Leadership by Example: The Leadership Crisis That We Rarely Talk About

As a muslim I always refer to our hsitory specially the prophet Mohammed’s biography and I will start my article today with AL-Khandaq Battale when muslims faced one of the greatest military threats in their history, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ did not stand at a distance giving orders. Instead, he picked up a shovel and worked alongside his companions. He carried soil on his shoulders, endured the same hunger they endured, and tied a stone to his stomach just as many of them did because of the severity of hunger. At one point, the companions struggled to break a massive rock that blocked their progress. They called the Prophet ﷺ, and rather than asking someone else to deal with it, he struck the rock himself until it broke. He led from the front. It teaches that leadership is not exercised from the safest place. It is earned where people can see sacrifice, humility, and shared hardship.

Today, leadership books describe this as leading by example. Fourteen centuries ago, it was already being practiced. That story often makes me ask a simple question:Do we really have a leadership crisis, or do we simply have too few leaders?

Modern organizations are full of managers. Many hold executive degrees, leadership certificates, and years of administrative experience. Many have mastered strategic planning, budgeting, negotiation, and organizational politics. Some know exactly how to navigate the system and climb the next step of the career ladder. But are these the qualities that make people want to follow someone? I’m not convinced.

Titles create authority, but they do not create trust. People rarely remember their managers because of an organizational chart. They remember them because of how they behaved during difficult moments. Who accepted responsibility when things went wrong? Who protected the team instead of protecting their own reputation? Who celebrated success by giving credit away instead of collecting it? Those moments reveal leadership far more than annual performance reviews.

One quality that seems increasingly rare is leadership by example. Employees notice when leaders ask others to make sacrifices they would never accept themselves. They notice when difficult shifts always seem to fall on the same people. They notice when leaders speak about teamwork but remain absent when the workload becomes overwhelming. The opposite is equally memorable. A leader who stays late with the team during a crisis. A department head who stands beside a junior employee during a difficult meeting instead of leaving them to face criticism alone. A consultant who teaches because they genuinely want younger colleagues to succeed, not because it improves their own image. These actions rarely appear in performance indicators, but they build something far more valuable trust.

Leadership also extends beyond today’s workload. Many managers help employees complete tasks efficiently. Fewer invest in the employee’s future. Does this person encourage a junior colleague to pursue further training, even if it means losing them to another institution? Will they recommend someone for a promotion elsewhere if they know it is the best opportunity for that person’s career? Do they defend an employee’s rights when doing so offers no personal advantage? These questions may say more about leadership than any management course.

Perhaps the biggest difference between a manager and a leader is this:A manager asks, “How can this employee help the organization?”A leader also asks, “How can this organization help this employee grow?”The two questions are not competitors. The best organizations need both.

Unfortunately, many workplaces seem to reward short-term results more than long-term character. Leaders are measured by budgets, targets, productivity, and key performance indicators. Those metrics matter, but they do not tell the whole story. No KPI measures whether employees feel psychologically safe enough to admit a mistake. No dashboard tells us whether people believe their manager genuinely wants them to succeed. No annual report captures whether someone leaves work feeling respected. Yet these experiences shape culture more than most policies ever will.

Of course, no leader can make everyone happy. Difficult decisions are part of leadership. Resources are limited, promotions cannot be given to everyone, and competing priorities exist in every organization. But fairness is different from popularity. People usually accept difficult decisions when they believe the process was honest and consistent. What they struggle to accept is selfishness. They notice when leaders pursue recognition while expecting others to carry the burden. They notice when protecting a personal position becomes more important than protecting the people who made that position possible. That is when trust begins to disappear.

However, organizations spend too much time developing management skills and too little time developing character. We teach communication. We teach finance. We teach negotiation. But who teaches humility? Who teaches courage? Who teaches a leader to stand beside their team when doing so carries personal risk? Those lessons are rarely found in a classroom.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ never asked his companions to walk a path he was unwilling to walk himself. That may be one of the greatest lessons in leadership the world has ever witnessed. Perhaps that is what people are still looking for today. Not the smartest manager. Not the most influential executive.Simply a leader whose actions match their words, who shares the burden before claiming the reward, and who cares not only about the success of the organization, but also about the people who make that success possible.