Jeff Jones: The Best Leaders Look in the Mirror First

The Catalyst

When a team misses a target, a project goes sideways, or a strong employee struggles, leaders have plenty of places to look for an explanation: macroeconomic headwinds or someone else was simply not performing well enough.

Jeff Jones, an executive who has held C-suite positions across advertising, retail, technology, and financial services, has seen these patterns throughout his career. When leaders describe an underperforming team, he says, one of the first explanations is often an underperforming person. Yet those same leaders may be avoiding the difficult conversations, accountability, or decisions that could change the situation. He recalls leaders blaming HR or recruiting for their inability to make a change rather than confronting what was within their own control.

Jeff’s alternative is simple, but uncomfortable: hold up the mirror first. For example, before diagnosing the people around you, examine the leadership system you have created. Before assigning responsibility and course corrections elsewhere, ask what you contributed to the outcome. Before deciding what someone else needs to change, identify what you can change within yourself.

It is a discipline built around ownership and agency rather than blame. For Jeff, it is fundamental to becoming a better leader.

The Approach

Starting with yourself does not mean every poor outcome is the leader’s fault. Teams still need people with the right values, skills, and motivation to succeed, which Jeff is explicit about. But he cautions leaders against making people the automatic explanation for performance problems without first examining their own leadership.

The first questions are directed inward: What did I contribute to this outcome? What did I say or fail to say? What did I do or fail to do? Those questions shift the conversation from blame to agency.

The next step is to analyze your actions and their impact. A missed commitment, for example, might look like an execution problem. But the mirror can reveal different questions. For example, consider whether the expectation was clear, whether ownership was defined, whether the leader addressed earlier signs that the work was drifting, or whether a difficult conversation was postponed.

Jeff sees that distinction as particularly important when teams are struggling. He notes that some leaders recognize an accountability problem but still fail to address it head-on, procrastinating on the difficult decisions required to resolve it.

This practice extends beyond single interactions. For example, Jeff encourages leaders to think about the system they create for their teams: the expectations, norms, commitments, behaviors, and operating practices that shape how work gets done.

“Teams rarely outperform the system their leaders create,” he says.

That changes the diagnostic question. Instead of asking only, Why didn’t they perform? a leader asks, What conditions did I create for performance? From there, the goal is to extract learning rather than excuses.

A leader cannot control every market condition, organizational constraint, personality, or unexpected event. But focusing on those factors first overshadows the most empowering part: the opportunity to identify something you can improve. Jeff’s encouragement to leaders is to resist going immediately to the people when strengthening a team, because there are “all kinds of other things in the system that you directly control.”

Once the lesson is visible, the leader can adjust behavior intentionally. Create more clarity. Address the conflict sooner. Change the meeting. Reset an expectation. Make the decision you have been postponing. Build a better mechanism for accountability.

Jeff’s thinking about conflict illustrates the same discipline. Avoiding disagreement or working around a difficult person may feel easier in the moment, but the team never develops the capability to solve the problem together. As he puts it, when teams work around conflict instead of through it, they miss the opportunity to grow, learn, and develop.

The final step is to model accountability for everyone else. When leaders publicly own their contribution to an outcome, they establish a different standard for the team. That mindset can become part of the operating system itself. Build the system well enough, and it becomes bigger than any one person joining or leaving the organization.

The mirror, then, is not simply a tool for personal reflection, but a mechanism for building a more accountable team.

The Takeaway

The Mirror Leadership Principle is most valuable when looking outward feels easiest: After a disappointing result. During conflict. When a team is underperforming. When someone misses expectations. When a plan that looked right on paper produces the wrong outcome. Those are the moments when leaders face a choice about where to look first.

Jeff does not argue that leaders should ignore performance problems or excuse people who cannot meet the standard. In fact, he offers leaders practical questions for evaluating whether someone has the values, skill, and will required for the team. But he strongly encourages leaders to start with the mirror. The moment a leader moves from blame to ownership, the possibilities are endless.

Jeff Jones is a proven public-company CEO and board director with senior leadership experience spanning technology, retail, financial services, and consumer brands, from startup environments to Fortune 50 companies.