Leadership Gravity

Do people orbit you willingly, or can't they escape fast enough?

There’s no shortage of leadership models. Some are genuinely useful. The social identity approach developed by Alex Haslam, Steve Reicher, and Michael Platow, for instance, demonstrates that effective leadership centres on shared identity: leaders succeed when they embody ‘us’, advance ‘us’, and craft what ‘us’ means. It’s rigorous work, and I’m proud to know Alex is a colleague at Exeter.

Then there’s the other sort - the strongman apologists: Elon Musk, who declared that ‘nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week’ and demanded ‘extremely hardcore’ commitment from Twitter employees as a condition of continued employment. Those CEOs who announce, ‘I do what I like because I can,’ and mistake fear and silence for respect.

More recently, there are the LinkedIn ‘thought leaders’ peddling ‘alpha male energy’ as though leadership were a dominance display on the savannah.

These strongman approaches share a fundamental error: they treat leadership as something done to people rather than something that operates between them. They confuse enforced proximity with a chosen orbit, and they mistake volume for mass.

I want to propose an alternative perspective: leadership as a gravitational force.

The Slingshot Effect

If you’ve watched any science fiction involving space travel, you’ve seen the gravity assist manoeuvre: a spacecraft approaches a planet, swings around it, and emerges travelling faster than before. It looks like movie magic, but it’s real physics that has powered some of humanity’s greatest exploratory achievements.

Voyagers 1 and 2, launched in 1977, used gravity assists at Jupiter and Saturn to achieve the velocity needed to escape our solar system entirely. The technique has been used since Luna 3 in 1959, and missions like Cassini (which used two Venus assists, one Earth, and one Jupiter to reach Saturn) demonstrate just how precisely this can be orchestrated. The spacecraft gains velocity from the planet’s orbital momentum, and the planet, in turn, loses an infinitesimally small amount. The encounter changes both.

Some leaders create this effect. People approach them and leave with increased momentum, refined trajectories, and sufficient energy to continue operating effectively until the next close pass. These aren’t leaders who demand proximity through authority or attract it through that convenient fiction we call ‘charisma’. They create something more like a gravitational field: consistent, predictable, and available to anyone who chooses to enter their sphere of influence.

“Charisma is a story we tell to excuse poorly behaved or poorly equipped, but profitable men. Leadership gravity is physics: ordinary forces, applied consistently, that hold everything in orbit.”

I am also not conflating leadership gravity with gravitas, a term I hold in the same contempt as charisma and applies equally homogenously to (mostly) men exhibiting a specific and oftentimes superficial tone and style, rather than any underlying interpersonal or technical qualities or characteristics of note.

Here’s the physics that makes this metaphor work rather than collapse: gravity is classified as a ‘weak force’, approximately 10³⁸ times weaker than the strong nuclear force, yet it holds the universe together. (I know this is a LOT, I know, I did a hell of a lot of googling to get a basic understanding - I did not do well in A-level physics!)

It dictates tides, with the Moon’s gravitational pull creating ocean bulges that drive twice-daily tidal cycles across every coastline on Earth. It enables animal navigation: migratory birds possess cryptochrome proteins in their eyes that allow them to literally see Earth’s magnetic field lines, using the planet’s magnetic field as both compass and map.

When I discuss leadership gravity, I often encounter a standard objection that the concept of gravity is too ‘passive,’ which misunderstands both the physics and the metaphor. Gravity’s classification as a ‘weak force’ shouldn’t be conflated with impotence or passivity. This argument is akin to considering other autonomic functions, like our heartbeat, to be passive. Sure, you can take that view… but try managing without it.

What Leadership Gravity Looks Like

Leadership gravity is the consistent influence that emerges from predictable values, observable behaviours, and genuine care: a stable reference point around which others willingly orbit, gaining momentum and refining trajectory through proximity while remaining free to explore.

This works across geographies and functions well asynchronously - a leader with leadership gravity doesn’t need to be in the room for their influence to be felt. People who have experienced their gravitational effect carry its influence with them. They make decisions by asking, ‘What would she think of this decision?’ or ‘Does this action align with what he taught me?’ The leader becomes a navigational constant, much like how migratory birds orient themselves against Earth’s magnetic field even when crossing a featureless ocean.

Critically, this creates awareness of consequences. When you orbit a leader with gravity, you become curious, conscious and careful whether your actions will create collisions, elegant interactions, or lead to departure beyond their sphere of influence entirely. You don’t need technology monitoring your keystrokes; you have internalised a reference point for what’s expected and what great behaviour looks like.

What Creates Leadership Gravity

Being a well-understood point in space and time. The skills I outline in It’s Not Magic: authentic presence, self-awareness, and precise communication contribute to leadership gravity. But there’s a critical addition: people need to know what you stand for beyond your technical or strategic competence. They need to understand your values viscerally, not as a plaque on a wall but as demonstrated patterns of behaviour.

The fence conversation. I often describe leadership as requiring flexibility in how, but immovability in what. There are multiple valid approaches to giving feedback, managing projects, and structuring teams. I’ll flex on method, but there are things I won’t flex on at all.

I describe a fence.

On one side: unprofessional behaviour from tardiness to telling lies, as well as incivilities like racism, sexism, ableism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, and homophobia. On the other side: professional integrity and human dignity. When people ask where I stand on these issues, the answer isn’t that I’m ‘on the fence’. I’m also not quietly on the dignity side of the fence, hoping someone else will sort out the unprofessional, unethical behaviour, -isms and phobias. I’m firmly on the dignity side, proactively working to dismantle the structures that sustain the other.

This predictability lends a density to the character of leaders. When people know exactly where you stand on fundamental questions, they know what you won’t stand for, and pivotally, they know where they stand relative to you. They can navigate by your example, because they know where you’ll be and how you’ll respond in any context or scenario. The leader who equivocates on values, who bends with political wind, who treats ethical positions as negotiable: they make pinpointing themselves challenging, creating uncertainty that makes orientation impossible.

Bidirectional influence. The Moon moves the tides, but here’s what’s often forgotten: Earth’s gravity also affects the Moon. The relationship is mutual. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory, developed by Graen and Uhl-Bien over 25 years, confirms this is true for leaders and their followers, where high-quality leader-follower relationships are characterised by ‘mutual trust, respect, and obligation’ with influence flowing in both directions. The leader’s capacity to influence grows precisely because they’re open to being influenced.

Leaders with gravity have different orbital relationships with different people. Some are close advisors, in tight orbit, with frequent interaction and substantial mutual influence. Others are more distant: occasional collaborators whose elliptical paths bring them near intensely for brief periods before swinging back out. Both are valid and valuable. The gravitational relationship accommodates variance in proximity in a way that transactional and autocratic leadership fail.

Gravity Compounds

Here’s where leadership gravity departs from classical physics. In Newton’s universe, mass is relatively fixed: a planet doesn’t grow heavier because moons orbit it. But in organisations, the perception of gravity increases precisely because people are observed orbiting.

This is Robert Merton’s Matthew Effect: advantage compounds. More followers make a leader more noticeable, more interesting, and more attractive to others, considering where to invest their time and attention. Cialdini’s research on social proof confirms the mechanism: when uncertain, we look to what others have chosen. The crowded restaurant that people have chosen to dine in must be better than the empty one they’ve rejected.

Each person propelled toward their goals by your gravity becomes a testament to your impact. These colleagues talk and recommend you, and draw new, more distant colleagues closer. Your sphere of influence expands not through self-promotion but through accumulated demonstration. Gallup’s research confirms the inverse is equally true: managers account for 70% of the variance in colleague engagement. People leave managers, not companies. And they stay for the same reason, drawn close by leaders with gravity.

The Absence of Gravity

In secondary school physics, I watched smoke particles under a microscope, buffeted in every direction by invisible air molecules. This Brownian motion experiment, first observed by Robert Brown in 1827 and later explained by Einstein, demonstrates what happens when particles have no anchor for their movement.

The movement is constant but random - there is activity without velocity - and if that’s not a description of transformation failures everywhere, I don’t know what is! Direction changes with every collision, and there’s no coordination between particles. Of course, the smoke eventually disperses throughout the container, but not with the intention required when the entity is a national or global company, rather than a petri dish. Without leadership gravity, there’s motion without meaning.

This is what organisations look like when leaders lack leadership gravity. Colleagues move constantly, reactively, without strategic direction. They bounce between priorities based on whoever collided with them most recently. Energy is expended, but trajectories are aimless. In the absence of leadership gravity, organisational Brownian motion is all you get.

The Democratic Physics of Leadership

A common objection: Doesn’t this only work for senior leaders with official positional power? The answer is no. Leadership gravity is built through behaviours anyone can develop and apply consistently, regardless of their title or status.

Gravity’s strength depends on mass and distance. A smaller body has a shorter gravitational reach, but within its sphere of influence, the effect remains identical. Someone junior in an organisational structure may never have the range of a CEO. Colleagues may have to approach closer to feel your pull, but once they’ve experienced the slingshot effect, they’ll return because, however minor it might seem, increased momentum and motivation feel good.

Your actual influence can grow this way even if your relative size in an organisational structure remains small. Each person who experiences the gravitational assist becomes a testimonial. They tell others and bring new colleagues into proximity to experience the same. Your sphere of influence expands not through self-promotion but through a reputation well-earned.

The question isn’t whether you have gravity. Everyone with any influence does. The question is whether you’ve made yourself predictable, consistent, and present enough that people can navigate by you. Whether they leave encounters with you accelerated toward their goals or depleted by the interaction. Whether your influence persists in your absence or evaporates the moment you leave the room.

Leadership gravity isn’t magic. It’s ordinary forces, applied consistently, enabling anyone passing to orbit willingly and to be gravity-assisted for greater reach than they could achieve alone.

It’s something anyone can build. It’s effortful, but not complex. Energy-expensive, but worth it for the leader and their team.

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References

CERN (n.d.). “The Standard Model.” Available at: https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model

Cialdini, R. (1984). Influence: Science and Practice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X

Gallup (2015). State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders. Washington, DC: Gallup Press. Available at: https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx

Graen, G.B. and Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). “Relationship-Based Approach to Leadership: Development of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory of Leadership over 25 Years.” Leadership Quarterly, 6(2), pp. 219–247. Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=managementfacpub

Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations (n.d.). “Brownian Motion of Smoke Particles.” Available at: https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/brownian-motion-smoke-particles

Haslam, S.A., Reicher, S.D. and Platow, M.J. (2020). The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780203833896. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203833896

Merton, R.K. (1968). “The Matthew Effect in Science.” Science, 159(3810), pp. 56–63. DOI: 10.1126/science.159.3810.56. Available at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.159.3810.56

Musk, E. (2018). Twitter post, 26 November. Available at:

Elon Musk@elonmusk

There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week

9:49 PM · Nov 26, 2018

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2.77K Replies · 9.14K Reposts · 49.9K Likes

Musk, E. (2022). “Extremely hardcore” email to Twitter employees, reported by CNN, 16 November. Available at: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/tech/elon-musk-email-ultimatum-twitter

NASA Science (n.d.). “Basics of Space Flight.” Available at: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/basics-of-space-flight/primer/

NASA Science (n.d.). “Tides.” Available at: https://science.nasa.gov/moon/tides/

Xu, J. et al. (2021). “Magnetic sensitivity of cryptochrome 4 from a migratory songbird.” Nature, 594, pp. 535–540. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03618-9