I was 30 years old when I was handed a mandate: lose five full-time roles from my team and get it done by the end of the month.
I had worked hard to build our culture. Work was my life, as it often is in major events and hospitality, and the team felt like family. But I was about to learn that leading a team meant more than keeping everyone close.
The mandate exposed something uncomfortable: I had been leading to be liked, downplaying my authority and avoiding hard calls to keep the peace. Now I had to make one.
Head office set the number and supported me, but the ‘who’ and the ‘how’ were mine. My team would hear the news from me. I couldn’t hide behind the mandate, and I had to own it.
After the last individual conversation, I remember closing my office door, pulling the blinds and falling into my chair, sobbing. It sucked doing this, and I felt terrible—mentally and emotionally exhausted. These were people’s lives I was impacting.
It was an unpopular decision—actually, five unpopular decisions. And there was no painless way to make them.
I still owed those five the care I had shown them every day we worked together, and so we supported each of them into a new workplace; for some, it opened an opportunity to learn something new.
I don’t know where all five eventually landed. But I’ve since come to believe it isn’t a leader’s place to decide whether a hard call was ultimately good or bad for someone else’s life.
An old Chinese story tells of a farmer whose horse runs away. “Bad news,” say the neighbours. “Maybe,” he replies. The horse returns with another horse. “Good news.” “Maybe.” His son rides it, falls and breaks his leg. “Bad news.” “Maybe.” Then war comes, and his injury spares him from being sent to fight.
Good news, bad news, who knows? We tell this story often at ServiceQ because it reminds us that our job is to decide for the right reasons, carry the decision with care, and trust people with what comes next. What those five made out of that chapter was theirs to write, not mine.
Unpopular does not mean unsafe
What followed, months later, was a far healthier P&L and greater leverage to secure the future contract, which also meant security for the 35 full-time team members who remained.
An unpopular decision is simply that: unpopular. But unpopular does not mean unsafe. The whole purpose of that decision was to keep the contract, and the people in it, safe.
Every leader faces this moment sooner or later, and right now many are facing it at scale. We are seeing and hearing of restructures, reduced headcount, workforces reorganised around AI. The question is not whether you will make unpopular decisions. You will. The question is what type of leader you will be when you make them.
The popular leader wants to be liked. I know the popular leader well; I was one. They avoid the hard call to keep the peace or soften it until it no longer works. They give until they are empty. In trying to save everyone, they risk losing everyone.
The self-serving leader protects their own position. They hide behind head office, deliver the news from a distance, and let the blame travel down while the credit travels up.
The service leader carries the decision. They make the hard call for the good of the whole, steady themselves first, and treat every person affected as a capable human being to be honoured, not a number to be processed. Their aim is to leave people better than they found them, including the people who leave. I’ve had to learn this approach and, through doing so, realised that sacrificing personal popularity is service leadership.
There is no “me” in service
Marcus Aurelius put it simply: “That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee” (Meditations 6.54).
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna counsels Arjuna to face his duty without attachment: “You have a right to your actions, but never to the fruits of your actions” (2.47).
Make the unpopular decision and leave people better than you found them. That is the whole game.
Every choice means giving something up. The question is: does this choice serve the bigger mission?
Service is not about your popularity, comfort or title. It is doing the right thing for the right reason, without needing applause.
Hard decisions are part of service leadership. If you’re navigating what it means to lead with courage, care and the bigger picture in mind, download our whitepaper, The Future of Service Leadership is 5D.