Weening speak and you hear words like “win,” “execute,” “grind,” “trans- form,” “move faster,” “compete.” Something did change, however. Or maybe “agglomeration” is a better way to describe what happened on Weening’s rise to the top. The word means “the act or process of collect- ing things into a single mass.” The salesperson who had once measured victory by the signed order, as CEO now measures victory by whether other people succeed as a team. Weening distilled his leadership philosophy into one sentence: “Invest in the success of others and you’ll be successful.” To explain his career transformation from a sales rep who asked, “How do I make my numbers?” to a leader asking, “How do I help everyone else make theirs?” Weening thinks about four constituencies: team members, customers, partners, and investors. “If I make sure every single one of


them is productive and has what they need,” he said, “I never have to think about myself – because success just happens.”


LEADERSHIP MEANS PROTECTING THE


PERFORMERS Weening learned an important lesson during his first management assign- ment. Ninety days into the job, he fired a salesperson named Leon who, for years, had failed to hit quota. Expecting resistance from his team, instead his two strongest salespeople walked into his office and thanked him. They had been carrying addi- tional quota because management refused to confront Leon’s chronic underperformance. Their message was simple: Finally, somebody has our back. The episode left a permanent impression. Most managers imagine that retaining an underperformer is compassionate. Weening saw the hid- den cost: The manager is transferring the burden to everyone else. Tolerating chronic poor perfor- mance, he concluded, is not kindness to one person. It is unfairness to the entire team. That principle helps explain the apparent contradiction in


Weening’s leadership style. He can be demanding and intensely com- petitive while simultaneously talking about caring for people. To Weening, the two are not opposites. Expect- ing excellence is part of caring. So is confronting failure, as is helping someone discover that they belong in a different job.


HEALTHY


DISAGREEMENT Weening has developed a phrase for protecting a powerful CEO from becoming too convinced of his own judgment. While actively asking em- ployees to challenge him, he says, “Don’t let me be wrong.” If they see him driving toward a cliff, he wants them to say so – because there are two possible outcomes: They may be right (in which case, Weening changes direction) or they may be wrong. If they’re wrong, then their disagreement reveals something else: Perhaps they lack context, perhaps management has failed to explain its strategy, or perhaps the company has a communications


The Michael Weening Leadership Code


These are the seven principles that turned a salesman into a CEO: 1. Five nos make a yes. Rejection is not evidence that you should stop. Often it is simply part of the path.


2. Invest in the success of others. Make your people, customers, partners, and investors successful and your own success becomes a consequence.


3. Don’t let poor performance hide. Protecting one chronic underperformer often means punishing ev- eryone else.


4. Don’t let me be wrong. Build a culture where employees can challenge the boss before the boss drives over a cliff.


5. Autonomy creates energy. Give capable people a destination, authority, and accountability – then get out of their way.


6. Map the work before adding AI. Automating a broken workflow produces automated dysfunction.


7. Be the grinder. Talent matters. Intelligence matters. But Weening’s career keeps returning to the same competitive advantage: Just keep going.


18 | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 SELLING POWER © 2026 SELLING POWER


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