The Leader Nobody Notices: 6 Leadership Lessons from Jay Jacobson

These lessons come from a conversation I had with Jay Jacobson on The Learning to Lead Show.

What does your leadership look like when nobody is watching?

Sit with that for a second. Because I've learned that the most enduring leaders I've ever met aren't the ones who announce themselves. They're the ones who quietly do the work, day after day, until, in the moments that actually matter, their character is already there waiting.

That's why I wanted to share what I took from my conversation with Jay Jacobson, a funeral home director, entrepreneur, leadership consultant, and author of Lead by Legendary Example. Jay has spent four decades on the front lines of some of the most emotionally charged, high-stakes moments any family ever experiences.

He testified before the U.S. Senate on behalf of small family funeral businesses. He helped coordinate the response to the United 232 crash in Sioux City, a mass casualty event that became the model for the national DMORT program. He has mentored hundreds of young people, and he's still up at 4 a.m. reading.

Here are six of his most powerful lessons.

Jay Jacobson doesn't fit neatly into any one category. He's a funeral home director of many decades, a profession that puts him on the front lines of some of the most emotionally charged, high-stakes moments in any family's life. He's an entrepreneur who runs his own bakery and cookie business. He's a leadership consultant who helps organizations develop leaders that endure. And he's the author of Lead by Legendary Example, a book built around six pillars and a ten-week leadership development program that anyone can run with their team.

His leadership education began the way the best ones do, without anyone calling it that. A paper route at nine years old. A lawn mowing business. A job installing phones for a telephone company. His first boss at the phone company taught him something his father never had the patience for: how to teach slowly, carefully, without shame.

He began to see that leadership wasn't just about directing people toward outcomes. It was about how you treated people along the way.

Then came the funeral home. The day after high school graduation, he walked in and never left. What he found there was a vocation that demanded everything: integrity, presence, service, composure, and the ability to care for people in their most vulnerable hours without ever making it about yourself.

"You are a leader because of all the things that you have done and the manner in which you have conducted yourself. Otherwise, it's just a title."

Along the way, Jay testified before the United States Senate on behalf of Iowa funeral directors during a hearing designed to scapegoat the industry, which threatened thousands of small family businesses. He helped coordinate the response to the United Airlines Flight 232 disaster in Sioux City, a mass casualty event that killed 112 people and required dozens of competing funeral directors to collaborate in ways they never had before.

That response became the model for what is now the national DMORT program. And he has spent decades mentoring young people, hiring the most active, most committed high school students he could find, and giving them the room to lead themselves.

Jay is 65 years old. He gets up at four in the morning to read. He bakes cookies and listens to audiobooks. He mentors junior high boys about the choices that shape character before pressure arrives. What he's built, a life spent invisible on purpose in some of the most significant moments of people's lives, and visible, loudly and publicly, when staying quiet would have been easier, is a life of legendary example.

Jay opens his book with a statement that functions less like a premise and more like a conviction: leadership is not declared. It is lived.

He didn't arrive at that line in a classroom. He arrived at it by watching people with titles fail, managers and owners who spoke the language of leadership, presented themselves as leaders, but whose actions didn't match their words. People who would be one thing to your face and something entirely different behind your back. Early in his career, Jay learned that the gap between stated character and demonstrated character is where trust goes to die.

Titles can get temporary compliance. But you can only lead by title so long before people see through it. What creates real followership is the daily, consistent demonstration of who you are: the vision you carry, the integrity you show, the service you render. When the moment of crisis arrives, the leader doesn't have to announce themselves. Everyone already knows.

"You are a leader because of all the things that you have done and the manner in which you have conducted yourself. Otherwise, it's just a title."

Reflect: What are you demonstrating today?

Not what are you saying. Not what title is on your door.

What are the people around you watching you do, and what is it teaching them about what leadership actually looks like?

Jay's chapter on integrity carries a line worth underlining: pressure reveals integrity more clearly than success ever does.

In July 1989, a DC-10 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa. Of the 296 people on board, 112 did not survive. Jay, in his early thirties, was among the funeral directors called to respond. In normal circumstances, these men and women were competitors. They didn't share trade secrets. But this was not a normal circumstance.

What emerged from that tragedy was something unexpected: a model. Funeral directors who had never worked together built a system from scratch in a National Guard hangar, a functioning morgue, a protocol for working with the FBI and FAA, a process for managing families while keeping the press at a respectful distance. That collaboration became the foundation for the modern DMORT program.

A few years later, Jay was invited to represent Iowa funeral directors at what he was told would be a cordial Senate hearing. When he arrived, he discovered the hearing had been designed to scapegoat his industry.

Sitting before two U.S. senators, Jay did something that required a different kind of courage: he called out his own senator, a man he respected, for sitting on misleading testimony. It made the paper. That wasn't the goal. The goal was to target the thousands of funeral directors whose small family businesses would have suffered under regulations based on false evidence.

Different crises. One consistent theme: integrity doesn't wait until conditions are comfortable. It shows up when the stakes are real.

"I do remember where I'm at. And my senator works for me."

Reflect: Think about a moment in the last 90 days when pressure revealed something about your character, for better or worse.

What did it show you?

This might be the most counterintuitive lesson Jay has learned in four decades of funeral service, and it applies far beyond his industry: when you've done your job perfectly, nobody notices you.

Jay trains his young funeral directors with exacting standards: dark suit, white shirt. No exceptions. Not because he's rigid about fashion, but because the moment someone on his team stands out for their appearance, attention shifts from the family to the staff. That is a failure.

He trains his team to maintain eye contact with each other across the room so they can communicate without words, a glance, a gesture, or a nod. They stay close enough to be immediately available. Far enough that families don't register their presence. The entire operation is designed to be felt, not seen.

Think about what that demands of a leader. It requires the willingness to work hard, execute at a high level, and then step back so the person you're serving can be at the center of the experience. No credit. No applause. Just the work done right and a family who leaves having felt cared for.

"If you've done it right, nobody will notice. You are almost invisible in the room."

Reflect: Are you leading to be noticed, or leading to serve?

What would it look like this week to be so good at your work that the people you serve barely register your presence, but leave feeling completely cared for?

Jay describes presence as one of the most important and most costly disciplines a leader can practice. It's costly because it's exclusive. You cannot be fully present with a grieving family and also be checking your phone. You cannot be fully present at your son's football game and also be prepared to receive the call that just came in.

He has spent years helping small-town funeral directors think through something they'd never considered a leadership issue: answering services. The instinct of a dedicated small-town director is to answer every call personally. That feels like service. But Jay challenges the assumption, because what looks like devotion is often just divided attention dressed up in commitment.

The solution isn't to choose work over family or family over work. It's to build systems that allow you to be fully present in each context when you're there. In the funeral home, that means each family conference gets your full attention until it's complete. At home, phones down, eyes up, and everything that was competing for your attention gets shut out for the evening.

If you want to lead the people in front of you, clients, employees, kids, give them the one thing that can't be outsourced or automated: your full presence.

"If you're at a ball game watching your son who's about to make the winning play and your phone rings, how can you be present with the family who's calling you? How can you be present with your son at the same time?"

Reflect: Where is your attention currently divided in ways that are costing the people in front of you?

What one boundary could you put in place this week to give them the gift of your full presence?

Jay watched the difference between collaboration and control play out in the most personal possible way: in his wife's medical care.

At the Mayo Clinic, every decision was made in the room with the patient and family present. Specialists spoke openly with each other and with the family. The whole team moved together toward the best outcome. It was, Jay says, a model of collaborative excellence.

Then she fell and broke her femur. Three hours from Mayo, they had to go local. The surgeon they encountered refused to talk to anyone. His position was clear: he was there to fix one bone. Jay told him the bone wasn't like everyone else's; she had endured twelve major surgeries, a hip replacement, and muscle grafts that had altered her anatomy. He needed to speak with the Mayo surgeon before proceeding. The surgeon refused.

Jay and his wife refused to allow the surgery. Eventually, the surgeon relented and made the call. But the standoff illustrated in stark relief what happens when a leader confuses control with competence.

Jay saw the same dynamic in Sioux City. What made the response work wasn't that one person had all the answers. It was that dozens of people, each with different pieces of the picture, trusted each other enough to share them. Each brought something. Together, they built something that became a national model.

"Collaboration is everything. No one person could have thought of all the issues. But everybody brought their little piece to the pie, and we were able to put together something repeatable."

Reflect: Where are you holding control that's cutting you off from the wisdom others could bring?

What would it look like to invite one more voice into a decision you've been making alone?

When Jay needed part-time help at his funeral home, someone to wash cars, mow grass, and handle general tasks, he made a hiring decision that puzzled most of his peers.

He hired the most active, most involved, most overscheduled high school students he could find. Not the kids with nothing else going on. The ones juggling sports, music, theater, AP classes, and every kind of community commitment. His peers thought this was backward. Jay had a different theory.

He told each student, "I need the cars cleaned before the funeral in three days. It's up to you when you do it. I need the grass mowed. I won't call you. You drive by here all the time. You'll see when it needs to be done. Just do it well, every time, as if it were for your own family."

Many times, the work got done at two in the morning. He never had to follow up with a single one of them.

The results bore out the theory. One of those students played in the NBA for years. One became a doctor. One worked in the White House. One is a Grammy-winning musician. None of them had much free time. All of them had the discipline, self-direction, and internal drive that come from having learned early how to carry multiple commitments without falling apart.

The best predictor of future performance is current behavior under constraint. A person who manages their time, honors their commitments, and delivers excellent work in the middle of a full life will do the same for you.

"Every single one of these busy kids got the jobs done. I never once had to go back to them and say, 'You didn't get it done.'"

Reflect: Who in your network is busy in the right way, already proving they can deliver under load?

Are you giving them the chance to deliver for you?

Jay Jacobson has run businesses, testified before the Senate, organized disaster response teams, and cared for thousands of families in their most difficult hours. He has been invisible, on purpose, in some of the most significant moments of people's lives. He has stood up, loudly and publicly, in moments when staying quiet would have been easier and safer.

And through it all, through the paper route and the football field and the Senate chamber and the hangar in Sioux City, he has been building the same thing: a life of legendary example. That's what it looks like when leadership isn't declared. It's just lived.

Pick one principle from this list, just one, and put it into practice this week. Not all six. Just the one your gut already knew you needed when you read it.

• Maybe it's the discipline of presence, phones down, eyes up, with one person who deserves it.
  
  

• Maybe it's inviting one more voice into a decision you've been controlling alone.
  
  

• Maybe it's asking, "What am I demonstrating today?" and adjusting one behavior accordingly.
  
  

Whatever it is, take the step. Then come back next week and take another one. You can do this.

Now go out this week with a humble curiosity to learn, grow, and lead with influence, taking your team to the next level!

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• Lead by Legendary Example by Jay Jacobson
  
  

• Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, et al.
  
  

• Wake Up Calls by Lisa Baue
  
  

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (not a leadership book, but the kind of book that keeps you curious)
  
  

• LinkedIn

• Website