Structuring Your Team for Progress, Purpose, and Pride

Welcome to Mission Elite’s Official Newsletter

^{Mission Elite is an organization that has impacted World Champions and National Championship-producing teams to leading executives and groundbreaking companies. The author of this newsletter and CEO of Mission Elite, Raheel Manji, specialized in Executive Leadership at Harvard and High Performing Teams through Stanford, where he finished in the top 3 of his class. He is trained in Psychology of Performance and is a former 4X professional title holder, ITA National Summer Champion, and NCAA Sweet 16 coach.}

The Psychological Case for Hierarchy and Chain of Command

In this passage, I am going to outline why it is important in every team and organization, particularly from a psychological standpoint, to embrace hierarchy and respect the chain of command.

The first reason is the impact this has on optimizing levels of motivation, and the second is its role in diminishing resentment.

Hierarchy refers to the structure of earned rank and status. Chain of command is the operational expression of that hierarchy; it is how information, decision-making, and responsibility flow through that structure. When either is violated, the culture begins to corrode.

Hierarchy as the Engine of Motivation

By now you must be tired of the number of times I have explained that, technically speaking, most of the positive emotion we experience in life comes from making progress toward a meaningful goal. The feeling of progress and the presence of a pathway to progress are critical to each individual's sense of purpose, meaning, and motivation.

A 2011 study by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, published in the Harvard Business Review and titled The Power of Small Wins, confirms this. They found that “making progress in meaningful work is the most powerful motivator.” Without a structure to advance in, this internal drive stalls.

I have observed teams that disregarded hierarchy and chain of command and saw the harm this caused to individual motivation, especially among low performers, along with a rise in resentment, particularly among high performers within the organization.

I have seen leadership on some teams attempt to give all members the same influence, power, and say. In their minds, it may have seemed like the right and morally correct thing to do, because on paper it looked that way.

Can you see how that might be? Imagine a Head Coach saying, “On our team, everyone has equal say, influence, and power, whether you’re a rookie or a veteran!” It is a nice thing to say and will gain a lot of claps before the start of a year or season. But not in the end, when everyone realizes how much taking this approach negatively affected the performance of the team, their motivation, and the high presence of resentment in so many senior or high-performing members. In the end, you are left with a team that underperformed, fractured internally, and lost trust in its leadership. Only then might the reason become clear, though, interestingly, many still fail to see it.

This, by the way, is what performance science indicates: teams that value equal say, influence, power, and rewards for all tend to have the most resentful and under-appreciated high performers.

And if it is such a moral pathway, why are there such high levels of resentment among senior leadership and high performers? Why do they feel so wronged, intuitively? Well, because they have been. And if I have not made it clear, leadership’s naivete in disregarding the importance of hierarchy is exactly the reason for them being wronged. As a result, there is an argument that when it comes to teams and organizations, ignoring hierarchy is not only negative for performance but unjust.

A Military Example: Why Chain of Command Saves Lives

The military is perhaps the clearest real-world example of why hierarchy and chain of command are non-negotiable. On the battlefield, decisions must be made instantly, under extreme stress, and often with lives on the line. If every soldier had an equal say in every tactical decision, chaos would erupt, hesitation would replace execution, and missions would fail.

Consider a platoon under fire: the commanding officer gives a single, clear order, and everyone moves as one. That order is not debated, voted on, or questioned in the heat of battle because doing so would cost critical seconds and potentially cost lives. The very survival of the team depends on the trust that orders will be followed, and that each person’s role, from private to commander, is understood and respected.

This model is not just for warzones. In organizations, when chain of command is ignored and decisions are made haphazardly by consensus or by those least equipped, you get a different type of casualty: morale, performance, and trust all die. The lesson is the same. When stakes are high, clarity of command creates alignment, speed, and unity of action.

Character Development Requires Struggle

Let us now shift to something deeper: character development.

If, on day one, as a rookie, you have the same amount of influence, power, say, and rewards as members who have been in your organization for years, there is no room for growth from a status or hierarchical standpoint. Meaning, you cannot make progress in this category of status, hierarchy, power, or reward. These are some of the most fundamental motivating categories humans strive to attain within organizations and in their lives, and the ability to strive for them is all taken away because leadership granted all of it on day one.

Dr. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and professor, has repeatedly cited dominance hierarchies as evolutionary necessities, deeply ingrained in the psychology of motivation. When you flatten them artificially, you erode the natural striving system that drives growth.

I truly believe one of the worst things you can do for rookies, first-years, or for that matter, children, is to give them everything they want without having to struggle for it. Not only is motivation diminished, but so much character development is ignored, because character is developed through struggling to attain what you want, not through simply having what you want.

By not embracing hierarchy, you erase the development of resilience, problem-solving, toughness, and ambition, amongst other traits, in your low-ranking members.

Earned Advancement: The Only Fair System

As non-politically correct as it sounds, from a purely performance standpoint, a rookie or low performer should have the least power, influence, say, and rewards on the team and should be treated like a rookie, while the high performers should experience the opposite. This should be embraced.

But with the understanding that if they grow, persevere, improve, and contribute more, they can climb the hierarchy. That is extremely motivating.

How unmotivating is it to know that, whether I contribute more or even less, I will still have the same level of power, influence, say, and rewards on this team?

Of course, now you can understand why you would likely have an extremely unmotivated and non-contributing team with this model of “everyone is equally valuable no matter what they contribute.”

Top Performers Deserve More, or They Leave

Now let us inspect the effects this would have on the top performers and senior leadership of your organization.

Imagine being a senior or top performer, contributing so much to your teams over so many years, only for leadership to tell the first-years and rookies that they have just as much influence and say on the team as you do.

It is not an uncommon thought in top performers on teams like this to think, “You mean, I just contributed and sacrificed so much to this organization only to be treated exactly the same as those who did not? What was the point of all my contribution and sacrifice? What is the point of anything I do in the future here?”

A Gallup survey in 2022 found that 70% of high performers leave jobs where they feel under-recognized, citing a lack of differentiation in how performance is rewarded.

This is why, from a performance standpoint, a leader should be very detailed in making sure the top performers are provided with the most rewards and the low performers with the least. Of course, with the understanding that if you do what it takes to become a top performer, you too can experience more reward.

I believe it is not enough to just operate with this model as a leader, even though it is the correct model; I believe you have to be radically transparent about it so that everyone understands the rules of engagement. Everyone within the organization should be aware of the game they have chosen to play.

If anyone disagrees, what they are essentially saying is that they feel they deserve the same amount of rewards without having to contribute as much. You can understand how this is a loser’s mentality and will produce, over time, a losing organization or team.

Fairness Is Not Equality

Are these rules of engagement not the most fair act? How is it fair to top contributors that the lowest contributors get the same benefits as them? Right, so again, if you want to optimize motivation in your low performers, do not give them the world without them having to earn it.

Make them understand that if they earn it, they will get better and better rewards. How much better in their performance and character will that produce within them over time?

Furthermore, there will be no resentment in the top performers because they feel all of their contributions, efforts, and sacrifices provided them with unique rewards.

As Dr. John Townsend notes in his book Leadership Beyond Reason, people need “structure, responsibility, and earned privilege” to feel empowered and engaged. Giving equal privileges without structure contradicts this framework.

Resentment Comes From Perceived Injustice

You must understand that resentment builds when individuals feel there is a lack of reciprocity or fairness in relationships or in teams.

Now it is important to note that fairness does not mean everyone gets rewarded or treated the same; that would be unfair when one individual contributes more than another. When systems ignore this principle and attempt to make outcomes the same for everyone, they often stifle motivation and innovation. History and organizational research show that when there is no connection between effort, contribution, and reward, performance declines and engagement drops.

In teams, fairness must be rooted in proportionality. People must get back relative to what they put in. The Institute for Employment Studies found in a 2019 study that “perceived fairness in recognition and rewards is the number one factor in sustained employee engagement.”

Having Seen Both Models Play Out

In this passage, I am not just speaking purely technically; I have actually experienced teams and organizations that had these exact issues arise.

Top performers in those organizations displayed deep levels of resentment from feeling unappreciated and not being rewarded in proportion to their contributions, especially when they were treated equally to low performers who contributed far less.

Low performers in these organizations often failed to strive toward excellence in relation to the organization's goals, becoming distracted by other endeavors that did not contribute to the success of the team. Without enough higher-status roles or rewards to pursue, they often finished their seasons or years producing only a fraction of their potential.

In contrast, I have been part of teams where high performers were rightfully rewarded and low performers had to earn their way upward, receiving fewer rewards until they proved themselves.

In these teams, the high performers loved their organizations so much that they sacrificed even more for them, and the low performers did all they could to contribute more, climb the ladder, and have a better life within the teams.

Hierarchy Drives Engagement, Not Toxicity

As toxic as it may appear at times to the sensitive, from a purely psychological standpoint, this method is the most fair and produces the most high-performing results, motivated teams, and the least resentment.

Google’s own Project Aristotle, a comprehensive internal study on team performance, found that the best teams had clearly defined roles, expectations, and leadership hierarchies, and that blurring them caused confusion, disengagement, and underperformance.

In conclusion, respecting the chain of command and embracing hierarchy is not just a military principle or corporate tradition, it is a psychological necessity. If you want ambition, progress, performance, and unity, you must reward difference. You must give people something to strive toward. You must allow those who give more to receive more.

That, at its core, is what creates a system of respect, not resentment.

Final Thoughts

For more on high performance, mindset, and success, follow us on Instagram at Mission Elite Performance and Mission Elite Mentality.

For a deeper dive into the principles that fuel success, check out my book, 17 Principles of a Mission Elite, available on Amazon or through our website.

If you would like us to support you and help your team or leadership, visit www.missioneliteperformance.com or contact our administrative team at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Raheel Manji
CEO, Mission Elite