When Movement Masquerades as Leadership

(Why the Knot Matters More Than Motion)

You’ll recognize the image above. It’s not only our CCLA logo mark.
It’s also a graphic representation of the definition of leadership we use.

That definition comes from Elliott Jaques and Stephen D. Clement:

Leadership is the process of getting other people
to move along together with you, and each other,
with competence and full commitment to achieve a goal.

Many of our readers have commented that the mark, just as we intended, communicates forward motion and progress.

The thing is, there’s another kind of movement that feels that way too—but is the furthest thing from the genuine article.

Here’s how it happens.

Calendars fill. Meetings multiply. Decisions are made on the fly. People stay busy—busier, and busiest—until they become mentally disengaged and unresponsive to ideas, even when those ideas might help alleviate the situation.

From the inside, this kind of frenetic pace often feels like momentum.
From the outside, it looks like exactly what it is—a hamster wheel.
Something is missing.

To see it clearly, start from the positive.

Imagine a group of people—each moving forward in their own lane, with their own perspective and effort. When leadership is working, those individual efforts don’t just continue in parallel—they come together.

They form what we call a knot.

Not a tangle.
Not a loose grouping.
Not just people working in proximity to one another.

A knot.

And inside this knot, something shifts.

People begin to move together—with competence and real commitment. And cooperation and collaboration become second nature. Alignment holds, even when things get messy.

That’s the primary thing missing in the illusion of leadership.

A group of people can move—fast, even—without ever becoming a knot. That’s movement without the knot.

Meetings happen. Information is passed along. Work appears to advance.

But understanding and acceptance are absent.

What emerges instead is compliance. And for a while, compliance can masquerade as commitment. But nothing is really holding.

This is where coordination replaces real collaboration—and begins to support the illusion that all’s well.

A knot, by contrast, requires more.

It requires:

•             Team members who act as agents—and are unthreatened by others doing the same

•             Shared clarity about what matters

•             Mutual influence

•             Competence that is actually brought to bear

•             Commitment that is freely given, not quietly withheld

Most of all, the knot requires people to really work together—not just pass things along.

We like to say it this way: the knot means “working together like your lives and livelihoods depend on it.” Because when it comes right down to it, they damn well do.

Getting people to move is not especially difficult.

Pressure can do that.
Authority can do that.
Habit can do that.

But movement alone does not indicate the presence of leadership.

We’d bet you’ve experienced something very close to this, so let us ask the question directly:

Where in your work or life is there a lot of movement right now…
but no knot?

And what would it take to create the conditions where you and others actually begin to move along together—with each other—competently and with full commitment?

Because, when the knot forms, something changes.
And when it starts to hold—well, that’s when things get exciting.