Nobody tells you this when you get promoted.
They give you the title, the office, maybe a bigger salary, and a team that now reports to you. And somewhere in the handoff, a assumption gets made. That the position means people are beneath you. That authority flows downward. That your job is to direct, correct, and be served by the people under your supervision.
It feels logical. It’s also wrong. And it’s costing your team more than you know.
In Part 2 of my conversation with Big Phil, we get into one of the most misunderstood dynamics in leadership. The relationship between authority and service. Most new managers walk into their first leadership role believing the position is something they’ve earned, something that grants them a certain deference from the people around them. What Big Phil discovered, through some of the hardest personal work he’s ever done, is that the position actually demands the opposite.
The best leader, in his words, is the one who serves. The one who puts themselves at the bottom of the barrel. Not as a figure of speech. As an operating philosophy.
Big Phil didn’t just say it. He lived it. He sat down with his assistant and asked her to redraw his org chart with him at the bottom. The software didn’t even support it. She had to do it manually. And when he looked at that image, something shifted in him that hadn’t shifted before.
That shift is what this episode is about.
If you are a new manager still trying to figure out how to hold authority without losing people, this conversation is going to reframe the way you see your role entirely. The question isn’t how do you get your team to follow you. The question is whether you are willing to serve them well enough that following becomes the natural response.
Part 2 of my conversation with Big Phil is available now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.