When Rationality Meets Humanity
One of the greatest tensions in leadership is the divide between what makes sense and what feels right.
Businesses are built to be rational - systems designed for efficiency, scalability, and growth. People, however, are built to be emotional - guided by meaning, fairness, belonging, and instinct. Alignment begins not when one side wins, but when both learn to meet in the middle.
That space - where rationality meets humanity - is where true leadership lives.
Most businesses operate from a rational construct. Decisions are measured against productivity, performance, or return. Logic is the language of value. Within that construct, emotion is often seen as interference - something to be managed, not integrated.
People, however, operate from an emotional construct. We’re wired for connection, guided by purpose, driven by an inner compass of what feels fair and right. We may understand the logic of a decision, yet still resist it if it violates our sense of meaning or belonging.
When these two constructs collide, friction follows. What feels perfectly rational to the business can feel cold or dehumanising to the people within it. What feels right to an employee can appear inefficient or uncommercial to the business. Over time, those opposing truths create frustration, disengagement, and misalignment.
The work of leadership - real leadership - is to bring these constructs into conversation. To expand our own capacity to both think and feel.
The work of leadership to expand our own capacity to both think and feel.
When I was CEO of Teach Starter, I learned this the hard way.
The business was at a turning point. I was focused on making it scalable - improving unit economics so we could reinvest in content creation and deliver more “aha” moments for teachers. The goal was clear: greater impact in classrooms. To get there, we needed efficiency. Every dollar spent on content needed to deliver measurable results.
But my team saw it differently. Their personal purpose was creativity. They wanted freedom to create wonderful resources - the kind that would spark joy in classrooms and make teachers’ lives easier. ROI wasn’t their construct. They were emotional beings working within a rational system.
Over time, that misalignment turned toxic. The team resisted change, sowed discontent, and pushed back against initiatives designed to secure the company’s future. It wasn’t that they didn’t care - they just cared about different things.
Eventually, I realised the issue wasn’t performance or process. It was the unwritten contract between the business and its people - the psychological agreement that shapes what each expects from the other. The business expected accountability; the team expected creative freedom. Both made sense, but not together.
So we rewrote the contract.
I gathered everyone for a workshop and gave each person two post-it notes. On the first, they wrote their version of the unwritten agreement: “If I do this, I expect the company to do that.” The responses were confronting: “If I show up to work, I expect to be creative.” “If I do my job, I expect the company to stay the same.”
Then I flipped the exercise: “Imagine you now own Teach Starter. What would your unwritten agreement be with your employees?”
The room went quiet. It wasn’t so easy to make demands when they carried the weight of responsibility. Their answers shifted: “If I take care of my employees, I expect them to contribute to growth.” “If I invest in my team, I expect them to grow with the company.”
That moment changed everything. We found the bridge - a shared language that connected the business’s rational construct with the team’s emotional one. From there, alignment began.
Alignment, I’ve learned, is like the meeting of the tide and the shore.
The ocean moves with emotion - alive, unpredictable, full of feeling. The shore stands with reason - stable, structured, clearly defined. When they meet, something beautiful happens. The tide shapes the shore. The shore gives the tide its form. Too much tide and the shore erodes. Too much shore and the ocean becomes stagnant. But in balance - where movement meets structure - they create life.
That is the Alignment Zone: the place where logic and empathy coexist, where decisions both make sense and feel right.
And as leaders, our task is to keep that meeting point alive - not to control the tide, nor harden the shore, but to create the conditions where both can shape one another.
Reflect: Where in your leadership are you over-relying on logic at the expense of humanity - or emotion at the expense of clarity - and what might alignment between the two look like for you?