My husband constantly points out how irreverent I am. He does this mostly in a light-hearted, good natured way, but he still definitely finds it frustrating. He will often feel like I am being actively disrespectful to individuals or institutions that deserve my deference.

The fact is that I am not disrespectful at all. What I am is an egalitarian. What that often means is that people who are used to getting a higher degree of respect due to their station in life/work will feel like I am being disrespectful because I do not give them any more respect than I give anyone else.

This is actually a bit of an on-going issue/struggle for me, particularly in business (and precisely why I would never survive in the military): I believe in respecting individuals, not rank or title. I have met VPs and C-level execs who take issue with this; and I constantly find myself working with teams who stare at me in shock when I don’t drop what I’m doing to jump whenever the CEO asks for something.

Politically, this certainly causes a problem. I am constantly shocked to discover that smart people let themselves be put in no-win situations and set up for abject failure simply because, to them, it is better to fail than to push back on someone who outranks them.

My husband would likely note that my aversion to failure above all else has more to do with my ego than with anything else. And he wouldn’t be wrong. That is my biggest driver, and I am not embarrassed to admit that. If I allow myself to be compromised out of the gate, I can’t possibly do anyone else any good.

Part of that means that I must honestly tell someone — no matter what their rank — when what they are requesting is unreasonable, impractical or counter-productive to larger objectives. One of the biggest causes for churn and chaos within an organization is a lack of prioritization: constant shifting of focus, no clear objective and whimsical firefighting exercises are not only bad for productivity, but they are bad for morale, bad for quality delivery, bad for reliability and bad for consistency.

Furthermore, I have found that most true leaders want consistency, reliability and productivity above all else. Often times, as Marshall Goldsmith discusses in his classic article, leaders are not aware that their ad hoc comments and requests are creating chaos. That’s not their goal. They certainly understand there is a heavy price to pay for it. But most people are unwilling to point out that is what they are doing.

A long time ago I made a decision, and it’s one of the things that is at the heart of my ability to be successful: my ability to be good depends on my ability to deliver; and reliable, consistent, high-quality delivery is dependent on insulating a team from as much unnecessary chaos as possible. It became very clear to me very early in my career that some of the most dangerous and inadvertent chaos a team can ever experience comes from a company’s leadership team — and often times, leadership doesn’t even know they are doing it. So the most essential role I can provide to my team is to be the person who pushes back on leadership when their requests are undermining the team’s ability to be successful.

That means I don’t drop everything we are doing when the CEO sneezes. That means that I don’t ignore other commitments to lesser ranked colleagues in favor of the President’s morning hot button issue. That means that a client doesn’t get delayed because a VP wants a color change on a website.

I don’t blow anyone off, and I don’t scoff in their face. I present the facts, make my recommendation and then get their feedback. In almost no case in over a decade of doing this have I had a leader listen to what I had to say and then still insist that their pet project was more important than something else.

If that makes me “irreverent,” then so be it, because what it also makes me is reliable. And a true leader trying to get business done knows that reliable delivery is more important than nearly anything else.

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