Leadership Through the Lens of the Sword and the Gold

Is a successful manager someone everyone fears… or someone who helps everyone succeed?

I am always struck by the growing emphasis on employee satisfaction and the importance of making people feel valued and happy at work. There is no doubt that a positive work environment can fuel achievement, creativity, and engagement. But sometimes, we talk about employee satisfaction as if employees should walk out of the office every day dancing with happiness… even if they have accomplished nothing! And this is where we need to distinguish between a positive workplace and a workplace without accountability.

Motivation matters. Recognition matters. And sometimes a simple “Well done… thank you” at the right moment can accomplish more than ten management speeches. But we also need to ask: What do we do with someone who consistently underperforms? What about the employee who neglects their responsibilities? And what about the person who keeps repeating the same mistake as if making mistakes has somehow become part of the job description?

If you reward the high performer and treat the underperformer exactly the same… don’t be surprised when the high performer eventually becomes an underperformer too!

I strongly believe that excellence should be recognized and rewarded. When people see that their effort matters and their achievements are valued, they are naturally more willing to contribute, improve, and go the extra mile. But at the same time, we cannot treat those who work hard and those who do not, those who take responsibility and those who spend their day searching for “reasonable excuses” for missed results, as if they are all the same.

At the same time, I am certainly not advocating for a manager who turns into a “monster” the moment they walk into the office, leaving everyone silent and turning every meeting into a collective funeral for ideas! Fear may make people comply, but it rarely makes them innovate. A fearful employee will think twice before making a decision, taking initiative, or putting forward a new idea.

But there is another type of manager who can be just as damaging: the manager who is afraid to hold anyone accountable because it might affect “employee satisfaction.” So the underperformer keeps underperforming, the late employee keeps arriving late, the same mistakes keep happening, and eventually the high performer becomes the one who feels most unfairly treated: “Why should I keep giving my best when, at the end of the month, everyone gets the same reward anyway?”

When people believe there are no consequences, standards eventually disappear.

Rewards and consequences are not some modern management invention; they are part of life itself. The real issue is not whether accountability should exist, but how and why we use it. Accountability should never be about revenge, humiliation, or giving a manager the chance to prove that they are “the boss.” It should be about responsibility, correcting the course, maintaining standards, and protecting the rights of the rest of the team.

This is where the value of a fair leader becomes clear: knowing when to tell the high performer, “Well done. We appreciate what you have contributed,” and knowing when to tell the underperformer, “This is not acceptable, and you need to take responsibility for what happened.”

Motivation without accountability can become indulgence… and accountability without motivation can become intimidation.

A manager does not need to be loved all the time, nor feared all the time. What a manager needs to be is fair all the time — knowing when to recognize, when to challenge, when to give another opportunity, and when to make a difficult decision.

And this is where the human side of leadership matters. Know the people who work with you. Listen to them. Understand their circumstances. Appreciate them when they deserve it, and challenge them when they fall short. Not every mistake deserves punishment, and not every achievement requires a financial reward. But every achievement deserves recognition, and repeated underperformance deserves accountability.

The UAE offers an interesting example worth reflecting on. Employee happiness and satisfaction have become part of a broader management philosophy aimed at creating more positive and motivating workplaces, supported by measurement, performance indicators, and accountability. We have also repeatedly heard His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, emphasize the importance of employee satisfaction and link leadership performance to the satisfaction levels within their organizations. This reflects a clear philosophy: employee satisfaction is not merely a feel-good metric; it is connected to institutional performance and results.

Success is not built by the “sword” alone… nor by the “gold” alone.

Success is built through a system where everyone understands that achievement is recognized, underperformance has consequences, and the manager is not there simply to hunt for mistakes or distribute rewards, but to create fairness and move the entire team toward a common goal.

The manager who fails to reward excellence kills motivation… and the manager who fails to hold underperformance accountable kills discipline.

So, don’t be the manager who uses the sword for everything… and don’t be the manager who hands out gold for everything.

Be the manager who knows when to say, “Well done”… and when to say, “This is not acceptable.”

Because leadership, in the end, is neither the sword nor the gold…

Leadership is fairness.

Written by
Dr. Hamada Alantably