You Lead

What if the secret to great leadership wasn’t about striving to be perfect—but about having the courage to be yourself? In You Lead: How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader, Minter Dial explores this question in depth, arguing that authenticity isn’t just a feel-good buzzword; it’s the foundation of effective, sustainable leadership in a world defined by disruption and transparency. Dial contends that leadership today isn’t about charisma, control, or clever strategy. It’s about merging your personal and professional selves to lead from the inside out.

The book begins with a wake-up call: the author’s experience on September 11, 2001, as he watched the planes hit the World Trade Center from his office window. That moment of crisis forced him to ask, “What am I doing that really matters?” It’s the same question he challenges every reader to answer. Dial believes you shouldn’t have to wait for an external shock to discover what truly drives you. Instead, you can consciously chart your own North Star—the personal compass that aligns who you are with what you do. This realization sits at the heart of You Lead: a powerful invitation to lead with purpose, vulnerability, and humanity.

The Wake-Up Call for a New Type of Leader

Dial argues that the 21st-century leader must operate in a world plagued by rapid technological change, social upheaval, and a crisis of trust. Gone are the days when smooth corporate messaging and rigid hierarchies could mask dysfunction. Today, authenticity has become a strategic necessity. The personal and professional worlds have merged—especially after the global pandemic forced millions to confront their home lives on video calls. Leaders can no longer hide behind a corporate persona. The best path forward is to lead as your full self, with integrity, vulnerability, and courage.

Throughout the book, Dial emphasizes that leadership transformation requires a personal transformation. Business can—and should—be a force for good, but that only happens when leaders’ personal values align with their organizational mission. It’s not just about profit; it’s about meaning, engagement, and mental well-being. (In this respect, Dial echoes thinkers like Simon Sinek in Start With Why and Brené Brown in Dare to Lead.)

From “Doing” to “Being”

Dial distinguishes between doing leadership—checking boxes, enforcing rules, chasing metrics—and being a leader: someone who acts with awareness, empathy, and conviction. He suggests that you can’t truly inspire others unless you know who you are and what you stand for. Modern leadership demands self-awareness and an understanding that life and work aren’t two separate domains but intertwined expressions of the same self. This themes carries through his “AND mindset,” a mental model that embraces paradox: you can be professional and personal, disciplined and vulnerable, strategic and human. The best leaders know how to hold opposing forces in tension without breaking.

The Structure of the You Lead Journey

Dial organizes the book into three parts. In Part One, he sets the stage with a call for integrated leadership—one that aligns personal values with organizational purpose. He lays out the paradoxes leaders must manage: belonging versus individuality, certainty versus change, truth versus storytelling, and order versus chaos. Part Two dives into the toolkit of the “You Lead” approach, notably his five-part CHECK model: Curiosity, Humility, Empathy, Courage, and Karmic balance. These aren’t soft traits—they’re competitive advantages for cultivating trust and engagement. Part Three then brings his philosophy down to earth, showing how to put these lessons into practice through better communication, mindful time management, and authentic networking.

But what makes You Lead distinctive isn’t its frameworks; it’s the way Dial brings them to life with candid personal stories. He tells of leading L’Oréal’s Redken brand and creating a workplace where authenticity, community, and even hugs were part of the culture. He discusses failures, like freezing mid-presentation at L’Oréal’s headquarters, and learnings from competitors, mentors, and music—from Steve Jobs to the Grateful Dead. These stories remind you that leadership isn’t a title; it’s a practice of intentional humanity.

Why This Matters Now

Dial’s thesis is both radical and deeply pragmatic: if you want to lead in a way that drives performance, engagement, and well-being, start with yourself. The new leadership paradigm is rooted in transparency, empathy, and personal responsibility. Instead of hiding imperfections, you bring them into the light as opportunities for connection. Instead of enforcing a false separation between your “work self” and “real self,” you integrate them around shared purpose.

By the end of this journey, you’ll see that leading isn’t about crafting a persona—it’s about becoming a whole person who leads with integrity. You’ll learn how to align your personal values with your company’s mission, cultivate empathy across teams, build trust in turbulent times, and make business a genuine force for good. As Dial writes, you can’t lead others until you’ve learned to lead yourself. In a noisy world hungry for truth, You Lead offers a human blueprint for leadership that works.

In a world of constant change and contradiction, Minter Dial urges you to embrace what he calls the AND mindset. Rather than choosing between opposites—profit or purpose, discipline or creativity, logic or empathy—great leaders must learn to integrate them. The “AND mindset” is about reconciling seemingly conflicting forces to unlock creativity, stability, and growth.

Rethinking Contradiction as Strength

Many leaders get trapped in either/or thinking. You might tell yourself you’re either a visionary or an executor, empathetic or decisive. Dial shows this binary mindset limits innovation and authenticity. He draws on psychologist Carl Jung’s concept of the Transcendent Function—the idea that by accepting our inner contradictions, we evolve into wiser, more adaptable beings. In business, this means resisting oversimplification. Instead of crushing paradoxes, you manage them creatively.

He illustrates this through practical paradoxes every leader faces: the need to belong yet be different, to learn from the past yet build for the future, to find order while navigating chaos, and to speak truth yet inspire through story. These tensions, Dial insists, aren’t problems to solve—they’re energy sources for leadership growth.

The Power of Language: From BUT to AND

One deceptively simple practice Dial recommends is replacing “but” with “and.” For example, say, “I value your idea, and we can build on it,” instead of “I value your idea, but…” That one word shift transforms dialogue from adversarial to collaborative. This linguistic reframe trains your brain to hold complexity instead of negating it. Over time, adopting “and” thinking makes your organization more resilient because it reframes disagreement as synergy, not subtraction.

Paradoxes of Leadership

Dial’s four central paradoxes go to the heart of human and organizational behavior:

• Belong yet be different: Building unity doesn’t mean cloning thought. Teams thrive when people feel seen as individuals within a shared tribe—like the Redken “Tribe” culture Dial helped cultivate, where hairdressers felt both part of a movement and recognized for their uniqueness.
• Honor the past, design the future: Understanding heritage (like Redken’s founder Paula Kent Meehan) provides context for innovation. Knowing where you come from enables you to adapt meaningfully to what’s next.
• Seek order amid chaos: Accept that disruption and unpredictability are permanent business conditions. Like a jazz band improvising within structure, you create rhythm in fluidity.
• Search for truth through story: Facts inform, but stories move hearts. Dial quotes Nancy Duarte and Andrew Stanton (of Pixar) to show that storytelling builds emotional resonance and lasting trust.

These paradoxes mirror the human condition. You can’t remove tension, but you can harness it. Dial’s point: your strength as a leader depends on your tolerance for ambiguity.

Embracing the Messiness

Ultimately, the AND mindset is about embracing life’s messiness—its blend of contradictions, emotions, and imperfection. Leaders who integrate opposites cultivate flexibility, curiosity, and compassion. When YOU LEAD, Dial says, “life is work, too.” That means showing up as a whole person who navigates uncertainty not by choosing sides but by uniting them. The more tension you can hold without cracking, the greater your creative and ethical capacity to lead.

If leadership starts from within, how do you actually cultivate the mindset to lead authentically? Dial’s answer lies in his CHECK model, a framework that distills five interconnected qualities—Curiosity, Humility, Empathy, Courage, and Karmic intentionality—that guide how you think, act, and connect as a leader.

Curiosity: Stay Hungry and Childlike

In a world awash with change, curiosity isn’t optional—it’s survival. Dial describes curiosity as the leader’s compass for continual learning and adaptability. Taking inspiration from the Grateful Dead’s improvisational spirit, he argues that true creativity comes from asking questions, experimenting, and staying open to serendipity. His daily practice of “green meetings”—conversations with people he doesn’t know—is a practical tool for feeding intellectual and emotional growth.

Humility: Confidence Without Ego

Humility, Dial insists, is not weakness—it’s strength under control. Great leaders listen before they speak, credit the team before themselves, and recognize how much they don’t know. Drawing from his experiences at L’Oréal, he recalls trying to collaborate with rival companies only to learn that brand reputation often blocks trust. His takeaway: humility builds bridges where arrogance builds walls. (Martin Seligman, in positive psychology, reaches similar conclusions—humility fosters higher performance and well-being.)

Empathy: The New Superpower

If curiosity helps you learn and humility helps you listen, empathy helps you connect. Dial distinguishes between affective empathy—feeling someone’s emotions—and cognitive empathy—understanding them. He calls empathy a superpower for customer-centric and people-first organizations. Businesses that lead with empathy, he notes, outperform their competitors in growth and engagement. Empathy, though, isn’t about being nice. It’s about understanding context and perspective so precisely that your decisions respect both logic and humanity.

Courage: Acting Despite Fear

Courage, Dial says, is rarer than intelligence. He links it to self-awareness: knowing your fears but moving forward anyway. His family stories illustrate this vividly—his great-grandfather, Senator Nathaniel Dial, publicly challenged his political party out of principle, and Henry Ford II’s refusal to bow to economic pressure in defense of fairness. Courage means owning your colors, speaking your truth, and accepting imperfection without flinching.

Karmic Mindset: Give Without Expectation

Finally, the CHECK model culminates in what Dial calls the karmic attitude—the idea that good leadership is about giving value freely. Whether it’s sharing knowledge, time, or recognition, you do it because it’s right, not because it guarantees return. His favorite example: WestJet’s “Christmas Miracle,” where employees surprised passengers with their dream gifts. It wasn’t designed for profit, yet it yielded massive goodwill and engagement. The karmic approach reframes leadership around intention—it’s about doing good work for its own sake.

Together, these five traits form the inner scaffolding of authentic leadership. They aren’t skills to perform—they’re mindsets to embody. Dial’s CHECK model reminds you that when you’re curious, humble, empathic, courageous, and karmic, you don’t just manage others—you inspire them to lead themselves.

One of Dial’s most revolutionary claims is that to serve customers best, you must start by serving employees first. Traditional thinking says, “The customer comes first.” Dial flips that notion on its head, showing that unless your employees are inspired, empowered, and trusted, customer delight is impossible. He calls this the Inside-Out model—a framework that begins with people at the heart.

The Inside-Out Model

Using his experience leading Redken, Dial maps out concentric circles of influence: employees at the center, then partners, distributors, customers, and finally the wider community. Each circle amplifies the company’s culture outward. When the innermost circle thrives, the ripple effect strengthens the brand’s reputation. Simply put, what you promise to your customers should also hold true for your employees. If you preach innovation or care externally but ignore it internally, your authenticity evaporates.

Creating a Tribe

At Redken, Dial helped cultivate what he called the “Redken Tribe.” Employees and contractors—known as Redkenites—shared values, rituals, and even “Redken Hugs.” This wasn’t fluffy culture; it was intentional community-building that fueled loyalty and creativity. People felt safe to bring their whole selves to work. Such belonging turns staff into brand ambassadors, or, as Dial puts it, “social employees” whose passion naturally radiates to customers. (Chip Conley’s Peak makes a similar case for organizations meeting employees’ aspirational needs.)

The Partner Mindset

Dial extends employee-first thinking to partners and suppliers. Borrowing from businesses like Petco and Virgin, he shows that treating collaborators as equals, not subordinates, builds stronger ecosystems of trust. The “partner mindset” reframes success from competition to co-elevation: when your partners thrive, you thrive. This attitude contrasts deeply with zero-sum corporate habits of squeezing margins at others’ expense.

Loyalty, Purpose, and the Brand Tattoo Test

Dial believes loyalty runs deepest when people personally identify with their company’s mission. He even poses a provocative question—the “Brand Tattoo Test”: Would you tattoo your company’s logo on your body? It’s metaphorical, of course, but revealing. If employees wouldn’t proudly “wear the brand,” something is missing in the culture. Brands like Harley-Davidson and Ben & Jerry’s pass this test because their missions—freedom and social justice—resonate beyond profit. The goal isn’t perfection but congruence between words and deeds.

By embedding purpose internally before projecting it outward, Dial shows how leaders can make “employee-first customer-centricity” a virtuous cycle. The happier and more connected your team, the more authentic and sustainable your customer relationships become. The employee’s energy, not the marketing budget, is what ultimately drives transformation.

Having anchored leadership culture around employees, Dial explores the outward journey: turning customer-centricity from a slogan into reality. For him, customer-centricity isn’t a marketing function—it’s a mindset woven through every department, policy, and process. The goal is simple yet radical: to earn trust by aligning your company’s actions with the customer’s experience.

Center the Company Around the Customer Journey

Dial encourages leaders to reimagine their organizations from the customer’s vantage point. He highlights Amazon’s “empty chair” at meetings—representing the customer’s voice—as a symbol of accountability. Yet he also warns that rituals mean little if divorced from empathy. To be genuinely customer-centric, you must walk in your customers’ shoes, feeling their frustrations and expectations at every touchpoint—from the chatbot to the delivery driver.

The Role of Data and Trust

In the digital age, data fuels customer insight—but also ethical risk. Dial stresses data fluency: leaders should know what data they hold, how it’s used, and whether customers trust their stewardship. Citing examples like Eurostar’s failed train redesign, he shows how ignoring real user feedback leads to “customer forgetfulness.” He also envisions a new role—chief ontologist—to interpret data through human meaning, bridging analytics and empathy.

Measuring What Matters

Most companies track KPIs that serve shareholders, not customers. Dial argues your dashboard should reveal who you really are: if the customer isn’t at the top, your priorities are misaligned. He critiques overreliance on Net Promoter Scores, urging richer qualitative feedback and story-based metrics. Success, he says, is when employees—and even algorithms—make decisions guided by integrity and customer value rather than short-term gain.

Customer Service Is the New Marketing

Perhaps Dial’s most practical insight is that service isn’t a department; it’s everyone’s job. He cites cases like Zappos and Glossier, where the CEO and developers answer phones to stay connected to real customers. Customer-centricity thrives when empathy permeates the culture—not when it’s offloaded to scripts or bots. The best measure? When your customers feel you have their back even before they complain. “Great service,” writes Dial, “is marketing that money can’t buy but loyalty will earn.”

In Part Three, Dial brings leadership theory into everyday practice. The art of leading, he argues, begins with mastering three finite resources: your presence, your time, and your people. These aren’t abstract management tools—they’re mirrors reflecting your self-awareness. How you manage attention, balance priorities, and treat others reveals who you truly are as a leader.

Being Before Doing

Most leaders obsess over productivity checklists but ignore “being.” Dial flips the script: before managing tasks, manage your state of mind. He practices daily meditation and mindful rituals like making his bed, asserting that grounded leaders make better decisions under pressure. His concept of aligning each day with your North Star keeps you intentional rather than reactive. “Being” sets the tone for everything that follows.

Time as the Rarest Resource

Dial stresses that time is the leader’s truest currency. By habitually overscheduling and apologizing for lateness, you’re signaling disorganization and disrespect. His principle of keeping 50% of your day unscheduled allows space for reflection, creativity, and mentoring—what he calls “green meetings” with new contacts. Being early, not rushed, sends a cultural signal: time is sacred, and so are people. (This echoes Stephen Covey’s prioritization principle from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)

Leading from Within

To lead others, you must first understand what drives them—and yourself. Dial insists on transparent feedback loops, empathy in performance reviews, and genuine appreciation. A simple thank-you, handwritten note, or acknowledgment from a CEO, he suggests, motivates more deeply than monetary rewards. “You must be a steward of your employees’ time,” he says—a phrase that encapsulates servant leadership at its purest.

By weaving mindfulness, empathy, and open communication into your daily rhythms, you become more than a manager—you become a model. The art of leading through being is the quiet revolution that turns organizations into communities of meaning.

If communication is the lifeblood of leadership, learning is its heartbeat. In the penultimate chapter, Dial explores how to communicate authentically in a hyperconnected world and cultivate learning cultures that thrive on imperfection and connection.

Communications as Connection

Dial begins by rethinking communication as an act of empathy, not efficiency. Email, Slack messages, and social media posts are extensions of your character. If your inbox shows hundreds of unread messages, you’re signaling disengagement. He shares personal lessons from overusing email at L’Oréal, learning that clarity and tone matter as much as speed. Communication that honors presence—listening actively, responding thoughtfully—builds trust instead of transactions.

Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Dial argues it’s a professional failure today to hide your authentic self online. Whether through LinkedIn, articles, or videos, leaders must express their personality and values publicly. The goal isn’t self-promotion; it’s transparency. By using your real voice and sharing personal passions—from rugby fandom, like Verizon’s Ronan Dunne, to creative photography—leaders humanize corporations. “If you don’t write your story,” Dial warns, “others will write it for you.”

Learning That Never Stops

Continuous learning keeps leaders alive and adaptable. Dial practices daily intellectual curiosity using curated feeds like Feedly and Flipboard, listens to podcasts, and schedules five “green meetings” a week with new people. He encourages sharing discoveries openly within teams to replace the old notion that knowledge equals power. True power, he says, is sharing knowledge to strengthen others—a karmic loop that energizes both giver and receiver.

The Power of Imperfection

Dial closes with a liberating message: leaders don’t need to be flawless; they need to be sincere. Vulnerability, he argues, creates trust faster than perfection. Mistakes become data points for growth. Admitting errors, sharing lessons, and staying curious signal a learning mindset. Leadership, then, is less a performance than a progressive act of becoming. In Dial’s words, “Your desire to try things, make mistakes, and at times make a fool of yourself is a big part of why being imperfect will be core to your long-term success.”

Dial ends You Lead with a call to action: connect the dots between your inner purpose and outer impact. Once you align your North Star, CHECK mindset, and employee-first culture, you’re ready to use business as a vehicle for positive change. This final stage is about leadership maturity—knowing that authenticity extends beyond self; it must ripple into systems, communities, and the world.

Believe in the Process

Dial challenges the old Machiavellian mantra that “the ends justify the means.” In people-centered organizations, the process is the product. Culture isn’t built by edicts but by repeated behaviors of fairness, empathy, and curiosity. If you focus only on short-term profits, you lose the discretionary energy—the voluntary passion—that distinguishes great teams. Growth sustained by purpose is slower but stronger.

Connecting Pixels, People, and Purpose

Leaders today must act as Connectors-in-Chief—linking ideas, relationships, and technology to amplify meaning. Dial models this through a digital yet deeply human practice: sharing curated content, connecting diverse thinkers, and uniting teams through transparency. Luck, he reminds readers, “comes before work only in the dictionary.” Building networks takes daily effort, humility, and intention.

Embrace Imperfection and Ethics

True leadership admits flaws and upholds fairness. Dial quotes mentor Pat Parenty’s mantra to be “fair and firm”—just and decisive in equal measure. He warns against perfectionism, arguing that self-awareness and honesty build credibility faster than polish. From algorithms to boardrooms, ethics can no longer be delegated to lawyers. Leaders must craft personal moral compasses to navigate data, diversity, and disruption ethically.

Business as a Force for Good

In the end, Dial believes that profitable and purposeful businesses aren’t opposites—they’re symbiotic. The best measure of success isn’t quarterly returns but long-term impact on people and planet. When your work reflects who you are and contributes to something larger than yourself, leadership transforms from duty into legacy. “Doing things that matter,” he concludes, “is how you create infinite energy.”