You Don’t Have To Be A Hero: Leading Through The Messy Middle

An Update from Amy: This post on “Hero Mode” has been expanded! The story you’ll read below is now the introduction to my complete framework, “The Leader as Regulator.” To get the full diagnostic toolkit, tactics, and scripts for leading through change, please click here to read the new, consolidated article.

When I heard that Dan Cross said to his boss, “We’re not going to hit our numbers this year—and that’s the only way we’ll survive to hit them next year,” I felt something catch in my chest.

Not fear.

Awe.

Dan and I first met years ago, when I was facilitating a culture change workshop for a regional leadership team he was part of. He stood out then as a thoughtful, values-driven leader. More recently, I interviewed him for my research on empathetic performance improvement—and this story stayed with me.

He told me about a time when he’d just inherited a sales team deep in burnout. It was 2020, early-pandemic, and the pressure was high. His team needed support—but his leadership expected results. Instead of pushing them harder, Dan made a different call: he managed up to create space for his people to heal.

That one decision changed everything.

The next year, despite tougher conditions, his team hit their numbers—and became one of the top-performing groups in the organization. But that wasn’t a miracle. It was a product of empathy, clarity, and a willingness to lead through the valley instead of rushing people out of it.