Thank God Don Draper Never Had LinkedIn.
Leaders today are performers — spinning yarns while spinning plates, claiming they invented the art.
I mean, could you imagine us having to sort through Henry Ford’s pro-Nazi tweets in this day and age?
Performative leadership is crippling every corner of our culture.
From politics to the corner office, it’s all about ego and self-centered motives. Walking back integrity. Standing for issues only because they’re in the news — not because they believe in them.
Leaders got exposed
The Internet Age came fast — but the impact it had on leaders hit slow.
And now they’re all exposed.
Because more often than not, their positions weren’t earned — they were bought, inherited, or built over time by simply sticking around.
They were rewarded for never standing on their own two feet.
That’s how they became “leaders.”
Being a leader used to mean something.
Across time, across cultures — to lead, to hold wealth, to be elite — meant something deeper:
You share your gifts generously with the world.
The ancient flex was servant leadership
In the Gita, the Pandavas are famously wealthy and powerful, yet they’re pious and duty-bound — the epitome of servant leadership. They don’t let the illusion of material wealth distort the sacred position they were given: to love, protect, and serve.
In ancient times, wealth came with a sacred obligation — build for the people who can’t build for themselves.
In Rome, patricians funded roads and feasts. In the Islamic Golden Age, powerful families built hospitals and libraries through waqf. Mansa Musa, the wealthiest man in recorded history, gave away so much gold during his pilgrimage that it destabilized economies for a decade.
And in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, leaders were chosen by clan mothers — and judged not by what they acquired, but how well they protected and provided for the people.
The servant leadership blueprint for power wasn’t about personal legacy. It was about collective longevity.
That was the original flex: don’t just collect wealth — circulate it.
Now our American oligarchs build super-lairs worth hundreds of millions of dollars to hide in shame as the coming cultural revolution shadows their shallow efforts.
The curtain is closing on performative leadership
The culture of performative leadership has come to an end.
Look — it’s not that I don’t care about your take on LinkedIn…
I just hate your motivation.
Pay attention to me. Look at all I’ve accomplished. Behold my restrained take on a hot-button issue — please peasants, notice my humility and take note.
This is how a leader shows up?
Honestly? GTFO.
Leave that at the door and go protect your people — the ones getting run down, replaced, and removed before their 401k vests. The ones adapting and changing, desperate for someone real to reach out with a hand of support.
People need real role models.
And you’re out here playing make believe on the internet.
Pretending to be king while you act like a jester.
Performing. Like a seal at the zoo.
That’s not leadership. It’s posturing.
What servant leadership actually looks like
My all-time favorite example of leadership: Nelson Mandela.
I’d love to dive deep into how he flipped Gandhi’s approach to nonviolence — nonviolent up until the point where violence is necessary.
The true warrior spirit he embodied.
But this is more important right now.
After spending 27 years incarcerated as a political prisoner, Mandela was freed and won the presidency of South Africa. Not long after, he ran into a guard from the prison — a man who beat him, humiliated him, even urinated in his mouth.
This man abused every ounce of power and authority he was given.
And now he was meeting the man he oppressed — who had flipped the dynamic and become the most powerful man in the country.
I read this and thought, “Get him, Nelson. Fuck this dude up.”
Because that man deserved consequence. No doubt in my mind.
We’d have all been fine with a violent outcome
Instead, Mandela forgave him.
On the spot.
Moved past the hate, past the hurt, past the need for retribution.
He moved past his ego — because the fate of the country was at stake.
And a Father of a Nation shows unconditional love to all his children.
We don’t need more thought leaders
Mandela didn’t need a platform.
He didn’t drop takes or posture online. He didn’t broadcast his principles — he lived them.
He was locked up in a cage unable to communicate to the outside world. In many ways, he is the original anti-influencer of the modern age – someone who can wield influence without needing to wave integrity or posture in public.
And he did it quietly, consistently, and at a cost no modern “leader” could stomach.
They took everything from him and then offered it back to him in the form of callous bribes: submit and cast aside your duty and principles, and you will be granted riches and freedom.
It was not that he was never given the opportunity to bounce.
It’s that he said nope.
Because their terms did not match his principles
That’s the gap. The disconnect. What passes for leadership today is performance. Carefully staged vulnerability. Selective outrage. PR masquerading as character.
We don’t need more of that.
We need people who carry the weight when the spotlight’s off. Who make decisions that matter before they’re recognized for them.
Leaders who don’t lower the age of ad targeting for kids — all but ensuring an entire generation is set to approach life like the population on the space station in Wall-E.
Real leadership happens in the silence, long before the applause — and long after it fades.
Will servant leaders rise?
Hopefully, a bunch of people wake up and realize that “thought leadership” is just ego-driven drivel — the industry’s version of a tabloid.
There’s a chance for the leaders in the middle. The ones holding down the fort. The ones commanding the real output. The ones who still remember what it means to hope — and want to be led by someone who deserves it.
Some of them will wake up and realize: They have to become the leader they always wanted to follow.
So that no one who works for them has to suffer through inadequacy the way they did.
Those shooters? They outnumber the glossy figureheads at the top.
And in short time, the puffed-up, out-of-touch leadership now decorating the halls of Fortune 500 brands will fall to the wayside — retreating to the corners of the submissive hell they came from.
Because again: being a leader does not mean you have hot takes on LinkedIn.
It means you show up and work for your people.