# 124: Joshua McMillion - Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership: 10 Ways to Lead Above the Standard
Featuring Joshua McMillion | Tales of Leadership Podcast Ep. 124
Every leader has a choice. They can lead at the minimum acceptable standard, focus on short-term results, and protect their own position—or they can choose the more difficult path of transformational leadership.
For Joshua McMillion, transformational leadership means becoming a Purposeful, Accountable Leader—a PAL. PALs lead with integrity, intention, and impact. They place people before ego, accept responsibility for their organizations, and focus on creating significance rather than chasing temporary success.
Transformational leadership requires more than motivational words. It demands routine, accountability, and discipline—RAD. It requires a servant’s heart, strong character, unwavering integrity, and the willingness to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do.
In this episode, Joshua shares ten practices leaders can use to rise above the standard and become the leader their team, family, and community need.
1. Become a Shepherd
A transformational leader operates like a shepherd—walking among the team to guide, guard, and grow the people entrusted to their leadership.
PALs are visionaries. They clearly communicate where the organization is going, why the journey matters, and what success looks like. Joshua describes this as building a symbolic leadership bridge with a clear starting point and destination.
The leader’s responsibility is not to do everyone’s work or remain at the front collecting recognition. It is to provide the direction, purpose, and motivation needed to keep the team moving safely toward the objective.
When a major obstacle emerges, the leader steps forward and acts decisively. At other times, the leader should practice OCT: Observe, Coach, and Train.
A shepherd does not seek attention. A shepherd ensures the team remains on azimuth.
2. Learn to Operate in the Gray
Life and leadership rarely provide perfect textbook scenarios. Leaders must frequently make decisions with incomplete information, changing conditions, and competing priorities.
Operating in the gray requires adaptability. Leaders must absorb information quickly, understand the resources available, and make informed decisions when the correct answer is not immediately obvious.
Two practices help leaders operate effectively in uncertainty.
First, create a candid feedback loop. As a leader’s influence and responsibility increase, honest feedback often becomes more difficult to receive. People may begin telling leaders what they think those leaders want to hear. Transformational leaders deliberately create opportunities for their teams to provide constructive, uncomfortable, and honest feedback.
Second, build resilience throughout the organization. When everyone is trained to solve problems, obstacles become easier to overcome. Resilient teams communicate openly, collaborate naturally, innovate under pressure, and willingly chase hard problems.
A transformational leader does not need to possess every answer. The leader must create an organization capable of finding answers together.
3. Maintain Perspective
Leadership can be a thankless responsibility. When the team succeeds, the people doing the work deserve the recognition. When something goes wrong, the leader must accept responsibility.
Joshua learned this lesson early in his military career: leaders are responsible for everything their organizations do or fail to do—even when they are not physically present.
Maintaining perspective requires leaders to mentally separate themselves from the daily grind and examine the organization from an aerial view. The position, office, or title is bigger than the person temporarily occupying it. Leaders will eventually leave, but the organization and its people will remain.
That realization should change where leaders invest their time.
People are the organization’s most important assets. Lasting success is never created by one leader alone; it is produced by the people carrying out the mission every day.
If the leader wins while the team loses, the organization may only win once. When the team wins the right way, momentum builds and future success becomes increasingly possible.
“See the whole battlefield before moving a single piece.”
4. Lead with HUGS
HUGS is Joshua’s framework for Humility, Understanding, Gratitude, and a Servant’s heart.
Humility - Humility is often developed through difficult, teachable moments. Losing, failing, and being forced to confront personal limitations can become some of a leader’s most valuable experiences. Transformational leaders do not hide from those memories. They reflect on them, learn from them, and allow them to shape how they treat others.
Understanding - Understanding begins when leaders quiet their egos and listen. This allows them to connect authentically with the people they lead. Joshua also draws an important distinction between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy can become an attempt to rescue someone from accountability. Empathy seeks to understand what someone is experiencing while still holding that person to the appropriate standard. PALs provide grace, coaching, and support—but they do not abandon accountability.
Gratitude - Gratitude is easy when everything is going well. The deeper leadership lesson is learning to find gratitude during hardship. Joshua’s personal reminder is: “Every day is a gift. I will not waste mine.” Difficult experiences can produce wisdom when leaders are willing to reflect on them. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, so leaders must approach today with purpose.
Servant’s Heart - A servant’s heart means helping others because you genuinely want them to succeed—not because serving them supports a hidden agenda. Purposeful, accountable leaders embrace humility, seek understanding, practice gratitude, and serve without making the mission about themselves.
5. Practice Mission Command
Mission command is the Army’s approach to delegating authority to the lowest appropriate level of leadership. It allows junior leaders to make timely, decentralized decisions while enabling senior leaders to guide larger organizations.
Delegation can be uncomfortable because it requires leaders to release control. It also requires them to quiet their egos and accept that someone else may accomplish the task differently.
However, delegation without preparation is not empowerment. Leaders must provide their teams with the tools, training, authorities, and resources required to succeed. When leaders assign responsibility without providing those conditions, the resulting failure belongs to the leader.
Transformational leaders continue to observe, coach, and train after delegating. They do not disappear from the process.
The goal is also not to delegate everything simply to reduce the leader’s workload. Leaders must determine which responsibilities truly belong to them and which tactical tasks should be entrusted to others. Effective delegation creates space for leaders to focus on the operational and strategic decisions only they can make.
If delegation makes you slightly uncomfortable, you may be moving in the right direction.
6. Adopt a Sledgehammer Mindset
The purpose of a sledgehammer is simple: break down barriers and remove obstacles.
Transformational leaders must first prevent unnecessary obstacles by establishing effective systems and processes. When a barrier does arise, however, leaders should not immediately take over. They should give the team an opportunity to solve the problem at the appropriate level.
When the obstacle exceeds the team’s authority, resources, or influence, the leader steps forward and removes it.
Afterward, the leader should ask:
What did we learn?
What system can we create to prevent this obstacle from forming again?
The sledgehammer mindset is not only about solving isolated problems. It is about creating organizational momentum.
Every person on the team should become a sledgehammer at their level of responsibility. Senior leaders attack strategic barriers so their teams can achieve overmatch against the problems directly in front of them.
When everyone removes obstacles together, the organization becomes a force capable of overcoming challenges that would stop individuals working alone.
7. Be Decisive
Decisive leadership does not mean making every decision unilaterally.
There are situations—particularly emergencies or moments when lives are at risk—when leaders must act immediately. But those moments are relatively rare. Leaders who constantly act without input eventually stop receiving valuable information from their teams.
Healthy decisiveness begins with active listening. Every person on the team should have a voice, and some of the strongest ideas may come from the most underestimated members of the organization.
Once the leader has enough information to make an informed decision, it is time to act.
The leader may only have a 70 or 80 percent solution. Waiting for perfect information can create paralysis and allow the environment to dictate the outcome.
Make the decision. Communicate it clearly. Move forward confidently.
Leaders can adjust when conditions change, but they should not waste energy continually second-guessing themselves. The organization is not fighting the original plan; it is responding to the environment. A plan is a tool, not the mission itself.
8. Discover Who You Are
Before attempting to transform an organization, leaders must understand themselves.
Self-discovery requires honest reflection. Joshua encourages leaders to consider several difficult questions:
What are your strengths?
Would the people around you identify the same strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Would your team agree with your assessment?
What areas of your life are most important?
What actions are you currently taking to protect those areas?
What is your leadership style?
What are your core values?
What foundation is your leadership built upon?
Leadership is not restricted to the workplace. It includes how you lead yourself, care for your family, and live when no title or audience is present.
Unless leaders understand their values, strengths, weaknesses, and identity, they are not fully prepared to lead others. Leadership begins with self-mastery.
The question every leader must eventually answer is simple:
Who are you?
9. Practice Inside-Out Thinking
Purposeful, accountable leaders are growth-minded. They do not begin by obsessing over external results. Instead, they focus on the internal identity, culture, behaviors, and systems that eventually produce those results.
Inside-out thinking begins with the person or organization you want to become.
The next layer consists of the processes, routines, behaviors, principles, and systems required to become that future version. Only then should the leader focus on long-term outcomes.
Leaders can begin by asking:
How does your organization make people feel?
How do team members feel when they arrive at work?
What does your family think of the person you are becoming?
Do you like the current version of yourself?
Culture deserves particular attention because it takes time to build. It requires leaders who establish routines, hold people accountable, and consistently demonstrate discipline.
That is the RAD approach: Routine, Accountability, and Discipline.
When leaders strengthen identity, culture, and systems, the results have a stronger foundation. Transformational leaders focus on becoming the right organization rather than merely appearing successful.
Get the little things right, and the bigger outcomes will begin to follow.
10. Close the Distance
Leaders cannot effectively lead an organization when gaps exist between them and their people.
Those gaps are quickly filled by fear, ego, jealousy, selfishness, and mistrust. Transformational leaders move toward their teams and intentionally build relationships before challenges arise.
Strong relationships make organizations resilient. When trust exists, people respond to difficulty by asking how they can help the team—not how they can protect themselves.
Closing the distance starts with understanding who you are and consistently living your core values. Words alone will never create lasting trust.
Deeds, not words.
When a leader’s actions align with their stated values, the organization can shift from an individual mindset to a team-of-teams mentality. People begin helping one another, sharing responsibility, and looking for opportunities to add value beyond their assigned duties.
Creating time for people becomes more difficult as a leader gains greater influence, responsibility, and authority. But transformational leaders deliberately make that time.
Distance weakens trust. Presence strengthens it.
Final Thoughts
Every leader must decide what kind of leadership path they will follow.
Will you prioritize your own needs, pursue short-term wins, and focus primarily on numbers? Or will you add value, place people before ego, and lead the whole person?
Becoming a transformational leader starts with quiet reflection. For Joshua, journaling has become one of the most powerful tools for understanding his thoughts, habits, values, and identity. Capturing your thoughts can unlock doors to parts of yourself you have never fully examined.
Transformation means going beyond your current self. It requires time, effort, accountability, and the courage to confront who you are today.
Purposeful, accountable leaders do not measure their lives only through success. They pursue significance.
Every person possesses the capacity for greatness, but those abilities must be forged through disciplined action. Use these ten principles to become the transformational leader your team, family, and community need.
Key Takeaways
Be a shepherd: Guide, guard, and grow the people entrusted to your leadership.
Operate in the gray: Create candid feedback loops and resilient problem-solving teams.
Maintain perspective: Accept responsibility and remember that people are your most important assets.
Lead with HUGS: Practice humility, understanding, gratitude, and servant leadership.
Practice mission command: Delegate authority while providing the tools, training, and support needed for success.
Become a sledgehammer: Remove obstacles and build systems that prevent them from returning.
Be decisive: Listen, gather sufficient information, make the decision, and move forward.
Discover who you are: Understand your strengths, weaknesses, values, and leadership foundation.
Think inside out: Build identity, culture, and systems before focusing on results.
Close the distance: Invest time in relationships and earn trust through actions, not words.
After Action Review
Reflect on these questions to apply the lessons from this episode:
Are you guiding your team toward long-term success, or are you primarily focused on short-term wins? Why?
What values define you as a leader, and are you living those values every day?
Where are you creating distance in your leadership, and what can you do to close that gap today?
Tales of Leadership Mission: To develop Purposeful Accountable Leaders (PAL)
by arming you with the tools required to lead with purpose, integrity, and accountability.
More Exclusive Content
What does it take to become a transformational leader?
In Episode #124 of Tales of Leadership, Joshua McMillion explores 10 practical traits that help Purposeful Accountable Leaders build trust, strengthen relationships, and develop future leaders. He explains how to operate in the gray, establish candid feedback loops, balance empathy with accountability, remove obstacles with a sledgehammer mindset, and close the distance with your people.
Transformational leadership is not about control, titles, or recognition. It is about leading with humility, serving without an agenda, holding people to a meaningful standard, and creating an environment where others can grow and succeed.