10 Leadership Principles from Green & Scarlet
- 37 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Written by Mark Proctor, Leadership and Success Advisor
Mark Proctor is a success advisor, leadership coach, and former elite military leader with over 30 years’ experience developing high-performing teams worldwide. He empowers leaders to build courage, clarity, and lasting impact through values-driven action.
Not long ago, I walked out of a meeting and felt that familiar frustration of not totally getting what I wanted from it. Everyone in the room (and in the team) was capable, they were intelligent and experienced in their domains. Slides had been shown, we’d discussed risks, and the actions had been captured neatly at the end. Despite it appearing to look like progress, nothing had really changed. No one had said anything outrageous. No one had behaved badly. There was no obvious failure to point at. Just a quiet sense that leadership hadn’t been properly exercised, or in some cases, shown up.
I’ve seen that same weariness in very different places over the years. In operations rooms, where the consequences were immediate and unforgiving. In boardrooms where the consequences took longer to surface but were just as real. At different seniority levels and in different countries.
The obsession with perfect leadership
We seem obsessed with perfect leadership. The next framework. The latest voice. The expert with the polished model. And the longer I’ve led, and carried responsibility when it genuinely mattered, the less interested I’ve become in the performance of leadership. In search of perfection, we overcomplicate things, get too scientific, and miss ‘the now’, what really matters. It’s not complicated. It’s habits.
Simple things, done consistently. Not all at once. Not perfectly. Just chosen and practised. That’s where most of us go wrong. We try to implement everything. We chase what others are saying. We compare ourselves to someone else’s version of leadership. Instead of picking two or three things and committing to them properly.
What you see below are the ten principles that sit at the centre of Green & Scarlet Leadership and Advisory. They’re deliberately simple. I pulled them together during the COVID period. If they don’t translate into action quickly, they’re useless.
You don’t need to master all ten. Pick a few. Work them for 90 days. Make them visible. Then add another. That’s how this becomes a habit instead of a theory. You will create positive outcomes and make a tangible, real difference by doing so.
1. Be just plain you
People follow who you are, not who you pretend to be.
I’ve watched leaders adjust themselves depending on who’s in the room. A different tone with seniors. A different energy with juniors. They never settle and are always on their guard. You don’t need a crafted persona. What you need is consistency. And more than that, we/you should celebrate your differences. Your background. Your accent. Your way of thinking. The slightly unusual angle you bring to problems. The world doesn’t need another imitation of someone else’s leadership style. It needs you.
If this feels uncomfortable, start small. Speak in your own words. Drop the borrowed phrases. Say what you actually think, respectfully, rather than what sounds impressive. The steadiness that comes from that is hard to overstate. Over time, people will feel your energy and even love you for it.
2. Build trust
Trust isn’t built in workshops. It’s built on Tuesday afternoons (or pick any afternoon of your choice).
You say you’ll call back, you call back. You say you’ll protect someone publicly, you do. You admit when you got it wrong. And this is where vulnerability matters. Not oversharing. Not theatre. Just the willingness to say, “I misjudged that,” or “I need your help here.” When leaders allow themselves to be human, trust deepens. When they pretend to know everything, the opposite is true.
We talk so much about trust, but when asked to identify what trust looks like, we struggle to put our fingers on it. Take some time to identify it as a team, and once you have done that, put it into practice. Don’t just talk about it, act upon it now, you all know what it means for you.
None of this is glamorous. It’s repetitive. Almost dull. But trust grows in repetition. When trust drops, you can feel the energy start to leak. Decisions take longer. We start to talk behind each other’s backs. You feel it before you can name it. You don’t rebuild trust with speeches or edicts on a wall. You rebuild it with behaviour.
3. Create a safe and exciting adventure
People perform best when they feel safe enough to speak and stretched enough to care. Safe doesn’t mean soft. It means someone can say, “I don’t think that will work,” without fear. But if it’s only safe and not stretching, people disengage. It becomes comfortable. Flat.
Variety matters. Doing things differently matters. When leaders introduce new approaches or fresh challenges, people become more creative. They wake up a bit. We grow when the stimulus changes.
So you must hold both. Psychological safety and energy. Stability and experimentation. You don’t redesign culture overnight. You start by asking one more question. Backing someone who tried something new. Letting a different voice lead the discussion. Create an agenda that is different from the last. Small signals. They compound.
4. Practise resilience
Sleep. Nutrition. Fitness. Basic well-being. Leaders love to talk about resilience as if it’s a heroic trait. In reality, most of it is mundane. When I’ve been exhausted, I’ve been sharper in tone than I intended. Less patient. More reactive. You don’t always see it in the moment.
If you want to lead well, look after yourself properly. And not just in theory, but in commitment. Put it in your diary. Guard the time. Go for a run. Switch off properly. Sleep properly. Don’t worry about what other people think. This isn’t indulgence. It’s maintenance, and it should never be voluntary. You’re trying to improve how you pitch up at work. That requires intention.
5. Empower others
Give people responsibility and back them when it matters. Not half-responsibility. Not “have a go, and I’ll step in if it goes wrong.” Real ownership. And then stay close enough to support, without hovering.
If you’re not yet in a position to empower others, ask to be empowered yourself. Step forward. Take something on. Believe you can do it. A bit of risk is healthy. Mistakes are how we learn, if the environment is safe enough to admit them.
To empower and or to be empowered is an amazing feeling. A win-win either way you look at it. It is a game-changer and will create a work atmosphere, for the best, difficult to replicate in any other way. Empowerment isn’t a speech. It’s a transfer of belief.
6. Make a personal commitment
Leadership cannot be delegated. You can assign tasks. You cannot assign responsibility for the culture. There’s a moment where you either step forward and say, “This is on me,” or you hide behind structure.
Often it means sacrificing time. Going in earlier to catch the person you need to speak to. Staying later to help someone who is struggling. Saying, “I’ll do something to get you started,” even if it isn’t technically yours to do. Listen actively by giving your full attention, to understand rather than to respond. It’s rarely convenient. But people can feel the difference between procedural leadership and personal commitment.
7. Know your people
Not just their outputs. The person. You don’t need deep biographies. Just enough understanding to know what motivates them. What pressures they’re under. Where they’re strong. Where they’re stretched thin. People’s challenges don’t start at 9 am and end at 5 pm.
When things get more difficult, and they will because they always do, this knowledge becomes critical. If you know how someone tends to react under pressure, you can approach a hard conversation more carefully. More intelligently.
If you only know someone through a spreadsheet, you’ll misread them when performance dips. Usually, we just haven’t made the time.
8. Handle change well
Change is constant. That isn’t new. What is new is the pace. And as humans, we struggle with change more than we admit. It unsettles competence. It exposes insecurity. This links directly to knowing your people. Some will lean in. Others will resist quietly. If you don’t understand them, you’ll misinterpret their response.
Change requires more effort than most leaders plan for. We focus on structure and underplay the human response. That’s where friction grows.
You don’t need perfect answers. You need clarity about what’s known and what isn’t. And visible calm. Calm spreads but unfortunately so does anxiety. You choose which one!
9. Show people they matter
Appreciation isn’t soft. It’s fuel. Think how you felt the last time someone appreciated you (if you can remember that far back!).
I’ve seen extraordinary effort go unnoticed because everyone was chasing the next target. That costs you. Make it a daily practice to watch for contributions. Put time in your diary if you must. Look for opportunities to say, “That made a difference.” Not robotic. Not performative. Just consistent.
Some recognition should be private. Some public. You have to know your people to get that right. Not everyone wants the spotlight. Often, the greatest impact has come from a quiet moment between two people, not everything needs a fanfare.
Small gestures count.
10. Understand your ecosystem
Your decisions ripple. Everything works as a system. People. Processes. Culture. Incentives. Pressure. None of it operates in isolation. If you only optimise your own area, you create friction somewhere else. I’ve seen it too often, well-intentioned efficiency causing downstream problems.
We need to lift our heads. Spot the interconnections. Work together instead of in parallel silos. Leadership isn’t just about managing your bit well. It’s about understanding how your bit fits into the whole. And acting accordingly. This builds a team ethos and allows greater human interconnection, where we can be at our best.
Why leaders still get it wrong
That’s the set. It isn’t revolutionary or complex, is it. But the tension? Most leaders I meet agree with every one of these principles. They’ll nod. They’ll say it’s obvious. So, if it’s obvious… why do we still get leadership wrong so often?
Why do capable people sit in meetings, or finish their working day and still feel that quiet sense that nothing really changed? I don’t think it’s ignorance but rather it’s a case of misunderstanding.
Your next steps
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TL;DR:
Leadership isn’t about perfect models. It’s about choosing a few simple habits and practising them consistently until they become who you are:
Stop chasing perfection, pick 2-3 principles and commit to them for 90 days.
Build trust and empowerment through small, visible behaviours, especially vulnerability, and follow-through.
Create environments that are both safe and stretching, variety and challenge spark growth.
Protect your resilience and time. How you show up physically and mentally shapes everything.
Lead beyond yourself: know your people, handle change calmly, show appreciation daily, and think system-wide.
Read more from Mark Proctor
Mark Proctor, Leadership and Success Advisor
Mark Proctor is an internationally recognised success advisor and leadership coach with more than three decades of elite military leadership experience. He specialises in helping leaders overcome self-doubt, elevate their confidence, and translate values into measurable action. After a distinguished global career, Mark founded Green and Scarlet Leadership to develop courageous, principled, and high-impact leaders. His work blends strategic insight with deep human understanding, empowering clients to think to the finish, act with purpose, and unlock their full potential. Mark’s mission is simple: build confident leaders who change their world for the better.
