Leadership Two Words at a Time

How can you lead complicated people in an increasingly chaotic world without losing your own sanity? In Leadership Two Words at a Time, Bill Treasurer argues that leadership doesn’t have to be overwhelming if you anchor yourself in small, memorable truths. Every lesson worth mastering about leadership, he suggests, can be boiled down to two words—simple, actionable phrases that capture the heart of what effective leaders actually do.

Treasurer’s premise grew out of decades of coaching executives, managers, and new leaders across industries. He found that when leaders distilled their insights from coaching sessions into short, memorable phrases, they were more likely to act on them. Keeping things “two words at a time,” he discovered, turned abstract advice into daily habits. These phrases became verbal compasses that helped leaders stay centered amid chaos. The book, then, is both a practical playbook for new leaders and a wake-up call for experienced ones who have drifted away from their foundational values.

Why Simplicity Matters in Complex Times

The world of leadership, Treasurer notes, has never been more complex. Leaders today must navigate hybrid workforces, heightened social tensions, and cross-generational expectations. Yet most leadership books target top executives instead of the first-time supervisor or project manager who’s just trying to get through a chaotic week. That gap inspired Treasurer to create something different—a field guide for “mere mortals” who need wisdom they can use right now. He distills leadership development into three human responsibilities: leading yourself, leading people, and leading work. Master those three, and you’ll master leadership itself.

He insists that the best leaders don’t start with grand visions—they start with self-awareness and discipline. You can’t lead others if you can’t first lead yourself. But self-management alone isn’t enough. Leadership is a relational art, requiring trust, humility, and inclusion. Finally, good leadership means getting work done ethically and effectively—translating values into results. These three arenas—self, people, and work—form the structural backbone of the book.

The Threefold Journey: Self, People, and Work

Part I, “Leading Yourself,” includes phrases such as Know Thyself, Model Principles, Gain Control, Practice Humility, and Cultivate Composure. Each chapter pushes you to strip away illusions about leadership as command-and-control. Instead, Treasurer teaches that self-awareness, integrity, and composure create a ripple effect: when you know yourself, you draw the best from others. His stories—ranging from a construction foreman to a corporate vice president—show how qualities like spiritual grounding and humility prevent the leadership disease of hubris.

Part II, “Leading People,” shifts outward to your relationships. You learn that trust must come first (“Trust First”), workplaces thrive on psychological safety (“Create Safety”), people grow through investment (“Nurture Talent”), and fairness depends on inclusion (“Promote Inclusion”). These chapters humanize management by turning empathy into a performance advantage. Through tales like the safety director who role-modeled vulnerability to ignite a cultural transformation, Treasurer reminds us that courageous openness—sharing pain, not just plans—is what unites teams.

Part III, “Leading Work,” takes the mission further. Here, Treasurer encourages leaders to fall in love with business itself (Love Business), master execution (Get Results), apply disciplined management (Master Management), and learn to build partnerships upward (Lead Up). Leadership, he insists, is not about rank—it’s about responsibility. And much of that responsibility involves “making others successful,” whether they’re your direct reports or your boss.

Leadership as a Courage Practice

Courage, a theme woven through Treasurer’s entire career, forms the moral engine of the book. Drawing on his earlier work Courage Goes to Work, he defines leadership as courage in motion: the willingness to face discomfort, raise standards, and serve others with humility even when it’s hard. Courage manifests differently at each stage—self-leadership requires self-honesty, people leadership demands vulnerability, and leading work takes accountability. Each chapter ends with “Think Now” and “Act Now” steps, anchoring reflection with tangible action—because you can’t think yourself into better leadership; you can only act yourself into it.

In crafting these two-word principles, Treasurer makes leadership both accessible and demanding. You can’t hide behind theory. “Practice Humility” is not an abstract ideal—it’s a behavioral challenge. His conversational tone, full of humor (“don’t brown-nose,” “tough noogies”), keeps lessons from feeling preachy, while stories of real leaders ground the wisdom in authentic experience.

Why This Book Matters Now

Modern workplaces face what Treasurer calls “the plight of new leaders”—people promoted for their technical skill but unprepared for the human complexity of leadership. When 83% of organizations say developing leaders is critical but only 5% actually do it, most first-time leaders are on their own. This book offers their missing playbook. It teaches that leadership is joyfully hard: difficult but deeply rewarding when you approach it as service, not status. In a world obsessed with hacks and quick wins, Treasurer’s “two words” method brings us back to the fundamentals of integrity, composure, discipline, and courageous service—simple, not easy, but profoundly transformative.

Core Message

Leadership isn’t about grand gestures—it’s about consistent choices grounded in character. Take it two words at a time, and leadership becomes a daily practice rather than an intimidating ideal.

Bill Treasurer begins where too many leadership books skip: with the inner life of the leader. “You leading you,” he writes, is the foundation of everything else. Without self-knowledge, humility, and composure, no skillset or strategy will save you. This isn’t motivational fluff—it’s practical. Teams mirror their leaders, and if your internal world is chaotic, that chaos will leak into your organization.

Knowing Thyself

In Know Thyself, Treasurer challenges you to conduct an internal audit: What makes you tick, and what ticks you off? He draws on the courage of self-discovery—a process that demands confronting your “sunshine and shadows.” Your strengths, he explains, can become weaknesses when overused. A persuasive communicator can morph into a spotlight hog; a harmonizer can smother productive conflict. By identifying the point where strengths become distortions, you gain mastery over your behavior.

He illustrates this using the concept of Five Flags. Every leader must define five core values and live by them. For one executive, “family” was a flag—but late nights at the office created a guilt-ridden gap between values and behavior. Alignment came only when he arranged to leave early twice a week to coach his son’s football team. Integrity, Treasurer writes, is “closing the gap between who you say you are and how you actually live.”

Modeling Principles

Once you know yourself, you must model your values. People copy their leaders, consciously or not. Treasurer’s story of the bank president and the “Casual Friday revolt” underscores this truth: as soon as the president voiced his conservative dress preference, everyone backtracked to agree. Teams naturally contort themselves to mirror the leader’s behavior. This means your actions set the tone—whether for trust or fear, integrity or hypocrisy. As he puts it, “People do as leaders do.”

Role modeling extends to vulnerability. In one powerful case, a safety director in a construction firm shared his alcoholism recovery story to rebuild trust across a company haunted by jobsite fatalities. His openness triggered a wave of honesty—workers began admitting safety lapses and confronting personal struggles. Vulnerability, Treasurer shows, isn’t weakness; it’s leadership courage.

Aspiring Higher and Gaining Control

To Aspire Higher means refusing complacency. Drawing from U.S. Navy SEAL ethos—“Earn your trident every day”—Treasurer insists that leaders must continually earn their right to lead through effort, discipline, and learning. Respect, in any culture, flows to those who work hard, deliver superior results, and display pride in craftsmanship.

Meanwhile, Gain Control dives into time management and self-care. Leaders burn out when they redline their engines without rest. Treasurer tells of “Kevin,” a good-hearted executive who died at 47 from overwork, serving as a tragic warning. The antidote is Personal Fidelity—faithfulness to yourself. Leaders who practice self-care through reflection, rest, and physical balance aren’t selfish; they’re sustaining their capacity to serve. Catching “eddies”—those pauses in the whitewater of work—is essential to long-term composure.

Humility and Composure

Treasurer calls humility “leadership’s underused superpower.” His examples—from arrogant executives sabotaged by hubris to grounded leaders admired for modesty—reveal that overconfidence kills trust. Modern modesty, he argues, is the antidote to an age of self-promotion. It’s possible to be bold and humble at once: to lead with conviction yet keep ego checked by gratitude. He complements this with Cultivate Composure, a practice of daily reflection rooted in spiritual fitness (a nod to thinkers like Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard). In silence, leaders cleanse their motives, making space for clarity and compassion.

The Self-Leadership Oath

“I promise to be faithful to myself… to honor my gifts and guard against ego inflation.” To lead others well, you must first make that vow to your own conscience and wellbeing.

After mastering self-leadership, Treasurer asks: Can people trust you? In Trust First and Create Safety, he argues that leaders either create courage or suffocate it. Fear-ridden workplaces, he explains, are toxic factories—costly in morale, innovation, and retention. Yet fear still masquerades as discipline in too many leadership cultures. True leaders have to unlearn that habit by building trustworthiness from the inside out.

Trust Starts with You

Trust isn’t a system; it’s personal. Treasurer recounts a business owner who faked being “on-site” during vacations because he didn’t trust employees to work unsupervised. His sneakiness bred the very distrust he feared. Contrast that with leaders who “trust first”—those who delegate meaningfully, keep promises, and admit mistakes. Vulnerability, or what Treasurer calls TRUST Courage, means having the guts to rely on people before they’ve fully earned it. This faith, paradoxically, inspires them to become trustworthy faster.

Treasurer recalls forgetting an employee’s children’s names—a small failure but a profound revelation. “What do my teammates want from me?” he realized. “Two words: just listen.” The story reminds you that presence—not performance reviews—builds relational capital.

Creating Psychological Safety

Psychological safety, popularized by Harvard’s Amy Edmondson (The Fearless Organization), is the permission to speak up without fear of embarrassment or punishment. Treasurer’s anecdotes bring that concept alive: two bosses giving the same assignment, one infusing it with fear (“Don’t screw up!”), the other with confidence (“Here’s a great opportunity…”). The second boss got better results—and more loyalty—because safety encourages risk-taking and innovation.

He introduces TELL Courage—the bravery to speak hard truths—and TRY Courage—the bravery to attempt new things. Both depend on safety. Teams need to know they can dissent respectfully and fail without being shamed. Treasurer points to McKinsey & Company’s doctrine of “obligation to dissent” as proof that challenge and respect can coexist.

Managing Fear and Conflict

Too many leaders confuse anxiety with accountability. “They think if I can make them worry more, I’ll worry less,” Treasurer jokes. But adults don’t need fear to perform. Fear corrodes trust; courage compounds it. Using practical language tools, he shows how simple phrasing shifts (“Help me understand” instead of “Why did you do that?”) can transform defensive conversations into collaborative ones. His communication chart—contrasting defensive versus receptive language—is a standout takeaway for real workplaces.

Of course, safety doesn’t mean softness. Treasurer reminds you to confront breaches—ethical lapses, bullying, and racism—with both honesty and dignity. Respectful confrontation is part of creating safety. It tells your team that standards and compassion coexist.

Leadership Takeaway

The safest workplaces are also the most courageous. When fear diminishes, initiative rises. When leaders model calm confidence and tell the truth with respect, teams find courage to innovate.

For Treasurer, developing people is leadership in its purest form. Nurture Talent challenges the modern leader’s favorite excuse—“I don’t have time.” Busyness, he argues, is the enemy of mentoring. Leaders exist to multiply human capability, and the act of developing others benefits everyone: the individual grows, the team strengthens, and the leader legacy endures.

Creating Opportunity

Great leaders “create opportunity,” not just tasks. Treasurer recalls times when a boss gave him an assignment that scared him into growth—a “Gulp Goal.” These goals are designed to stretch, not crush. They require you to match each task to a person’s emerging strengths so that challenge feels like belief, not punishment. He asks: when your career began, who gave you that one opportunity that changed everything? Your task now is to pay it forward.

Beyond formal promotions, he lists “organic opportunities”: letting a junior team member lead a meeting, liaising with clients, or representing you while you’re on vacation. Each moment of visibility teaches autonomy. “Readiness,” Treasurer writes, “means your readiness to let go and their readiness to grab hold.”

Delegating for Growth

Delegation is the courage to trust. Leaders often cling to work because they fear irrelevance or imperfection, but delegation is developmental oxygen. Treasurer’s framework turns delegation into an intentional skill: clarify the task’s purpose, set expectations, communicate support, and check in regularly—without micromanaging. When done right, delegation scales capacity and confidence on both sides.

He emphasizes that growth happens outside comfort zones. “People don’t grow in a zone of comfort—they grow in a zone of discomfort.” Good leaders, then, create deliberate unease. But they also recognize progress, praising not only achievement but effort: “Thank you for stretching yourself—that took courage.”

Feedback as Development

Development requires feedback, and Treasurer loathes once-a-year reviews. He compares annual appraisals to “a septic tank ready to explode.” Instead, leaders should normalize continuous feedback—brief, candid, humane. He borrows consultant Dan McCarthy’s “BEER” model for corrective talks: Behavior, Effect, Expectation, Result. It’s structured, fast, and fair. Feedback, he shows, is an act of service, not judgment.

His stories—from construction foremen to executives—prove that leadership development works. As one mentor told him, “Leaders create leaders.” Every one-on-one, every assignment, every recognition conversation becomes part of that sacred baton pass between generations of leadership courage.

Key Lesson

Leadership isn’t about holding power—it’s about passing it on. When you nurture others, you multiply courage and capability across your organization.

Few leadership books tackle inclusion with such direct moral clarity. In Promote Inclusion, Treasurer argues that leadership divorced from justice isn’t leadership—it’s tyranny lite. Every person deserves to feel they belong and can contribute freely. He examines bias not as accusation but as awareness: you can’t fix what you refuse to see.

Facing Bias with Honesty

Treasurer disarms defensiveness through confession. As a fast-talking New Yorker, he once assumed Southerners were slower thinkers because they spoke slowly—until his Mississippi-born boss shattered that bias with brilliance and grace. The point: we’re all conditioned by invisible preferences. The danger isn’t bias itself but blindness to it. He recounts how a manager’s shared alma mater tilted hiring decisions—proof that even “harmless” favoritism shapes careers.

The most moving story involves his daughter Bina, who has cerebral palsy and wears a cochlear implant. Through her, Treasurer learned that exclusion often hides behind assumptions of normality. “Would you hire my daughter?” he asks readers, forcing reflection on our silent calculus of comfort and capability.

From Awareness to Action

Enter diversity expert Gloria Cotton, who reframes inclusion as action: “It’s not a spectator sport.” Intentions don’t equal impact; saying “I treat everyone the same” isn’t equity. Cotton’s parable of the left-handed scissors makes the abstract tangible: what’s normal for you may be impossible for someone else. Inclusion means redesigning systems—work processes, policies, and communication norms—so everyone can participate fully.

Treasurer also cites research from Administrative Science Quarterly (Sonia Kang, 2016) revealing how candidates who “whiten” résumés double their callbacks even in diversity-friendly firms. Bias costs talent and trust alike. He notes that inclusive companies don’t just do right—they perform better, with higher innovation, reputation, and retention.

Be Pro-Inclusion

Being anti-discrimination isn’t enough; leaders must be pro-inclusion: recruiting broadly, mentoring equitably, and amplifying silenced voices. Pro-inclusion means using privilege to create access, not deny it. Treasurer insists, “Racism is anti-leadership.” Fairness and justice aren’t add-ons to performance; they are the essence of worthy leadership.

Inclusion Mantra

Every leader carries the power to expand belonging. Intentional inclusion transforms teams from compliant to committed, unlocking voices that make organizations human—and better.

In Part III, Treasurer reminds us that leadership isn’t spiritual meditation alone—it’s rolling up your sleeves and producing tangible results. Love Business reframes ‘business’ as a creative adventure, not a capitalist grind. Whether you lead a nonprofit or a for-profit, you’re still managing systems of value exchange—resources, relationships, and results. Learning to love that complexity is part of developing business confidence.

From Intimidation to Infatuation

New leaders often feel overwhelmed by jargon—EBITDA, ROI, or “strategic synergies.” Treasurer urges you to view business as a language you can learn. Mastery doesn’t come overnight; it comes through curiosity and humility. He compares loving business to attending a lifelong university—it constantly teaches forecasting, negotiation, customer insight, and risk management. Once you stop fearing the course load, you start enjoying the learning.

He also warns against “business infatuation”—the shiny seduction of startups that value hype over foundation. Before chasing new ventures, he advises asking practical questions: What’s the revenue model? Who benefits? Is there substance beneath style? Critical thinking, not blind enthusiasm, distinguishes a passionate professional from a naive cheerleader.

Passion and Pace

Passion, from the Latin passio (to suffer), means willing endurance for what matters. Treasurer illustrates this with a VP navigating the COVID-19 crisis who rediscovered heart-led leadership: caring for people first, profits second, and finding joy in shared purpose. Passion fuels perseverance when work turns stormy—but it must be paced. His mantra: strong foundations, slow burn. Sprinting leads to burnout; sustained curiosity leads to mastery.

Essential Shift

Stop fearing business as bureaucracy and start seeing it as humanity in motion. Loving business means loving people’s ingenuity, interdependence, and potential for impact.

Treasure’s “Master Management” chapter demystifies the mechanics of execution. If leadership is inspiration, management is translation—turning vision into measurable performance. He redefines management fundamentals as both art and discipline.

Setting Real Goals

He skewers vague corporate goals—“Do better,” “Be more competitive”—calling them “bullshit goals.” Real goals are specific, measurable, and time-bound: “Reduce turnover by 10% by December.” He recommends a questioning framework: Why does this goal matter? How will we measure progress? What risks and resources are involved? Goals unlinked from strategic purpose are empty calories—they fill slides but starve results.

Treasurer also introduces “Gulp Goals”—targets that are scary but achievable, inspiring both adrenaline and growth. When employees set their own challenging goals, they’re far more committed to achieving them.

Priorities and Accountability

All tasks aren’t equal. Drawing from Stephen Covey’s wisdom (“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”), Treasurer shows how to rank competing demands. He advises focusing first on what’s STCKY—“Stuff That Can Kill You”—the high-impact goals that, if neglected, sink everything else. Leaders who constantly “expect and inspect” progress—through supportive check-ins, not micromanagement—build accountability cultures without fear.

Financial literacy is another cornerstone. Leaders must “act like an owner”—understand costs, contracts, and the profit logic of their organizations. His story about a lawyer’s mantra, “RTFCA” (Read The Contract… Again), humorously underscores how many disasters come from leaders signing what they don’t understand.

The Manager’s Toolbox

Treasurer revisits the timeless core of management theory—planning, organizing, staffing, and controlling—and refreshes these functions with modern leadership flavor. Planning means shaping a bold but realistic future; staffing means recruiting and growing talent with fairness; controlling means monitoring without smothering. He ends with a practical classic: the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to keep teams aligned, aware, and agile.

Manager’s Creed

Management isn’t bureaucracy—it’s stewardship. Setting clear goals, aligning effort, and tracking truthfully turn leadership ideals into measurable impact.

Lead Up flips traditional hierarchy on its head. Treasurer argues that leadership isn’t just downward influence; it’s managing relationships in all directions, especially upward. Helping your boss succeed multiplies your own impact—and proves you’re ready for greater responsibility.

Influencing Without Authority

“Leading up” means shaping decisions, not sucking up. Treasurer distinguishes this from flattery. Real influence comes through credibility, insight, and courage. He tells stories of young leaders who challenged senior executives respectfully, catalyzing company-wide DEI initiatives. Their courage to “think beyond their boss’s thinking” expanded organizational awareness and their own careers.

Visibility matters too. Engaging in “extracurricular” leadership—volunteering for committees, mentoring peers, or joining charity projects—builds relationships beyond your lane. He recounts Aldridge Electric’s partnership with Bridges to Prosperity, where executives and hourly workers labored side by side in the Nicaraguan heat, hierarchy dissolved under shared purpose. Exposure like that builds empathy—and reputational capital.

Close the Experience Gap

New leaders often freeze under senior scrutiny. Treasurer’s “Experience Gap table” contrasts what bosses need (truth, early warnings, alternatives) with what juniors offer (polish, fear, oversharing). Bridging that gap means honesty: tell the real story, bring options, manage details efficiently, and project calm confidence. “You’re paid to think,” he reminds. “So think forward.”

He introduces the concept of a “question roundup”—surveying stakeholders before pitching big ideas to uncover hidden concerns. It’s preemptive diplomacy that turns resistance into partnership. For inevitable rejections, he advises: ask twice. Many “no’s” mean “not yet.” Leaders who politely persist earn credibility as serious thinkers, not sycophants.

Leading Up in Practice

Support your boss sincerely, challenge with respect, and speak truthfully. Leadership travels upward as well as down—and courageous candor is the currency that makes it possible.

Treasurer closes his book with a simple charge: Be Courageous. Leadership, he insists, is “joyfully hard.” It demands humility, nerve, and moral steadiness. Every challenge—from establishing trust to confronting bias—boils down to courage: the decision to act rightly despite risk.

Courage as Daily Practice

Unlike heroics, courage in leadership is steady endurance. It’s the choice to do what’s right even when doing nothing would be easier. Whether confronting underperformance or admitting a personal mistake, courageous acts set cultural tone. As Treasurer writes, “Keep doing the next right thing, especially when doing the wrong thing is easier.”

He closes with gratitude—for leaders willing to grow, for readers willing to self-reflect. Courage isn’t about bluster; it’s about faith in your values and belief in people’s potential. The leader’s work never ends, but neither does its joy.

Final Benediction

“You matter, and so do the people you lead. Leadership can be hard—but it can also be holy work.” Take it two words at a time and you’ll find your courage on the way.