What Sets Leaders Apart
Search for “leadership” online and you’ll find over 500 million references – articles, podcasts, models, TED Talks, job specs, courses, quotes. It’s everywhere.
And yet, when you sit across from someone who truly leads – not just manages or performs – it’s hard to put your finger on what exactly they’re doing differently.
I’m not trying to define leadership here. I’m simply sharing what, in my experience, tends to set certain leaders apart – not just the great ones, but the ones who shape culture, move things forward and grow the people around them, often without needing the spotlight.
One common thread: they change their relationship with control.
I recently came across Herminia Ibarra’s work on leadership identity, where she suggests that leadership involves evolving who you are through action and experience. The higher you go, the less it’s about what you do and more about what you enable in others. That shift is deeply disorienting for many, particularly those who were promoted for their competence and decisiveness.
Operational excellence gets you to the table. But it doesn’t keep you there. What sets leaders apart is not their grasp of process, it’s their grasp of people. Especially under pressure.
Emotional Maturity Over Emotional Intelligence
That’s why emotional intelligence has become shorthand for modern leadership. But in truth, the bar is now higher. It’s not enough to understand emotions – your own or others’. You need emotional maturity: the ability to sit with discomfort, avoid premature solutions and resist the urge to control what can’t be controlled.
As Susan David writes, “Tough emotions are part of our contract with life.” She advocates for emotional agility – the ability to face feelings head-on, rather than avoid or suppress them, as a foundation for resilience and psychological flexibility.
In a previous piece, I wrote about how most leaders don’t struggle because they don’t care. They struggle because they care too much – and try to fix too fast. What sets others apart is their ability to hold the tension, not resolve it.
Holding Tension Without Forcing Resolution
Ronald Heifetz, who developed the theory of adaptive leadership at Harvard, suggests that one of the leader’s core responsibilities is to maintain composure during uncertainty – to “hold steady” long enough for new thinking and alignment to emerge. Many leaders don’t do this. They rush to smooth over discomfort or provide quick solutions. The intent is good, but the outcome can undermine longer-term progress.
This ability to tolerate ambiguity is one of the least celebrated, most critical leadership muscles. It doesn’t show up in quarterly reports. But it’s the reason some leaders build trust while others erode it.
The challenge? This kind of leadership often feels counterintuitive. You’re rewarded your whole career for bringing clarity, until the problems shift from technical to relational, from linear to systemic.
This is where mental toughness enters – not as stoicism, but as emotional endurance. The leaders who stand apart aren’t the ones who are unfazed. They’re the ones who are affected – but stay anchored. They might feel fear, pressure or doubt. But they don’t offload it onto others.
In my earlier post on pressure, I described how good leaders manage information flow, decision rights and competing demands. But real leadership emerges when there is no playbook. When your ability to contain emotional noise becomes more valuable than your ability to create operational plans.
It’s here the leadership flywheel begins to turn. The unglamorous consistency of showing up, not having the answers, staying curious and creating psychological safety builds momentum – slowly at first, and then all at once.
But you don’t get the flywheel effect without surviving the early grind.
Internal Grounding in an External Storm
Jim Collins, in his study of high-performing companies, introduced the concept of Level 5 Leadership – a rare combination of personal humility and fierce resolve. These leaders are not charismatic or loud. What sets them apart, he writes, is their “indomitable resolve.”
That resolve often shows up as quiet clarity. A kind of inner stillness. And in many cases, it comes from work that has nothing to do with business.
Leaders who distinguish themselves tend to have done their inner work. They’ve examined their stories, their insecurities, their need to be seen as the smartest person in the room. They’ve come to terms with fear – not by eliminating it, but by recognising it for what it is: often, a signal rather than a stop sign.
As I’ve written before, fear is usually “a mile wide and an inch deep.” It feels like a wall but turns out to be mist once you walk through it.
What sets leaders apart is not the absence of fear – it’s the relationship they’ve built with it. They’re willing to walk through the fog because they know something more important is on the other side: alignment, growth, clarity, progress. Not just for themselves, but for the people they lead.
A Personal Turning Point
The first time I encountered a coach, I was still working as a VP of Finance, temporarily covering as GM for one of our markets while the company was hiring. It was a period of flux – two jobs, competing expectations and a lot of pressure.
The coach I worked with at the time had a lasting influence on me – in hindsight, both good and not-so-good. But what stands out now is that he introduced me to a book I never would have picked up on my own: The Courage to Teach, by Parker J. Palmer.
It’s not a business book. It’s about the inner life of teachers – but what it gave me was a new lens: That the real work of leading others starts with the work of knowing yourself. Palmer writes that “we teach who we are.” The same is true for leadership. We lead who we are.
And if we haven’t taken time to explore, challenge and grow that inner landscape, we risk repeating old patterns, no matter how strategic our plans are.
That book planted a seed.
In the End
What sets leaders apart is rarely their brilliance.
It’s their depth.
Their capacity to hold complexity without rushing to simplify.
Their ability to stay human under pressure.
Their choice to grow inwardly so they can lead outwardly.
In an era that still rewards noise, speed and certainty, the real leaders are those willing to do the opposite.
They go slow when it counts.
They listen before they act.
They stay curious longer than is comfortable.
And they build cultures where others can do the same.
That’s the work. And that’s what sets them apart.
Few leaders have space to think like this, let alone talk about it. But it's often in these quiet reflections that the biggest shifts begin.
If any part of this resonates with you – if you're navigating the stretch between what you've built and who you're becoming – I’d welcome a conversation, contact me through this site or at Anthony.omara@aramoglobal.com
Further Reading
If you’d like to explore some of the ideas referenced in this piece:
Herminia Ibarra, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader – on evolving leadership identity through action and experience
Susan David, Emotional Agility – on navigating tough emotions and building psychological resilience
Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers – on adaptive leadership and holding steady in complexity
Jim Collins, Good to Great – especially the chapter on Level 5 Leadership and the power of quiet resolve
Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach – a reflective, non-business lens on leading from within