A few weeks ago, I was texting with a former colleague and good friend. We’ve worked together, built things together, and talked about leadership the way most people talk about sports. Constantly, and with opinions.
We were riffing on a leadership move happening in our industry. We got into what the organization actually needed, not just someone who could think about innovation, but someone who could build the team to turn that vision into reality. What started as an industry conversation turned into something I couldn’t stop thinking about. And somewhere in that thread, between the analysis and the self-reflection, we stumbled into a framework I didn’t have language for until that moment.
I’ve been in legal technology services and consulting for a long time. I’ve watched organizations hire brilliantly and hire catastrophically. I’ve seen visions die not because the idea was bad but because the wrong person was carrying it. I’ve seen operationally excellent leaders plateau because they were placed in a seat that didn’t match their wiring. And I’ve seen companies thrive not because they found one perfect leader, but because they understood which seats were empty and deliberately filled them.
I want to talk about the Four Seats archetypes, what they are, how to identify which one you’re actually in, and why the most dangerous mistake in leadership isn’t sitting in the wrong seat. It’s not knowing you’re in it.
Seat One: The Dreamer
The Dreamer is the purest form of visionary leadership. Grand ideas. Compelling narrative. The ability to see a future that no one else can yet see and to talk about it in a way that makes people want to follow.
The Dreamer’s superpower is inspiration. Their shadow side, and every archetype has one, is that inspiration without architecture is just optimism with good branding.
The Dreamer doesn’t think in seats. They don’t ask which roles are empty because they assume the energy of the vision will fill the gaps. They hire people who validate the vision rather than people who carry what the vision can’t. And when things don’t execute, the Dreamer often concludes the vision wasn’t communicated clearly enough. So they communicate it again. Louder.
I’ve watched brilliant Dreamers talk their organizations into momentum, only for that momentum to stall because nobody built the operational infrastructure to sustain it. The vision wasn’t the problem. The self-awareness was.
Here’s the hard part. Most Dreamers think they’re in Seat Two.
Seat Two: The Architect Visionary
The Architect Visionary carries the same fuel as the Dreamer. The vision is real. The direction is clear. The ability to see around corners and translate market need into organizational direction is genuine.
But the Architect Visionary has one thing the Dreamer doesn’t. They know what they are. And they know what they aren’t.
Before I took on my current role at the advisory firm, I had a vision for building a service line that didn’t exist within the firm. I could see exactly what it needed to be. I could see the market need, the client pain, and the gap that nobody was filling. I was certain about the direction.
I was nervous about the execution. And I want to be honest about that nervousness for a second, because I think it’s the most important part of this story. I didn’t walk in with a polished plan born from confidence. I turned to trusted frameworks such as the Four Disciplines of Execution, the Objectives and Key Results methodology, and the 12 Week Year. I didn’t go back to these frameworks because I was 100 percent certain of exactly what I needed to do, but rather because I knew that to combat imposter syndrome, this is what I needed to do to stave off that feeling.
And if you’ve spent any time with this show, you know I’ve talked about imposter syndrome before. But what I haven’t said before is this: the imposter feeling and the Architect behavior happened at the same time. I was reading the methodology books and doubting myself at the same time. Those two things were not in conflict. The doubt was the reason for the methodology. I knew I needed a structural container for my vision, or it would stay a vision.
That’s the Architect Visionary move. Not the absence of fear. The presence of a plan despite the fear.
I also knew something else. I knew I cast wide. I’m the keynote speaker, not the panel speaker. I run three podcasts. I travel. I spray value across every room and platform I can reach because that’s my orientation to the world. I generate. I communicate. I build relationships broadly and let the vision do the work of attracting the right people.
I also knew that broad orientation meant I wasn’t a fit for one of the most critical seats on my team. I needed someone who goes deep. Someone who owns a handful of relationships and drives the majority of their revenue from that focused attention. Someone who understands the heart and soul of a client in a way that requires sustained presence, not broadcast energy.
I needed to hire my complement. Not my clone.
And that is the defining move of the Architect Visionary. You don’t hire people who make you feel validated. You hire people who carry what you can’t.
Within 30 seconds of my first conversation with the person I eventually brought on to help me run sales, my gut told me she was the one. She told me she had three clients she could bring with her if I hired her. She did. She has what I don’t. She focuses deep where I cast wide. She builds the kind of relationships that drive sustained revenue from a concentrated base of trust. That’s not to say that I don’t have those types of relationships as well, but I knew enough to know that what was needed was both of us with our distinct approaches to attack the market. My love of educating massive numbers of people is where I shine brightest, and she definitely does not prefer that approach. She executes. She understands clients in a way I admire and don’t replicate.
I want to really be clear about this important point: hiring her didn’t happen because I lacked confidence, but rather because I was honest with myself.
That’s Architect Visionary thinking applied to the highest-stakes decision a leader can make.
Seat Three: The Colonel
The Colonel doesn’t originate the vision. That’s not a limitation. That’s the point.
The Colonel is operationally brilliant in a way that most Visionaries, Dreamers, and Architects alike are not wired to be. The Colonel understands the numbers, the market mechanics, the team dynamics, and the specific sequence of decisions that turn a compelling direction into a functioning organization. The Colonel assembles the right people, removes the roadblocks, and builds what the Architect designed.
Early in my career, I worked for someone I’ll call my Colonel. He gave me the best onboarding I’ve ever experienced. He taught me the technical foundation of the work we were doing, the bits and bytes, the mechanics of a product I was going to be selling, at a depth that nobody else had bothered to give me. He didn’t have to do that. He chose to.
And then he stepped back and watched me run.
What he gave me wasn’t just knowledge. It was credibility. With his operational foundation underneath my visionary instincts, I could sell the vision of what the product could do in a way that resonated because it was grounded. I wasn’t selling air. I was selling something I understood at the level of the person who built it, even though I wasn’t the person who built it.
That’s the Colonel at their best. Not just executing the vision, but identifying the people around them who carry it forward and deliberately investing in building their foundation.
Here’s what organizations miss about the Colonel. They often promote Colonels into Visionary roles because Colonels are so competent, so indispensable, so clearly excellent that the organization assumes they should lead at the top. And sometimes that works. But often it doesn’t, because the Colonel’s genius lies in making a vision operational, not in generating it. Promoting a Colonel to a Visionary seat doesn’t create a better Colonel. It creates a frustrated executive and an empty seat that nobody knows is missing.
Seat Four: The Executor
The Executor is where the rubber meets the road. This is the person who builds and delivers. Not generates, not operationalizes, not translates. Builds. Delivers.
The Executor doesn’t need to own the why. They need to own the how, completely, reliably, and with a level of focus that the Visionary and the Colonel often cannot sustain because their attention is always being pulled toward the horizon or the organizational layer above them.
The Executor needs two things to thrive: clarity and trust. Give them clear direction, the authority to carry it out, and an excellent Executor will consistently outperform expectations. Micromanage them or leave them without a clear framework, and you will lose them, either physically or psychologically.
The person I brought in to help me run sales for my service line is an Executor in the most complimentary sense of that word. She executes at a level I cannot match in her lane. But she’s also grown way beyond that original seat, which is worth naming, because great Executors often develop Colonel instincts over time. The seats are not ceilings. They’re starting points.
The Mirror Question
So here’s where I want to leave you.
Most leadership conversations ask: What kind of leader are you? I want to ask something sharper.
Which seat are you actually in? Not which seat do you want to be in? Not which seat your title implies. Not which seat you’d describe yourself as sitting in at a dinner party. Which seat are you actually in when the pressure is on, and the decisions are real, and the gap between your vision and your execution becomes visible?
And then the harder question: does your organization know which seats are empty?
Because the most common leadership failure I’ve observed is not incompetence, it’s a misplacement. Dreamers in Architect seats, wondering why nothing executes. Colonels in Visionary roles, wondering why they feel creatively suffocated. Executors with no Colonel above them, running hard in a direction nobody has clearly defined.
The Four Seats framework doesn’t tell you which seat is best. There is no best seat. Every seat is critical. Every empty seat costs the organization something it can’t easily measure until it’s already lost.
What the framework does is give you the language to have an honest conversation, first with yourself and then with your team, about who is sitting where and whether the right people are in the right seats.
I read those methodology books again before walking into my firm on the first day to prepare. But I also read them because, somewhere beneath the imposter syndrome, was a clear-eyed understanding of exactly which seat I was in and exactly which seats I needed to fill around me. That self-awareness wasn’t confidence. It was honesty. And in my experience, honesty about what you are and what you aren’t is the foundation of every functional leadership team.
The Dreamer thinks they’re in Seat Two. The Architect Visionary knows which seat they’re actually in.
Which one are you?
