a great leader? Or are you just going through the motions? The leadership contract demands that you consciously commit to being the best leader you can be. It's no longer good enough to be a great technical leader. It's no longer good enough to be an average leader. Your organization needs you to be a truly accountable leader. And it all begins with a decision. Are you ready to make it?

Leadership Is an Obligation—Step Up

Once you make the decision to be an accountable leader, you realize that you must now rise to a new standard of behavior. You have to fulfill your leadership obligation to your customers, employees, shareholders, and community. Are you prepared to step up to the obligations of leadership?

Leadership Is Hard Work—Get Tough

You need to commit to tackling the hard work of leadership. You need to have resilience and a real sense of personal resolve to help your company be successful. You will need to set the pace for others in your organization. You can't be a bystander waiting for things to improve on their own. Are you prepared to get tough and do what is necessary to make your organization a success?

Leadership Is a Community—Connect

It's time to stop being disconnected as a leader. You must reach out and build strong relationships with your fellow leaders. You need to commit to building a community of leaders—it all begins with a commitment to connect. Are you ready for it?

These four terms go a long way toward addressing the problems with leadership accountability today. We can overcome lame and unaccountable leadership in our organizations when leaders truly understand what it means to be a leader and sign up for the right reasons. It's no longer good enough to be a complacent or ambivalent leader. Your organization needs you to be truly accountable. Your employees, customers, shareholders, and stakeholders need you to be at your best.

If you accept a promotion without making a conscious decision to become a leader, you won't get the best possible performance out of your team because you will simply be going through the motions.

If you try to be a leader without considering your obligations to the people around you, you won't be focused on your organization's larger goals. You will be thinking about how to advance your own career instead of how to build long-term success. You will make it all about you rather than the obligations you have to others. This creates risk for you and your organization. You might be tempted to do things that get you in trouble.

If you try to be a leader without digging into the hard work, you won't be prepared for crises. You will be drowning in day-to-day deadlines instead of focusing on where your organization needs to go next. You will find yourself floundering when issues come up on your team because you haven't taken the time to build a collaborative culture. You will leave serious gaps in your team's capabilities because you haven't bothered to tackle the tough issues.

If you try to lead without connecting with other leaders, you will isolate yourself. You will focus on your own narrow little world instead of collaborating with peers from across your organization and your community. You will find yourself blindsided by problems you didn't expect because you didn't connect with anyone who could have helped you prepare. You will end up overstressed and overwhelmed because you don't have anyone supporting you.

Leadership is isolating for many of us. We need to understand that leadership is a community. And we have to stop looking for the quick fix. We need to accept that leadership is hard work and that we can't avoid tackling the hard problems.

Does any of this resonate with you?

Accepting this leadership contract will improve our own working lives, but the benefits don't stop there. I believe that leaders who understand their obligations to those around them won't disgrace themselves with scandal. We have seen too many leaders embarrass themselves and their organizations because they were thinking only about their own short-term interests. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. The first step is to really understand the obligations that come with leadership. It's about having clarity, knowing what's expected of you as a leader, and then having the commitment to be the best leader you can be.

That's the essence of the leadership contract. It's not a legal or formal contract. It's a personal, even moral contract. It's the personal commitment you make to be an accountable leader—the leader that you must become for yourself and your organization. It's a commitment to redefine how you lead now and in the future. That's what you are signing up for.

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