The Leadership Code
How we lead, how we grow, how we multiply our impact.
Why are we doing this?
Management, when done well, is how we multiply our impact. It's how we live our values beyond just our own work — through the people we develop and the culture we create.
At M. Palmer Consulting, we don't believe in accidental leadership. We don't promote someone and hope they figure it out. We invest intentionally in developing leaders who can carry forward our values.
This document defines what leadership looks like at M. Palmer Consulting — not in theory, but in practice. Grounded in our five values, and in reality: the messy, difficult, rewarding work of developing people.
Your job is the people, not the tasks.
As an individual contributor, your job is to do excellent work. As a leader, your work is the people you serve. Their growth is your growth. Their success is your success. Their development is your deliverable.
This shift is hard. It means letting go of being the expert, getting comfortable with others doing things differently, and measuring success in ways that are less visible and less immediate. But your impact multiplies.
Leadership develops in stages.
Like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, each level builds on the one before it. You can't skip steps. You can't master the top without a solid foundation.
The Most Important Things to Remember
- Leadership is developmental, not binary. You're somewhere on the journey. Always.
- You can't skip levels. Master the foundation before you try to be strategic.
- This is a practice, not a destination. You never "arrive."
- You're not alone. Melanie is here. Your peers are here. This document is here.
- Start with Level 1. If you're not managing down well, nothing else matters.
Managing Down
The Foundation
Your relationship with your direct reports is the foundation of everything else. Without solid management of your direct reports, your leadership crumbles - no matter how strategic or values-driven you think you are.
- Developing people who will eventually outgrow you
- Removing barriers so they can do their best work
- Providing context so they can make good decisions
- Being in service to their growth
- Telling people what to do
- Monitoring compliance
- Protecting yourself by controlling them
- Treating reports as resources to deploy
Core Practices
- Your reports come to you with problems and solutions
- They ask for feedback, not just wait for you to give it
- They speak up in meetings and disagree when they see things differently
- You can take a vacation and nothing falls apart
- You spend more time coaching than doing
- Your reports can't function without you - you're the bottleneck
- They wait for permission on decisions they should own
- They seem hesitant to disagree or share bad news
- You cancel 1:1s when things get busy
- You feel threatened when people grow
Your direct reports are watching how you lead more closely than anyone else. They're learning from what you do, not what you say. Manage down like it's the most important part of your job. Because it is.
Values-Driven Leadership
The Commitments
Once you've built a solid foundation with your direct reports, they need to know how you'll show up. Values-driven leadership means your team can predict your behavior — not because you're robotic, but because you're principled.
Empower, Don't Rescue
Your job is to build capability, not dependence. When someone brings you a problem, your first instinct should be to help them solve it - not to solve it for them.
- Ask "What do you think we should do?" before giving your answer
- Delegate meaningful work, not just tasks you don't want
- Let people struggle productively - discomfort is where growth happens
- Celebrate when someone no longer needs your help
- Swooping in because it's faster to do it yourself
- Holding work too tightly because "no one else can do it right"
- Creating a team that can't function without you
"We not only complete projects, but we also equip teams for the future."— M. Palmer Consulting Value: Empowerment
- Your team can predict how you'll show up
- You lead from values, not moods or convenience
- People describe you as consistent and principled
- Your team feels safe being vulnerable because you model it
- Your behavior changes based on stress or who's in the room
- You talk about values but don't live them under pressure
- People are surprised by your reactions or decisions
- Your team doesn't know what you stand for
Inclusive Leadership
Equity in Action
You've built trust with your direct reports and established consistent, values-driven leadership. Now comes the critical question: Is that trust and consistency available to everyone?
- Ensuring voices of all team members are heard and valued
- Speaking up for team members who may not feel comfortable speaking for themselves
- Moving from intention to action on inclusion
- Embedding inclusive behaviors into how we work every day
- A separate skillset from leadership
- A checklist or annual initiative
- Saying the right things but not changing behavior
- Expecting marginalized colleagues to do the educating
Core Practices
- All team members feel seen, valued, and heard - not just the loud ones
- Opportunities are distributed equitably
- You catch and address bias and exclusion in real-time
- Team members from different backgrounds feel safe bringing their full selves
- The same people always get the best projects or visibility
- Quieter team members are overlooked
- You only think about inclusion during DEI initiatives
- Marginalized team members don't feel safe or supported
Inclusive leadership isn't a separate skillset - it's how you do all of the other leadership work. How you delegate, give feedback, build relationships, and make decisions.
Strategic Leadership
Organizational Influence
You've mastered managing your direct reports, lead consistently through values, and built an inclusive team culture. Now it's time to think bigger - shaping how the organization works, not just how your team works.
- Representing your team's work and needs in leadership conversations
- Building cross-functional relationships and alignment
- Seeing patterns and systems, not just individual situations
- Using your influence to remove organizational barriers
- Playing politics or manipulating for personal gain
- Abandoning your team to focus on "bigger" things
- Making decisions without considering broader impact
- Becoming so focused on strategy you lose touch with the work
Core Practices
- Leadership actively seeks your input on organizational decisions
- You're invited into strategic conversations beyond your scope
- Peer leaders see you as a collaborative partner
- You can connect your team's work to broader organizational goals
- You're so focused on strategy you've lost touch with your team
- Leadership is surprised by issues you should have escalated
- You're competing with peers instead of collaborating
- You're not invited into key conversations or decisions
Strategic leadership means you're no longer managing in isolation. You're representing your team's needs, influencing decisions beyond your scope, and thinking systemically about how M. Palmer Consulting operates.
Leadership Multiplication
Building Leaders Who Build Leaders
This is the ultimate question: What happens when you're not here? Leadership multiplication is the pinnacle - you're building leadership capacity that outlasts you and spreads beyond your immediate sphere. This is legacy work.
- Developing leaders who will develop other leaders
- Creating systems and knowledge that persist beyond you
- Celebrating when people you've developed outgrow you
- Making the organization stronger through the leaders you build
- Cloning yourself or creating mini-versions of you
- Hoarding knowledge or relationships as power
- Only developing people who will stay forever
- Treating leadership development as secondary to "real work"
Core Practices
- People you developed are now developing others successfully
- Your frameworks are being used beyond your direct team
- The organization has stronger leadership capacity because of you
- You feel genuine pride when people outgrow you
- You're still the only one who can do certain things
- Knowledge and capability are concentrated in you
- People you developed aren't developing others
- You feel threatened when people grow beyond you
Everything else - the projects, the problems solved, the crises managed - those are important but temporary. The leaders you build? They keep going. They build other leaders. They shape culture. They multiply impact long after you've moved on. Build leaders. They'll build the future.
The Transition to Leadership
If you're reading this as someone moving from peer to leader, or from individual contributor to manager, know that this is a real shift. Your relationship with your colleagues will change. That's okay — and it's worth it.
You don't have to be a different person.
Your personality, your values, your way of connecting - those stay.
You do have to hold yourself differently.
The jokes you make, the complaints you voice, the information you share - these all land differently when you have positional power.
Your former peers want you to succeed.
Trust that they're adjusting too, and give everyone (including yourself) grace.
It takes time.
You won't master all five levels immediately. Start with Level 1, get solid, then build up.
You'll make mistakes.
That's how you learn. What matters is that you acknowledge them, learn from them, and keep going.
Our Commitment to You
If you're leading at M. Palmer Consulting, you're not alone. You have Melanie as a thought partner and sounding board. Your peers as collaborators, not competitors. This document as a reference. And permission to learn.
We trust you. Now trust yourself.