Miter’s talent leadership philosophy: Leading from the bottom up

I’ve spent my career building and leading teams across different companies, industries, and stages of growth. The contexts have changed. The scale has changed. But one thing has stayed constant: the way you show up for your team determines everything about how they show up for the work.

This article is about the leadership philosophy I bring to my team. At Miter, we talk a lot about what it means to Win as a Team. It’s one of our core values; it’s not just a rallying cry. It’s a lens through which I think about leadership every single day. Because winning as a team doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a deliberate, intentional approach to how you lead the people around you. 

The philosophy that has shaped me most? Servant leadership. And I want to share what it actually looks like in practice.

Flip the triangle

Most of us grew up with a pretty traditional picture of leadership. The leader sits at the top. The team exists to support their vision. Information flows down. Decisions flow down. Everything flows down.

Servant leadership flips that completely.

In this model, the leader’s job is to sit at the bottom and hold everything up. Your team is at the top. Your role is to clear their path, invest in their growth, and make sure they have everything they need to do their best work. When your people are supported, challenged in the right ways, and clear on what’s expected of them, the results follow. It really is that straightforward.

For me, this isn’t just a feel-good management theory. It’s the most effective way I’ve found to build teams that are genuinely engaged, consistently high performing, and excited to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Two practices make this real for me: radical candor and situational leadership.

They’re distinct frameworks, but they work together in ways I’ll get to.

Radical candor: Saying the thing

One of Miter’s values is to Give a Damn. I think about that a lot when it comes to feedback.

Giving a damn means you care enough to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. It means you don’t let someone walk out of a presentation not knowing it ran long and left no room for questions. It means you don’t smile and say “great job” when what you really mean is “let’s talk about what could’ve gone better.”

That’s the heart of radical candor: caring personally and challenging directly, at the same time. Not one or the other.

There are four ways leaders tend to give feedback, and only one of them actually works:

• Ruinous Empathy is when you care about someone so much that you avoid giving them hard feedback altogether. It feels kind in the moment. It isn’t.
• Manipulative Insincerity is praise to someone’s face, criticism behind their back. It’s corrosive and it destroys trust fast.
• Obnoxious Aggression is direct, but brutal. It gets the message across while making the person feel terrible. Not the goal.
• Radical Candor is the sweet spot. It sounds like: “You were clearly prepared and the content was strong. Here’s what I’d do differently next time, and here’s why I think it’ll make a real difference for you.”

The thing people miss about radical candor is that you can’t just deploy it on your team without earning the right to do so. Trust has to come first. One of the ways I build that trust is by asking for feedback myself, regularly and genuinely. I’ll end a one-on-one with something like: “What’s one thing I could have done differently this week that would have made your job a little easier?” Then I stop talking and actually listen.

The more you model that kind of openness, the easier it becomes for your team to receive feedback when you give it. You’ve already shown them you can take it too.

We also run quick retrospectives on my team after major milestones and to start a new quarter. A simple “stop, start, continue” conversation after a big project or presentation keeps feedback timely and specific. It doesn’t need to be a formal process. Sometimes it’s a ten-minute Google Meet call while the experience is still fresh. The point is to make feedback a normal, ongoing part of how we work, not something that only happens twice a year in a performance review.

Situational leadership: Meeting people where they are

Early on, I had someone on my team who had been doing a particular function for years. I assumed competence meant they wanted full autonomy, so I largely stepped back. What I missed was that they were struggling with motivation, not skill. They didn’t need more space. They needed more engagement from me. I was delegating when I should have been supporting.

Situational leadership was the framework that helped me break that habit.

The core idea is that there’s no single right way to lead someone. The right approach depends on where that person is with a specific task: how capable they are, and how motivated they are to do it. Someone brand new to a responsibility needs more direction. Someone who’s done something a hundred times needs room to run. Treating them the same way is a mistake in both directions.

Here’s how I think about the four modes of situational leadership:

• Directing is for someone who’s new to a task and needs clear guidance. I’m specific, I’m present, and I’m checking in often. This isn’t micromanaging. It’s appropriate support for where they are.
• Coaching is for someone who’s developing their skills but still needs my involvement. I’m giving direction and encouragement, asking questions to help them think it through, but I’m still pretty hands-on.
• Supporting is for someone who has the competence but might need a confidence boost or a sounding board. I’m not in the weeds with them, but I’m accessible. I’ll shadow a call here and there, jump in when needed, and make sure they know I’m there.
• Delegating is for someone who’s ready to fully own something. I hand it off and trust them to deliver. I’m available if they need me, but I’m not hovering.

The hardest part is the diagnosis. You have to do the honest work of figuring out where each person actually is, and that requires paying real attention. I stay curious: asking questions in one-on-ones, watching how someone approaches a new challenge, noticing when energy or confidence shifts.

This is also where radical candor and situational leadership connect. The type of feedback I give needs to match where someone is. Someone new to a task needs specific, directive feedback. Someone who’s been at it for years might need a different kind of challenge entirely.

What this looks like at Miter

Miter’s values give me a clear framework to come back to when I’m thinking about how to lead. Build the Blueprint is about being intentional and structured in how we work. More Wood, Fewer Arrows is about focusing energy where it actually matters. Win the Next Point is about staying focused on what’s in front of us and not getting lost in what we can’t control.

All of those show up in how I lead my team. Being intentional about feedback. Being deliberate about how much support or space someone needs. Staying focused on what will actually move things forward for the people I work with.

Servant leadership is one of the most disciplined things you can commit to as a leader. When you get it right, the results speak for themselves: a team that trusts you, pushes each other, and genuinely wants to win together.

That, to me, is what Give a Damn is all about.