Welcome back to Relationships At Work – A leadership podcast helping you build workplace connection, improve culture, and avoid blind spots. I’m your host Russel Lolacher

I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better.

This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.

Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…

“People” Leaders Are Undermining Leadership

I’m sure this is going to bother a few people but we need to talk about a phrase that’s quietly undermining leadership in our workplaces: People Leader.

On the surface, it sounds noble. Sure. Empathetic. Even progressive. But here’s the thing—it’s redundant. Like ATM Machine.

And that redundancy is revealing.

You see, leadership is about people. Always has been. Always will be. So when we slap “people” in front of “leader,” what we’re actually doing is acknowledging a gap—a failure of leadership to be about people in the first place. It’s a patch over a flaw, a workaround to describe what leadership should have already meant.

We don’t say “process leader” or “project leader” or “spreadsheet leader.” Because those aren’t leadership roles. Those are management and facilitation roles. Necessary? Absolutely. But they’re not leadership.

Leadership, by definition, is about the influence you have on others—the people who build, support, deliver, and evolve your mission. It’s about how you show up for them. How you build trust, drive clarity, and engage them to grow.

So when organizations use the term People Leader, it’s not a celebration. It’s an indictment.

It tells us that somewhere along the way, the term “leader” got hijacked by org charts, delivery schedules, and performance dashboards. That we started promoting “leaders” for their efficiency with tasks, not their effectiveness with humans.

And now we need to qualify the kind of leadership we actually mean. The kind that’s supposed to be foundational. The kind that cares, listens, and guides. We have to remind folks that leadership is more than job titles or deadlines. That’s the real issue here.

But instead of fixing the root problem, we’re inventing terminology to feel like we’re evolving.

This is ATM Machine logic all over again—Automated Teller Machine Machine. Saying the same thing twice because we’ve lost trust in the original meaning.

Leadership, without people, isn’t leadership. It’s administration.

The Question: How can we ensure our leadership is defined by how we serve people—not just how we deliver results?

• Audit Your Influence. – Make a list of decisions you’ve made in the last month. How many were people-first? How many were task- or performance-driven at the cost of your team? Real leadership shows up in who benefitsfrom your calls.
• Prioritize Relationship Over Role. – Invest time in conversations that aren’t about performance metrics. Ask how someone’s doing. What’s challenging them. What would make them feel more seen. That’s not “extra”—that’s the job.
• Remove the Crutch of the Title. – If you lead people, drop the “people” part. Let your actions, presence, and trustworthiness do the defining—not the descriptor in your email signature.

Let’s make the human-first leader the default expectation, not the exception with a modified job title. Strip away the qualifiers.

Just say “Leader.” And let that mean what it’s supposed to mean again.
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If we need a prefix to remind others (or yourself) that your leadership involves humans, we’re doing it wrong. Leadership is people. Everything else is a footnote.