Why I Take a ‘Roll up Your Sleeves’ Approach to Leadership – And How it’s Paying Off

A few weeks ago, I headed on the road to work closely with a few of my teammates in streamlining a mounting list of priorities and projects.

In many organizations, the CEO who travels to ‘help’ a direct report with their workload could be seen as a vote of no confidence. But my team knows that close collaboration is central to my leadership approach — not to control the process or the outcome, but to provide them with coaching and guidance that ultimately empowers them in their role.

When my teammates needed support, I knew that giving them home court advantage would make the situation feel more manageable and reinforce that we were in it together. I was there to help, not take over.

Rolling up sleeves without stepping on toes

There’s a fine line between being helpful and disruptive. When a CEO swoops in, the results can be counterproductive. Research shows that companies perform better when leaders empower their teams.

But enabling people doesn’t mean a leader is confined to the strategy lane. Some of the most successful companies are led by those who aren’t afraid to dive into the details. The real challenge is finding the balance between knowing when to roll up your sleeves and when to step back.

For me, true hands-on leadership isn’t about doing people’s jobs or making decisions for them. I know I lack the context and detailed knowledge of the situation needed to manage it alone — and that’s not my goal anyway. I want to show up in a way that enables progress, builds capability and still leaves ownership squarely where it belongs.

That balance comes down to three pillars of hands-on leadership: root cause curiosity, problem-solving collaboration and delicately balancing patient coaching and results.

When applied together, they create a leadership approach that supports people, strengthens performance and ultimately delivers better outcomes. Here’s how I put those principles into practice as the CEO of a community of veterinary hospitals.

Get curious about the best way to help

When someone on your team needs help, the most valuable thing you can do isn’t jumping in with solutions — it’s asking better questions about where the real challenge lies.

Your greatest asset is your distance from the day-to-day friction. While a team member might be focused on a specific issue, your high-level perspective allows you to see the entire landscape. By asking probing questions rather than barking orders, you help them look up from the ‘weeds’ to see the true source of the problem.

The key is to hire people who know their roles better than you do, and then support them when they hit roadblocks. But spotting the signs of overwhelm requires knowing people’s subtle signals. When you’ve built real relationships, you notice when someone goes quiet, loses focus or starts missing timelines they’d normally hit. Those signs are invitations to dig into what’s really going on, so you can help in a way that moves the work forward without undermining trust or ownership.

Collaborate for collective success

As a leader, you always have the option to make a call or take something off someone’s plate and do it yourself. You might even get faster results. But I’ve learned this approach rarely creates the conditions for long-term performance or true growth. In fact, micromanagement has been shown to erode morale, hinder productivity and damage creativity.

That’s why I spend so much energy thinking about how I show up for my people. Instead of defaulting to providing answers, I focus on the ‘how’ of our work. How are we communicating? How are we collaborating together? Is my feedback actually landing — or am I overwhelming someone with content when what they really need is context?

You must meet people where they are, working shoulder-to-shoulder to ensure they have the room to internalize the process. It’s about saying: “You’ve got your piece, I’ve got mine and we’re both working toward the same end. How do we get there?”

When you get the ‘how’ right, you stop pushing for high performance and start cultivating it. By collaborating and leading through influence rather than authority, you build a team that upholds a shared standard of excellence, instead of merely following instructions to get to an outcome they think you want.

Balance the patience to coach with the urgency to deliver

A collective focus on excellence is important because collaboration and development can’t always be prioritized above everything else. The art of high-performance coaching lies in finding that sweet spot: having enough patience to let your team internalize the work, while maintaining enough urgency to meet the business’s needs.

Early in my career as a new people leader, I leaned harder into the people side of leadership. But it’s easy to get caught up in the desire to develop someone and allow the timeline for that growth to stretch too long. While it helped refine my coaching then, as a seasoned CEO now, I know that boards and shareholders won’t wait. As a leader, you have to be disciplined enough to deliver timely results.

The good news is: a hands-on, collaborative leadership style isn’t at odds with high performance. Quite the opposite. When done thoughtfully, working closely with your team creates the space for honest, real-time conversations about outcomes – conversations that deepen loyalty and investment into shared goals. This allows you to identify where you’re excelling and course-correct where you’ve slipped into cruise control. Instead of waiting for a quarterly review, you can take action in the moment, ensuring that small adjustments prevent significant issues.

Once the people side of the business becomes part of your operating DNA, and you’ve created a higher level of accountability, you can also start to move faster and push new systems and processes more aggressively, because the trust and alignment required to sustain that pace are already in place.

But there is one caveat: leading this way demands time, emotional energy and a clear sense of self-awareness. Not every conversation will land perfectly. But when you understand the impact you have on others, you can intentionally create an environment where helping one another is safe, expected and highly valued. And that becomes the foundation that allows both people and performance to thrive.