Three Things Every Leader Needs (And the Four Moves That Keep Them Alive)
He was sitting in the parking lot before work. Engine off. Coffee cold. He had been there for twenty minutes. He told me later that he was not procrastinating. He was looking for a reason. A reason to walk in. A reason to be the kind of leader his team needed that day. A reason that did not feel borrowed from a book or stolen from someone else's career. I asked him a question I have started asking everyone I coach. What are you looking forward to. Who are you looking up to. Who are you chasing. He stared at me for a long moment. Then he said, "I don't know if I have an answer for any of them right now."
That was the day we started building.
The three needs nobody teaches you to track
In 2014, Matthew McConaughey gave one of the more memorable Oscar acceptance speeches in recent memory. Most of it has faded from public memory. The first thirty seconds have not. He said he needed three things each day. Something to look up to. Something to look forward to. And someone to chase.
It is one of the most useful frameworks for a leader's interior life I have ever encountered, and almost nobody talks about it in leadership circles. Probably because it sounds too simple. Probably because it does not fit on a quarterly review. But here is what I have noticed in twenty plus years of leading teams and coaching others. When all three of these are present in a leader's life, the leader is grounded. They make decisions cleanly. Their team feels the stability beneath their feet. When even one of these goes missing, something starts to drift. Not dramatically at first. Just enough that the people around them can sense it before they can name it.
Something to look forward to gives the present its meaning. Without it, every Monday is just a Monday.
Someone to look up to gives the work its altitude. Without it, you start defining excellence by whoever is loudest in the room.
Someone to chase gives the journey its tempo. Without it, you slow down. Not because you are tired, but because you have no one ahead of you reminding you what is possible.
The leaders I have worked with who are most alive in their roles have all three. Cultivated on purpose. Refreshed on purpose. Protected on purpose. The leaders I have coached out of quiet burnout almost always have one or zero.
Where Constructing Clarity comes in
I get asked all the time what Constructing Clarity actually does for a person. The short answer is that it does four specific things to these three needs.
It creates them when they are missing.
It maintains them when life tries to wear them down.
It nurtures them so they grow into something durable.
And it extends them outward so the people around you receive the same gift you have given yourself.
This is the framework I want to walk through. Four moves. Three needs. One foundation.
Move 1: Create
The first move is to put the structure in place before you feel like it. Clarity is not built in inspired moments. It is built in ordinary ones.
You create something to look forward to by putting it on the calendar before the week swallows you. Not as a reward for surviving the week. As an anchor that pulls you through it. A dinner. A trip. A conversation you cannot wait to have. A learning moment with your kids. A page of a book you have been saving. The size does not matter. The presence of it does.
You create someone to look up to by picking on purpose. Not whoever happens to be in your industry. Whoever lives the kind of life you actually admire. Watch them. Read them. Notice what they do when no one is watching, if you can. The right mentor figure does not have to know you exist. They just have to be visible enough that you can study them.
You create someone to chase by being honest about what you are trying to grow into. Not who you want to copy. Who is one or two steps ahead of where you are right now, doing the kind of work you would respect yourself for doing. The point is not to overtake them. The point is to have a tail light to follow when the road gets dark.
If you do not create these three things on purpose, your environment will create them for you. And your environment is not always rooting for you.
Move 2: Maintain
Creating is the easy part. Maintaining is where most leaders quietly lose ground. Life is going to test all three of these. Your thing to look forward to will get postponed. Your hero will say something that disappoints you. The person you are chasing will pull away or, worse, slow down to match your pace.
Maintaining is not the same as forcing. It is the discipline of returning. Of putting the dinner back on the calendar after the deadline ate it. Of finding a new chapter from your mentor when the last one let you down. Of remembering that the person you are chasing is not a destination. They are a direction.
I have a personal rule for this. Every Sunday evening, I do a quiet check on these three. It takes about ten minutes. I ask myself the questions out loud, in the order they were given to me.
What do I have to look forward to this week.
Who am I looking up to right now and how am I letting their example shape me.
Who am I chasing and what step are they taking that I should be taking too.
If any of the three feels weak, I do something about it before the week begins. Not after the week breaks me. Before. That is what maintenance means. Catching the small drift before it becomes a structural problem.
Move 3: Nurture
Nurturing is the move most leaders skip entirely. Because it does not feel productive. Because it does not look like work. But the three needs do not just need to be present. They need to be growing.
Something to look forward to grows into a life you are excited to wake up to, instead of one you are managing your way through.
Someone to look up to grows into a personal canon of people whose example you can return to in different seasons. A leader for the hard quarters. A parent figure for the family chapters. A craftsman for the moments you are tempted to cut corners. A peer for the days you forget what honesty looks like.
Someone to chase grows into a sense of motion. The chase is not always about outcompeting. Sometimes it is about being reminded that the next level exists and that someone you respect is already operating there.
To nurture these is to give them attention disproportionate to their immediate payoff. To read the book your mentor figure wrote even when you are tired. To send the message to the person you are chasing even when you are not sure they will respond. To plan the trip you have been putting off because the deadline does not seem to allow it. Nurturing is the practice of investing in what you cannot measure today, trusting that it will compound into the leader you are becoming.
Move 4: Extend
Here is where it changes. Because the first three moves are about you. The fourth is about everyone you lead. Extending means asking the same three questions of your team. Not as a workshop exercise. As genuine curiosity.
What does your team have to look forward to right now. Not just the deadline. The thing that makes the work feel like more than work.
Who are they looking up to. Are you giving them access to people worth modeling, or are you the only example they see.
Who are they chasing. Is there someone in the organization, in the industry, in their own field of vision, who reminds them what the next version of themselves could look like.
A leader who builds these three needs only for themselves is healthy. A leader who builds them for their team is multiplying. This is the foundation poured deepest. Not just for the person at the top. For everyone the structure has to hold.
What this looks like on a Monday morning
Back to the parking lot. The leader I started this article with does this practice now. Every Sunday evening, ten minutes, three questions. He told me last month that the parking lot mornings are gone. Not because the job got easier. The job is still the job.
Because he stopped walking in empty. He had something on the calendar he could not wait to get to. He had a mentor figure whose latest essay he had read that weekend. He had a peer he was quietly chasing, and that peer had no idea, which made the chase feel pure.
That is what these three needs do when they are constructed on purpose. They give you something to walk in with. They make you a more present leader without requiring you to be a different person. You do not need to overhaul your life to start. You need to put one thing on your calendar, name one person worth looking up to, and identify one person worth chasing.
That is the foundation.
The repeatable line
You will not feel grounded by accident. You will feel grounded because you constructed the ground.
One action for this week
Take ten minutes tonight. Write down three names and one date.
Something on the calendar in the next seven days that you are looking forward to.
A person whose life or leadership you want to look up to this season.
A person, named or anonymous, public or private, you are quietly chasing right now.
Then send this article to the leader in your life who has been walking into work empty.
Sources and further reading
Matthew McConaughey, 2014 Academy Awards acceptance speech for Dallas Buyers Club.
Simon Sinek, Start With Why, Find Your Why (with David Mead and Peter Docker), and The Infinite Game.
Tony Dungy, The Mentor Leader.
Where clarity goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, growth follows.
