The Leader Who Waited to Speak So Everyone Else Would

In The Wall Street Journal's CEO Brief, Alan Murray shares one of the better turnaround stories in biotech. In The Biotech Leader Who Erased Team Lanes, he recounts a conversation with Jeff Leiden, who became CEO of a struggling Vertex Pharmaceuticals in 2012, when the stock traded under $40 a share. Leiden is now executive chairman, and the stock has climbed above $500.

Leiden credits two things. The first was strategy. With more than 90% of drugs that enter clinical trials failing, his team concluded that many drugs were aimed at the wrong targets, so Vertex committed to working only on targets proven to cause a disease. That discipline led to its work in cystic fibrosis. The second was culture, and that is the part Murray found most interesting. I did too.

The Leader Who Held Back

Leiden inherited a hub-and-spoke model in which everything reported to the CEO and the CEO made the decisions. He is careful not to criticize his predecessor, and neither am I. That model can work, and for some companies at some moments it is exactly right. But Leiden believed something different about his business. "I believe drug discovery is the ultimate team sport," he told Murray.

So he changed how decisions got made. His direct reports met every Monday for six hours to work through the issues together. Leiden tried not to weigh in early. He listened to them argue, which he says let him see every side of a problem before he decided anything. The team even had a motto about everyone swimming outside their own lanes.

That small choice, holding back his own view, is the part I would underline for every leader. When the most powerful person in the room speaks first, everyone else starts editing. They soften the concern, align with the boss and save their real opinion for later. When the leader waits, people bring their full judgment instead of the version they think the boss wants to hear. I have watched how much truth goes unsaid in organizations until people have nothing left to lose, a pattern I described in Why People Wait Until They Leave to Tell the Truth.

Lanes Turn People Into Job Descriptions

Leiden also describes a familiar problem in pharma. Companies tend to organize by function. Discovery finds a drug and hands it to development, which says it can't develop it. Development hands it to regulatory, which says the trials were wrong. Regulatory hands it to commercial, which says it can't sell it. Each group does its job. The drug still fails. His answer was to bring every stakeholder in at the beginning.

What strikes me is what lanes do to people. When someone is only allowed to speak from inside their function, the organization hears their job description, not the person. The scientist who has a sharp instinct for what patients will accept never gets asked. The commercial leader who understands the science better than anyone assumes keeps quiet because it isn't her lane. The company pays for all of that talent and uses a fraction of it.

Inviting people outside their lanes is how a leader discovers what each person actually brings. It is also how people discover it about themselves. Followers are far more willing to stretch for a leader who sees them clearly, which is the point I made in Your People Can't Follow a Leader Who Can't See Them.

Discipline Makes the Freedom Work

None of this means Vertex abandoned structure. Its strategy was built on a strict rule about which targets it would pursue, and that kind of discipline is a real asset. It gave everyone in those long Monday meetings a shared standard for deciding what mattered. Leiden also stressed that hiring the right people, then onboarding and training them well, was critical. Freedom to swim outside your lane works best when everyone agrees on where the pool is.

Murray notes that this is easier said than done, and he is right. A strong strategy and a strong culture worked together here, and I wouldn't credit the stock price to meetings alone. But the leadership lesson travels well beyond biotech.

A few questions for leaders this week:

In your last important meeting, who spoke first? If it was you, try holding your view until everyone else has shared theirs, and notice what you hear.

Where in your organization does work get handed off and fail? Bring those groups into the room at the start, before anyone has something to defend.

Who on your team has an insight outside their job description that you have never asked for? Ask this week.

Leiden's success came from knowing what his business needed and trusting his people to see more than he could see alone. That trust began with a leader willing to wait before he spoke.

When a leader speaks last, people stop editing themselves and start bringing everything they see.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.