In this episode 60 of the Potential Leader Lab Podcast, we're breaking free from societal molds and false narratives that stifle authentic leadership.

Our Discussion

I discuss how embracing your existential freedom can become a revolutionary act in today’s world. Drawing inspiration from Albert Camus and my own experiences, we explore why true leadership means creating a better world through our actions and choices.

Join us as we go deep into the importance of living questions rather than seeking finite answers, how to authentically lead in a world that values conformity, and the profound impact of living to the point of tears by pursuing what truly matters. This episode is a call to rebel against the mundane and create a legacy of meaningful change. And, I'll leave you with 5 practical concepts you can take home to start experimenting and evolving as a leader

★ Key Topics ★

03:05 The illusion of control and the freedom of rebellion.

06:14 Why authenticity in leadership matters more than ever.

10:37 How societal conditioning influences our leadership styles.

15:22 The role of existential questions in personal and professional growth.

20:45 Practical steps to integrate rebellion and creation into your approach.

25:32 Embracing life’s challenges as opportunities for authentic leadership.

30:18 Leading by example and inspiring others to think differently.

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Find Perry Maughmer

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/perrymaughmer

Subscribe: perrymaughmer.com/podcast

Contact: perrymaughmer.com/contact

Learning Resources Mentioned

Hard Goals : The Secret to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be – 2010

by Mark Murphy (Author)

https://amzn.to/4hWFMml

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Perry Maughmer believes the world deserves better leadership; that in every human interaction there is the opportunity to either build others up or tear them down; and that leadership is the choice we make in those moments.

These beliefs led Perry to create the Potential Leader Lab. He wanted to offer those who share his beliefs the space and safety to explore transformative ideas, experiment with new behaviors, and evolve into the leaders they were meant to be and that the world needs.

This is a framework he has used again and again with his Vistage peer advisory groups and companies like Turn-Key Tunneling, Convergint, Haughn &  Associates, I Am Boundless, Ketchum & Walton, LSP Technologies, and Ahlum & Arbor.

Perry lives and works on the shores of Buckeye Lake in Ohio, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, and on the beach in Anna Maria, Florida with his amazingly creative wife Lisa. They have 2 rescue dogs and are intermittently visited by their 3 wonderful children throughout the year. Perry & Lisa are living life in crescendo and focused on exploring, experimenting, and evolving their vision of a life they have no desire to retire from.

Copyright 2026 Perry Maughmer

Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab, where we explore the relentless pursuit of creating a better world, one beautiful question and one courageous action at a time. I am your host, Perry Maughmer. And today on episode 60, we will be exploring leadership as rebellion in creation. So a lot of what we're gonna talk about today is kind of spun out of a couple of, thoughts from Albert Camus. The first one is men must live and create and live to the point of tears. And the second is the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. So leadership, what I'll you know, you wanna call it what you you know, we have to add these, adjectives, but authentic leadership, which I it just boggles my mind because I'm not sure there's another kind. But authentic leadership isn't about fitting into societal molds.

It's about breaking free from the conditioning that keeps us chasing noise and short term gratification. And to lead well, we have to first rebel against the false narratives we've been taught to value. Now this for those of you that have listened before, you know, the whole thing about the relentless view, my kind of philosophy is living fully in pursuit of what truly matters. Right? So, what I call leadership is creating a better world for those we care deeply about. So I wanna I wanna reiterate that when we talk about these things, I have absolutely no answers. And and by and large, what I wanna help us do is figure out what the right questions are, because that's what drives our life. Our life is driven by chasing the questions, not the answers. Because questions open things up for us.

And each your success, even though even though we're driven, we have this we have this need for closure. It's stronger in some people than others. It's actually causing you can look it up. It's called a need for cognitive closure. But we we're so driven, and we have such a deep desire to find answers, but none of them, when we get them, ever satiate or or slake the thirst or the hunger we have. Because as far as I know, nobody's ever gotten an answer to anything and went, oh, I'm done. I can I don't have to look anymore? Like, I found the answer. Well, there is no answer.

Right? The questions, we have to live fully into the questions. And the questions point us in a direction so we can find bigger, more beautiful questions beyond that so we can transcend ourselves in the service to those we care deeply about. But we have to shift our focus and quit looking for the answers. The answers get us nowhere. They close things off. They stop things. Answers questions open things up. And and really great questions, you can feel them in your soul.

Like, you feel them when you ask them. They just they just stop you immediately because you wanna think about it and ponder it and seek clarification. Seek the answer. Because that's what means to live fully live the questions fully. Your life is one big question, not an answer. So we're gonna talk a little bit about, the reasons why living to the point of tears requires that we see through the layers of what I call conditioning, societal conditioning, and then being fully present with what genuinely moves us. And everything, our life is created through our lived experience. It's created by what we pay attention to.

So if if you don't purposely pay attention to things, whatever is loudest is what you pay attention to. And and so the first thing we have to do is understand that we learn from our own experiences. That's all that matters. So it is impossible for you to pattern or imitate somebody else. And so we have to act our way into being and take full, radical responsibility for who we become, because we're the only ones that did it. We are responsible for all the decisions we make. And so we can't we can't outsource that to somebody else. We can't just pattern ourselves after somebody else.

We can't say, I'm gonna be like that person. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. Then I'll have that. That's not the case. You can only be you. I forget who it was. I forget who said it, but it's a great quote.

It's you know, we we're all born originals, but we die a copy. And so we can learn from other people. See, this this is the thing. This is not a binary, don't do this, do this. It's not all or nothing. Right? This is where our our black and white thinking does us injustice. So we can certainly learn from other people, but the challenge is it's just like leadership. Leadership, in my opinion everything's my opinion that I'm talking about.

Right? It's not there's no facts here. But leadership can be learned, but it can't be taught. So you can listen to other people because I do a lot of leadership development. I tell people this every time we get together. It's like, well, I'm not teaching you anything. I'm opening up ideas, concepts, or talking about things that matter. You have to ingest those things and figure out what aligns with you from an authenticity standpoint, and then incorporate those things into who you are for your own evolution. Because you will evolve into the type of leader that only you can be.

And that's what the world needs. It needs all of us to step fully into that responsibility of being the leader we're capable of being. I hate to say it's simple, but it is. Now, it isn't easy. It's it's simple, but it's not easy. And so we have to we have to be careful of all the all the, what I'm gonna call, the media. All the messages coming at us every day. Because social platforms, media, even our peers push us to chase what's urgent, shiny, or fleeting.

Today, what do we need today? And these things, they numb us. They don't move us. They actually just numb us. It's like novocaine. It's like emotional novocaine. You know, we just we don't wanna feel these things anymore. So we do the things that we're supposed to do, so that we feel like we're making progress. Did you know that the latest research says the average American spends 5 hours a day on their smartphone? 5 hours a day on their smartphone.

And here's the next data point. Half of that is on social media apps. So 2 and a half hours a day is spent on social media. Now, I'm gonna ask you 3 questions. Think about your own experience. This is it, your own lived experience. Right? So when you if for whatever amount of time, not saying you'd heck, some people on here might be 5 hours on social media. I don't know.

Some people may be none. I get it. We're not all the same. But if you spend any amount of time, think about your your your latest, you know, foray into Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, whatever, LinkedIn, whatever platform you wanna talk about, x, whatever it is. What value did you get from it? How did you feel afterwards? After your scrolling session, how did you feel? And what true value did you get out of the experience? Were you able to move yourself closer to what matters most to you by scrolling through that social media platform? And do you feel better or worse after the experience? Or back to the original, do you feel at all? Or was it just the ability to numb yourself? That's not rebellion or creation. It's actually consumption, and there's a whole study out there about balancing out consumption and creation. We need people that create, not we don't need everybody consuming. So how much of what you focus on is driven by internal truth versus external noise? Do you know? Do you even know? Do you know what you want? So in order to to be authentic, we have to silence all that noise and reconnect with what truly matters to us.

Meaningful goals that stretch us towards self transcendence. And it's this is ongoing. It requires a high degree of relentlessness and the willingness to fight the good fight. And this requires we recognize and take responsibility for all of our choices every day. Not a bad thing. By the way, none of this and I know that some of it's heavy, like, some of it my my goal here is not that anybody feels worse after listening to this. I want you to feel empowered and see the possibility and opportunity that lays in front of you that that that is there for you to take advantage of if you so choose. I don't want you to feel despair or anxiety or frustration or any of those things.

Because you can choose differently today. Because we have multitude of choices every single day, and we are our lives are the products of our choices. Plain and simple. Whatever wherever you are in your life right now is a product of all the choices you have made. You want a different one? Make different choices. You want you want something different in the future? Make different choices. That's the only way it works. By the way, you have to be fully present to do that because the only way to create a better future is create a better present.

So you can't constantly worry about the future and then not exist in the present because your future is not gonna be different. So now let's talk about rebellion as freedom. I love the word rebellion. So Camus idea is the rebellion is freedom from an unfree world. Freedom from an unfree world. Now, social conditioning traps us in cycles of the of short term thinking. And then media and societal pressure convince us that success is quick, leadership is a role, and happiness is instant. None of those things are true.

Success is not quick. There is no overnight success. You You ask anybody who's an overnight success, they will get really pissed off. And they'll say that's the that 20 years was the longest overnight success I've ever experienced. Happiness is not instantaneous, and leadership is not a role. Leadership is a decision. Leadership is an action. Leadership is a choice.

Leadership is not a role. It's not a label. It's not a job. And the funny thing is is it's not even defined by you. It's defined by other people. You don't anybody who says they're a leader ain't a leader, because that's not how you get defined as a leader. If other people say you're a leader, then you're a leader. And the rebellion part of this is rejecting all that false narrative and embracing long term meaningful goals that align with your own evolution of transcend self transcendence.

You have self actualization first, and then you the only the only meaningful reason to self actualize is to self transcend, because then we transcend our self in service to others with all of the things that we self actualize. We became our authentic self in service to others. Now, your I love this this line of your existence as an act of rebellion, and I forget it was one of the stoics who said, sometimes just to live is an act of courage, and I believe that. Just being, just existing is an act of courage. And we can live authentically, and it's it is in defiance against a world obsessed with appearances and immediacy. It is authenticity is defiance against our world that is obsessed with appearances and immediacy. Everything has to look great. It has to look great now.

See, if you spend your energy working on things, if you're so if everything you're doing is about what needs to be done today, tomorrow, even next week, next month, without knowing what matters most, how are any of those decisions aligning you with achieving the thing you want in the future? Unless you have absolute clarity of what matters most. And once you do, then you can then you can align your activity, your behavior, your choices. You can live to the point of tears because all that means, it doesn't mean it's not sad. It's just an emotional release because of your alignment, because of the meaning that you have. Leadership is not about loud victories. It's about the quiet rebellion of things like consistency, values and virtues, and meaningful impact. That's what leadership's about, the quiet rebellion of consistency, values and virtues, and meaningful impact. But you have to observe your lived experience without judgment to be to see where you can begin, to see where you're misaligned from your essence.

This is where rebellion begins, by acting in alignment with who you are because your lived experience matters. Your lived experience is the baseline. The baseline is not social media or somebody else or your friend or your peer or your boss or your any of that. Your baseline is you, your lived experience. You're playing it's it's like golf. You don't play every you never play golf against anybody. You play golf against par. You play golf against yourself.

And so we have to shift inward to understand what's our baseline. What am I trying how am I trying to evolve? I just wanna be a better version of myself. I don't want to evolve into a version of someone else. So think about that. Here's here's a question for you. What narratives about success or importance have you internalized that no longer serve you? I mean, think about this. Think about what you're striving towards, and then think about what are where do those narratives come from? Did you create them, or or were they created for you? Are there ones that were created when you were a child that you're still striving to achieve that are not serving you or meaningful to you? And then the second question is, what would rebelling against those look life look like in your life? So number 1, what what are the narratives about success or importance or however you wanna phrase it that that you have internalized that may no longer serve you? And then what would rebelling against those look like for you? Because only you can answer that. Now we got to evolve through the tears in rebellion, and there there is a cost.

Right? Because social conditioning prioritizes immediate wants over meaningful pursuits, and that's this keeps us small and and reactive and unable to see the bigger picture of who we're meant to be. And then we have to you have to contrast that against that fleeting satisfaction against social of social validation, like the likes or applause or whatever that might be. Right? Followers on whatever platform, blah blah blah blah blah, with the enduring fulfillment of achieving a heartfelt goal. So again, we have to we have to fight that quote, unquote satisfaction of societal validation, likes, applause, followers with the enduring fulfillment of achieving a meaningful goal. Now Mark Murphy would say, if you wanna figure out what a heartfelt goal looks like, you have to think about these three questions. So think about something inside of me keeps pushing me to achieve this goal even when things get in the way. When I think about this goal, I feel really strong emotion. And by the way, these aren't questions or statements.

Sorry. So you're just ranking them on a score of 1 to 7. And I mentally own this goal. It doesn't belong to anyone other than me. Even if somebody else initially gave me the idea for it, it's a 100% my goal now. I own it heart and soul. So if you can rank those sevens, you got a shot. But if they're ones, you don't got a shot, because you're not gonna you're not gonna rise to that occasion, because this is hard work.

Like, nothing nothing meaningful was ever achieved easily. So if we if we back this into the explore experiment of frame, evolve framework, we explore by questioning the narratives you've accepted. What do you truly value versus what have you been told to value? So whatever you value right now, is it because you truly value it? This is a hard look inside. Are you doing because somebody told you years ago? Now we have to experiment. So we're gonna test small rebellions. Say no to the immediate, the shiny, the shallow. Choose depth instead, and then evolve. As you align your actions with meaningful goals, you grow into someone who transcends your old self.

So very easily, it fits into explore, experiment, evolve in a very practical way. And then leadership becomes about less about influencing others and more about embodying what it means to live freely and authentically. Because now you represent your very behavior, very back to you act your your life is a rebellion against an unfree world. Because when you choose to act authentically, you don't have to tell anybody. You embody that philosophy. Whatever your philosophy is, you embody it. People people can tell by watching you. So you have to experiment with these small acts of rebellion.

So what are we taking away from this? Leadership begins with rebelling against the noise, the false narratives about what's important, because only you can decide that with your own lived experience. And then we live to the point of tears by focusing on meaningful, transcendent goals instead of fleeting wants. And then I want each of you to think about how being so free that your very existence challenges others to rethink what matters. Imagine that world, where people are watching you, and your very existence challenges the other people to rethink what matters to them. That's an awesome place. So here's the thing, identify one area where social conditioning has kept you chasing the wrong thing, and rebel by choosing something meaningful instead. And then by all means, share those acts of rebellion or a shift in focus if you wanna be nice about it with other people. But I I love acts of rebellion.

I think it's much more meaningful and powerful than just shifting your focus. So what's one immediate step you can take today to silence that noise and focus on what's deeply meaningful to you? Maybe it's get off your phone. Just less. Spend less time. Because all it's on there is everybody's best self. Right? It's all nothing on there is true anyway. And how can living authentically and in alignment with your values inspire other people to do the same? You have kids. You have people that you care about.

Again, leadership is all about creating a better world for those we care deeply about. How does this behavior create a better world for those that you care deeply about? It provides them that your very existence challenges them to do it for themselves. So Camus' words remind us that leadership isn't about following a script. It's about daring to live authentically, feel deeply, and act courageously. So break free, rebel, and create a life that matters, not just for yourself, but for those you care deeply about. So remember, it's not about having all the answers, it's about asking big, bold, beautiful questions and showing up with intention every day. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries, embracing the unknown, and daring to do the work that truly matters.