🧭 The Inverted Pyramid of Leadership

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• Frank Clark on Leadership

• The Inverted Pyramid of Leadership Explained

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The Inverted Pyramid of Leadership

Today, we are going to get some insight from Frank Clark, the former CEO of Home Depot, and the inverted pyramid of leadership they use at Home Depot. It looks like this (see below), but his explanation of it is even better. Take a look at my summarized view and his explanations in the quotes.

• Leaders are at the bottom: “As a leader everything you do is uphill. It's uphill. Nothing cascades down. When I hear leaders say that they've got a message and it cascades down through the organization, I go, ‘Oh no, it doesn't.’ Gravity is not your friend in an organization. You have to push your message up because in the end, people really don't know whether they care what you're talking about. You have to provide that motivating force for them to care about what you're saying."

• Everything important is happening above you: “Once you view yourself on the bottom, you understand, first off, everything that's important is happening above you. You have to have phenomenal listening skills—that's a whole separate topic—how do you listen, how do you actually understand what's happening up there above you. You have to focus on communication because your message has to be simple and compelling because you're counting on the people above you in the organization to relay that communication through. So, they have to internalize that message as their own.”

• The importance of paying attention: “My own belief that I learned from you, and boy, if there's one thing I would tell every single leader: pay attention, pay attention to what you recognize and celebrate in your organization because that's what you're going to get. People are pretty smart, and when they're working in an organization, for the most part, they want to be successful. But how clear is their CEO communicating what she or he actually wants? The clearest way you communicate it is through what you recognize and celebrate. I learned that from you. I did it religiously for eight years. And I feel like, as I say, the understanding of what it takes to move an organization from the bottom rather than the top was absolutely a key to thinking about leadership in the right way.”

From this perspective on leadership, three critical lessons emerge:

1. Responsibility - Leadership means doing more. It is a responsibility and a privilege. You have to realize it takes energy and you have to push your messages, they don’t just cascade down. When you think from this perspective, you realize the walk uphill can be steep.

2. Humility - Great leaders have humility. They know that it’s not about being at the top, but about serving everyone else in the organizational hierarchy. This mindset shift reminds you that significant activities and decisions happen above you, and it’s your role to support and empower those processes. Viewing yourself at the bottom helps you appreciate the need for a grounded approach to leadership and focus on enabling others to succeed.

3. Communication - You have to consistently be communicating, whether it’s communicating your message or actively listening to others. As a leader, you have to PUSH your message. You can’t lead without empathy and understanding. Effective leadership requires clear, simple, and compelling communication. It means reinforcing positive behaviors, listening to feedback, and realizing the importance of where and how you communicate.

Notes:

For our premium users, we have done a full deep-dive on Clark’s leadership methodology and stories here. If you are a FREE subscriber and interested in reading the whole article, please reply to this email.

The quotes are sourced from his interview on How Leaders Lead with David Novak.

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