Performative Leadership

Performative leadership is a style of management where individuals prioritise the appearance of being a leader over the actual responsibility of leading. Often described as leadership theatre, it focuses on high-visibility actions, such as public speeches or symbolic gestures, that lack substantive follow-through or real impact on the team's well-being and productivity.

Common Signs of Performative Leadership are:

Language without follow-through or intention: long speeches and frequent use of buzzwords like "transparency," "empowerment," or "psychological safety" in presentations, with no changes in day-to-day operations.
Over-reliance on optics and visibility: a heavy focus on how initiatives will be perceived externally or by superiors, rather than how they are experienced by the team.
Scripted vulnerability: sharing personal struggles or failures in a way that feels rehearsed or "PR-ready," avoiding any real emotional risk.
Feedback avoidance: a tendency to speak "down the ladder" rather than engaging in two-way conversations; feedback is often welcomed in theory but ignored in practice.

Many factors drive performative behaviours, like, organisations mistakenly reward charisma and ‘executive presence’ over actual people management, desire to be public ‘thought leaders’ and do personal branding (crating a cult) over internal team leadership, to manage perceptions for promotions, and the fear being seen as weak or incompetent.

The effects of performative leadership are many, it erodes trust and team members become cynical and distrustful of leadership, it leads to quiet quitting when they feel their leader is insincere, and feel ‘burn out’ and exhausted.

In Matthew 23:1-12 we hear that the scribes and Pharisees sit on the throne of Moses. Thus they are leaders; but using a recent leadership vocabulary, they were performative leaders. Jesus provides a profound critique of what we now call as performative leadership—the tendency to prioritise the appearance of authority over the substance of service. By examining the "scribes and Pharisees," he exposes the gap between public persona and private reality.

Jesus identifies three core behaviours that define performative leadership:

The burden-giver: leaders who "tie up heavy burdens... and lay them on people’s shoulders" but are unwilling to "lift a finger" to help. They create rules and expectations for others that they themselves ignore, they weaponise rules and regulations instead of using them to empower.
The costume-wearer: leaders who "do all their deeds to be seen by others". In Jesus’ day, this meant broadening phylacteries and lengthening tassels to signal superior piety.
The status-seeker: those who "love the place of honour at banquets" and want to be greeted with prestigious titles like "rabbi" or "instructor". They view leadership as a social ladder to climb rather than a responsibility to carry.

Jesus calls for integrity over image. He commands followers not to follow the example of these leaders because they "preach but do not practice". True leadership requires the public and private personal integrity.

Jesus calls for equality over hierarchy by forbidding the use of self-inflating titles. Jesus reminds his disciples that "you are all brothers". This prevents leaders from using titles to put others in a lower place.

Jesus calls for service over status. The passage concludes with a definitive paradox, "The greatest among you will be your servant". In the economy of God, greatness is measured by how much you lift others up, not how high you stand above them.

Performative leadership is ultimately a "scam" that preys on people’s trust to feed the leader’s ego. Authentic leadership, as modelled by Christ, is not a performance for an audience but a sacrifice for a family. To lead well is to realise that the highest seat is actually the last one in line.

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