Closed Loop Leadership: Why Most Leaders Burn Out and Mutualists Endure
- ERIC BOROMISA
- Sep 11, 2025
- 4 min read
Leadership is a funny word. Everyone wants to claim it. Few actually practice it.
Most “leaders” today are just managers with a PR team. They hit targets, collect bonuses, and bounce—to the next gig or the next crisis. Their legacy? A few LinkedIn endorsements and a trail of quietly traumatized teams.
The real difference isn’t charisma. It’s loop thinking:
Open loop leaders extract from people and systems.
Closed loop (Mutualist) leaders circulate trust, opportunity, and influence—compounding over decades.
The first burns hot and dies alone. The second becomes the kind of leader people tell stories about.
Open Loop Leadership: The Short Game
Open loop leadership is everywhere. It’s fast, loud, and corrosive.
Transactional Power
Authority flows from title, fear, or budget—not trust.
Compliance replaces commitment.
Extraction Over Investment
People are “resources,” not compounding assets.
Culture is a press release, not an operating system.
Fragile Legacy
Results dip or politics shift? You’re out.
What’s left: attrition, resentment, and a brand no one wants to work for.
Open loop leaders confuse fear with respect and control with competence. They can look great on paper while hollowing out the institution beneath them.
You’ve seen this before:
The founder-CEO who treats people like disposable parts, until Glassdoor tanks recruiting.
The politician who slashes public services for short-term tax wins—then faces revolt.
The PE exec who chases quarterly gains, leaving a crater behind.
Open loops always close. In leadership, that closure shows up as burnout, rebellion, or irrelevance.
Closed Loop Leadership → Mutualism
Mutualist leaders flip the loop.
Instead of extracting value, they build systems of trust and opportunity that feed them back.
Key Principles:
Trust is the Only Real Currency
Titles fade. Options vest. Trust compounds.
Mutualists keep promises, tell the truth early, and own their mistakes.
People Are the Portfolio
Open loop leaders treat employees as costs. Mutualists know talent is the only compounding asset.
Invest in autonomy, growth, and real career upside.
Systems Over Heroics
If your team only functions when you’re in the room, it’s not a team. It’s a hostage situation.
Mutualists build systems that work in their absence—and improve over time.
The Mutualist Flywheel
Leadership is a flywheel, not a ladder.
When you close the loop:
Invest in people → They trust and perform → Systems stabilize → Leverage grows.
Leverage compounds → You reinvest → Stakeholders align → Legacy builds itself.
Now compare that to the open loop treadmill:
Push for results → Burn out people → Lose talent → Scramble for hires → Repeat until fired.
A Tale of Two Executives
Tom (Open Loop):
Slashes budgets. Pressures sales. Claims early wins. Looks great in Q1. By Q3? Burnout, churn, quality collapse. He jumps ship before the implosion.
Rita (Mutualist):
Starts by listening. Maps trust gaps. Closes loops: clear goals, shared upside, career velocity. In 18 months, her org runs like a machine. Turnover drops. Growth is durable—not sexy, but sustainable.
One leaves buzzwords.
The other leaves an institution that survives her.
Why Open Loop Leaders Still Win (Temporarily)
If they’re so fragile, why are open loop leaders everywhere?
Short-Term Incentives: Boards chase speed, not resilience.
Optics > Outcomes: Extraction artists are great at theater.
Legacy Operating Models: Most orgs still run on industrial-era command-and-control.
But the environment is shifting. Fast.
Employees talk (Glassdoor, Blind).
Customers talk (Twitter, Reddit).
Bad loops close faster than ever.
In a transparent world, loop design is survival strategy.
Mutualist Governance: Scaling Closed Loops
Leadership doesn’t scale unless governance does.
Boards, councils, nonprofits—they all face the same loop choice:
Open Loop Governance: Extract, obscure, erode trust.
Closed Loop Governance: Share visibility, align incentives, build legitimacy.
Mutualist governance means:
Radical Transparency (Where It Matters)
Not vanity dashboards—actual clarity on trade-offs and decision-making.
Stakeholder Inclusion
Customers, employees, communities—not afterthoughts, but design inputs.
When they’re in the loop, they defend the system instead of attacking it.
Feedback as Operating System
Don’t fire-and-forget. Mutualist orgs close loops with data, reflection, and course correction.
If you can walk away and the system thrives, that’s real power.
The Mutualist Leadership Playbook
Want to lead like a mutualist? Shift your loop.
Circulate, Don’t Extract
Credit, promotions, opportunity—send it around, and it comes back stronger.
Design Self-Sustaining Systems
If your org collapses without you, you weren’t leading. You were propping it up.
Close Feedback Fast
Ask: “What’s unclear? What’s broken?”
Respond. Iterate. Trust compounds when people see change.
Think in Decades
Your legacy isn’t the bonus. It’s the system that survives you.
Open loop leaders chase applause. Mutualists build echoes.
The Coming Leadership Divide
We’re entering an era of radical accountability.
Open loop leaders will burn out faster and leave wreckage behind.
Mutualists will compound trust, attract talent, and earn long-term power.
The future belongs to those who design loops—not ladders.
Your Move
Ask yourself:
Do you want to be the star of a short, dramatic story?
Or the architect of a long, compounding one?
Mutualism doesn’t require sainthood. Just care about the system that feeds you.
Close the loop.
Build something that survives you.
That’s power.
If this resonates, explore more of my writing at Numbers & Letters, or reach out for a consultation to discuss leadership design and systems thinking for your organization.
Sources & inspiration:
Wes Anderson - The Phoenician Scheme
The work of Michael Duncan
Disclaimer/Full Disclosure (You made it!): This blog post was generated with the assistance of AI, with N&L human oversight ensuring accuracy and insight. The thoughts and opinions expressed are our own.
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