LEAVE IT WHERE IT LIES: The Leadership Habit That Creates More Friction Than Accountability

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Over almost twenty years, I've had the privilege of observing hundreds of one-on-one conversations between leaders and their employees. Some have been inspiring. Others have been uncomfortable. And some have definitely changed careers. Through all of those observations, one pattern keeps appearing, regardless of the leader's experience, industry, or personality wiring. By the time the conversation ends, only one person seems to be carrying the outcome, and surprisingly often, it's the leader.

A while ago, I was coaching a senior executive who told me he felt completely exhausted. His workload was heavy, to be sure, but not extraordinarily unmanageable; nothing had gone spectacularly wrong, and no crisis was unfolding around him. In fact, his team was capable, he described his own leader as very supportive. But he seemed to be carrying something a lot heavier than just his workload. When I asked what was weighing on him, he named one of his Directors, explained how frustrated he was with this person’s lack of accountability, and said, "I've tried everything!" As coaches, we've all learned to be curious whenever someone says they've tried everything, so we unpacked what "everything" meant.

He'd had several coaching conversations with this Director, had given him clear feedback, clarified expectations, asked thoughtful questions, and offered him support. He'd challenged when necessary and followed up on established commitments. By any reasonable standard, he was doing what good leaders do.

When he told me, "I just can't get him to take ownership", something shifted. It was such an off-handed comment that would’ve been easy to let pass. But it piqued my curiosity, so I asked him a question: "Can you actually make another adult take ownership?" He smiled almost immediately. "No." "So why are you carrying responsibility for whether he does?" He got reflective for a minute, processing this new a-ha.

It turned out he wasn't exhausted because his Director wasn't changing. He was exhausted because he'd given himself the responsibility for whether his Director changed. Those are two very different things.

I've come to believe this is one of the biggest hidden drivers of Leadership Friction. Leaders are unknowingly creating drag in their own leadership by carrying outcomes that don’t actually belong to them. And that in turn creates drag in the very systems they’re trying to streamline. Then they worry about whether feedback lands; they replay difficult conversations in the car on the way home, wondering whether someone was offended, whether the team bought into the decision, or if an employee will finally follow through this time. Every minute of attention invested there is attention unavailable for the work leaders actually own.

Most of the time, it happens for a very understandable reason: they care. In fact, I've noticed it's often the leaders who care the most who are most likely to fall into this leadership hole. They genuinely want people to succeed, and they want coaching conversations to make a difference. They want their employees to grow, and the team to thrive. Those are all signs of a leader who is deeply invested in other people.

Unfortunately, things start to go sideways when caring becomes carrying. Without realizing it, many leaders begin accepting assignments nobody ever gave them. They believe it's their responsibility to get their employee to embrace feedback, stay motivated, agree with a decision, change their behaviour, or repair a difficult relationship. Those may be the outcomes we hope for, but they're not outcomes that we can own.

There's an important distinction here that has fundamentally changed the way I think about leadership. As leaders, we are absolutely responsible for the quality of our leadership: for preparing well, communicating clearly, listening carefully, asking thoughtful questions, setting expectations, providing meaningful feedback, creating psychological safety, and removing unnecessary obstacles. We own all of that.

What we don't own is another person's decision. Once the conversation is over, another adult gets a vote. Actually, they get the only vote that matters: they decide whether they'll reflect on the feedback, and if they'll do anything with it to change their behaviour. They decide whether they'll honour the commitment they just made, and whether they'll grow. Every one of us retains the freedom to choose how we respond. As leaders, we can influence that choice, but we can't make it for someone else.

I sometimes use gardening as a metaphor for leadership. A gardener can prepare the soil, water consistently, remove weeds, and create excellent growing conditions. They can do almost everything possible to help a plant flourish. What they can't do is stand over the garden tugging on the stem because they're impatient for it to grow. Everyone understands that pulling harder doesn't accelerate growth. It damages the plant. Yet leaders often do exactly that. We explain again, send another article, schedule another follow-up, remind, rescue, and worry. Before long, we're investing more energy in another person's accountability than they are. That's not accountability. That's Leadership Friction. It's effort being invested where effort has very little ability to positively influence the result.

One of the most useful questions I ask my executive coaching clients is surprisingly simple: "What part of this actually belongs to you?" That question almost always changes the conversation because it redirects the leader's attention away from someone else's choices and back toward their own leadership. Sometimes the answer is that they haven't been clear enough. Sometimes they've avoided an uncomfortable conversation or softened feedback that needed to be direct. Occasionally, they realize they've genuinely done everything good leadership requires, and the next move belongs entirely to the other person.

That realization can feel strangely uncomfortable. Many leaders unconsciously equate carrying the outcome with caring about the person. But they're not the same thing. In fact, I've often found the opposite is true: when leaders stop rescuing people from responsibility, accountability becomes much easier to see. Employees begin carrying more of their own development because the leader has stopped carrying it for them.

That's often the moment leadership becomes more effective. The conversations become calmer, feedback becomes clearer, and the leader becomes more present because they're no longer trying to engineer the other person's reaction. They simply show up, lead well, and allow other adults to make their own adult decisions. Responsibility has finally been returned to its rightful owner.

And perhaps that's the real lesson. Leadership isn't about making other people change. It's about creating the best possible conditions for change, then respecting another person's freedom to decide what they'll do next.

That may feel like a lighter burden. In my experience, it's also a far more effective way to lead.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

I'd like to invite you to experiment with a practice I often use with executive coaching clients. I call it Leave It Where It Lies.

For the next week, pay attention to the moments when you find yourself carrying the emotional weight of another person's choices, replaying a conversation, worrying about whether someone will change, or wondering if your feedback landed.

When you notice yourself doing it, don't try to solve the problem just yet. Pause instead. Then ask yourself: "What part of this situation genuinely belongs to me as the leader?" If the answer reveals something you've been avoiding, perhaps you need to have a clearer conversation, provide more direct feedback, set stronger expectations, or create better conditions for success. That's your work. Own it fully.

Then ask yourself a second question: "What part of this belongs to someone else?" If the answer is, their motivation... their behaviour... their commitment... their response... their decision..., simply say to yourself: "That's not mine." Then make a conscious decision to leave it where it lies.

If you worry that others may think you don’t care or have lowered your expectations, simply remind yourself that another adult deserves the dignity of carrying their own responsibility.

At the end of each day, reflect on where you successfully left responsibility where it belonged, and on where you found yourself picking it up again. What did you notice about your own energy, thinking, and the quality of your leadership when you carried only what was yours?

You may discover that leadership doesn't become lighter because you care less, but because you're finally carrying the things that are truly yours.

THE SIX ENGINES OF AMBITION: Do You Know Your Ambition Profile?

by Leslie Rohonczy, IMC, PCC, Executive Coach & Author

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If you're like most ambitious leaders, you probably know where you want to go. And also like many leaders, you may never have stopped to ask yourself what's pulling you there.

Promotion conversations usually revolve around readiness. Do you have the experience? Have you demonstrated executive presence? Can you think strategically? Are you ready to lead at the next level? These are important questions, and organizations should absolutely be asking them. They're just not the questions that intrigue me most.

When a client tells me they're hoping to become a Vice President, a C-suite executive, or even to make the move into their first leadership role, I'm curious about something else: "What is it about that role that's so appealing to you?"

At first, the answer is usually broad, and typically, "I want to make a difference." It's a perfectly reasonable answer. It just isn't the whole answer.

As we continue the conversation, something fascinating almost always emerges. Two leaders can be pursuing the same promotion for completely different reasons. One is captivated by the opportunity to shape the organization's future. Another lights up when talking about developing people. A third is excited by the challenge of operating at a completely different level. Someone else feels a responsibility to step forward because they know they can help. From the outside, they appear to be travelling the same road. Under the hood, though, they're powered by very different engines.

After seeing this pattern again and again over the years, I began sketching what eventually became the Six Engines of Ambition model. These engines represent the motivations that create the horsepower behind our ambition. We all have all six within us, but each contributes a different amount of power. That mix is unique to each person, and it often shifts as our careers evolve.

Before reading further, resist the temptation to decide which engine you are. That's a bit like asking which instrument matters most in an orchestra. Almost nobody is powered by a single engine. Instead, notice which descriptions resonate most strongly with you. You're not looking for one answer; you're discovering the mix of engines in your profile.

Calling is the engine of purpose. If this is one of your strongest engines, the organization's mission matters deeply to you. You're less attracted to leadership itself than to the opportunity to advance something you genuinely believe deserves your energy. Ask yourself what excites you most about the next promotion. If your answer begins with the organization's purpose rather than your own career, then your Calling Engine is probably doing a lot of the work. Its shadow appears when the mission becomes so intertwined with your identity that disagreement starts feeling personal.

Contribution is the engine of service. These leaders gain enormous satisfaction from making other people's lives better. They enjoy coaching, mentoring, removing obstacles, and creating environments where others can thrive. They're often the people who leave a meeting thinking less about how they performed and more about whether everyone else left feeling heard, supported, or inspired. Their shadow is over-functioning. Helping gradually becomes rescuing, and before long, they're carrying responsibilities that belong to someone else.

Vision is fueled by possibility. These leaders naturally look over the horizon. They become energized imagining what the organization could become three, five or ten years from now. They enjoy building, transforming, and creating. If you find yourself becoming impatient with conversations that never seem to move beyond today's operational issues, the Vision Engine may be one of your dominant drivers. Its shadow appears when tomorrow becomes so exciting that today starts feeling like an inconvenience.

Adventure is the engine of growth. Some people see uncertainty and instinctively think, that sounds interesting. New challenges, unfamiliar situations, and bigger problems energize them rather than intimidate them. Every promotion is another chance to discover what they're capable of. Their shadow appears when climbing becomes more rewarding than contributing, leaving them constantly searching for the next mountain before fully appreciating the one they're already standing on.

Obligation is fueled by responsibility. I've coached many leaders who never set out to become senior executives. They simply looked around, saw a need, and concluded that someone had to step forward. They care deeply about doing the right thing and are often the people organizations depend on during difficult times. If you've ever caught yourself thinking, If I don't do this, who will?, there's a good chance the Obligation Engine is one of your strongest drivers. Its shadow is becoming indispensable. Delegation becomes difficult because being the dependable one has become part of your identity.

Ego is the engine most people are reluctant to acknowledge. There is often a degree of shame attached to admitting it's one of our drivers because we associate ego with being egotistical or self-aggrandizing. I don't believe that's true. Recognition matters. Achievement matters. Titles matter. Human beings have always cared about status, and healthy ambition has fueled extraordinary careers. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to accomplish something significant or being proud when others recognize your contribution. The shadow appears only when the title becomes more important than the work, or when your sense of self becomes defined by the title on your business card.

One of the things I find most fascinating is that these engines rarely stay in the same proportions throughout a career. I coached a newly promoted manager early in my coaching career. About fifteen years later he called me again because he was trying to decide whether to pursue an executive role. On paper, it looked like the obvious next step. He had the experience, the credibility, and the support of his organization. Yet something just didn't feel quite right.

As we explored what was creating the hesitation, he said, "I don't actually want the title. I want the chance to shape where we're going." That moment changed the conversation. Until then, he believed he was pursuing a promotion. What he eventually discovered was that, unlike fifteen years earlier, he was now being driven by the Vision Engine. Once he understood that, he also realized there were several ways to influence the organization's future, only one of which involved the executive role he'd been focused on.

I've watched similar discoveries unfold many times. Leaders realize they've been driven primarily by the Contribution Engine without ever recognizing it. Others discover that their Obligation Engine has been making career decisions for years. Some come to appreciate their Ego Engine for giving them the confidence to pursue opportunities they might otherwise have avoided, while realizing it no longer needed to be their dominant engine. The engines themselves aren't the problem. The problem is allowing them to operate without ever noticing which one is doing most of the driving.

The goal isn't simply to identify your ambition engine; it's to understand your Ambition Profile. Once you do, career decisions become clearer, and you begin recognizing why certain opportunities immediately excite you while others, despite offering more money or prestige, leave you feeling meh. That's when you stop measuring your ambition against someone else's and begin making choices that are genuinely aligned with your own motivations.

Your next promotion may change your title. But understanding your Ambition Profile may change your career.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

BUILD YOUR AMBITION PROFILE: Spend some time with the Six Ambition Engines definitions above, and estimate your current profile by assigning a percentage to each one. You may have a sense of your strongest, and your weakest engines – fill those in first. Don't answer based on who you aspire to become. Base your answers on the choices you've consistently made in your career. Your total should equal 100%.

• Calling: _____%

• Contribution: _____%

• Vision: _____%

• Adventure: _____%

• Obligation: _____%

• Ego: _____%

Now ask yourself three questions:

1. Which ambition engine has generated most of the horsepower that got me where I am today?

2. Which engine may be revving higher than it should be?

3. Over the next five years, which engine do I want fueling this next chapter?

Your answers may reinforce the career path you're already on, or they may point you in an entirely different direction. Either way, you'll gain insights into yourself that many ambitious leaders never stop to examine.

HOW OLD IS THE PERSON STEERING YOUR CAREER? Your Destination Was Chosen by Someone Who No Longer Exists

Leslie Rohonczy, IMC, PCC, Executive Coach & Author

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The first few years of my adult life were the striving years. Striving to make ends meet, striving to get noticed in my career, among a sea of other young professionals who always seemed to be better at standing out from the crowd than I was; striving for a promotion to the next level, without ever really asking myself why a title was my end game; striving to feel my own worth, when I didn’t feel at all worthy.

And when I finally got that hard-fought promotion, and found myself in that shitty little clapboard office in the middle of the advertising department at our local newspaper, I had a sphincter-shifting moment of clarity: “Was THIS what I had been working so long and hard for? This office with no window and no purpose? How could all of my striving, motivation, blood, sweat, and tears really have been about THIS?!”

That experience, and that question, changed my career. The promotion was exactly what I'd wanted, which was precisely the problem. I'd spent years chasing a destination chosen by a version of me who no longer existed.

At the time, I couldn't have explained what was happening. I just knew something felt profoundly off. Looking back now, I realize it was the first time I'd noticed that somewhere between the striving and the arriving, it was me that had changed, not the destination.

That experience isn't unique to me. I've heard versions of this experience in many of my executive coaching conversations. The offices are usually much nicer than mine was, and the titles on the business card are more impressive, but eventually the same uncomfortable question appears: Now what? Or sometimes: Is this really all there is?

Life reshapes us while we are busy building our careers. The destination we chose at twenty-eight no longer fits the person we've become at forty-eight, but we may not see it if we don't pause long enough to notice the mismatch.

A few weeks ago, I found myself watching a YouTube video of a single sculler crossing a perfectly calm lake. There was something mesmerizing about how the boat cut through the glassy water. Every stroke looked powerful yet effortless, as it glided across the water with absolute purpose.

I find rowing kind of a strange way to travel. The boat moves confidently forward while the rower faces the opposite direction. Rowers can clearly see where they've been. They can study the wake they've left behind, and can appreciate every kilometer they've already travelled. The one thing they can't actually see is where they're going.

Hey, that also describes many leadership careers! Early in our careers we choose a direction that makes complete sense at the time. We pursue promotions, bigger teams with more span of control, financial security, influence, recognition, and the opportunity to prove ourselves. We want to make our parents proud, build something meaningful, provide for our families, or finally settle that relentless inner voice insisting we're still not enough.

There is nothing wrong with any of those motivations. In fact, they often provide exactly the fuel we need during those demanding early years. But life has a habit of changing us while we're busy rowing.

Successes often turn out to be less satisfying than we imagined. We experience illness, burnout, unexpected opportunities, disappointments, and moments of clarity we never saw coming. And over time, our definition of success begins to evolve. Status starts giving way to significance. Recognition becomes less important than contribution. Freedom matters more than prestige.

The person holding the oars today isn't the same person who first climbed into the boat and set the direction. Yet many of us continue rowing toward the same destination simply because that's where we pointed the boat years ago.

One of my favourite coaching questions catches people completely off guard: How old is the person currently steering your career?

Sometimes it's the twenty-five-year-old you who's desperate to prove she belongs. Or the young father determined to build financial security for his new family. Sometimes it's the ambitious new executive convinced that one more promotion will finally deliver the satisfaction they've been chasing.

That younger version of ourselves deserves enormous respect. They worked hard, took risks, made sacrifices, and created opportunities that today's version of us benefits from every single day. But they couldn't possibly have known who we would become. They didn't know which experiences would shape us, what losses we would endure, what relationships would change us, or how dramatically our understanding of a meaningful life would evolve.

So why are they still deciding where we're headed?

I think this is where many can get stuck. It might feel like lost ambition after decades of investment and building up our expertise, relationships, credibility, and identity. Changing direction can begin to feel like admitting those investments were mistakes. They weren't. They just brought us to the place where we're finally experienced enough to ask a better question.

Instead of asking, “Can I get there?” the question becomes, “Do I still want 'there'?”

That may be one of the hardest career questions we'll ever ask ourselves because the answer often asks us to loosen our grip on a destination we've carried for years; one that feels like our encoded mission, because we've been chasing it so long.

One of the greatest gifts coaching has ever given me is permission to pause before pushing forward. We're conditioned to believe that success comes from rowing harder. Sometimes it does. But sometimes, the wisest thing a rower can do is lift the oars from the water, let the boat glide, and take some time to turn around and really study their trajectory.

Only then can you answer the question, "does this destination still belong to the person I am today?" I encourage leaders to ask themselves uncomfortable questions as part of the process. Questions like, "If you were choosing your career today, would you choose the same destination?" "Which ambitions genuinely belong to you, and which belong to a younger version of yourself?" "What are you continuing simply because you've already invested so much?" "What gives you energy today that barely mattered ten years ago?" "If nobody else's expectations mattered, where would you point the boat?"

Sometimes the answers are deeply reassuring. You discover you're exactly where you're meant to be, and you begin rowing again with conviction because your destination has been consciously chosen by the person you are today, and not inherited from someone you used to be.

Other times the answers lead somewhere entirely different: a new awareness, a different role, a revised definition of success, a shift in priorities, or a career that finally reflects the person you've become instead of the person you once were.

Neither outcome means your younger self got it wrong. That version of you did exactly what they were supposed to do: they got you this far. But at some point, every leader deserves to ask a simple question: Who is this person holding the oars now?

The younger version of you chose a destination with the wisdom they had at the time. You don't owe them blind obedience. You owe them gratitude.

Now it's your turn to decide where the boat goes next.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

This week, spend ten uninterrupted minutes with a blank sheet of paper. Across the top, write this question: How old is the person currently steering my career?

Don't answer it too quickly. Think about the ambitions you're pursuing right now, the goals you're sacrificing for, the opportunities you're saying yes to, and the ones you're turning down.

Then ask yourself: If I were starting my career today, with everything I've learned about myself over the past twenty years, would I still choose this destination?

If the answer is yes, you've just reaffirmed that you're rowing with purpose. If the answer is no, don't panic. You don't have to change direction tomorrow. You simply need to acknowledge that the person holding the oars today deserves a voice in deciding where your boat goes next.

LEADERSHIP FRICTION: How Canadian Leaders Can Take the Parking Brake Off Productivity

by Leslie Rohonczy, IMC, PCC, Executive Coach & Author

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What if the biggest drag on organizational performance isn't effort or access, but the way leaders unintentionally slow things down? Canada has spent years trying to solve its productivity problem. I can't help but wonder whether we're diagnosing the wrong patient.

Governments debate productivity, economists analyze it, CEOs talk about it on earnings calls, and we hear about technology, innovation, regulation, investment, artificial intelligence, and labour shortages in the media and online. Those conversations matter because according to OECD's 2025 Economic Survey, Canada's productivity has been lagging its peers for many years.

But after spending almost two decades coaching leaders inside organizations, I've become convinced there's another part of the conversation that deserves more attention: Leadership. More specifically, how small leadership behaviours that seem completely harmless on their own can slow an organization to a crawl.

Imagine driving your car with the parking brake engaged on one click. You'd probably still get where you're going, but the engine would need to work a little harder, and you'd burn a bit more fuel. You might not even notice it at first.

Now imagine clicking that parking brake up another notch; then another; and another. Eventually, you'd be pressing the accelerator harder and harder, while wondering why the car feels sluggish.

That's what I see inside many organizations. One extra approval; one more meeting that "everyone should attend"; one leader stepping in to do because it's faster than explaining; one decision climbing another level because it feels safer to have the boss review it first." None of those things feels like a crisis, but collectively, it's like driving with the parking brake on.

Leaders who create the most friction are often the hardest-working people in the organization. They're dedicated, they care deeply, they're incredibly capable... and they're also exhausted. I've lost count of the number of leaders who've told me, "I'm involved in everything," with a touch of pride. When they offer this up as evidence of their commitment, I see it as a warning light on their leadership dashboard.

One senior executive I coached was frustrated that every important decision landed on her desk. She genuinely believed her leaders lacked confidence. I spent several weeks observing her leadership team meetings and one-on-one meetings. Whenever a difficult question surfaced, all eyes turned toward her. Experience had taught them that if they waited a few more seconds, the answers would arrive. From her perspective, she was simply being helpful. But before anyone else had a chance to wrestle with the issue (and learn from the experience), she'd offered a suggestion, answered the question, or made the decision herself.

As a leader, when you're capable, experienced, and genuinely committed to helping your people succeed, stepping in feels responsible, and the truth is that sometimes it is. But the challenge comes when that strong desire to help turns into over-functioning.

One of the practices I use to coach leaders is called 'Leave It Where It Lies'. It's super simple, and a great practice to experiment with. If someone else owns the work, the decision, or the problem, leave the ownership with them. Coach them, support them, challenge their thinking, and ask powerful questions designed to create greater awareness. Just don't slip the backpack onto your own shoulders because you think you can carry it more easily.

Unnecessary approvals send a message. Jumping in to rescue teaches a lesson, and decisions you reclaim make the next one more likely to find its way back to your desk. None of that shows up on your productivity dashboard, but it definitely slows the entire organization down, one click of the parking brake at a time.

What if, instead of focusing on becoming more personally productive, we focused on removing friction for everyone around us instead? Ask: "Where have I become a bottleneck? What am I holding that someone else is ready to carry? What would happen if I resisted the urge to help for just sixty more seconds?"

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Over the next week, become a student of your own leadership friction. Don't try to change anything at first. Just notice the moments when you feel the urge to step in, approve something, answer a question, solve a problem, rescue someone who's struggling, or join a meeting because you're worried they might need you.

When you notice the impulse, pause and ask yourself:

• Does this really belong to me? If not, who does it belong to?

• What might happen if I leave ownership with the owner?

• How might I build capability, instead of dependency?

Then make a conscious choice. You may still decide to step in, and sometimes that's exactly what good leadership requires. The goal isn't to become less helpful. It's to become more intentional about when your help creates momentum, and when it just adds another click to the parking brake.

Canada's productivity challenge is real, and solving it will require action from everyone: governments, educators, investors, innovators, and business leaders alike. And inside our own organizations, every one of us can start making a contribution tomorrow morning.

Remember that the parking brake doesn't come off all at once; it comes off one click at a time. What if that's how organizations can become more productive, too?

 If you’d like to explore leadership productivity in your organization, reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

SAVING YOUR DEVELOPMENT BUDGET FOR STRUGGLING EMPLOYEES? Invest in Your Strongest Performers for Real ROI

by Leslie Rohonczy, IMC, PCC, Executive Coach & Author

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Think about the strongest performer on your team. When was the last time you deliberately invested in their growth and development?

If it's been a hot minute, that's understandable. Our attention naturally gravitates toward the people who need us most: the employee who's struggling, the new hire who's still finding their feet, or the people navigating conflict, missing deadlines, and falling short of expectations. Those are the situations that feel urgent, and they deserve our attention.

Our highest performers are usually bright, dependable, consistent, and able to solve problems before they ever reach our desks. They deliver what we need when we need it, and they rarely ask for help. And that's exactly where the opportunity begins.

I've become convinced that one of leadership's greatest missed opportunities is failing to keep developing our strongest people. Every leader understands the cost of poor performance: missed deadlines, quality issues, customer complaints, conflict, and a hundred other visible problems that demand our attention every day.

The cost of under-investing in a high performer is much harder to see because it doesn't show up as an urgent crisis. If it does appear on your radar, it'll probably look like unrealized potential: future executives who plateau before anyone notices; high-performing individual contributors who continue troubleshooting instead of learning how to multiply their impact through others; teams that miss the opportunity to learn from people who could have become exceptional mentors, peer coaches, and role models; and organizations that continue benefiting from what these people already know how to do while investing very little in what they might become capable of next.

Most organizations invest significant time and money in courses, conferences, mentoring programs, leadership programs, executive coaching, stretch assignments, and succession planning. The intention is clearly there. But the challenge is knowing where to invest next.

When someone is struggling, the path usually feels obvious. You can see the gap, identify the missing skill, and work together to close it. High performers are different. They're already succeeding, producing excellent work, and they've earned trust. So, it's no surprise that many leaders find themselves wondering, "What exactly would I coach them on?"

I've heard versions of that question many times. "She's forgotten more about finance than I'll ever know." "He's the smartest engineer in the company." "What could I possibly teach someone who's already better than I am?" Those are common, honest questions that reveal one of the biggest misconceptions about leadership development.

There's often another concern sitting just beneath those questions. You may worry that developmental feedback could demotivate someone, especially a high performer who's already succeeding.

In my experience observing hundreds of one-on-one conversations between leaders and their employees over fifteen years, thoughtful developmental feedback is usually received as a meaningful investment in someone's growth. For many high performers, the message isn't, "I'm not good enough." It's, "My leader sees even more potential in me, and is willing to invest in helping me reach it."

Early in our careers, development is largely about building capability. We learn technical skills, improve our communication, strengthen our presentations, become better at delegation, and learn how to navigate conflict. Progress is easy to recognize because we're continually adding new tools to our toolkit.

As we become more experienced, development changes. The work becomes far more reflective. Instead of asking, "What do I need to learn?", the conversation shifts toward questions like:

• What strengths have contributed to my success?

• How do those strengths affect the people around me?

• Where might those strengths be overused?

• What assumptions have become so familiar that I no longer notice them?

• How will the next level of leadership ask something different of me?

Those are leadership conversations. Some of the greatest leadership growth I've seen has come from helping someone see a familiar strength through a completely different lens.

One CEO I worked with realized his decisiveness had gradually begun shutting down healthy debate on the executive team. He wasn't trying to dominate discussions. He was simply moving quickly because that's what had always made him successful. Once he saw the pattern, he began inviting opposing viewpoints before making important decisions. His team became far more engaged, and the quality of their decisions improved.

Another leader discovered she was solving too many problems herself. She genuinely believed she was helping her team. Instead, she was unintentionally preventing them from developing their own judgment. As she experimented with stepping back, her team stepped into greater accountability and performance.

A dependable director prided herself on being indispensable, until she came to realize that she had become the biggest barrier to developing her people. Her greatest contribution was no longer doing more. It was creating opportunities for others to grow. (And bonus, she had more capacity for the strategic work she wanted to do.)

None of these leaders needed fixing. Their strengths simply needed to evolve.

Leadership potential isn't a fixed quantity. Some people are already performing at a remarkably high level, and they still have enormous capacity to grow. They may become your future executives, trusted advisors, exceptional mentors, or the people who elevate the performance of everyone around them, simply because of how they show up.

Current performance tells only part of the story. The more interesting question is how much untapped potential still sits beyond what you're seeing today.

We may know our strongest people still have room to grow, but we aren't sure what to talk about in a one-on-one beyond project updates and performance. If that feels familiar, here are six coaching conversations worth having.

1. Shift the conversation from performance to perspective. Instead of asking, "How's the project going?", ask, "What are you noticing about yourself as a leader that surprised you recently?" or "Where do you think your strengths have the biggest impact on other people?" High performers rarely need help doing the work. They often benefit from understanding the impact they have while doing it.

2. Challenge how they think, not simply what they do. Invite them into conversations where there isn't an obvious answer. Ask them to weigh competing priorities, explore trade-offs, or think several years ahead. Stretching judgment often creates more growth than assigning another project.

3. Help them shift from individual excellence to multiplying others. Ask questions like, "Who else could do this?" or "How could this project become a development opportunity for someone on your team?" Future leaders create results through other people, not just through their own expertise.

4. Coach the impact they have on others. Ask, "What behaviours do you think your colleagues have started copying from you?" or "If everyone on the team approached work exactly the way you do, what would improve, and what challenges might emerge?" Those questions often reveal blind spots that performance reviews never touch.

5. Create room for experimentation. High performers often feel enormous pressure to keep getting everything right. Talk openly about where it's safe to test ideas, challenge assumptions, and learn through experience. Continued growth requires space to experiment, not just expectations to deliver.

6. 6.      Give honest, forward-looking feedback. High performers hear "great job" all the time. What they hear much less often is, "Here's what the next level of leadership will ask of you." Helping someone understand what tomorrow requires can reignite their development in ways praise never will.

If you begin having conversations like these, something important happens: your strongest people continue evolving, your future leaders begin emerging earlier, and your culture becomes stronger because excellence begins multiplying instead of simply performing. And that's an extraordinary return on investment.

Thinking about the recent FIFA World Cup, it strikes me that we don’t ever question why the best players in the world still have coaches. We understand that excellence doesn't maintain itself. It requires continual challenge, fresh perspective, honest feedback, and deliberate development. We see the same pattern in Olympic sport, elite music, aviation, medicine, and business. Brené Brown has spoken openly about the coaches and mentors who've helped her continue growing throughout her career.

Organizations have the same opportunity. Every year, they invest enormous effort closing performance gaps. Far fewer invest the same energy expanding excellence. One protects today's results, and the other builds tomorrow's leaders.

Your next exceptional executive may already be sitting right there on your team. Maybe the next culture influencer is already solving problems just three desks away. Or an extraordinary potential mentor may be excited about an opportunity to help others stretch and grow, too.

The question is no longer whether those people have more potential; it’s: how will you deliberately help them discover it?

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Before your next one-on-one with your strongest performer, resist the temptation to spend the hour reviewing projects and priorities. Spend the conversation exploring who they're becoming instead.

Ask them:

• what they're learning about themselves as a leader

• which of their strengths they'll eventually need to redefine

• where they suspect their biggest blind spot might be

• what future leadership responsibilities will require them to do differently than what made them successful today

Then notice what happens. You may discover you've spent years managing someone's performance, when their greatest opportunity was developing their leadership.

If you're curious about unlocking the next level of leadership potential in your strongest people, I'd love to explore the opportunities with you. Reach out for a free Executive Coaching conversation with me at www.leslierohonczy.com.

LET'S STOP CALLING IT CHANGE RESISTANCE: Mistaking Confusion for Resistance is Solving the Wrong Problem

by Leslie Rohonczy, IMC, PCC, Executive Coach & Author

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"People just don't like change." I've heard that sentence hundreds of times over the years, usually from a frustrated leader trying to explain why an important initiative isn't gaining traction.

I don't buy it. People change all the time. We change jobs, get married, become parents, move across the country, learn new technologies, adapt to reorganizations, new bosses, new colleagues, and entirely new careers. If humans were naturally resistant to change, civilization would have ground to a halt somewhere around the invention of indoor plumbing.

So perhaps we've been diagnosing the wrong problem all along. In my experience, people aren't nearly as resistant to change as leaders imagine. But they ARE resistant to confusion, and that's a big difference.

Imagine you're standing in an airport waiting to board a flight. The departure board suddenly flashes "Gate Changed." No problem. You gather your things and head to the new gate. Now imagine the board starts changing every few minutes. Gate 18. Gate 26. Back to Gate 18. Flight delayed. Actually... on time. Please wait for further announcements. No explanation. No updates. No one seems to know what's happening.

You haven't become resistant to flying; you've become exhausted by trying to make sense of conflicting information. And that's what organizational change often feels like.

One executive I coached was convinced her leadership team was pushing back on a major transformation. "They just won't get on board," she told me. As we unpacked what was happening, a different picture emerged. Different executives were communicating different priorities. Success hadn't been clearly defined. As a result, some teams had already started changing their processes, while others had been told to wait. Timelines shifted weekly. Nobody knew which decisions had actually been made and which were still under discussion. Her team wasn't resisting the future, as she'd thought; they were just trying to survive the present. That distinction completely changes the leadership response.

If we assume people hate change, we tend to push harder. We communicate more frequently; another town hall with another corporate slide deck. We repeat the vision one more time, hoping it'll resonate, and that enthusiasm will eventually take over.

Sometimes the problem isn't a lack of communication. It's a lack of clarity.

Cognitive psychology and neuroscience researchers have long recognized that uncertainty increases cognitive load. When we can't confidently predict what's happening around us, our brains naturally direct more energy to monitoring for risk and filling in the gaps. That leaves us with less mental capacity for creativity, problem-solving, collaboration and learning.

When information is missing, we rarely leave the blanks empty. Our brains naturally want to connect all the bits and pieces of data we do have, by filling in the story with imagined information. It's a normal human response. And we rarely get it right. "I guess my role isn't important anymore." "They've probably already made the decision." "I'd better wait before I commit." "They're changing direction again."

As an executive coach, I spend a surprising amount of time helping leaders separate facts from the stories they've unconsciously constructed. Organizations do exactly the same thing. Confusion is a story factory. The irony is that leaders often perceive these behaviours as evidence that people are resistant or hesitant. People are asking lots of questions, waiting, and not taking initiative. From the leader's perspective, it looks like reluctance. But from the employee's perspective, it feels more like self-protection.

If we're striving to eliminate uncertainty, we're on a fool's errand. It just isn't possible. Markets shift, customers evolve, governments turn over, technology advances, and tactical plans evolve.

What if instead, we focused on eliminating unnecessary confusion. How? By making decisions visible, clearly explaining what is known, what remains uncertain, and when more information will be available, while carefully distinguishing between firm decisions and emerging possibilities. And by transparently acknowledging the ambiguity, rather than masking it with false certainty. And by recognizing that clarity is not achieved through a single announcement, but cultivated through an ongoing, intentional leadership practice.

In coaching conversations, when I hear a leader say, "My team is resisting change," I almost always become curious about something else. I wonder what the team might be confused about. And when I ask that question, it usually leads us somewhere much more useful. Because once confusion is reduced, something remarkable often happens: the resistance starts dissipating on its own.

Perhaps people were never resisting the change. Perhaps they were just trying to find stability as the ground moved under them, before taking the next step. And that is a very human thing to do.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Choose a current change your team is navigating and set aside 20 minutes to work through this exercise.

1. Write down the change in one clear sentence.

2. List the key areas where confusion might exist. For example: priorities, roles, timelines, decision-making, success measures.

3. For each area, ask yourself: What have I explicitly communicated? What might still be unclear or inconsistent? Where could people be filling in the gaps with their own assumptions?

4. Identify one or two specific actions you can take this week to reduce that confusion, such as clarifying a decision, aligning messaging with your leadership team peers, or naming what is still unknown.

5. Check in with your team and ask them directly: “What feels unclear right now?” Listen without correcting or defending.

6. Reflect on what shifted when you focused on increasing clarity.

If you're curious about creating greater clarity, alignment, and confidence in your leadership team, I'd love to explore it with you. Reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com

LEADERSHIP ALTITUDE: Are You a Helicopter, Jet, or Starship?

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I talk a lot about altitude with my executive coaching clients. One conversation in particular was with a senior leader who sat down across from me and said, "I'm working ridiculous hours, I'm constantly busy, and yet it feels like I'm falling further behind every week."

What struck me wasn't the workload itself, but the contradiction. Things were ticking along well, her team was delivering, and her dashboard showed everything was under control. But she spent most of her days bouncing from issue to issue, rarely finishing what she had planned to accomplish before the next urgent matter popped up. Because she was dependable and responsive, decisions, problems, requests, and approvals continually found their way to her. And every day, she felt like she was climbing up the down escalator.

As we unpacked her reality, we noticed a pattern emerging. There was a common thread at play: decisions flowed through her; problems landed on her desk; questions had to be answered by her. Her team depended on her for direction, approvals, information, and problem-solving, leaving her days consumed by operational details, responding to issues, and helping people navigate obstacles.

Of course, these are all important activities, to be sure. It might be tempting to think that she was not delegating well, or that she was a workaholic, but the real issue turned out to be her leadership altitude. She was spending most of her time operating at a Manager altitude, instead of the more strategic Vice-President altitude. In essence, she hadn't adjusted her altitude with her new responsibilities and span of control. That conversation stayed with me because I've seen countless versions of it throughout my years of executive coaching: leaders unaware they are flying at the wrong altitude.

THE ALTITUDE GAP

One of the most common, and most challenging, leadership transitions a leader can make is the shift from managing day-to-day operations and individual contributors, to leading other leaders, systems, functions, and strategy.

As leaders move through organizations, the horizon line they're responsible for monitoring expands. They become accountable for larger systems, more people, greater complexity, and decisions whose consequences may not appear for years. But many leaders continue operating at the altitude that made them successful in their previous role.

The behaviours that help someone become an outstanding Supervisor differ from those required to become an outstanding Director. The strengths that help someone succeed as a Director may eventually become limitations as they move into Vice-President, Executive, and C-suite leadership. That's why so many talented leaders feel overwhelmed. They're trying to lead a large organization while spending most of their time solving low-altitude problems.

Over the years, I've developed metaphors for leadership using three aircraft: the Helicopter, the Jet, and the Starship. Each operates at a different altitude and provides a different perspective. And each becomes increasingly important as a leader's scope of responsibility expands.

THE HELICOPTER

Imagine your leadership as a helicopter hovering a few hundred feet above the ground. You're no longer standing in the middle of the action, but you're still close enough to see what's happening on the ground. You can spot bottlenecks, notice tension between teams, identify missed handoffs, and observe where work is getting stuck.

This is the altitude of operational leadership, where leaders coach people, remove obstacles, allocate resources, clarify priorities, and help teams navigate challenges. Helicopter altitude keeps leaders connected to reality because they can still see the work as it unfolds.

Most of us spend a significant portion of our early leadership careers here. Supervisors, Managers, Team Leads, Project Managers, and frontline leaders often need to operate predominantly at this altitude because their success depends on helping people execute effectively to produce results.

The challenge is that Helicopter altitude feels productive. You can see a problem and solve it. You can answer a question and help someone move forward. You can remove a roadblock and watch progress happen almost immediately. The feedback is instant, and that sense of usefulness can become habitual.

Over time, some leaders become so accustomed to solving problems that they unknowingly train everyone around them to bring problems to them. Decisions, accountability, and responsibility all begin to migrate upward. And before long, the leader knows everything that's happening this week and very little about what needs to happen three months or three years from now.

I've worked with executives whose calendars looked like emergency dispatch units. Every issue found its way to them, minor conflicts required their involvement, and difficult decision somehow became their responsibility. They were admired, trusted, hardworking... and exhausted.

THE JET

As leaders move into larger and more complex roles, another shift begins to happen. The work itself becomes less visible. At first, it can feel uncomfortable, especially if you've built their careers on being knowledgeable, responsive, and closely connected to the work. Climbing higher often means giving up some of that visibility.

A Director overseeing six teams can't possibly keep track of every conversation, customer issue, project challenge, or interpersonal conflict occurring across their organization. And a Vice-President, responsible for several other leaders, hundreds of employees, and complex organizations, certainly can't.

What emerges in its place is something different: noticing patterns. Instead of seeing a single employee struggling, leaders begin noticing recurring turnover across a department. Instead of focusing on one delayed project, they begin recognizing a resource allocation issue affecting multiple teams. Individual events still matter, but they become clues pointing toward something larger, rather than signals to jump into action and solve them.

This is Jet altitude. The horizon expands dramatically. Details become harder to see (as they must), but the broader landscape becomes clearer. Leaders begin examining how departments interact, where priorities collide, what external conditions will likely impact their business, how information flows through the organization, and which systems are producing the outcomes they see.

The questions change as well. Rather than asking, "How do we solve this problem?" leaders begin asking, "Why does this problem keep appearing?" Rather than focusing on individual performance, they start paying attention to the systems and structure, processes, communication channels, incentives, governance, and culture.

Many leaders arrive at positions that require Jet altitude long before they become comfortable operating there. They continue solving issues one at a time, when the real opportunity is to improve the system creating those issues in the first place.

Jet altitude comes with its own traps, however. Leaders can become so fascinated by the system of strategy, frameworks, organizational design, and planning that they lose touch with the people living inside it. Most of us have experienced a strategic initiative that looked brilliant in a boardroom and bewildering everywhere else. Reality has a way of exposing details that weren't visible from 40,000 feet.

THE STARSHIP

The further leaders advance, the more another question begins to emerge. The focus shifts from "What's happening?" and "Why is it happening?" to a different question altogether: "What will happen next?" This is where Starship altitude becomes necessary.

Imagine looking back at Earth from space. Cities fade from view. Roads become invisible. Eventually, even national borders lose their meaning. Our perspective changes completely.

At Starship altitude, we stop focusing primarily on operations and organizational systems. Our attention shifts toward forces that may shape the organization for years, and sometimes decades, into the future.

We begin asking different kinds of questions: What technological shifts are reshaping the industry? How will demographics change the workforce? What customer expectations are emerging? What assumptions do we hold today that future leaders may laugh at? What must this organization become if it hopes to remain relevant ten or twenty years from now?

This is the altitude of enterprise leadership. It's where leaders wrestle with the big, bold questions of purpose, direction, positioning, legacy, and long-term relevance. They are less concerned with certainty, and more with understanding what version of the future may be emerging and how today's decisions might improve the organization's chances of thriving within them.

Starship altitude is partly about learning to notice what others overlook. Tomorrow rarely arrives all at once. The clues are usually visible long before the disruption becomes obvious, but they can be easy to miss when your attention is consumed by today's challenges.

Starship altitude has risks of its own. We've all encountered leaders who seem permanently stationed in orbit. They speak passionately about the next decade while their teams are struggling with problems that have existed for the last two years. Their vision may be compelling, but their connection to present-day reality becomes increasingly thin.

Organizations need leaders who can imagine the future, but they also need leaders who understand the realities of today.

WHEN SUCCESS BECOMES A LIABILITY

Promotions can create an unexpected problem: the behaviours that helped us earn a promotion to the next level of leadership frequently become the very behaviours that limit us afterwards.

The Manager who built a reputation for being responsive becomes the Vice-President who can't stop getting involved. The Director who became successful through personal expertise struggles to delegate decisions. The executive who built a career by solving problems continues solving them long after the role requires system-level thinking instead.

That's why leadership transitions can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. The issue is rarely intelligence, capability, commitment, or work ethic. It's altitude. The role requires one perspective while the leader continues operating from another.

That's exactly what was happening with the Vice-President I mentioned earlier. She was struggling because her responsibilities had evolved, but her altitude had not. Once she began spending less time solving operational issues and more time leading at the altitude her role demanded, something interesting happened. Her calendar became less crowded; her teams became more capable; her decisions became more strategic. And she finally stopped feeling like she was climbing the down escalator. What a relief!

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

The Altitude Audit: Set aside 10 minutes and reflect on the past two weeks. First, ask yourself:

• Have I been spending most of my time at Helicopter altitude, focused on tasks, issues, and execution?

• Have I been operating primarily at Jet altitude, focused on systems, priorities, and cross-functional outcomes?

• Have I been spending meaningful time at Starship altitude, scanning the horizon and thinking about the future?

Now ask a second question: What altitude does my role actually require most often?

Notice any gap between where you've been spending your time and where your leadership responsibilities require you to be. Then reflect on:

• What keeps pulling me toward my current altitude?

• What leadership challenges might be connected to this gap?

• What important signals, opportunities, or risks might I be missing?

• What is one thing I could do this week to operate at the altitude my role requires?

Many leadership challenges are not capability problems; they're altitude problems. Sometimes the most important growth a leader can make is learning to see a different horizon.

If you're curious about how your own leadership altitude may be helping or limiting your effectiveness, I'd love to help you explore it. Reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

OUR CAREER-LIMITING ADDICTION TO CERTAINTY: Why Some Leadership Decisions Stay Stuck

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Are you waiting for information you can’t possibly obtain? I don't mean that you're looking in the wrong place. I’m talking about information you’re waiting for that literally does not yet exist.

That may sound strange, but I see it regularly in my executive coaching work with leaders. The decision might involve any number of challenging scenarios: a strategic shift, a career move, a difficult conversation, an investment in a new opportunity. The details vary, but the pattern is remarkably consistent: a leader wants more information, clearer insight, and greater confidence that the decision will work out as they intend. On the surface, that sounds sensible. And most of us would prefer thoughtful leaders to impulsive ones.

The challenge, however, is one of diminishing returns: some decisions eventually reach a point where additional thinking stops producing additional clarity. The facts have been gathered, the options have been explored, trusted people have offered their perspectives, and the risks are reasonably well understood. But there it sits, parked, waiting for... what?

In my executive coaching work with leaders, I've noticed that people rarely get stuck because they haven't thought enough. By the time they're talking to me, they've usually considered their situation from every conceivable angle. They've researched, talked it through with trusted colleagues, slept on it, revisited it, and probably had the conversation with themselves a dozen times.

But something often goes unnoticed: the quest for information that belongs to a future chapter of the story. They assume that if they think a little deeper, analyze a little harder, or wait a little longer, the missing piece will eventually appear. Sometimes it does, and sometimes the information they're looking for can only emerge after action begins.

I was reminded of this recently while speaking with a client who was considering a significant career move. She had done her homework thoroughly. She understood the opportunity, the risks, and the trade-offs involved. She had spoken with people she respected and spent considerable time reflecting on the decision. At one point, she made a joke about it and said she was waiting for the universe to send her a registered letter confirming she was making the right choice. The image made us both smile because it captured the situation, and her wiring, perfectly. (Sometimes, clients come up with the perfect metaphor on their own.)

She wasn't avoiding the decision or being careless. She had simply reached the point where further analysis was unlikely to produce anything meaningfully new. The information she wanted was on the other side of the decision, the result of experiencing it firsthand.

Many leadership decisions eventually arrive at this point. More analysis feels productive because analysis has served us well throughout our careers. Gathering information is often the right response to uncertainty. The difficulty comes when we continue gathering long after we've exhausted what the current chapter can teach us.

Ronald Heifetz's work on Adaptive Leadership offers a useful distinction here. Technical problems can often be solved through expertise and existing knowledge. Adaptive challenges are different. They require learning, experimentation, and movement into territory where important answers emerge only after action has begun.

Senior leaders encounter these challenges constantly. Markets change. Technologies reshape industries. Customer expectations evolve. Business models that once seemed stable begin to shift. In situations like these, leaders often keep searching for information that nobody has access to yet. Not the board. Not the consultants. Not the person with twenty years of industry experience.

Reality is frustrating that way. It tends to hold onto certain information until somebody actually does something. Leaders who would never describe themselves as risk-averse can find themselves waiting for reassurance that cannot be obtained ahead of time. The decision remains under review, another meeting gets scheduled, another discussion takes place, and the future remains politely on hold.

Meanwhile, reality keeps moving. Competitors make decisions, employees draw conclusions, and opportunities evolve. More importantly, new information appears when somebody tests an idea, enters a market, has a conversation, launches a project, accepts a role, or declines one. Action reveals things that analysis cannot.

That's why people who move sometimes appear to have better information than everyone else. In many cases, they created it. I’m not advising recklessness or abandoning thoughtful analysis. Good leaders should examine assumptions, consider consequences, and seek wise counsel. The challenge is recognising when analysis has delivered everything it can reasonably provide. Many important leadership decisions don't begin with certainty. They begin with a willingness to learn.

My client eventually made her move. What struck me afterwards wasn't whether the decision worked out. It was how little new information appeared between the moment she felt stuck and the moment she finally acted. The certainty she had been waiting for never arrived. What arrived was the next chapter of information. Once she stepped into the experience, she began learning things that had been impossible to know beforehand. Those insights had never been available to her while she was standing still.

That realization has stayed with me because it applies to far more than career decisions. Some of the information we want most is unavailable until we begin moving toward it.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

• Think about a decision you've been carrying for a while.

• Write down the information you believe you still need before acting. Then write down what information could only become available after you take action.

• As you compare the two lists, notice whether you've been waiting for information that genuinely exists or information that belongs to a future chapter of the story.

• If certainty never arrives, what decision would you make based on what you already know?

• Sit with that question for a few minutes and notice what emerges.

Reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

WHAT MUSICIANS CAN TEACH US ABOUT LEADERSHIP: Lessons from the Stage

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I've read hundreds of leadership books. Some were brilliant, some were forgettable, and a surprising number appeared to have been written by people who’ve likely never actually met another human being in the wild.

In fact, some of the most useful leadership advice I've ever encountered came from a conductor, a bass player, a jazz musician, a record producer, and a pop star.

Let’s start with one of the most profound leadership books I’ve ever read. It was co-written by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and Rosamund Stone Zander, who was trained as a family systems therapist and has coached organizations around the world. I read their book, The Art of Possibility years ago, and it has stayed with me in a way most leadership books haven’t.

That raises a fair question. Why write about a book that is more than two decades old when leaders are already drowning in newer books, newer models, newer acronyms, and newer ways to make a perfectly good meeting sound like a government procurement process?

Because while some ideas age, other ideas deepen. The Zanders’ work has deepened for me because it speaks to something leaders are still wrestling with every day: How do you help people perform at their best when pressure is high, trust is fragile, attention is scattered, and everyone is carrying more than they are saying out loud?

Benjamin Zander has a famous line that has lodged itself permanently in my leadership brain: the conductor does not make a sound. The person standing at the front, a visible focal point for the performance, and getting all the attention and accolades, never plays a single note. In fact, they don’t make a sound. That idea is so simple it almost sneaks past you. A conductor has enormous responsibility and very little direct control, which is a pretty accurate description of senior leadership on most days.

You can't force trust. It doesn’t magically appear because you demand it. Engagement is not something people hand over on command. Creativity, courage, and ownership don't show up because someone in a leadership role says they should, no matter how inspiring your town hall deck may be.

What you can do is create conditions for clarity. You can set the tempo. You can help people hear one another. You can notice when the brass section is overpowering the strings, which is also an excellent metaphor for certain executive teams I've seen in action.

This is where I think musicians have a strange and wonderful advantage as leadership teachers. They spend their lives working with the same forces leaders work with every day: ego, pressure, collaboration, uncertainty, discipline, and the occasional public flop.

They also can't hide behind strategy language when things go sideways. If the music is off, everyone knows it, even if they can't name the particular instrument or musical error. But they feel it.

Victor Wooten, the great bassist and author of another of my favourite books, The Music Lesson, offers a leadership insight I wish we talked about more. He writes about music as a language, something learned through listening, feel, relationship, and practice. Victor talks about how we learn language as babies, as a metaphor for becoming a skilled musician. As babies, we’re not taught the grammatical rules and structure of the English language; we learn to speak English by being immersed in it, observing, experimenting, and trying new moves.

Leadership is similar. We can study the grammar of leadership all day, and I love a good leadership model as much as the next executive coach, but people do not experience us as models. They experience our attention, curiosity, timing, style, and whether we listen before we jump in with the answer we had already tucked in our pocket.

Wooten also writes about space as part of music. That one should be required reading for anyone who has ever filled a silence in a meeting because the pause made them feel squirmy. But silence isn't something to be avoided at all costs. The moment a pause appears, there's no need to rush to fill it with another opinion, explanation, or attempt to move the conversation along.

Musicians know the value of silent pauses, called ‘rests’ in music notation. The rests are part of the music, equally as important (and sometimes even more important than) the notes. In leadership, the pause is often where the more honest thought finally has room to arrive.

Herbie Hancock has told a story about playing with Miles Davis that has stayed with me for years. During a performance, Hancock played what he thought was the wrong chord, and was rattled in the moment. Miles responded by playing something that made the chord work. That story captures one of the most mature leadership behaviours I know: the ability to work with what has happened rather than burn energy wishing the original plan had survived contact with reality.

Leaders face wrong chords all the time. A project stalls, a stakeholder reacts badly, a talented person disappoints you, or the meeting takes a turn no one predicted. Some leaders freeze because reality has deviated from the sheet music in front of them. Others adjust and find the next note by listening for what's emerging.

Then there's Taylor Swift. She may seem like an unusual addition to a list that includes conductors, jazz musicians, classical performers, and music producers, but I think she offers one of the most powerful leadership lessons of all.

Years ago, when ownership of her master recordings became a highly public issue, she faced a situation many leaders encounter in one form or another. Something important was no longer under her control.

Most people, when faced with that situation, focus on the fight. They pour their energy into winning the argument, defeating the opponent, or getting back what was lost. Taylor Swift chose a different path. Rather than spending years fighting a battle on someone else's terms, she re-recorded her catalogue and created a new version of the future. That strikes me as a remarkably useful leadership lesson.

When leaders feel stuck, they often assume they have two choices: accept reality or fight reality. Sometimes there is a third option. Build a different game. I can't tell you how many times I've watched leaders exhaust themselves trying to force a door open when they would have been far better served looking for a different entrance altogether.

Rick Rubin brings a different kind of wisdom into the conversation. In his amazing book, The Creative Act, he writes about creativity through the lens of attention, receptivity, and noticing what wants to emerge. That may sound a bit woo-woo until you consider the damage that can be caused by action without awareness. Many leaders are praised for moving quickly, making decisions, and pushing things forward, even when they are moving quickly in the wrong direction. Rubin’s work reminds me that insight often starts before action. It starts with noticing the pattern, the tension, the missing conversation, or the thing everyone has learned to politely step around.

Yo-Yo Ma offers another leadership lesson, especially through his long-standing work with Silkroad, the organization he founded to bring together artists and cultural traditions from around the world to create something meaningful together. At first glance, that sounds like a music project. In reality, it is a masterclass in collaboration across difference. How do people with different histories, perspectives, experiences, and ways of seeing the world create something together without sacrificing what makes each of them unique?

That feels painfully relevant right now. Many leaders are trying to create alignment in environments where people don't see the world the same way, don't process information the same way, and don't always feel safe saying what they really think. Ma's work reflects a deep respect for curiosity, difference, and the discipline required to create something meaningful across traditions. Curiosity is not decorative in those conditions. It is operationally useful.

Then there is Wynton Marsalis, who has often described jazz as a metaphor for democracy. I think it also offers a useful lens for leadership. Jazz succeeds because each musician has the freedom to contribute their own voice while staying accountable to the rhythm, structure, and needs of the ensemble.

That is also what healthy organizations are trying to build. People need room to think and contribute, but they also need enough shared structure that the whole thing does not turn into twelve soloists competing for oxygen.

I think this is why music keeps giving me better leadership metaphors than most leadership books. Music understands influence without control. It understands dynamics, tension, timing, cadence, pace, listening, calibration, collaboration, and the reality that performance depends on both individual mastery and collective trust. When we pay attention to the whole sound, we notice who is carrying too much and who has gone silent, and we can sense when the tempo is too fast for the quality of performance that’s required.

True leadership is not about proving your own brilliance; it's about making more brilliance possible around you. What stays with me is that every one of these musicians, in very different ways, points to the same truth. Leadership involves shaping the conditions that allow great performances to happen, helping people contribute their best work and connect it to something larger than themselves. The leaders people remember are the ones who helped others find their voice, trust one another, and create something better than any one person could have produced alone.

If you want to expand your leadership repertoire, reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

YOU DON'T NEED TO BE LESS HUMAN TO BECOME MORE STRATEGIC: Growing into Senior Leadership Without Losing Yourself

Leslie Rohonczy, IMC, PCC, Executive Coach & Author

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I don’t often write about the end of a coaching engagement. Usually, the stories I share in these Leadership articles come from the beginning, when a leader is naming the thing that isn’t working, or from the messy middle, where self-awareness is rising, old habits are getting exposed, and trying on different ways of leading can feel awkward, vulnerable, and occasionally a bit like wearing someone else’s shoes. The ending is different. It's where you find out what actually changed.

I recently wrapped up a coaching program with a senior leader I’ve had the genuine pleasure of working with over several months. Near the end of our conversation, she named something that many leaders I've coached have wrestled with. She reflected on how much of her early career success had come from being deeply involved, highly responsive, emotionally available, and someone people could count on without hesitation. She built strong teams, led in a highly hands-on, relational way, and noticed what others missed.

She said, “What I’m realizing is that the strengths that helped me succeed as a Manager and Director still matter, but how I express them has to change as I grow into a more senior role.”

That landed, because I have heard versions of this tension many times in coaching conversations. A leader gets promoted because they are capable, dependable, thoughtful, and trusted. They build a reputation by being the person who gets things done, notices what others miss, responds quickly, supports their people, and carries a lot without complaint. Then, somewhere along the way, the feedback changes. Suddenly, they are being told to be more strategic, to lead at a higher level, to stay out of the operational weeds, or to focus less on execution and more on enterprise thinking.

And what many deeply relational leaders hear in that feedback is something far more unsettling. "Does that mean I need to stop caring so much? Be less available? Become one of those polished executives who have mastered the art of sounding profound while saying almost nothing at all?"

It can create a genuine identity wobble because, for many leaders, especially high performers, the behaviours that built their early success were quite intentional. They became trusted because they were emotionally present for their people. They became promotable because they were dependable and productive. They earned influence because people experienced them as thoughtful, caring, and deeply committed. So when leadership growth requires change, it can create a real fear that the people around you may experience you as less caring, less accessible, or somehow less 'you'. Becoming more strategic can feel unsettlingly close to becoming less recognisable to yourself.

My client said something else in our closing conversation that I suspect will resonate with more than a few people. We were talking about confidence in the context of external validation, positive feedback, visible signs of success, and being seen as capable. She said, “Even just becoming aware of that has shifted my thinking.” Because once you notice that your confidence has been partly outsourced to the reactions of others, you begin to reclaim some authorship over it.

She also described a deeply human aspect of this coaching work: we build insight and self-awareness, and our confidence can feel steady for weeks, until something comes along that throws us off balance, and we find ourselves slipping back into old habits of thinking and reacting. That’s normal. Greater self-awareness does not mean those moments disappear forever. It means we recognize them faster. With practice, the distance between being triggered and catching ourselves in our 'old way' gets shorter and shorter. We still have the occasional wobble. We just recover quicker.

I see this pattern so often in coaching with leaders growing into more senior leadership roles. Many eventually discover that some of their most valued strengths become 'over-strengths' at more senior levels. Responsiveness can become reflexive order-taking, where the instinct to be helpful overrides the discipline to assess whether the ask actually belongs at your altitude. Inclusiveness can become over-consulting, where the desire to bring people along starts slowing decision-making long after sufficient input has been gathered. Ownership can become over-functioning, where personal accountability turns into doing work that should be delegated, because trusting others feels riskier than stepping in yourself. Emotional generosity can become protective insulation, where the instinct to care protects people from meaningful accountability, hard truths, and the consequences that would ultimately help them grow.

Those qualities are not inherently problematic. The challenge is that leadership context changes, and with it, what the role actually requires. Many of the skills that help someone thrive as a manager aren't the same ones required for senior or executive leaders to be successful. If you remain endlessly accessible, when do you think? If every decision requires broad consensus, when do you decide? If you keep solving problems your team should be solving, how do they grow? And if your calendar looks like a losing game of executive Tetris, where exactly is strategic leadership supposed to happen?

This is where many leaders give me the hairy eyeball, because this developmental ask can feel emotionally confusing, as the internal questions sound like: "Am I becoming colder? Am I losing what made me effective? Am I becoming less authentic?"

In my experience, the leaders who successfully navigate this transition don't become less human as they grow, but they do become more discerning. They get clearer about where their time creates the most value, become more intentional with their energy and attention, stop equating constant 'doing' with leadership contribution, and learn that protecting thinking time is part of the role, not an indulgence. They also become more willing to disappoint someone in the short term if the longer-term decision serves the broader organization. That is leadership maturity in action.

Let me put on the gender lens for a minute. For many women, there can be extra complexity layered into this transition. I say this thoughtfully, not as a sweeping generalization. Many women have spent years being socially rewarded for being accommodating, relational, highly capable, emotionally tuned in, and endlessly dependable. Add perfectionism, caregiving conditioning, or internalized pressure to be both competent and likeable, and this transition can carry extra emotional texture. And that means the leadership identity work can sometimes be more nuanced for women.

What I have consistently seen in leaders who navigate this transition well is something I deeply respect. They don't harden or become emotionally beige, and they don't confuse detachment with sophistication. They keep their humanity, while becoming much more deliberate about where that humanity gets expressed.

Before we wrapped up, my client said something that captured this beautifully: “It’s really about becoming more aware of where I put my energy and time. The things that helped me succeed still matter. But how I do them has just evolved.” That is leadership growth. Learning how to lead in a way that matches the altitude of the role, without losing the parts of yourself that made people want to follow your lead in the first place.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

For the next two weeks, become a curious observer of your own leadership habits.

Pay attention to moments where you instinctively step in, respond immediately, over-consult, solve a problem that arguably belongs to someone else, say yes when your calendar is already gasping for oxygen, or stay deeply involved in work that may no longer require your altitude.

The goal is not to change anything immediately. The goal is to notice. Catch yourself in real time and ask: Is this a strength serving the current role, or a legacy habit from an earlier chapter of leadership?

At the end of your observation period, spend some time reflecting on these questions:

1. Which behaviour(s) showed up most often?

2. Which of these once served you well, and how?

3. What leadership need were these behaviours originally helping you meet: competence, control, belonging, approval, usefulness, certainty, or something else?

4. Which of these habits now creates drag, exhaustion, bottlenecks, or unintended consequences for you and/or others?

5. Where might your team, your peers, or your organization need something different from you now?

6. What is one small experiment you could try that would better match the altitude of your current role?

If you're a leader navigating this leadership transition and want to grow your strategic impact without losing the humanity that helps people trust you, reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com