UpTrajectory Review

Marcel Schwantes' piece in Inc. argues that genuine leadership influence stems from daily habits rather than positional authority. The core premise: people follow those who consistently demonstrate trustworthiness, respect, and commitment through their actions. While the available text is brief, the headline signals a focus on four specific behavioral patterns that any leader—regardless of title or hierarchy—can cultivate to build authentic followership. This framing aligns with Schwantes' broader body of work, which often draws on servant leadership principles and emotional intelligence research to challenge command-and-control management styles.

For small-business operators, this distinction matters more than in larger organizations. When you're running a company with five, twenty, or fifty employees, your authority is already fragile. You likely can't out-pay competitors, your title carries little weight with early hires who remember when you were doing payroll at the kitchen table, and your team can leave for a bigger brand tomorrow. In that environment, followership built on habit and trust isn't a soft skill—it's your only durable management infrastructure. The habits Schwantes identifies are likely ones you can implement Monday morning without budget approval or board sign-off.

What's genuinely useful here is the framing that authority and followership are separate currencies. Many founders conflate them, assuming that because they sign paychecks, people will commit fully. That's increasingly contested in practice, especially with younger workers who rank manager quality as a top retention factor. Where we're slightly skeptical: habit-listicles in business media often present correlation as causation and underweight structural factors. A leader with terrible habits can still retain people if compensation and mission are strong. Habits are necessary but not sufficient—they're the floor, not the ceiling.

The second-order effects cut in both directions. If Schwantes' four habits become normalized in your business, you reduce dependency on any single manager's charisma, which makes scaling easier and succession less chaotic. Conversely, if you ignore this and rely on authority, you'll likely see quiet disengagement first—missed deadlines, minimal initiative, referrals drying up—before anyone quits. That lag makes the cost hard to attribute and easy to deny. There's also a hiring implication: screening for these habits in new managers is cheaper than training them in after a bad fit damages a team.

Watch whether Schwantes' four habits are framed as universal or context-dependent. A habit that builds followership in a crisis (decisiveness, visibility) may differ from one that works in steady-state operations (delegation, listening). Your move this week: pick one recurring interaction—your Monday team meeting, your one-on-ones, your Friday wrap—and audit it against the habit list. Ask one direct report privately: what do I do that makes you trust my judgment more, and what erodes it? That answer is more actionable than any framework.

Takeaway: Audit one weekly leadership interaction against trust-building habits and ask a direct report what specifically builds or erodes their confidence in you.