[notacoward]

> your job is still to help them do it their way

Mostly I agree with everything you say, especially about needing followers before you can lead, but I think this part deserves more discussion. At staff level (if not slightly before), "help the company" and "do it their [historical] way" are often not the same thing. As I said in another sub-thread, at that level you're hired to bring knowledge and skills and perspective that the org doesn't already have (or have enough of). Unlike lower levels, pulling in some direction is part of the job in this case. I think EMs at all levels understand this and often support it quite well. The problem I've seen is other high-level engineers who never knew anything but the current way and believe that it's generally the only way (except of course for the one part they personally understand and want to change). This sometimes leads to hiring people and then thwarting their efforts to do what they were hired for.

> uses a lot of political capital > ... > optimizing for the best performance reviews

That's the problem. These two should be aligned. You should reward what you want to see more of, and I think people using their best professional judgment qualifies. Relying on the continual presence of people who will sacrifice their own career/financial progress to make needed change (as I mentioned in another sub-thread) is not an effective or ethical strategy. I won't even say whether I believe I'm in that category myself, but I certainly saw other people who got tired of lying down across barbed wire so other people could run past them.