LEADER OR GURU? Mapping Career Progression Along Two Parallel Paths

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Imagine realizing that the management role you worked so hard to earn isn’t the work you want to keep doing. You miss being closer to operations, solving difficult problems, and applying the expertise that helped you get promoted. Another role could put those strengths to better use, but one question keeps getting in the way: “Will everyone think I couldn’t handle leadership?”

That's a vulnerable question, isn't it? When choosing work that suits you better feels like a reputational risk, I get curious about what career progression has come to mean. If people leadership and expert leadership are genuinely parallel paths, why would moving between them feel like going backward?

TWO PATHS WITH SOMEWHERE TO GO

People leadership offers the opportunity to build something beyond your individual contribution. You help others develop, create the conditions for a team to succeed, and take responsibility for decisions that affect people’s work. There can be enormous satisfaction in seeing a team accomplish something its members couldn’t have achieved individually.

Progression along this path involves changing responsibilities. Managing individual contributors differs from leading other managers, and leading a function requires a broader perspective again. Success depends increasingly on what you enable others to do.

The guru path develops a different form of leadership, rooted in deep expertise and judgment. Think of the person whose understanding helps others see what they’ve missed, who can untangle a difficult problem and ask the powerful question that changes the whole discussion. Think Yoda, with better sentence structure.

When I say “guru,” I mean an expert whose contribution grows beyond their own technical output. Their knowledge informs consequential decisions. They help others develop sound judgment and recognize when established approaches need to be challenged, including approaches they developed themselves.

A guru might progress from resolving complex operational problems to shaping standards across the organization. Later, their expertise might influence their profession or industry. Their scope expands through the significance of the problems they help solve and the capability they build in others.

Both paths involve leadership, and both require continued development. Neither is inherently superior, and choosing one shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence that someone couldn’t succeed at the other. People may also combine these responsibilities or move between paths as their career interests and capabilities evolve.

THREE PERSPECTIVES ON TWO PATHS

Career choices are shaped by the opportunities available and the contributions organizations reward. That makes this worth exploring from three perspectives: choosing your own direction, developing others, and shaping the career system. You may recognize yourself in more than one.

IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING YOUR NEXT CAREER MOVE: Start with the work you want more responsibility for. It’s possible to enjoy mentoring colleagues without wanting formal accountability for their performance. It’s also possible to love your specialty and discover that developing a team gives you greater satisfaction than doing the technical work yourself. The distinction becomes harder to see when one path comes with better pay, more influence, and a title everyone recognizes as advancement. Ask yourself: If both paths offered comparable compensation and standing, which work would I want to spend my week doing?

Give yourself an honest picture of both. People leadership includes the pleasure of helping someone flourish and the obligation to address problems you’d both rather avoid. Expert leadership includes the satisfaction of mastering difficult work and the responsibility to make that knowledge useful to people who may see things differently.

If you’re already managing people and questioning your fit, resist drawing a sweeping conclusion from one difficult role. Consider whether the problem is the work itself, the conditions surrounding it, or skills you haven’t yet had the opportunity to develop.

If you consistently prefer expert work, take that preference seriously. You don’t have to keep pursuing management just because you’ve demonstrated that you can do it. Examine the specific role you’re considering: would it give you the opportunity to apply your strengths to work you value, with responsibilities and rewards you’re willing to accept?

When discussing a possible transition, explain what you’re moving toward: the problems you want to take on and how your experience will help you contribute, rather than what you want to move away from. Your management experience may help you explain how your operational expertise can serve the wider organization. You can’t control everyone’s interpretation, but you can give them a clearer account of your intentions than “I’m going back.”

IF YOU'RE A LEADER DEVELOPING OTHERS: A strong performer’s next step can start to feel obvious, especially when they resemble an earlier version of you. Before recommending your own path, find out what attracts them to the work ahead. “What interests you about managing people?” will usually reveal more than “Would you like a promotion?”

Listen just as carefully when someone expresses a preference for expertise. What responsibilities are they ready to take on? Where else in the organization could their expertise make a meaningful difference?

Talent reviews offer another opportunity to examine these questions. In a nine-box talent review, HR and business leaders place employees on a grid using assessments of current performance and future potential to inform development and succession planning. Those conversations can shape the opportunities someone is offered, including how others see their future in management or expertise.

That makes “Potential for what?” an essential question. A person’s limited interest in managing people tells us something about their aspirations. It doesn’t establish the limit of their future contribution. Before deciding where someone could go, we need to understand both their capabilities and what they want to develop.

We also need to keep expert progression demanding and accountable. Being highly knowledgeable doesn’t excuse poor collaboration, and becoming everyone’s indispensable problem-solver can constrain a team’s capability. A credible guru path should help people extend their impact, including making others better equipped to do the work.

IF YOU'RE SHAPING THE CAREER PROGRESSION SYSTEM: The real test of parallel paths comes when someone chooses between them. Can an accomplished expert continue advancing without acquiring direct reports? Can a manager move into an expert role and retain standing appropriate to their contribution? Look at what your organization actually rewards.

Suppose a specialist advises on decisions carrying significant operational risk but is excluded from the discussions where the options take shape. Their expertise is valued, but their influence is restricted. If meaningful salary progression also depends on moving into the leadership stream, the message becomes clearer: expertise will only take you so far.

Under those conditions, choosing management may reflect the rewards available rather than a preference for people leadership.

Equal standing doesn’t require identical salaries for every expert and manager. It requires a defensible way to recognize the scope and value of different contributions, with meaningful opportunities to develop along both paths. It also requires visible examples. People need to see experts whose careers continue to grow and managers who have changed direction without becoming cautionary tales.

A strong career progression system needs language that reflects the opportunities it offers. Calling a move “back to operations” can suggest retreat, even when someone is taking on complex problems that affect the entire business. If we want people to move toward work where they can contribute most, we need to recognize that choice as a legitimate expression of ambition.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Choose the perspective most relevant to you and make space for a conversation you might otherwise postpone.

• IF YOU’RE CONSIDERING YOUR NEXT CAREER MOVE: Reflect on this question: What do I hope a people leadership role will give me, and which of those things could I also pursue through the guru path? Consider what attracts you to the work itself and what depends on the opportunities and rewards attached to it.

• IF YOU’RE A LEADER DEVELOPING OTHERS: At your upcoming 1:1s, move beyond asking about the next role. Ask each direct report: “As you look ahead, what would you like people to rely on you for, and how could we build your career around that?” Explore both paths before assuming which one would best support their aspirations.

• IF YOU’RE SHAPING THE CAREER PROGRESSION SYSTEM: Share this article as a starting point for a discussion at the leadership table. Ask: “If one of our strongest people leaders chose to pursue the guru path, what would our response reveal about whether we genuinely value both?” Test your answer against actual career moves and the opportunities those people received afterward.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

DO YOU FEEL LIKE A FRAUD? How the Imposter Response Changes As You Rise

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Has this ever happened to you: You walk out of a meeting convinced you sounded like an idiot, only to have someone tell you how valuable your contribution was. You suspect they’re just being generous. You were there. You heard yourself.

Or someone challenges your recommendation, and suddenly you’re defending it with everything you're worth, far more fiercely than it probably deserves. And you know you could reconsider, but now it feels like your credibility is on trial.

The fear of being exposed can make us react in seemingly opposite ways: hold back or double down. It can follow us through promotions, borrow from our strengths, and become harder to recognize as we gain authority. By then, other people may be working around a fear we haven’t yet admitted to ourselves.

The imposter response changes as leadership demands change. And the fear of being exposed can show up as hesitation in one leader and excessive certainty in another. Getting promoted doesn’t settle the question of whether you belong. Sometimes, it simply raises the stakes.

Imagine two leaders preparing for a difficult discussion. One rehearses her recommendation repeatedly, then introduces it with, “This might be a stupid idea, but…” The other arrives with a firm position and pushes back against every question. He’s determined that nobody will see him hesitate.

They look very different. Yet both could be wrestling with the same fear: What happens when people discover I’m not as capable as they think?

We tend to recognize the imposter response when someone minimizes their accomplishments or doubts their qualifications. It’s harder to spot when it arrives wearing authority and insisting on the last word.

WHAT ARE WE RESPONDING TO?

In my book, Coaching Life, I describe the imposter response as the fear of being found out, despite evidence of our capability. We explain away accomplishments as luck, good timing, or other people overestimating us. Somehow, our successes never quite count as proof.

I prefer the term “imposter response” instead of the familiar “imposter syndrome.” The original researchers called it the “impostor phenomenon,” but “syndrome” became the popular label, making the experience sound like a disorder. I think that “response” better captures what I want us to explore: what makes us feel exposed, and what we do to protect ourselves when that happens. It directs attention toward what we’re experiencing and the choices we make in how we respond.

There’s also a useful distinction between our inner critic and our imposter response. Our inner critic is the voice inside most of us that judges us. Our imposter response is preoccupied with how to avoid the shame of being exposed.

Looking at the imposter response through the lens of leadership, our efforts to avoid feeling exposed can create extra work for the people we lead. It can weaken their trust in our judgment and make them reluctant to tell us what we need to hear.

THE PROMOTION CHANGES THE QUESTION

Early in our careers, it's pretty easy to demonstrate our competence. We know how to do the work, and we can point to what we’ve produced. As we move into leadership, it gets harder to point to something and say, “I did that.” More of our contribution comes through other people’s work, and it can take months to see whether a decision paid off. We’re still contributing, but the evidence may look very different from how we used to prove that we were good at our jobs.

What we fear people will discover about us can change, too. A new manager might worry about leading former peers, while a senior executive fears being asked a question they can’t answer. Here are some ways those fears can show up at different leadership levels or when we enter unfamiliar territory.

• FIRST LEADERSHIP ROLE: “Who am I to lead people who know more than I do?” We might cling to being the expert, do work that belongs to others, or avoid giving difficult feedback because we doubt our authority to give it.

• LEADING OTHER MANAGERS: “If I’m not directly involved, how will anyone see my value?” We might oversee work too closely or insert ourselves into decisions our managers are equipped to make. Delegating can feel like making ourselves irrelevant.

• SENIOR EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP: “I’m expected to have answers I don’t have.” We might overprepare to avoid being caught off guard, conceal uncertainty, or delay a decision because we’re afraid of getting it wrong. We might also project more certainty than the evidence warrants.

• ENTERING AN UNFAMILIAR ORGANIZATION OR MANDATE: “My previous success might not count here.” We might rush to prove our value before understanding what’s needed, copy the prevailing leadership style, or hold back a different perspective because we’re unsure how it will be received.

These are possible patterns, rather than a predictable progression. A seasoned executive can feel entirely capable leading a major transformation and suddenly fraudulent when presenting to a new board.

The underlying question is worth noticing: What do I believe I have to prove to deserve this role?

If the answer is “I must always know more than my team,” each capable person we hire becomes a potential threat. If it’s “I must be indispensable,” successful delegation becomes uncomfortable. We might even pull work back just as someone else begins to handle it well.

I explored a related tension in LEADING EXPERTS?: our responsibility for the work can exceed our personal expertise. How we handle that gap becomes part of the leadership others experience.

DOUBT DOESN’T ALWAYS LOOK DOUBTFUL

You can’t reliably judge someone’s self-trust by how confident they appear. A forceful delivery can be an attempt to conceal considerable fear, while someone who acknowledges uncertainty may be quite comfortable with their own capability.

Our responses can also borrow from our strengths. If we’re driven and action-oriented, we might work harder, take charge faster, and become increasingly controlling. If relationships matter deeply to us, we might look for reassurance or avoid a necessary conversation because someone’s disappointment would feel like a verdict on our worth.

An analytical leader might keep researching until there’s no possibility of being wrong. Someone who usually thinks out loud might fill every pause, afraid that silence will suggest they have nothing useful to contribute.

Thoroughness can become a delay that everyone else has to accommodate. Helpfulness can become taking over. Determination can make us remarkably difficult to advise.

None of these behaviors proves an imposter response is present. But they invite a better question: When I feel exposed, which of my strengths do I push beyond the point of being useful?

FEELING UNDESERVING CAN DISTORT THE EVIDENCE

There’s a trap here: once we believe we don’t belong, we can become unreliable interpreters of our own performance. Praise gets dismissed as kindness. A successful outcome gets credited entirely to the team, or to luck, with no acknowledgment of our contribution. One difficult meeting becomes evidence that the promotion was a mistake.

Feedback can become equally difficult to use. We may hear a specific development need as confirmation that we’re fundamentally unqualified. Or defend ourselves so strongly that we miss something we genuinely need to learn.

Accurate self-assessment requires room for both capability and limitation. “I handled that well” and “I need help with this” should be able to coexist without either cancelling the other out.

There's a caveat in all this: before we conclude that our confidence needs work, we need to ask what’s happening around us. Are we second-guessing ourselves because we lack experience, or is it really because our boss keeps overruling decisions we were authorized to make? Do we doubt our expertise because there’s a gap in our knowledge, or because our ideas are regularly dismissed until someone else repeats them?

Those circumstances call for different responses. We can work on self-trust while also challenging behavior that undermines it. If we treat every doubt as a personal shortcoming, we risk taking responsibility for conditions we should question, and trying to earn credibility from people who keep changing the requirements.

Starting from “I’m the problem” can prevent us from seeing any of those accurately. The useful inquiry is more specific: What evidence tells me I need to develop? What evidence shows I’m already capable? What conditions are making it harder to succeed?

WHEN OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TO HELP US FEEL CAPABLE

When our accurate self-assessment skills feel shaky, it feels like such a relief to get reassurance and a sense of control. We check, check again, request another revision, or step into a decision that someone else could've made. From our side, it feels like being responsible. From the team’s side, it becomes extra work they have to do to help settle our discomfort.

Imagine a director asking a manager to develop a recommendation. The manager does the work and presents a solid proposal. The director requests more detail, then another option, then another meeting. Sure, further analysis might be warranted, but suppose the real obstacle is that the director feels exposed approving something they couldn’t have developed themselves. That manager is now doing two jobs: solving the business problem and helping the director feel safe enough to accept the solution.

Over time, people may learn to praise an idea before questioning it, or seek approval they don’t need. They let the leader to make the final “improvement” because it feels safer. Their attention shifts toward managing the leader’s emotional needs along with the work.

We all need support. The concern is whether people can disagree with us or work independently without having to repair our sense of worth afterward. A useful pause before intervening is: What will this improve for the work? What relief am I hoping it will give me?

Sometimes both answers are legitimate. Sometimes that second question explains an intervention the work never needed.

HOW MUCH PROOF IS ENOUGH?

The demand to keep proving ourselves can be difficult to satisfy. We succeed, then decide the assignment wasn’t challenging enough, or that we simply got lucky. We receive recognition, then question whether the person really understands our work.

When we're in the habit of disqualifying the evidence, yet another achievement won’t settle the case. That’s why the developmental work needs to go beyond collecting reassurance. We can practice assessing our contribution fairly, naming a genuine gap without turning it into a personal indictment, and allowing others to contribute without interpreting their capability as evidence against our own.

This may mean asking a question we think we should already know the answer to. It may mean accepting a good recommendation while acknowledging that we need help understanding part of it. Or letting someone finish a task without adding our fingerprints.

Those choices can feel uncomfortable. They also allow the work to proceed without requiring everyone to participate in our ongoing audition. Our teams need access to our judgment, but if we’re using that judgment primarily to defend our credibility, how much of it is available for the responsibilities we were hired to carry?

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Choose one recent leadership moment when you felt you had something to prove. Use the questions from this article to examine that moment in writing. Stay with that situation throughout, so you can trace how your fear influenced what you did.

1. WHAT FELT AT RISK? What happens when people discover I’m not as capable as they think? What did you imagine would happen if you couldn’t answer the question, needed help, or made a mistake? Then answer: What do I believe I have to prove to deserve this role?

2. HOW DID YOU PROTECT YOURSELF? When I feel exposed, which of my strengths do I push beyond the point of being useful? Describe what you actually did. Perhaps you kept checking, defended a weak recommendation, or took over work someone else could handle. What did that require from the people around you?

3. DOES YOUR ASSESSMENT HOLD UP? What evidence tells me I need to develop? What evidence shows I’m already capable? What conditions are making it harder to succeed? Give each question equal attention. Notice whether you can readily list your shortcomings but struggle to acknowledge your contribution, or whether you’re blaming yourself for circumstances you need to address.

4. WHAT WILL YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME? Before acting, ask: What will this improve for the work? What relief am I hoping it will give me? Choose one response to practice the next time you feel exposed. Make it specific: “I’ll ask for the explanation I need instead of pretending I understand,” or “I’ll leave the decision with its owner, even if being less involved makes me uncomfortable.” Afterward, compare what you feared with what actually happened. What did you learn, and did your different response give someone else more freedom to do their job?

You don’t have to feel fully confident before changing how you lead. You can start by noticing when your need to feel capable is making it harder for someone else to shine.

If you’d like support exploring how your imposter response affects your leadership, reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at leslierohonczy.com.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

WHAT IF I DON’T WANT MORE? When Someone Else’s Idea of Success Undermines Our Own

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Every day, strangers contact me with exciting news about how much bigger my business could be. Urgent, sensational promises of ten thousand monthly leads, thousands of new customers, and a calendar overflowing with bookings. I try to imagine accommodating even a fraction of that, and wonder what would happen to the life I love and have deliberately built for myself and my family.

I understand the appeal of growing a business, but somewhere in these uninvited, enthusiastic offers is an assumption nobody has bothered to check: do I actually WANT the kind of success they’re selling? That’s the question those pitches have made so obvious for me. Their promised outcome would interfere with the reasons I chose this work in the first place.

What happens when someone else’s idea of success undermines our own?

MY INBOX WOULD LIKE A WORD

Some of these strangers have apparently examined my website, YouTube channel, LinkedIn page, and social media presence in considerable detail. They send screenshots covered in red circles and annotations, as though a formal investigation has just revealed alarming deficiencies in my professional existence.

This red circle brigade is very concerned about my growth. They offer systems to generate hot leads while I sleep, courses to scale my business, and services that promise to fill my calendar, apparently on the assumption that an unfilled hour represents a shameful commercial tragedy.

Nobody has asked what I’m actually trying to build. What, exactly, would I do with 10,000 leads a month? I’m a one-woman band most of the time. I answer inquiries from potential coaching clients, have exploratory conversations, and work out whether we’re a good fit. Even a fraction of that promised volume would create more work than I have the capacity to accommodate.

My coaching practice is healthy, and I’m grateful to work with some amazing Canadian corporations, executives, and senior leaders. Serving them well takes dedicated time and attention, and I’m careful to protect that. If these pitches delivered everything they promised, I’d spend most of my days stick-handling inquiries and less time doing the coaching I love. I’m not willing to buy myself that problem.

WOULD YOU WANT WHAT THEY’RE OFFERING?

Your version of this probably doesn’t involve the promise of thousands of coaching clients. But you may recognize the assumption that ‘more must be better,’ whether anyone has asked what you want or not.

Perhaps you’ve been encouraged to pursue a bigger role because you’re seen as ready for it. You might agree you’re capable, but wonder whether you want all the travel and additional responsibilities. Or maybe you’d like to go deeper into your work and grow your expertise, while the career conversations keep steering you toward what comes next. The offer may be thoughtful and well-intended, and you may even want it, but being capable of taking something on doesn’t necessarily mean it belongs in your life.

Over my career, I’ve spent plenty of time imagining what it would feel like to run my days to my own cadence. When I left my job as Corporate Coach for EDC in 2023, I dove into my consulting firm the very next day. I wasn’t looking for much downtime between chapters, but I was looking for a different relationship with work.

Being my own boss gave me more control. I still had to make deliberate choices about how much work I took on and what I wanted to have space for alongside it.

My work week now starts at 10 a.m. and finishes at 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Along with one-on-one executive coaching, delivering keynotes, and facilitating workshops, I protect time to think about my clients’ development and prepare their programs. I also write these LinkedIn articles, and collaborate with other coaches. And my beloved Fridays belong to the recording studio: full days of creativity, music production, play, and picnic lunches as we finish album number ten. There’s also room for time with family and friends, and weekends at the cabin with my husband.

A fully booked calendar is not my end game! I want meaningful work I can dedicate myself to wholeheartedly, within a life that has room for all the parts of it that I love. So far, none of those unsolicited business audits have accurately identified this priority, and I doubt they ever will. But it is crystal clear for me, and it guides my choices about the kind of clients I coach, the partners I collaborate with, and the business services I invest in.

WHAT DOES SUCCESS REQUIRE FROM YOU NOW?

Our choices can sometimes feel hard to untangle. Perhaps you want more time at home, but the role that keeps you away also provides financial security for your family. Or you care deeply about the work but wonder how much longer you can sustain the demanding pace. You can value what your career has made possible and still want something to change. What would you want your working life to look like now?

There’s still value in examining which ambitions remain yours. Do you want the work that comes with this next role? Does the opportunity fit with what matters most to you now, or are you pursuing something you used to want out of habit? You might decide that more is exactly what you want. You might also discover that you’ve been pursuing an outcome that no longer fits, largely because you haven’t given yourself permission to reexamine it.

For me, knowing what I want must guide what I accept; otherwise, the promise I made to myself about my work-life balance gets broken one reasonable-sounding exception at a time. Protecting my boundaries means I ask what a yes will displace. Saying yes to another commitment might mean less time for my client work, or giving up a Friday in the studio. Declining it might mean losing revenue.

Sometimes I’ll decide a trade-off is worthwhile. I want to make that decision consciously, particularly when I’m excited about an opportunity. Work we love can expand just as easily as work we feel obliged to do. I still want to grow my coaching business and do work that makes a difference. But I also want those studio picnic lunches.

So when the next uninvited intruder offers to flood my business with leads, I’ve decided to send them a link to this article. Just not on a Friday. I have plans.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

PRACTICE: BEFORE YOU SAY YES

Set aside 15 minutes with a decision you’re facing: an opportunity, a request, or a commitment you’re considering renewing. Choose something you feel you should want, but haven’t fully examined.

1. DESCRIBE THE LIFE THAT COMES WITH IT

Imagine you’ve said yes, and six months have passed. The initial excitement has settled. Write about an ordinary week: what occupies your attention, when you finish working, and what you have energy for afterward. Then ask yourself: If nobody knew I’d accepted this opportunity, how much would I still want it?

2. MAKE THE TRADE-OFF VISIBLE

Complete these sentences as specifically as you can:

• Saying yes would give me…

• To make room for it, I would have to reduce, postpone, or give up…

• I’m willing to accept that cost because…

• The part I’m struggling to admit is…

Notice where you feel enthusiasm, reluctance, or relief. What might that reaction be telling you that your practical analysis hasn’t captured?

3. CHOOSE YOUR TERMS

Your answer may be yes, no, or “under different conditions.” If saying no isn’t a realistic option, what could you negotiate before accepting? Consider the scope, the timeline, or which existing responsibilities would need to come off your plate.

Write one concrete next step: a question to ask, a condition to negotiate, or a boundary to put in your calendar. If the sacrifice is temporary, set a date to review whether it’s still worthwhile.

Finish by completing this sentence: For this decision to fit my definition of success, I need…

Keep your answer somewhere visible so you can check it before you respond. This gives your own definition of success a voice in the decision.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD? Building Leadership Confidence Through Metacognition

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com 

I’ve been learning to play Mad World by Tears for Fears on the baritone ukulele. I've had this damned song as an earworm for months, so I thought, if I learned how to play it, maybe it’ll somehow magically resolve and finally leave me. Yeah, I see that my solution to hearing it constantly in my head is to practice it repeatedly out loud; a questionable strategy, for sure. But given the headlines lately, at least I’ve chosen an appropriate soundtrack to the news.

But sometimes it really feels like the world has gone mad, doesn't it? For Canadian leaders, tariff uncertainty and geopolitical upheaval collide with the organizational pressures already waiting on the calendar. You can start the morning wondering where the world is headed, then spend the afternoon approving a strategy that depends on where you've predicted the world is headed.

Somewhere between those two activities, a familiar question jangles in the background, with increasing volume: What if I make the wrong call?

In my executive coaching conversations, I see capable leaders hesitating to take up their full space. They have experience and valuable perspectives, but the possibility of being wrong feels so consequential that they hold back, and just when their perspectives and judgment are needed most.

The thought underneath can be painfully personal: Can I still be a good leader when I have no idea what happens next?

WHEN DID EVERY DECISION START FEELING CATASTROPHIC?

Some decisions carry substantial risk. No amount of positive thinking will make an exposed supply chain secure or restore funding that has evaporated.

But there’s another layer worth examining: the meaning we attach to making those decisions. “I don’t know whether this will work” can become “I shouldn’t recommend it.” And from there, it’s a short trip to “Maybe I’m no longer up to this job.” Notice the distance traveled. An uncertain outcome has become a judgment about your capability.

For some leaders, that activates an old rule: I earn my place by getting things right. Or a limiting belief: If I get this wrong, they’ll question whether I belong at this level. Others may be developing new rules in response to current conditions: With everything so unstable, I can’t afford a single mistake.

Those beliefs can sound responsible. But they set a standard that no human leader can be expected to meet. If you’re judging your fitness to lead by your ability to predict an unpredictable world, what evidence could ever convince you that you’re doing well?

METACOGNITION: A LEADERSHIP SUPERPOWER

University of Waterloo psychologist Igor Grossmann and co-author Samuel G. B. Johnson offer a useful perspective. In their 2025 paper, Cultivating Wisdom Through Metacognition: A New Frontier in Decision-Making Under Radical Uncertainty, they propose that becoming more aware of how we think, and learning to regulate that thinking, can help us approach uncertain situations more wisely. This includes recognizing the limits of our knowledge and considering perspectives beyond our own. Their work provides a foundation for the leadership practices I've developed and am offering here.

First, a definition: Metacognition means noticing and examining how you’re thinking, then adjusting your approach when needed. You might be evaluating a recommendation while also noticing: I’m dismissing this quickly because it challenges that position I defended last week. Or preparing to contribute while realizing: I’m waiting until I can make an argument nobody could possibly question. That awareness creates an opportunity to choose your next move.

There’s experimental evidence behind one practice in particular. In research involving 555 participants across experiments, Grossmann and colleagues found that practicing reflection from a distanced, third-person perspective promoted wiser reasoning about interpersonal challenges. Rather than asking, “Why am I so upset about this disagreement?” you might ask, “Why is [ your name ] reacting this way, and what might they be overlooking?” The benefits included greater intellectual humility and consideration of other perspectives. How can you put this into practice when a decision is waiting and your confidence is wobbling?

CATCH THE MOMENT BEFORE IT BECOMES YOUR RESPONSE

You probably wouldn't stop a heated discussion to announce that you’re conducting a metacognitive assessment (haven't your colleagues suffered enough jargon?). But what if you had a recognizable cue you could watch for, to remind you to check your thinking?

For example, you might notice yourself rehearsing a defense while someone is still speaking. Or you find yourself about to request another analysis, although you couldn't say how that additional information would change your recommendation. Or you’ve started writing an email explaining why a decision belongs to someone else, because you're feeling uncomfortable with the weight of the consequences if you're wrong.

A physical sensation, such as a tightening jaw or a heavy chest, can serve as a reminder too. It doesn’t diagnose what’s happening; it gives you a cue to go and look.

Ask yourself: “What am I assuming right now?” You may not have time for a full exploration. Even identifying the thought, "I’m assuming disagreement means they’ve lost confidence in me", can help you listen differently to the next sentence.

MAKE THE BELIEF SPECIFIC ENOUGH TO EXAMINE

“I’m overthinking” doesn’t give you much to work with. Try putting the underlying rule into words.

• “If I ask for help, they’ll question why I have this role.”

• “Changing my recommendation will make me look unreliable or flaky.”

• “Until the external situation settles, committing to anything is irresponsible.”

• “If this fails, it will prove I wasn’t ready.”

Then ask: “What does this belief have me doing, and what is that costing?”

The leader who believes asking for help exposes weakness may exclude precisely the expertise a decision requires. The leader determined never to appear inconsistent may keep defending a recommendation after its assumptions have changed.

As I explored in WHY EGO BELONGS IN THE C-SUITE, a more useful question to ask yourself is "What happens to my sense of self when my judgment is challenged?" You need enough confidence to contribute, while allowing that contribution to be examined.

The caution here is that some workplaces do punish candor or mistakes. If your belief reflects actual experience, it deserves a realistic response, perhaps a clearer decision mandate, or an explicit agreement about acceptable risk. Calling every concern a “limiting belief” would be a convenient way to ignore the conditions that leaders actually face.

BORROW YOUR PERSPECTIVE BACK

When the decision feels inseparable from your worth, try looking at it as though you were advising another capable executive. “If a respected colleague brought me this situation, what would I want them to consider?” Would you expect them to forecast every political development? Would you tell them that seeking a competing view disqualified them from leadership? Or would you help them examine the available evidence and decide what level of commitment it supports? That little shift can expose a double standard. We may allow other leaders to exercise judgment, while expecting ourselves to produce certainty.

This also extends the idea behind LEADERSHIP ALTITUDE. Sometimes the perspective you need includes seeing the way you’re interpreting the situation, and how that interpretation affects the people depending on you.

WHAT YOU NOTICE NEEDS SOMEWHERE TO GO

Awareness becomes useful when it changes a choice. Imagine you catch the thought: I can’t recommend this until I know it will succeed. Simply telling yourself to be more confident probably won’t help. You could instead ask: “What would make a recommendation responsible with the knowledge we have?”

Perhaps you need a limited pilot, a clear spending boundary, or agreement about what would trigger a review. Your recommendation might become: “Based on what we know, I recommend proceeding with the pilot. Our biggest unresolved assumption is customer demand. We’ll review it before committing further funding.” You’re taking up your leadership space and giving others something concrete to examine.

Likewise, if you notice that you’re defending a position to protect your reputation, you can choose a different response: “That challenges an assumption behind my recommendation. Let’s examine it before we go further.” The discomfort may remain, but you can make a more useful leadership move.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

For the next week, before you give a recommendation, respond to disagreement, or ask for more information, ask yourself three questions:

• What am I treating as a fact that may be an interpretation?

• What am I afraid this decision could say about me?

• What does my leadership responsibility require now?

Afterward, write down what you noticed and whether it changed your response. Your reflection can be brief, or you can go all the way to the lava; it's up to you.

Over time, you may see patterns, and be able to catch a familiar belief earlier, before it edits your contribution or turns a useful challenge into a personal threat.

I’ll keep working on Mad World, although I’m losing faith in my earworm-removal strategy. Meanwhile, the world will keep giving us reasons to doubt what happens next. Our job is to not turn them into reasons to doubt ourselves.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

LEADING EXPERTS? How to Lead Well When You Don’t Share Your Team’s Expertise

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Congratulations on the promotion. You’re now leading a group of people who know considerably more about their work than you do. You have solid leadership experience and a record of getting results, but somewhere between accepting the role and attending your first team meeting, a nagging question surfaces: “What happens when they realize how much I don’t know?”

Perhaps you’ve inherited an established team of specialists, or maybe you’re hiring people for expertise you don’t have. Either way, you’re now responsible for work you couldn’t personally step in and do.

Your team members may have questions, too. Will you understand what they need? Will they spend the next six months explaining their work to someone who then overrules them?

Those are reasonable concerns on both sides. How you respond will depend partly on what you believe you must know and prove, in order to earn their trust.

YOUR LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE DOESN’T EXEMPT YOU FROM LEARNING

You may have been on the receiving end of well-meaning reassurance offered to leaders in your position: “You don’t need to understand the work. You just need to lead the people.”

Sorry, but it’s more complicated than that. You need enough understanding to grasp the decisions you’re making and the consequences you’re accepting. You don’t need to become an engineer to lead the engineering function. You do, however, need to understand what it means when engineers warn that a deadline creates unacceptable risk. You also need the curiosity and humility to explore their concerns before committing them to work whose consequences you don’t fully understand.

The learning task is substantial, even for an experienced leader. You’re developing the knowledge your new responsibilities require, while relying on people whose judgment you’re still getting to know. People who will notice whether you build on what they’ve explained and apply it to later decisions, or not.

NOTICE WHAT YOU EXPECT YOURSELF TO PROVE

You can believe wholeheartedly in hiring people who know more than you do, and still feel uncomfortable when their expertise exposes a gap in your own understanding. Intellectually, you welcome their knowledge. Personally, you’d prefer that they didn’t see how much explaining you need.

That discomfort deserves your attention because it can shape your behavior before you even recognize what’s happening. You might offer an opinion before you’ve understood the problem, avoid a basic question, or insist on approving decisions your specialists are qualified and authorized to make.

Underneath those behaviors may be an expectation you haven’t examined: If I’m the leader, I should have the answer. I should be able to judge every recommendation. Important decisions should come through me.

Those expectations can follow an experienced leader into a new role, even when they’d never impose them on anyone else. You can understand the value of shared expertise and still measure your own worth by how often you’re needed.

Ego can enter through that gap. Wanting to contribute and earn respect is understandable. But when you feel compelled to prove your value in every discussion, your team may end up managing your need to feel knowledgeable, not just the work itself.

Imagine a specialist answering a question directly and thoroughly. You have nothing useful to add, but feel an urge to put your stamp on the answer anyway. Before speaking, consider: What would my contribution improve? What am I afraid my silence would suggest?

The same reflection applies to decisions. Are you retaining a decision because it requires your authority, or because letting someone else make it leaves you wondering what your role is?

You don’t need to criticize yourself for having these reactions. You do need to notice them early enough to choose how you respond. Sometimes that means asking the question you’re embarrassed to ask. Sometimes it means saying, “You have the expertise and authority to make this decision. What support do you need from me to make it?”

Your own development includes becoming comfortable with work progressing well without requiring your answer or approval. That creates more space for the responsibilities that do need your leadership.

FIND OUT WHAT THIS TEAM NEEDS FROM YOU

Imagine an experienced leader taking responsibility for a specialized Centre of Expertise team. At an early meeting, the team presents a difficult problem. The new leader listens, draws on a similar situation from a previous role, and suggests an approach that worked there. The team explains why it won’t work here. The leader offers a variation, and the discussion becomes increasingly strained.

Later, the leader wonders why the team seems resistant. The team wonders why someone with so little knowledge of their work is already prescribing solutions.

Perhaps two departments have given the team competing priorities, and neither will budge. Perhaps the specialists have repeatedly flagged a risk that hasn’t reached the person who can act on it. They may know how to do the work but lack the authority to move the boulder in the road that’s preventing it.

Before offering an answer, the leader could ask: “Where are you stuck, and what would be useful from me?”

Then comes the work of interpreting what you hear. If the team asks for more resources, what is driving the shortfall? If they need a decision, who has the authority to make it, and why hasn’t it happened? Your leadership experience helps you examine the conditions surrounding the work, even while you’re learning about the work itself.

You can also ask what they need you to preserve. An incoming leader who focuses exclusively on fixing things may disrupt relationships or practices that already serve the team well. “What’s working here that you’d be concerned about losing?” can reveal something a list of problems won’t.

These conversations help you develop a shared understanding of your role. You might say: “You’ll lead the technical recommendation. I’ll work with you to resolve the competing priorities and secure the decision with the Executive team. Let’s identify where you need my involvement and where it would slow you down.”

Your team can then assess your leadership through what you do with their expertise. Do you represent their concerns accurately? Do you resolve the competing priorities? When you make a commitment, do you follow through?

LEARN HOW TO ASSESS JUDGMENT

One of the harder questions in this transition is how to evaluate advice you can’t fully verify yourself. “Trust the experts” sounds straightforward until two experts disagree.

You’ll need to learn how your specialists arrive at their recommendations. Confidence and fluency can make advice sound persuasive, but they don’t establish its quality. A specialist who speaks cautiously may be recognizing complexities that someone else has overlooked.

Useful questions include:

• What options did you consider, and why are you recommending this one?

• Which assumptions matter most to your recommendation?

• Where would another qualified expert disagree with you and why?

• What evidence would cause you to reconsider?

• What independent review would be appropriate before we commit?

When experts disagree, ask them to identify precisely where their reasoning diverges. Are they relying on different evidence? Making different assumptions? Giving different weight to the same risks?

For example, one specialist may favor an approach because it offers greater reliability, while another favors an alternative because it can be implemented sooner. Understanding that difference helps you measure it against strategic direction, and to identify what needs further technical assessment before a leadership decision can be made.

Resist the temptation to side with whoever sounds most certain or confirms your initial preference or solution. Ask each person to explain in their own words what would have to be true for the other recommendation to make sense. Their answers can expose assumptions that would otherwise remain hidden.

For decisions with significant consequences, you may need another qualified person to assess the technical recommendation. Recognizing that need is part of exercising judgment. You remain responsible for ensuring the decision receives appropriate scrutiny, even when you can’t provide all of it yourself.

MAKE YOUR QUESTIONS EASIER TO ANSWER HONESTLY

Speaking of scrutiny, a new leader’s questions carry weight. Genuinely curious, powerful questions are one of the biggest contributions you can make as a newcomer to this team. But without the right framing, they could have the opposite effect. What feels like curiosity to you may sound like criticism to someone who doesn’t yet know or trust your intentions.

“Why do you do it that way?” can be a useful question. It can also sound like, “Please defend this ridiculous practice.” It helps if you explain what you’re trying to understand: “I’m learning how the work fits together. What led to this approach, and what constraints does it address?” That leaves space to discover that an apparently cumbersome process serves a legitimate purpose. It also makes it easier to ask the basic questions you might otherwise avoid for fear of looking uninformed.

Your fresh perspective may reveal outdated practices and assumptions others no longer question. But before proposing change, learn enough about the context to be able to distinguish needless complexity from the essential safeguards.

As I explored in Has Your Experience Become a Liability?, previous success can influence what we’re willing to consider. In a new field, or with a new team of experts, familiar solutions deserve examination before they become decisions or instructions.

BE CLEAR ABOUT WHERE YOUR AUTHORITY APPLIES

Respecting expertise doesn’t mean you have to agree with every recommendation. Your specialists may offer excellent advice within their discipline, but lack visibility into other considerations that you’re responsible for.

A technically strong proposal may need more resources than are available. A preferred solution may create unintended consequences elsewhere in the organization. An innovative project may be exciting but misaligned with the organization’s strategic direction. You may need to choose a workable option that leaves some people disappointed.

If you accept the technical advice but decide that another consideration takes precedence, say so. Avoid implying that the specialists’ analysis was wrong just because you chose a different course. You might offer: “I accept your assessment of the risk. Given our current constraints, I’m choosing this option, and I’ll take responsibility for that trade-off. Let’s agree on what we need to monitor and when we would revisit it.”

There will also be boundaries you can’t responsibly cross. A budget or deadline doesn’t erase professional standards or legal obligations. Part of your learning is understanding which constraints allow for discretion and which require qualified guidance.

This is another moment to pause and examine what you expect of yourself as a leader. Feeling responsible for the outcome can tempt you to take over decisions that belong elsewhere. Being clear about authority includes recognizing when your involvement is necessary (which is about the work) and when your discomfort (which is about you) is asking for more control.

As explored in Leadership Altitude, your attention needs to match the responsibilities of your role. Here, that means developing enough understanding to lead responsibly while allowing your specialists to exercise their full expertise.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

If you’ve recently taken responsibility for an expert team, choose one important decision you’ll face in the next few weeks. Write down what you understand well enough to judge, and where you’re relying on someone else’s expertise.

Before the conversation, ask yourself: What am I expecting myself to know or decide here, and is it realistic? Does that expectation actually belong to my role? Notice whether you’re preparing to learn or preparing to demonstrate how much you already know.

Arrange a conversation with the appropriate specialist and explain what you need to understand. Ask them to walk you through their reasoning, including uncertainties and alternatives. Then confirm your understanding: explain it back in your own words and invite them to correct you.

During the discussion, notice any urge to prove your value. What prompted it, and what did you do next? Consider whether your response helped you understand the issue or moved the conversation toward territory where you felt more comfortable.

Before deciding, ask: Have I understood enough to exercise my responsibility, and have we involved the expertise this decision requires? Afterwards, ask the team what was useful about your involvement and what would help next time.

You may never be able to do your specialists’ jobs, and that can take some getting used to. Your leadership contribution becomes clearer as you learn to work with their expertise without needing every answer or decision to establish your worth.

If you’re navigating this challenging transition, reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com. We can explore what your new role requires and where you can make the greatest leadership contribution.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

IS AI KILLING OUR CURIOSITY? Critical Curiosity & Leadership Judgment in the AI Age

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Have you ever noticed how tempting it is to accept an AI tool’s answer without questioning it? It looks and sounds so convincing, and heaven knows we’re all overloaded these days. Who has time to question something that already looks thoroughly thought through? After all, “AI checked it” can feel like permission to act.

But what did it check, against what information, and who examined the answer? Our curiosity needs to survive that moment, before the decision comes back to bite us in the butt.

I've noticed a common theme with many clients over the past six months. They talk about how quickly these convincing AI answers get accepted without challenge. With teams increasingly busy and expected to do more with less, an answer that looks and feels complete can be awfully tempting. Their concern, and mine too, is what happens to our human curiosity when we start accepting that appearance as enough.

Those conversations helped shape my newest keynote and interactive workshop, Critical Curiosity in the AI Age, which I developed for a senior leadership group I’m working with.

In the session, we discover where to find powerful questions, how to dial up our innate curiosity, and how to fine-tune the questions that help us decide if a recommendation actually holds up. We also explore how to help the person who’s bringing the recommendation forward do more of that thinking themselves, so they get better at spotting what needs checking before their next recommendation lands on your desk.

WHEN AN ASSUMPTION ACQUIRES A BUDGET

See if this scenario is familiar: customer satisfaction has declined, and a senior leader says, “We don’t have enough people answering customer inquiries.” It sounds reasonable. The team is busy, customers are unhappy, and hiring seems like a sensible response.

By the next meeting, it has become “our customer service staffing problem.” It suddenly appears as a headline in the quarterly update deck, then acquires a budget request, and AI is asked to create the staffing plan. Back comes a polished recommendation with recruitment priorities and measures of success.

But nobody has examined what customers are actually unhappy about. Are they waiting too long for a response, or contacting the organization repeatedly because nobody resolves their issue? More people might help, but the team has started solving a problem it hasn’t adequately defined or understood.

This is the echo effect to watch for: an interpretation gets repeated until people begin treating it as an established fact. And when that explanation comes from someone who is senior, it’s even more likely that the next person will treat it as a conclusion rather than one possibility.

AI can become another voice repeating the original assumption, sometimes even the loudest voice. A recommendation built around that assumption can feel like independent confirmation. Using AI to develop a recommendation doesn’t, by itself, challenge or verify the assumptions behind it.

We used to call this “GIGO” in the old days: garbage in, garbage out. Today, the output can come back beautifully packaged and stated with such certainty that it makes questionable input hard to spot.

THE HUMAN SKILL BEHIND THE DECISION

This is the kind of conversation participants practice in Critical Curiosity in the AI Age, using my ECHO Check process. It gives leaders and the people presenting recommendations a shared structure for examining the thinking behind them.

Each element serves a distinct purpose:

• EXPLAIN: Make the reasoning behind the recommendation visible, in their own words, including why the person presenting it finds it convincing.

• CHALLENGE: Examine the assumptions and evidence, bringing what’s missing or uncertain into view.

• HONE: Improve the recommendation in light of what is revealed during the Challenge conversation.

• OWN: Clarify who is accountable for the decision, how its impact will be assessed, and when to reconsider it.

The person presenting the recommendation stays involved throughout the process. They identify what needs checking and work out how the findings should change their proposal, with the leader and others helping them think more deeply.

In IF AI SAVES TIME, WHO GETS THE TIME BACK?, I explored how leaders can preserve opportunities for employees to develop judgment as AI takes on more work. These conversations give us a way to do that within the work that already needs doing.

For an already-busy leader, that might sound like another demand on limited time. But skipping these questions won’t necessarily save you time. You may end up spending far more time and effort solving the wrong problem, then dealing with new issues your solution creates. A few powerful questions up front can help you understand what you’re agreeing to before you commit the budget and everyone’s sweat equity.

Of course, that depends on whether your questions actually invite people to think. Sometimes we’re just asking them to agree with us.

A QUESTION CAN OPEN THINKING OR CLOSE IT

A leader might say, “Don’t you think we should look at the process first?” It has a question mark at the end, but it’s clearly just a suggestion dressed up in a question suit.

There’s a different possibility when the leader is prepared to learn something. A genuinely curious question can help the employee notice a gap in their own understanding, and their answer can reveal where the conversation needs to go next.

That requires good listening chops and a willingness to reconsider your own position. Asking questions becomes much less useful if you’ve already decided which answers you’re willing to accept.

We sometimes put these capabilities under the dreaded “soft skills” label. But they’re relevant to decisions involving real budgets and consequences for customers. There’s very little softness about discovering that your expensive solution addressed the wrong problem.

As I explored in WHO WILL DISAGREE WITH YOU TO YOUR FACE?, the leader’s response matters. If uncertainty receives an impatient dismissal, asking people to be more curious won’t accomplish much.

WHAT ARE WE SECRETLY HOPING FOR?

This next part might be a bit uncomfortable, but stay with me. Our own preferences belong in this examination too. Sometimes we’re drawn to a recommendation because it confirms what we’re hoping for.

I occasionally give a coaching client a simple practice when they’re trying to determine how they really feel about two choices. We take a coin and assign one choice to heads and the other to tails, then toss the coin. I ask them to notice, while the coin is spinning in the air, which result they’re secretly hoping for. I’ve found that moment remarkably useful for bringing an unacknowledged preference into view.

The coin doesn’t decide for them, and their preference doesn’t establish which choice is best. It reveals where they’re already invested in the answer, which can get in the way of weighing the options.

We can bring that awareness to a recommendation. Perhaps hiring feels more manageable than investigating where the existing process is breaking down. Or maybe the proposed action supports a position we’ve already announced. How might that preference affect what we’re willing to question? Our preferred answer deserves a good hard look, too.

FROM UNDERSTANDING TO PRACTICE

In Critical Curiosity in the AI Age, participants work through a scenario together, practicing questions and listening to what the answers reveal. They compare what different groups noticed and examine how those discoveries affect the proposed action.

Everyone begins with the same scenario, but different questions can bring different uncertainties into view. Another group may notice something yours overlooked or ask a question that changes how you understand the problem. That comparison allows participants to examine the limits of their own questioning.

Understanding the four elements of the ECHO Check gives people a starting point. The workshop gives them practice using it when an answer sounds convincing and the pressure is on to make a decision. Participants then choose where to apply the learning in their own work and develop the powerful questions they intend to use after the session.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Over the next week, notice the decisions moving through your team. Pay particular attention to recommendations that arrive polished and ready to approve, whether they come from AI or another source.

Where can you see the reasoning behind them? Where does everyone seem to be relying on someone else having checked? Where is curiosity missing?

Then consider where a session like this could help your organization:

1. Where have you had to revisit a decision because an assumption wasn’t examined, and what did that cost in time, resources, and missed opportunities?

2. Who would benefit from practicing together, including those presenting recommendations and those approving them?

3. What would you want them to do differently afterward, both in making decisions and in how they develop employees’ judgment?

Choose a specific decision that’s worth discussing with your colleagues and explore where stronger questions could help. Their perspectives may help you spot assumptions or question something before it becomes accepted as fact.

If you’re planning a leadership event or seeing these patterns in your team’s decisions, I’d welcome a conversation about bringing Critical Curiosity in the AI Age to your organization. Tell me where convincing recommendations are moving faster than the questions they deserve. Get in touch.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

WHY EGO BELONGS IN THE C-SUITE: What If We’ve Been Warning Leaders About the Wrong Thing?

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

What if one of the most dangerous things we can ask a senior leader to do is leave their ego at the door? We say it when someone dominates the conversation or refuses to admit a mistake. Fair enough. But if a leader truly left their ego at the door, what would allow them the confidence to make a difficult call, acknowledge their authentic contribution, and stay grounded when someone challenges their judgement?

I think the C-suite requires more ego than we like to admit. The question is whether yours can handle reality, including the parts that are inconvenient or uncomfortable.

WHAT EGO ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

In our everyday vernacular, we usually say “ego” when we mean an inflated opinion of oneself. The field of psychology describes ego strength in terms that include tolerating frustration and stress, delaying gratification, and adjusting desires to meet reality. That's a far cry from demanding applause every time you speak.

Perhaps “leave your ego at the door” is the wrong warning. A leader who needs to be right at all costs can shut down honest discussion. A leader who can’t recognise their own value may hold back when their judgement is needed. The updated warning I’d rather offer is this: pay attention to what happens to your sense of self when someone challenges you.

I think of leadership ego (my working definition, not a clinical label) as a grounded sense of who you are and what you can bring to bear. You can name your talents without apology or minimizing, see your gaps without collapsing or defending, and hold a position without treating disagreement as an attack on your worth.

The distinction becomes clearer when we look at how leaders respond when their judgement is tested. Some defend their position so fiercely that they crowd out other perspectives. Some discount what they bring and hesitate to use the authority they have earned. And some can stand behind their judgement while remaining open to what they may have missed.

TOO MUCH OF THE WRONG THING

We usually spot the defensive version first. I've seen executives ask for candour, then argue with anyone who offers it. I've also seen leaders call a team win “my achievement.” That was awkward for everyone on the team! And I've coached countless leaders who tend to mistake a different point of view for a challenge to their authority. After a while, people get practiced at agreeing instead.

That can give a leader a false sense of alignment and support, right up until the risk everyone saw coming comes back to bite them in the ass.

The tempting explanation is “too much ego.” I wonder whether the more useful question is about what that ego has to protect. If being wrong feels unbearable, a correction becomes a threat. If recognition is scarce, someone else’s contribution feels like a subtraction. None of us can infer a person’s inner life from one meeting, of course. What we can do is notice whether their reactions make honest conversations harder.

Research on narcissistic leadership gives us a reason to be careful with first impressions: the qualities that help us become leaders don't reliably translate into lasting leadership effectiveness. One study found that narcissistic rivalry was associated with declining effectiveness ratings over time. I don't recommend using these findings alone to diagnose your colleague, but they do challenge our habit of treating visible confidence as proof of leadership strength.

This is also why I asked, in WHO WILL DISAGREE WITH YOU TO YOUR FACE?: what happens after someone risks telling you something you don't want to hear?

TOO LITTLE OF WHAT YOU NEED

There's another leadership cost that attracts far less irritation: the executive who has excellent judgement but introduces every recommendation with three caveats. The new VP who can explain her gaps in exquisite detail but can't say what she is especially talented at. The leader who gives the team the credit they deserve, then edits their own contribution out of the story.

That can look like humility. Sometimes it is. And sometimes, it's actually uncertainty dressed up in humility's clothing. The self-doubt is about whether they have earned the right to lead at their own level, or the feeling of being an imposter. Either way, it leaves their colleagues to guess where they stand, what they recommend, and how much confidence to place in their expertise. Their work may be strong but the signal is weak.

I've written about identifying the strengths that feel so natural we overlook them in WHAT’S “RIGHT” WITH YOUR LEADERSHIP. At senior levels, recognizing our strengths becomes a responsibility, because others need to know what you can be counted on to contribute.

A STRONG EGO CAN SHARE THE AIR

Consider two leaders hearing the same objection: “I think we're missing a serious risk.” One immediately explains why the concern is unfounded. The other says, “Tell me what you are seeing that we might be missing.” Both may ultimately keep their original plan, but only one has made it easier to surface the risk next time.

That second response takes confidence, and trusting your own judgment enough to let it be examined. It also means trusting that you can change your mind, share credit, or admit a limit without losing your standing.

Research on humble leadership found positive associations with employee and team outcomes, though the strength and context of those relationships vary. Humility has room for conviction; it doesn't require shrinking.

That same strength at full volume, however, can become a liability. Decisiveness helps when a decision is needed and narrows the conversation when people need to contribute. Empathy builds trust and may make a difficult boundary harder to set. Knowing your strengths means knowing when to use them, and when to dial them down.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Think of a recent high-stakes moment: a disagreement, an unexpected criticism, or a decision for which you were accountable. Before judging your reaction, ask what you were trying to protect or prove. Then choose the question that makes you least comfortable, and reflect on it:

• If you tend to defend your position quickly: What feedback or competing view did I make costly for someone to offer, and what might it have told me?

• If you tend to understate your contribution: What do I know I bring to this decision, and what becomes harder for others when I leave it unsaid?

• If you are still learning your pattern: When my judgment is challenged, do I get more curious, more forceful, or less visible, and what does that response help me avoid?

Your ego will come to work with you. Let it. Give it a job worthy of your leadership: helping you stand behind what you know, stay open to what you don’t, and make space for the best answer, even when it isn’t yours.

For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com

WHO WILL DISAGREE WITH YOU TO YOUR FACE? What You Do with Disagreement Reveals Your Culture

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Make a list of the people at work who will disagree with you to your face.

Not the people who raise concerns privately after the meeting. Not the ones who hint that there “may be a few considerations” before wrapping the concern in fourteen layers of diplomatic bubble wrap. I mean the people who look directly at you and say, respectfully and clearly, “I don’t think we should do this”, or “I think you’re wrong”. How many names are on your list?

If several people come immediately to mind, it may mean you are unusually brilliant and surrounded by people who independently reach your exact conclusions every time. Hmmm… possible, I suppose, but it’s more likely that people have learned that agreeing with you is easier, safer, and better for their careers. The absence of disagreement isn’t proof of agreement.

And if you’re struggling to think of anyone, especially if you’re a senior leader, you’re in good company.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for performative candour! It’s not about leader-baiting, or being the one who says, “just to play devil’s advocate…” and then makes everyone wish the devil had retained better counsel.  It is a diagnostic: when dissent appears, the organization shows whether truth is useful, ornamental, or punishable.

FIND THE CULTURE IN THE AFTERMATH

We often talk about whether people feel safe enough to speak up. It’s a worthy question, but it places most of our attention on what happens before someone disagrees.

Are they confident enough? Courageous enough? Credible enough? Skilled enough? Have they overcome their fear of conflict? Can they speak truth to power?

I’m interested in what happens next. What happens in your organization after someone disagrees with power? Does the leader become curious, or begin building a defence? Does the person’s concern receive genuine consideration, or a polite little burial? Are they still invited into the important conversations? Does the leader continue to seek their perspective, or does the person gradually acquire a reputation for being “difficult,” “negative,” “not a team player,” or “not sufficiently strategic”?

That response tells us more about the culture than any values statement, engagement survey, or town-hall declaration about psychological safety can. Culture is not what leaders say about candour. It is what people can safely learn from watching candour land.

Anyone can say, “I welcome healthy debate.” The real test begins when the debate is directed at something they believe, want, proposed, approved, or have already announced with an enthusiastic PowerPoint deck.

THE TWO-BOULDER PROBLEM

Imagine that speaking up requires us to travel down a road toward a person with more authority than we have. On that road, we encounter boulders.

Some of those boulders are inside us. We may be afraid of being wrong, looking foolish, damaging an important relationship, or being seen as confrontational. We may doubt whether we have enough authority or expertise to challenge the prevailing view. Some of us have spent years becoming extraordinarily good at reading subtle signals, adapting to other people, and preserving harmony. Speaking up can feel like deliberately lobbing a grenade into the conversation.

Other boulders have been placed in the road by the organization. We may have watched someone else challenge a decision and pay for it. Perhaps a leader says they want input, but responds to every concern with defensive cross-examination. Maybe the decision has already been made, and the meeting is consultation theatre. Or questions are welcomed right up until they threaten the timeline, budget, the leader’s preferred solution, or their ego.

These internal and external boulders can look remarkably similar from the outside, which is why it’s easy for leaders to misread silence. When someone stays silent, we may assume they need more confidence. When someone hesitates, we may decide they’re conflict-averse. When they finally raise a concern in private, we may coach them to be more courageous next time. Sometimes that is exactly the developmental work they need. And sometimes, what looks like a confidence problem is an accurate reading of the environment.

THE BOULDERS WE CARRY

Researchers James Detert and Amy Edmondson have examined what they call “implicit voice theories”: It’s a useful name for the unspoken beliefs people develop about when and why it’s risky to speak up at work.

These beliefs often become personal rules: Don’t embarrass the boss. Don’t challenge someone in public. Don’t bring up a problem unless you already have the solution. Don’t bypass the chain of command. Don’t speak until you are certain.

Most of us didn’t invent these rules over breakfast. We accumulated them through experience, by noticing which comments caused others to tighten, and by watching what happened when someone challenged a powerful person. We learned when candour was welcomed, when it was just tolerated, and when it came with a cost later.

Eventually, these lessons (which I prefer to think of as limiting beliefs) follow us into environments where the danger is lower. But the internal boulder still blocks the road long after the original organization, leader, or experience that put it there has disappeared.

That’s where courage, self-trust, and communication skills matter. We may need to challenge our assumptions about what will happen if we disagree. We may need to learn how to state a concern without apologizing for having one, becoming combative, or explaining it until everyone has forgotten the point. We may need to tolerate the discomfort of letting another adult have a reaction we can’t control.

We’re responsible for the boulders we carry: our old rules, fears, assumptions, and habits. But we’re not responsible for pretending the external ones aren’t real, especially when the organization helped put them there.

THE BOULDERS CREATED BY POWER

Here’s one study that complicates the usual conversation about psychological safety. In a meta-analysis, researchers Elad Sherf, Michael Parke, and Sofya Isaakyan found that perceived impact was more strongly associated with speaking up, while psychological safety was more strongly associated with remaining silent. In their analysis, perceived impact explained 67 per cent of the predicted variance in employee voice, compared with 28 per cent explained by psychological safety. In plain language, that means people are weighing two different questions: “Is it safe to say this?” and “Will saying it make any difference?”

That second question might even be more important than the first. A person may believe they can raise a concern without being publicly humiliated or fired, but decide to remain silent because experience has taught them that nobody with authority will do anything with it.

Fear isn’t always the driver; sometimes it’s fatigue. How many times should someone point out the same operational risk before stopping? How often should they offer a different perspective when every decision continues exactly as planned? At what point does “Please keep speaking up” begin to sound like “Please continue supplying input we have no intention of using”?

People notice whether their contribution has impact. They also notice whether the person who speaks up remains respected afterward.

SPEAKING UP SHOULD NOT REQUIRE HEROISM

We love stories about courageous people who speak truth to power. They are inspiring for good reason. I once worked with a senior leader who was willing to step into what many people would consider the danger zone. I watched him respectfully challenge executives, hold his ground when his perspective was unpopular, and speak with remarkable candour without making the conversation about his ego. His courage and credibility contributed to him becoming a senior executive and, eventually, the acting CEO.

There’s much to admire in his story. There’s also a question worth asking: If telling the truth requires extraordinary courage, what does that tell us about the power? Courage is a valuable leadership capability. But it’s a terrible organizational workaround.

We should help people build the confidence and skill to disagree. We should also resist romanticizing systems that repeatedly require people to risk their relationships, reputations, or careers to bring forward information the organization needs.

DISAGREEMENT IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY VALUABLE

Of course, the person disagreeing isn’t always right. Some people challenge everything. Some use “I’m just being candid” as diplomatic immunity for their poor behaviour. Others raise vague objections or repeat concerns that have already been addressed. And some confuse not getting their way with not being heard.

Useful disagreement requires responsibility. It names the specific concern and distinguishes evidence from assumption. It helps others understand the risk, consequence, or perspective they may have missed. Whenever possible, it contributes to better thinking rather than tossing a smoke bomb into the conversation and calling it candour.

But leaders have responsibilities too, and their responsibilities carry more weight because their reactions carry more consequences.

A leader does not have to agree with every dissenting view. They do need to demonstrate that disagreement can occur without diminishing the person who provided it.

WATCH WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

The culture-making moment begins after the disagreement lands.

What does the leader’s face do? What happens to their tone? Do they ask a curious question, or immediately explain why the person is wrong? Do they become interested in the information, or preoccupied with the challenge to their authority?

Then watch what happens over the following days and weeks.

Is the person still included? Does the leader continue to seek their advice? Is their concern accurately represented when the decision is discussed elsewhere? If the decision does not change, does anyone explain why? If the concern later proves valid, is that acknowledged without defensiveness or historical renovation?

Everyone else is watching too. People learn whether disagreement is welcome by observing what happens to those who disagree. One person’s experience becomes everyone else’s evidence.

WORK ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ROAD

If we want more honest conversations, we need to work on both kinds of boulders.

Those of us speaking up can ask:

• What am I afraid might happen?

• What evidence supports that fear?

• Is this an old rule I am carrying into a new environment?

• What specifically do I need to say?

• How can I make my concern clear, useful, and proportionate?

• Can I allow the leader to have a reaction without rushing to soften, retract, or overexplain my point?

Those of us holding more power can ask:

• What do people see happen when someone challenges me?

• Do I reward candour only when it is convenient or well packaged?

• Have I confused a lack of disagreement with strong alignment?

• Do people believe their input can affect the outcome?

• What happens to someone’s standing with me after they oppose my view?

• Who has tried to tell me something more than once?

Neither side gets a free pass. Courage without judgment can become recklessness. Authority without curiosity can become a very expensive echo chamber.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE: THE DISAGREEMENT TEST

Set aside 30 minutes when you can reflect without rushing to defend yourself. Think about the last three times someone disagreed with you in front of other people.

For each situation, ask yourself:

1. What happened inside me the moment the disagreement landed?

2. What did my face, voice, and first response communicate to the person and everyone watching?

3. Did I become curious about what they could see, or begin proving what I already believed?

4. What happened to that person’s influence, access, and standing with me afterward?

5. Did my response make the next disagreement more likely, or less?

Now return to the list you made at the beginning of this article. Who disagrees with you to your face?

If the list is shorter than you’d like, resist the temptation to announce at the next team meeting that your door is always open. An open door is only useful when people have reason to believe that walking through it will matter.

Find one person whose perspective you may not have made enough room for. Ask them what they see that you might be missing. Then pay very close attention to what happens inside you when they answer.

The objective isn’t more conflict. It’s making the truth less expensive to tell.

If this article raised a few useful questions about how you lead, how your team tells you the truth, or what happens after disagreement lands, I’d be glad to talk. You can reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

IS IT ADAPTABILITY OR SELF-ABANDONMENT? 5 Signs You’re Losing Your Authenticity as a Leader

I was watching the 1999 movie Runaway Bride on a rainy Sunday. In it, Julia Roberts plays a woman who has become remarkably skilled at adapting herself to each man she plans to marry. Every fiancé likes his eggs prepared differently, and every time, she claims that his favourite is hers too. Eventually, she sits down with a plate of eggs prepared in several different ways because she has no idea how she actually likes them.

I'm sure that no one has ever derailed their career by pretending to like scrambled eggs. But changing your leadership identity with every new boss or initiative can be considerably more expensive.

Imagine working for three different executives in three years. The first rewards decisiveness, so you learn to arrive with an answer. The second values collaboration, so you become careful not to sound too certain. The third wants relentless optimism, so you become reluctant to name risks or issues.

You've adapted successfully to all three. But when someone finally asks what you genuinely think about a significant decision, you can bet that you'd struggle to answer. Like Julia Roberts’ character surveying that plate of eggs, you will have become much better at identifying other people’s preferences than locating your own.

Adaptability is one of the most celebrated qualities in leadership, and for good reason. Knowing how to read the room, flex your communication style, support a decision you might not have made yourself, and keep things moving when the organizational furniture is being rearranged around you are all important leadership skills.

But adaptability has a shadow side. If you keep reshaping yourself around every new person, priority, pressure, and preference, eventually you may struggle to remember what you genuinely stand for.

THE LINE IS EASY TO MISS

Self-abandonment is a pretty weighty term, but it doesn’t feel that way at the beginning, which is why it can take on a life of its own without our awareness. It usually happens one reasonable little accommodation at a time.

Your new boss prefers shorter, more decisive conversations, so you become more concise. That makes sense. Then you notice that questions are interpreted as resistance, so you begin asking fewer of them.

The organization announces an ambitious transformation, and you help your team get behind it. That is part of leadership. Then you realize the timelines are unrealistic, but everyone else appears enthusiastic, so you keep your concerns to yourself.

Your workload expands temporarily during a reorganization. You agree to stretch because the business genuinely needs you. Six months later, the temporary arrangement has become your job, and you've stopped mentioning the cost because you don't want to appear inflexible.

No single decision feels dramatic enough to count as self-abandonment. The pattern becomes visible only when you step back far enough to see what has accumulated. You are working harder to anticipate what other people want than to determine what you believe. You are editing your contribution before anyone else has the opportunity to respond to it. You have become exceptionally skilled at reading the room while gradually disappearing from it.

AUTHENTICITY DOESN’T MEAN REFUSING TO ADAPT

Leaders sometimes confuse authenticity with saying everything they think, exactly as they think it. That would not be authenticity. Effective leadership requires judgment about timing, language, context, and audience. You can remain true to your values while changing how you express them. You can disagree with a decision and still help implement it responsibly. You can choose not to raise every concern in every meeting without becoming complicit or voiceless. The crucial question is whether you are making these choices consciously.

Healthy adaptability sounds like this: “I understand what this situation requires, and I am choosing how best to respond.” Self-abandonment sounds more like this: “I know what I think, but it no longer feels safe, useful, or career-enhancing to let anyone else know.”

In a study published in The Journal of Psychology, research on authenticity at work supports the idea that it is distinct from simply “fitting in” at work, and that it is meaningfully related to well-being outcomes such as burnout and boredom. In other words, when people feel unable to show up authentically, it can be associated with poorer experiences at work (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30285570/).

It means that fitting in and feeling like you can be yourself aren’t the same thing.

None of this means every preference needs to be defended as identity. Refusing to learn a new system because “that’s just not me” isn’t authenticity; it’s avoidance. But it does mean that repeatedly overriding your own judgment, values, and limits comes at a cost.

THE DEEPER ISSUE IS SELF-TRUST

When we keep overriding ourselves, we often assume the problem is confidence. Sometimes it is, but the deeper issue may be self-trust.

Confidence asks, “Can I handle this?” Self-trust asks, “Can I rely on my own perceptions, judgment, values, and experience, even when other people see things differently?”

Leaders with self-trust can reconsider an opinion without assuming they were wrong to hold it. They can receive feedback without reconstructing their entire identity around it, and adapt to a new boss without treating that person’s preferences as universal leadership law. And they can also recognize that discomfort doesn't automatically mean they are doing something wrong or need to change themselves.

Organizations send constant signals about what gets rewarded. We learn which opinions receive the nod of approval, which questions make the room tense, and which behaviours are described as “not quite executive enough.” We also notice who gets invited back into the conversation. Responding intelligently to those signals can be politically astute. The danger begins when we allow them to replace our internal compass.

Our organizations hired us for our experience, judgment, and perspective. If we continually reshape all three to resemble the people above and around us, we may become easier to manage. We may also become considerably less valuable.

FIVE SIGNS WE MAY HAVE CROSSED THE LINE

The shift from adaptability to self-abandonment often appears in ordinary leadership habits. These patterns can be difficult to recognize in ourselves because many of them begin as reasonable leadership choices. Any one of these behaviours may be situational, but a repeated pattern deserves a closer look.

1. WE CONSULT THE ROOM BEFORE WE CONSULT OURSELVES

Before deciding what we think, we scan for the safest or most popular position. By the time we read everyone else’s reactions, our own view has become difficult to locate. Reading the room is a valuable leadership capability. The problem begins when everyone else’s response becomes the raw material from which we construct our own.

2. WE KEEP MOVING OUR LIMITS

We agree to one more responsibility, one more unreasonable deadline, or one more evening of work. Every exception can be justified, but together, the exceptions become our operating model. Adaptability sometimes requires a temporary stretch. Self-abandonment turns temporary stretches into permanent expectations because we are reluctant to risk disappointing anyone by resetting the boundary.

3. WE TRANSLATE DISAGREEMENT INTO PERSONAL FAILURE

When someone challenges our view, we don't just reconsider the idea; we immediately question whether we were too direct, too difficult, too sensitive, too cautious, or simply too much (or not enough). Thoughtful leaders examine their impact. When we are losing self-trust, we may automatically assume that another person’s discomfort is evidence of our own failure.

4. OUR LEADERSHIP IDENTITY CHANGES WITH EVERY NEW BOSS

Different leaders reward different behaviours based on their own personal communication preferences and decision-making styles. We may find ourselves reshaping our style to match shifting expectations, which can gradually dilute our own sense of self. Expanding our range is healthy. The concern is whether each adaptation adds to our leadership capacity or replaces a piece of it.

5. WE FEEL RELIEF WHEN SOMEONE ELSE SAYS WHAT WE WERE THINKING

This can be one of the clearest clues. We had the concern, question, or alternative perspective, but waited until someone else made it safe to acknowledge. There are sensible reasons to choose the right moment or allow another person to lead. But if our first reaction is consistently relief that someone else took the risk, it may be worth asking why our own voice remained suppressed.

KEEP YOUR CENTRE AND EXPAND YOUR RANGE

The answer is not to become less adaptable. Senior leaders need considerable range, especially when organizations are contending with new technologies, changing workforce expectations, economic uncertainty, and frequent structural change. The opportunity is to build that range around a stable centre of gravity

Our centre includes the values we protect, the judgment we've earned through experience, the limits required for sustainable performance, and the leadership contribution we want to make. Our range includes the many ways we can communicate, collaborate, experiment, and respond.

A tree survives strong winds partly because it can bend and flex, but its ability to move also depends on having roots. Professional roots don't make us rigid; they allow us to flex without being carried away.

One place to begin is by separating what must remain stable from what is available for adaptation:

• Our communication style may be adaptable, but our integrity is not.

• Our methods may be adaptable, but our standards cannot disappear.

• Our timing may be adaptable, but our conviction that an important risk needs to be raised may remain firm.

• Our role may evolve, but our values are non-negotiable.

These distinctions are rarely obvious in the moment. They become clearer when we move beyond asking, “What does the organization need from me?” to ask a deeper question: “What do I need to remain authentic as a leader?”

BEFORE WE ADAPT AGAIN

The next time we feel pressure to reshape ourselves around a person or situation, we can pause long enough to examine what we are changing.

We can ask ourselves:

• Where am I deciding to override my judgment, and what's driving my decision?

• What specifically am I trying to avoid?

• What have I not yet said, and what's holding me back from saying it now?

• Which part of this situation genuinely requires my flexibility?

• Which value, limit, or responsibility needs to remain intact?

• If I continue responding this way for another year, what will the impact be on me?

Most leadership accommodations and adjustments are simply part of working effectively with other human beings, who remain stubbornly committed to being different from us. The challenge is to notice when a useful strength has started working against us. Adaptability should give us more ways to lead, connect, and navigate complexity, not require us to leave ourselves behind.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Find 30 minutes of quiet time when you can do this exercise in a calm state, without rushing or being interrupted.

Recall one recent moment when you adapted yourself to the room, then left the conversation feeling frustrated, diminished, resentful, or unlike yourself. Reconstruct that moment as specifically as you can, and when you have it clearly in your mind, answer the following questions:

1. Before you began adjusting to everyone else, what did you genuinely think, want, need, or believe?

2. What did you choose to say or do instead, and what were you trying to protect: approval, credibility, belonging, harmony, opportunity, or something else?

3. What did you assume might happen if you expressed your real perspective, held your limit, or acted on your own judgment? What evidence supports that assumption, and what evidence challenges it?

4. Who or what benefited from your accommodation? What did it cost you, your team, or the quality of the decision?

5. If you could replay that moment with both adaptability and self-trust, what would you keep about your approach, and what would you change?

6. Identify one upcoming situation in which you are likely to repeat this pattern. What, specifically, will you say, ask, decline, or protect so that you can remain flexible without leaving yourself behind?

We don’t need to reject other people’s preferences or sample every possible kind of egg. We simply need to know which choices are genuinely ours.

Adaptability remains one of the great strengths of effective leadership. Self-trust prevents that strength from becoming an over-strength and consuming the leader who possesses it.

If you want to explore how to remain adaptable without losing your self-trust or leaving yourself behind, reach out for a free executive coaching conversation at leslierohonczy.com.

HOW METAPHORS REVEAL WHAT ADVICE MISSES: Borrow this Powerful Tool from a Master Coach

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com

Halfway through an executive coaching session with a senior leader, I saw it: that juicy a-ha moment when an insight sparks, and the body responds before the words arrive. My client’s posture shifted as I offered him a metaphor for what he was experiencing. He leaned forward and began nodding, then his hands joined the conversation. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s exactly me. Do you have a camera in my office?”

For the record, I don’t have cameras hidden in my clients’ offices. But what I did have was a metaphor that illustrated something true about how he had learned to operate. It was a unique lens that reflected back to him the strengths he relied on, the pressures he carried, the ways he protected himself, and the costs of those strategies.

And, maybe most importantly, he felt seen. He understood that I ‘got’ him and wasn’t judging him. We now had a safe, shared language for exploring something that had previously been difficult for him to name. That’s one reason I return to metaphor so often in my executive coaching work.

I should clarify what I mean by metaphor. I’m not suggesting that leaders dust off those tired old sports clichés we’ve all heard a thousand times: keep your eye on the ball, step up to the plate, get back in the game. Those expressions may add a bit of colour to a conversation (if you like the colour beige), but they rarely reveal anything new. A developmental metaphor is personal, specific, and rich enough to help someone recognize a pattern in how they operate, then explore its strengths, limitations, and possibilities.

But metaphor isn’t just a powerful coaching tool; leaders can use metaphors when coaching and developing their employees, too. You don’t need to be a professional coach, invent elaborate imagery, or turn every one-on-one into a voyage of symbolic discovery. Sometimes one well-timed image can help an employee describe a challenge they’re having more clearly, so they can examine it with less defensiveness, and imagine a different way of responding.

The metaphor itself is not the point. What matters is what it helps someone recognize about what’s happening now, and the new possibilities that recognition opens.

MOVING FROM INSIDE THE PATTERN TO OUTSIDE IT LOOKING IN

When a behavioural pattern is deeply embedded, we don’t typically experience it as a pattern; we just experience it as our reality.

The leader who throws on his cape and flies in to rescue the team may believe, “This is what responsible leadership looks like.” The person who puts on a suit of armour before a difficult conversation may believe, “I need this protection to remain composed.” The executive who moves at jet-boat speed may see the wake she leaves behind her, without fully recognizing how hard it is to bring other people along with her.

Metaphor can help someone gain enough distance to examine what is happening. Instead of saying, “I’m impatient and terrible at bringing people along,” a leader can begin to notice, “I can feel my jet boat accelerating again.” Instead of thinking, “I shut people out,” someone might say, “This suit of armour is getting too heavy.” Instead of thinking, “It’s all up to me,” someone might notice, “I’ve picked up everyone else’s backpacks again.” Instead of thinking, “If I don’t get them engaged and developing, I’m not doing my job,” a leader can begin to notice, “I’m pulling up every seedling to make sure it’s growing.”

That small change in language matters. The behaviour is still theirs to understand and address, but it no longer defines the whole person. They can step back, observe it, and begin making more deliberate choices.

Research on metaphor supports its role in helping people make sense of complex or less tangible experiences by connecting them with something more concrete and familiar. A metaphor will not automatically produce insight or behavioural change. It does, however, create another way to explore an experience and experiment with different responses.

What felt personal and loaded yesterday can become something two people place between them and examine together today. It leads to powerful questions like, “What does the armour protect?” “When did the jet boat become necessary?” “What might you be taking away from your employees by flying in to rescue them?” “What are you trying to prevent by tending the garden so intensely?” These questions invite curiosity into a conversation where judgment, frustration, or defensiveness may have been getting in the way.

A LENS, NEVER A LABEL

There is a risk in all of this, of course. A metaphor can become so clever, appealing, or memorable that the person offering it falls in love with it. Once that happens, we may start trying to stuff the other person’s experience into our beautifully shaped metaphor, instead of allowing their experience to shape it.

A metaphor should offer a lens through which someone can examine their experience. It should never become a label that defines them.

When I offer a metaphor to a client, I tell them explicitly that I am not attached to it. Leaders can give an employee the same permission: “This image may not fit. We can play with it, change it, challenge it, or throw it out, and find something else that feels more like it fits your experience.”

I once offered a Labrador Retriever guide dog as a metaphor for a client’s ability to guide a new leadership team through a merger with another group. I thought it fit beautifully. He was terrified of dogs. Needless to say, we found a new metaphor. The person being coached gets the deciding vote. It’s as simple as that.

Even a metaphor that resonates with several people may mean something different to each of them. A gardener might represent patience and trust for one leader. For another, it might reveal a tendency to overwater every plant, pull up the seedlings to check whether they are growing, and take personal responsibility for the weather. Same garden. Entirely different coaching stance.

HOW METAPHOR SHAPES MY COACHING

Integral Coaching Canada’s methodology has deeply shaped my use of developmental metaphor.

In my executive coaching work, metaphor can help a client recognize how they currently approach an important challenge and envision a broader, more intentional way of leading. That developmental work is far more extensive than the simple application I am sharing here.

Leaders are often given objectives such as “delegate more,” “become more strategic,” “communicate differently,” or “strengthen executive presence.” These may be worthwhile goals, but they rarely help someone recognize what to do differently when the pressure is on.

A strong metaphor gives the objective shape and texture.

Consider the leader whose approach resembles a jet racing boat. They are fast, responsive, decisive, and highly capable of reaching a destination quickly. Those strengths may have been richly rewarded throughout their career. At the same time, there is very little room in the boat for anyone else, and the leader’s speed may leave a wake of dependency, confusion, or disengagement behind them.

Simply advising this leader to slow down probably won’t create much change. The metaphor opens a richer developmental conversation:

• When does speed genuinely matter?

• Who needs to be in the boat with you?

• When would creating shared ownership matter more than arriving first?

• How will you retain your decisiveness while making more room for others?

The metaphor makes an abstract objective easier to recognize and work with in real situations.

What follows is a simple way for leaders to experiment with metaphor in developmental conversations. It is not a substitute for professional coach training or a complete coaching methodology. Four clever questions do not make anyone a Master Coach before lunch, but they can help you have more effective developmental conversations with your direct reports.

WHERE USEFUL METAPHORS COME FROM

Often, people hand us their metaphors without realizing it.

An employee may describe themselves as running on a treadmill, carrying everyone else’s load, juggling ten balls, playing every instrument, or wearing armour into important conversations. That language is worth noticing because it may reveal how they already understand their experience.

Imagine an employee saying, “I feel as though I’m juggling ten balls and everyone keeps throwing me another one.”

A leader could move immediately into workload solutions. Or they could become curious about the image:

• Which balls cannot be dropped?

• Which ones belong to you?

• Which were handed to you by someone else?

• Are any still in the air because you haven’t decided where they belong?

The metaphor does not replace a practical conversation about workload. It helps both people understand the workload more precisely before deciding what to do about it.

Sometimes, the person creates the image. Sometimes, you build it together. Occasionally, you may offer one based on what you’ve observed. However it emerges, the employee needs room to define its meaning, revise it, or reject it.

A rejected metaphor is useful information. It tells you that you have not yet found language that belongs to the person.

METAPHOR CAN HELP A TEAM SEE ITSELF

Metaphor can also help a group name how it wants to work together.

In my work with teams, I have seen the value of creating a collective metaphor that captures the team’s strengths, aspirations, relationships, and shared responsibilities. A team might identify itself as a pod of dolphins, for example, and develop its own understanding of what that image represents about how members navigate, communicate, protect one another, and move together.

The power comes from the meaning the team creates, rather than from the leader arriving with a polished image and announcing, “Good news, everyone. We’re dolphins now.”

A shared metaphor can give a team shorthand for conversations that would otherwise be difficult to begin. When the pod of dolphins is functioning well, what’s happening to make it so? When food sources are scarce and the pressure is on to find food, how does the pod adapt? What causes some dolphins to be separated from the pod, and how do the others help them navigate their way back?  

Because the metaphor belongs to everyone, it can become a useful reference point for reflecting on collective behaviour without immediately blaming an individual. The team can then discuss whether it’s living into its chosen image and what may need attention when it’s not.

Used thoughtfully, a collective metaphor can help a team name the culture it wants to create and recognize the everyday behaviours required to make that culture real.

USING METAPHOR WITHOUT GETTING IN ITS WAY

If you want to experiment with metaphor in a developmental conversation, a few practices matter:

• Listen for images already embedded in the person’s language. Their metaphor will often resonate more deeply than one imported from outside.

• Offer your own images lightly. “I wonder whether this is a little like…” creates more room than “Here is what you are.”

• Watch what happens before you elaborate. Changes in posture, energy, expression, words, or engagement may tell you whether the image is opening the conversation or closing it down.

• Let the person define the details. Ask what the metaphor means to them instead of explaining what you believe it ought to mean.

• Explore both its value and its cost. A jet boat, suit of armour, conductor, gardener, or superhero contains strengths as well as limitations. Development begins with understanding the whole pattern.

• Remember your authority. An employee may agree with a metaphor because their leader offered it. Make disagreement easy and explicit.

• Allow the metaphor to evolve. As the person develops, the image may acquire new features, change form, or become unnecessary.

Most importantly, don’t confuse recognition with transformation. A metaphor can create a powerful moment of awareness and insight, but insight is the beginning. Sustainable change still requires practice, reflection, experimentation, and new choices under real pressure.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Think about someone you are coaching or developing who has you feeling stuck. In your next conversation, listen carefully for the images embedded in how they describe their experience.

If none emerges naturally, you might ask:

“If this challenge were a vehicle (or a landscape, object, animal, machine, or character), what might it be?”

Then remain curious: What does the image reveal about how they currently see themselves or the situation? What strengths exist within it? What does the image protect, restrict, overlook, or leave behind? If it evolved to represent how they would like to approach the situation, what would change?

Resist the temptation to interpret the image for them or steer them toward the answer you think they need. The metaphor may help you see where their development could go next. More importantly, it may help them see it for themselves.

If you would like to explore the metaphors shaping how you lead, or create a collective metaphor that helps your team strengthen how it works together, I would love to help. Reach out to arrange a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at leslierohonczy.com.