The Question Behind Every Leadership Decision
How to know when your team needs serenity—and when they need storm
Your team just missed quota for the third straight quarter. Do you:
A) Steady the ship. Remind them of fundamentals. Reduce pressure. Let them rebuild confidence through small wins.
or
B) Question everything. Challenge assumptions. Demand they stop playing it safe. Push them past comfort into breakthrough.
Both answers can be right. Both can be disastrous.
The difference isn’t the philosophy you choose—it’s whether you’re reading the moment correctly.
Some situations need Marcus Aurelius: calm, grounded, unshakable. Others need Nietzsche: restless, demanding, willing to burn it down and start over.
The leaders who build something lasting aren’t the ones with the best philosophy. They’re the ones who know which philosophy this specific moment requires.
The Two Leadership Modes You Already Use
You probably don’t think of yourself as oscillating between ancient philosophers. But watch what happens when you’re under pressure:
Sometimes you steady. You lower the temperature. You remind people what’s working. You create space for recovery.
Other times you disrupt. You challenge the status quo. You question whether “good enough” has become the enemy of excellence. You light a fire.
Neither mode is wrong. But using the wrong mode at the wrong time destroys teams.
Apply Marcus when your team needs Nietzsche, and you get stagnation dressed up as stability. Everyone stays comfortable, and nothing changes.
Apply Nietzsche when your team needs Marcus, and you get exhaustion dressed up as ambition. Everyone burns out trying to prove they’re worthy of staying.
The skill isn’t picking your default. It’s recognizing which moment you’re in.
When Your Team Needs Marcus
Marcus Aurelius led Rome through plague, war, and political chaos. His Meditations read like a field manual for keeping your head when everything around you is falling apart.
Some leadership moments demand exactly that.
Your team needs Marcus when:
Recovery is the priority. After a major disruption—losing a key account, a failed product launch, a round of layoffs—people need to rebuild trust in the fundamentals before they can take risks again.
Anxiety is drowning out thinking. When uncertainty is high and everyone’s looking for solid ground, your job is to be the steady point. Calm the noise. Provide clarity. Let people catch their breath.
Burnout is the hidden cost. If your team has been running hot for months, pushing harder isn’t leadership—it’s cruelty. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is give people permission to rest.
The foundation is shaky. You can’t innovate on top of broken systems. If your team doesn’t trust the basics—the processes, the communication, each other—fix that before you ask them to reimagine anything.
What Marcus does well:
He creates safety. He reminds people what they control. He builds resilience through repetition and discipline. He steadies the ship so people can think clearly again.
Where Marcus fails:
When the ship itself is the problem. When stability has calcified into stagnation. When what your team actually needs isn’t reassurance—it’s permission to question everything, including you.
When Your Team Needs Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche didn’t write for people seeking comfort. He wrote for people willing to tear down inherited values and build something new in their place.
Some leadership moments demand exactly that.
Your team needs Nietzsche when:
Comfort has become complacency. If your team is hitting targets but stopped innovating, if “this is how we’ve always done it” has become the default response, you don’t need steadiness—you need disruption.
The system is the bottleneck. When the processes, structures, or assumptions that got you here are the exact things preventing you from getting there, steady leadership just locks the problem in place.
People have stopped questioning. If your team waits for you to have all the answers, if they’ve stopped challenging assumptions or pushing back on bad ideas, they’re not engaged—they’re compliant. And compliance kills innovation.
The moment demands courage, not comfort. Sometimes the market shifts. Sometimes the competition leapfrogs you. Sometimes you have six months to reinvent or die. In those moments, calm reassurance isn’t leadership—it’s denial.
What Nietzsche does well:
He refuses inherited answers. He demands people think for themselves. He creates urgency. He gives permission to burn down what isn’t working and build something better.
Where Nietzsche fails:
When people are already fragile. When trust is broken. When what your team needs isn’t transformation—it’s stability long enough to remember why they signed up in the first place.
The Diagnostic Skill Nobody Teaches
Here’s what makes this hard: your default mode feels right even when it’s wrong.
If you default to Stoicism, every situation looks like it needs steadiness. “Let’s not overreact. Let’s stay focused. Let’s trust the process.”
If you default to Nietzsche, every situation looks like it needs disruption. “We’re too comfortable. We’re not thinking big enough. We need to move faster.”
Both instincts feel like leadership. Both can destroy teams when misapplied.
I learned this during one of our best years ever. Every metric pointed to success. Every Stoic instinct I had said: don’t mess with what’s working, keep the momentum, protect what you’ve built. But underneath the numbers, I had a nagging sense that the moment was changing faster than we were. The market was shifting. The skills that got us here weren’t the skills we’d need next year. And some of the people who’d been excellent in the previous chapter weren’t positioned to thrive in the next one.
The Stoic move would have been to steady the ship. The hard move was acknowledging that sometimes the right people for one season aren’t the right people for the next—and helping them transition to better fits elsewhere. It wasn’t about performance. It was about fit for a changing moment. That’s when I learned: reading the moment sometimes means making the uncomfortable call even when everything looks fine.
The skill is learning to override your default long enough to ask: What does this moment actually need?
Not what feels comfortable. Not what matches your leadership brand. What does this specific team, in this specific situation, need right now?
Three Questions to Diagnose the Moment
1. Is the foundation solid or shaky?
If your team doesn’t trust the basics—the strategy, the processes, each other, you—you can’t ask them to innovate on top of that. Fix the foundation first. That’s Stoic work.
If the foundation is solid but you’re building the wrong thing, steadiness just means building the wrong thing more efficiently. That’s when you need Nietzsche.
2. Is the energy level depleted or stagnant?
Depleted teams need recovery. They need smaller wins, clearer direction, permission to breathe. Pushing harder breaks them.
Stagnant teams need disruption. They’re not tired—they’re bored, comfortable, going through the motions. They don’t need rest. They need a reason to care again.
3. Is the biggest risk moving too fast or too slow?
If you’re navigating crisis, transition, or uncertainty, moving too fast compounds the damage. Slow down. Stabilize. That’s Stoicism.
If you’re watching the market shift while your team debates minor process improvements, moving too slow is the crisis. Speed up. Challenge everything. That’s Nietzsche.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Scenario 1: The Team That Missed Quota Three Quarters Running
Your instinct might be to disrupt. Challenge them. Demand more. Push past comfort.
But look closer: Are they complacent, or are they demoralized? Have they stopped trying, or have they lost confidence in what they’re trying to do?
If it’s demoralization, they don’t need disruption—they need Marcus. They need you to rebuild trust in the fundamentals. Clarify the strategy. Remove obstacles. Celebrate small wins. Give them solid ground before you ask them to take risks again.
If it’s complacency—if they’re making excuses, playing it safe, hiding behind process—then yes, they need Nietzsche. They need you to challenge the status quo, question the assumptions, refuse to accept “good enough.”
Same symptom. Opposite solutions.
Scenario 2: The Team That’s Crushing Goals But Stopped Innovating
Your instinct might be to steady. Don’t mess with what’s working. Keep the momentum going.
But look closer: Is this sustainable excellence, or borrowed time? Are they crushing goals because they’re executing brilliantly, or because the competition hasn’t caught up yet?
If it’s sustainable—if the fundamentals are sound and the team is energized—then yes, steady the ship. That’s Marcus. Don’t disrupt what’s working.
But if success has made them comfortable, if they’ve stopped questioning whether today’s playbook will work tomorrow, you need Nietzsche. You need to disrupt before the market does it for you.
Same symptom. Opposite solutions.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Consistency
Every leadership book tells you to be consistent. Have a clear philosophy. A defined approach. “This is how I lead.”
But the moments that define your career won’t fit neatly into a single framework.
The best leaders I’ve worked with aren’t consistent—they’re adaptive. They’ve learned to recognize which moment they’re in and override their default when necessary.
That’s uncomfortable. It means you can’t rely on a signature move. It means some quarters you’re the steady hand, and other quarters you’re the one questioning everything.
It means your team can’t predict which version of you they’re going to get—and that’s the point.
Because the goal isn’t for them to know how you’ll respond. The goal is for you to respond to what the moment actually needs.
Building the Instinct
This skill doesn’t come from philosophy. It comes from noticing.
After every major decision, ask yourself:
Did this moment need steadiness or disruption?
Which mode did I default to?
If I had chosen the opposite, what would have happened?
You’ll start to see patterns. The meetings where you steadied the room but people actually needed permission to challenge the plan. The moments you pushed for breakthrough but people were still recovering from the last disruption. The times your default worked brilliantly—and the times it made everything worse.
That pattern recognition is the skill. Not picking the right philosophy, but developing the instinct to know when to switch.
Living in the Tension
Neither Marcus nor Nietzsche would have made a great sales leader on their own.
Marcus would steady the team through every downturn but might never push them past comfort.
Nietzsche would ignite their ambition but might burn through trust.
The leaders who actually build something—who create teams that last and perform and grow—aren’t choosing between steadiness and storm.
They’re learning to live in the tension between them.
So here’s the question:
What would your leadership look like if you stopped trying to be consistent—and started learning to read the moment?
Not which philosophy you prefer. Not which mode feels most like “you.”
Which mode does this team, in this moment, actually need?
Because the answer changes. And your willingness to change with it—that’s the difference between leading and just having a philosophy.