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.

10 C-SUITE ATTRIBUTES THAT MATTER MORE THAN EVER: Executive Leadership Has Changed. Have Our Leaders?

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

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

Imagine being handed the keys to the C-suite today. Congratulations! Now, about that job description. The economy is uncertain. Geopolitics has wandered straight into your strategic plan. Canada’s relationship with its largest trading partner is fractured. AI is changing work faster than many organizations can redesign it. Your people are tired of change, but you need them to get better at it, quickly. And somewhere in the middle of all this, you’re still expected to deliver the quarter. Welcome to the executive team.

This is an interesting time to be a senior leader in Canada.

For many years, I was the Corporate Coach at Export Development Canada, coaching leaders inside an organization devoted to helping Canadian companies grow internationally. One thing I learned from that experience is that moving beyond familiar territory asks something different of leaders. Assumptions get challenged. Relationships work differently. Risk changes. What made you successful somewhere familiar may be surprisingly unhelpful somewhere new. And that feels particularly relevant now more than ever.

EDC just reported (September 2026) that 72% of Canadian exporters plan to pursue new markets over the next two years, up from 65% just five months ago. Europe and Asia-Pacific are attracting particular interest. At the same time, companies are navigating tariffs, geopolitical instability, rapid technological change, productivity pressures and economic uncertainty.

KPMG recently asked Canadian CEOs which leadership capabilities they consider most important for navigating geopolitical instability and sluggish economic growth. Their answers included leading transformation and culture change, faster decision-making under pressure, stronger strategic foresight and scenario planning, and AI understanding and literacy.

The demands of the senior leadership job are changing.

So perhaps the question for boards, CEOs, and executives aspiring to the C-suite is no longer simply, “Who has performed well enough to get there?” We might also ask, “Who has the range to lead from there now?”

What does that kind of range look like in practice? While the answer will vary by organization, industry, and circumstance, some leadership capabilities are becoming increasingly important as the demands on senior executives change. These ten stand out to me, not as a definitive checklist, but as a useful way to examine whether our leadership capabilities are keeping pace with the world we’re being asked to lead in.

Here are ten leadership attributes I believe deserve particular attention.

TOP 10 LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTES

1. STRATEGIC FORESIGHT

Nobody gets issued a crystal ball with their executive parking pass. Strategic foresight is something more useful anyway. It’s the ability to look beyond the most likely future and consider several plausible ones. What happens if a major market becomes less accessible? Or if a competitor changes your industry's economics? What if AI fundamentally changes the work? Or the assumptions underneath your five-year strategy stop being true?

It’s impossible to accurately predict the future, anyway. The real objective is to become less surprised by it.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: What would have to happen for our current strategy to stop making sense?

2. ADAPTIVE DECISIVENESS

Executives have always made difficult decisions. What has changed is how frequently they may have to make them without enough information. Waiting for certainty can feel responsible. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is indecision dressed up in a respectable suit.

Adaptive decisiveness means making a sound decision with the best information available, explaining the reasoning, watching what happens, and being willing to change course when the evidence changes.

Changing your mind because the facts changed isn’t weak leadership. Refusing to change it because your ego is now attached to the decision might be.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: Where are we waiting for certainty when what we actually need is a thoughtful decision?

3. GLOBAL AND GEOPOLITICAL CURIOSITY

For Canadian executives, geopolitics can no longer be something that happens somewhere else. Trade policy, currencies, regulation, supply chains, energy, political relationships and cultural differences can affect customers, costs and growth surprisingly quickly. And as more Canadian companies branch out to explore markets beyond the United States, leaders will increasingly encounter places where the familiar rules of business don’t necessarily apply.

That calls for something deceptively simple: curiosity, the willingness to understand before assuming, and occasionally to say, “We don’t know enough about this yet.”

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: Which assumptions about our markets, customers, and competitors are we treating as facts?

4. ENTERPRISE THINKING

Many executives reach the C-suite because they have become exceptionally good at a specific function: finance, operations, technology, marketing, people, sales. Then the job changes. At the enterprise level, the question is no longer simply, “What is best for my function?” It becomes, “What does the whole organization need?”

A technology decision can create a people problem. A cost reduction can create a customer problem. A growth opportunity can introduce risks another executive sees more clearly than you do.

Strong C-suite leaders gradually loosen their grip on their functional identity and become stewards of the whole enterprise. In my coaching work, I’ve seen how challenging that transition can be, especially when functional expertise has been such an important part of a leader’s success.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: When my functional interests and the needs of the enterprise collide, which one wins?

5. TECHNOLOGICAL JUDGMENT

I deliberately haven’t called this AI expertise. Most executives don’t need to become technologists. They need enough understanding to ask good questions and enough judgment to recognize bad answers.

PwC’s 2026 Global CEO Survey found that only 12% of CEOs reported both revenue and cost benefits from AI, while 56% reported neither. That doesn’t argue against AI. It argues for thoughtful leadership around where and how it is being used.

Where does AI genuinely create value? What work should disappear or change? What should remain distinctly human? What risks are being introduced? Who remains accountable for the decisions? I explored another aspect of this question recently in IF AI SAVES TIME, WHO GETS THE TIME BACK? The technology may create capacity. But leadership must still decide what that capacity is for.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: Are we using AI because we can, or because we are clear about the value we want it to create?

6. THE ABILITY TO BUILD ADAPTABILITY

Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends research found that 85% of leaders consider building organizational and workforce adaptability critical. Only 7% say they are leading in helping their workforce continuously grow and adapt. That gap should get our attention.

Organizations can’t keep throwing change at people and calling their ability to absorb it “resilience.” Adaptability requires context, priorities, learning, tolerance for experimentation, permission to stop doing some things, and enough stability to innovate. Otherwise, adaptability becomes exhaustion, and exhausted people aren’t particularly strategic or creative.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: How are we building our organization’s capacity to adapt, rather than simply asking people to absorb more change?

7. EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION

This capability doesn’t appear on a balance sheet, but its consequences sure do. When uncertainty rises, people watch their leaders more closely. An executive who becomes reactive, defensive, or visibly anxious can send that anxiety through an organization faster than a layoff rumour.

Senior leaders don’t need to become emotionless. They need enough self-awareness to recognize what is happening inside themselves, enough social awareness to sense how others are feeling and anticipate how they may respond, and enough self-regulation to consciously choose what they send outward, and how. And remember, the higher the position, the bigger the wake you’ll leave behind you.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: Under pressure, what am I transmitting to others, and is it helping them respond at their best?

8. TRUST-BUILDING CANDOUR

I’ve seen uncertainty create an interesting communication problem in organizations. Leaders are often tempted to wait until they have answers before saying anything. And employees are often most hungry for communication when answers don’t exist yet.

Candour means being able to say what we know, what we don’t know, what has changed, what we are considering, and what happens next. It also means creating enough safety for other people to be candid with us. The more senior you become, the more courage it can take for someone else to tell you they think you’re wrong. I explored this more deeply in DO PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH YOU TO YOUR FACE?, because one of the less obvious risks of gaining authority is gradually losing access to the candid disagreement you need most.

If nobody challenges your thinking anymore, it might be worth wondering why.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: How am I creating the conditions to discover what people really know, see and believe, especially when it differs from what I want to hear?

9. TALENT MULTIPLICATION

There’s a point in an executive career when your greatest contribution shifts from what you can personally accomplish yourself, to what you can inspire and enable others to accomplish through your leadership.

Your job increasingly becomes creating the conditions for others to think, decide, challenge, experiment, and lead. That means developing successors, giving away meaningful authority, coaching rather than rescuing, and resisting that seductive little voice that says, “It would be faster if I just did it myself.” In truth, yep, it probably would. That’s why the habit is so dangerous.

If too many decisions still need you, eventually you become part of what’s slowing the organization down.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: Where am I adding value by being involved, and where has my involvement started preventing someone else from growing?

10. INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY AND COURAGEOUS CURIOSITY

The further people rise in an organization, the easier it can become to confuse experience with certainty. Experience is enormously valuable, until the environment changes enough that some of what we ‘know’ becomes an assumption worth examining.

Curious executives ask what they are missing, whose perspective they haven’t heard, what evidence would cause them to change their minds, and which assumption would be most dangerous if it were wrong.

Perhaps the hardest question is also the shortest: “Could I be wrong about this?”

That doesn’t diminish executive authority. Used well, it strengthens it.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE QUESTION: What am I so certain about that I’ve stopped being curious about it?

THE C-SUITE MAY NEED MORE RANGE

Canadian companies are being asked to protect what works while exploring what comes next. The expectation is to maintain U.S. relationships where possible, while building new ones, to invest while managing uncertainty, to leverage the hell out of AI while figuring out where it actually creates real value, and to transform our organizations while keeping people capable of absorbing the transformation.

Those challenges require strategy, capital, and execution. They also require leaders with range.

Perhaps that gives us a different way to think about C-suite readiness. Experience still matters, of course, but experience tells us what worked before. Leadership becomes particularly interesting when the environment stops cooperating with our experience.

The executives who lead Canadian organizations successfully through the next decade may be the ones whose ability to learn, unlearn, decide, and adapt, will help them survive and thrive without losing sight of the people they are asking to come with them.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Take another look at the ten attributes, but don’t choose the three you’re best at. That’s too easy. Instead, reflect on which one made you slightly uncomfortable.

Reflect on these two questions:

1. Where is that capability being tested in your leadership right now, and what do you tend to do instead?

2. If the demands of your role change faster than you do over the next three years, which capability will you wish you had started developing today?

WHY DO YOU REALLY WANT TO LEAD? 5 Uncomfortable Questions to Ask Yourself

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

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

Ask someone why they want a bigger leadership role, and you'll usually hear the standard answers: "I want to make a difference" or "I want to help people grow." Both may be completely sincere; admirable even, and definitely plausible. Also, probably not the whole story.

Perhaps you really want greater influence, recognition, money, authority, or challenge. Perhaps the promotion would prove something to a former boss, a parent, a colleague, or yourself. There's no shame in any of these drivers, and they don't make you unfit to lead. They make you human.

The risk begins when we refuse to examine those motivations more deeply. An unacknowledged need doesn't disappear when the promotion is announced. It just gets a larger office, a bigger budget, and more people to influence.

YOUR AMBITION IS DATA

Leadership researchers Kim-Yin Chan and Fritz Drasgow introduced the term ‘motivation to lead’ in their research on the three sources of leadership motivation: we may be drawn to leadership because we enjoy it and see ourselves as leaders; because we feel a duty to step forward; or because we're willing to accept the costs and responsibilities involved. Their findings also showed that motivation to lead adds meaningful information when predicting leadership potential.

In other words, the motivation for why we lead deserves more attention than a common question during a promotion interview.

Most of us have a mix of motives, not just one. We can care deeply about helping others, enjoy being influential, and appreciate the salary increase. Self-awareness asks us to recognize what's driving us, so those motives don't take over when pressure rises.

The more useful question, then, isn't simply, “Do I want the job?” It’s, “Do I want the work the job will require of me?” That work comes with a few uncomfortable tests.

FIVE POWERFUL QUESTIONS

Here are five questions that can help you look beneath those standard polished reasons for wanting to lead and examine what may also be driving you. Whether you’re considering a leadership role or already in one, reflect on them with curiosity rather than trying to produce “right” answers. They can help you distinguish between wanting the title and wanting the work that comes with it. They can also help you anticipate where your motives could shape your behaviour, and make more deliberate choices about the kind of leader you want to be.

1. WOULD YOU STILL WANT TO LEAD WITHOUT THE RECOGNITION?

Imagine that your new title will impress no one. There's no spotlight, no special recognition, caché, or fancy office that comes with this promotion. And you'll still have to address poor performance, defend an unpopular decision, absorb pressure from above, and support people through uncertainty.

Does the work still interest you? Not the title, but the day-to-day work required. This simple question can help you separate attraction to the role from appetite for its actual, although less glamorous, responsibilities.

2. ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE AWAY DECISIONS AND CREDIT?

Many people earn leadership roles because they're excellent operational problem-solvers. They're great at doing the work, and they often get fulfillment from it. Then they're promoted as a reward for doing it so well, only to discover that the promotion has taken them away from the very work that made them happy and successful.

Their value used to come from doing and solving problems exceptionally well. But on the other side of a promotion, their value as leaders must now come from building other people's judgment, coaching and guiding them for development and performance, and getting the work done through others.

That can be a tough pill to swallow for someone who loves the doing part. Suddenly, they're standing outside the fun stuff like a kid looking in a candy shop window. Solving the problem themselves would be faster. Rewriting the work would be easier. Making the decision would feel satisfying. Being in the action would be juicy. And without realizing it, they become the bottleneck.

Leadership asks us to let someone else wrestle with a problem, try new things, explore solutions, make a sound decision, implement it, and receive the credit. If your identity depends on being the person with the answers, leadership can expose that dependency pretty quickly.

3. CAN PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH YOU SAFELY?

Authority changes conversations. Even warm, approachable leaders underestimate how much people edit themselves around power. Gallup has reported that managers account for approximately 70% of the variance in employee engagement across business units. How a leader listens, responds, delegates, recognizes, and corrects has enormous consequences.

As your authority grows, people are less willing to risk candour. You can make it safer by receiving feedback openly while resisting the urge to explain it away. You can also reward people who surface risks, and allow disagreement to influence your thinking. If everyone agrees with you, it may be because your judgment is consistently sound, but it may also be because people don't feel safe challenging you. That possibility deserves investigation too.

4. DO YOU WANT TO GROW PEOPLE, EVEN WHEN IT SLOWS YOU DOWN?

“I want to develop others” sounds splendid until development becomes inconvenient. Real development requires time, clarity, stretch, experimentation, unintended consequences, feedback, and room to learn. Sometimes it means watching someone take the scenic route to a conclusion you reached ten minutes ago. Sometimes it means coaching a capable person who may eventually outgrow your team.

“Developing people” can't survive as a slogan. It has to appear in calendars, assignments, actions, conversations, and decisions about who gets opportunities, recognition, and visibility.

5. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT LEADERSHIP TO PROVE?

This may be the most revealing question of all. Complete these sentences from your own individual perspective, without answering on behalf of your organization, your team, or the interview panel:

• When I reach the next level, I'll feel...

• I'll finally know...

• Other people will see me as...

• I'll no longer have to...

• I'll have proved...

Read your answers with curiosity. Look for the emotional contract you may be trying to sign with the role or title. A promotion can give you more authority. It can't permanently settle whether you're intelligent, valuable, respected, or enough. When we ask a title to do that for us, we get unintended consequences: we may hoard decisions to feel essential, avoid feedback to preserve a feeling of certainty, or overwork to justify our place. Those patterns are costly, but they're coachable once we become aware of them.

THE QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTION

Wanting to lead isn't evidence that you should. Some uncertainty about whether leadership is right for you may reflect a healthy respect for what the role will require of you.

Before pursuing the next title, we might ask a more demanding set of questions: Do I want to hold power, and how would I use it responsibly? Can I help others become less dependent on me? Am I willing to hear what authority makes harder for people to say? Can I remain curious about my impact when my intentions are good?

The strongest motivation for leadership may not be pure selflessness or naked ambition, but the willingness to keep examining both, while accepting responsibility for what our motives produce in other people.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Write down every reason you want your current leadership role, or the next one. Include the obvious reasons, and also include the private reasons you would choose to edit out of an interview answer. Then ask: When this motive is healthy, how does it strengthen my leadership? When it takes over, what might other people experience from me? You don't need perfectly selfless motives to lead well. You need to understand what is driving you, recognize how those motives shape your decisions and relationships, and take responsibility when they begin to lead you instead of serving the people you lead.

SOURCES

Chan, K. Y., and Drasgow, F. (2001). Toward a theory of individual differences and leadership: Understanding the motivation to lead. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 481 498. Gallup (2015). Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement.

IF AI SAVES TIME, WHO GETS THE TIME BACK? Leaders Decide If AI Builds Capacity or Creates More Work

By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC

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

An employee figures out how to use AI to turn a two-hour daily task into a 20-minute one. On paper, the organization has just gained 100 minutes of capacity every week. In practice, that gain only matters if someone decides what the time is for.

Does it get allocated to deeper thinking, stronger relationships, harder problems? Does the organization reduce staffing? Does the employee just become responsible for producing more, faster? Or does it vanish into the hazy workplace swamp of meetings, messages, and overflowing inboxes?

LinkedIn is filthy with articles either fear-mongering or cheerleading about AI. So many leadership articles seem to focus on how much time AI can save. I'm interested in a different question: what will leaders decide to do with that time?

If every efficiency gain is immediately converted into more volume, we're not improving the system: we're standing in a sinking boat, bucket in hand, while a larger hose pours in work faster than we can bail.

I’m not an AI expert, and I don’t claim to be one. What I do have is a front-row seat to senior leaders trying to make sense of the expectations AI is creating inside their organizations. From that vantage point, recovered time looks less like a technology question and more like a leadership decision.

There's a second question tucked inside this one, and it may matter even more: if AI takes over more of the work people have traditionally used to learn their craft, how will they develop the judgment to know whether that work is any good?

RECOVERED TIME GETS CLAIMED, NOT KEPT

I read about a study done just last year that got me thinking. The Harvard Business School working paper studied 78 employees at IG Group, who were asked to use generative AI to produce online investment articles. Across participants, the average time spent coming up with the concepts for an article fell from about 63 minutes to 23. The writing phase fell from 87 minutes to 22.

Those are significant gains, but they tell us nothing about how the recovered time should be used. Workplace capacity rarely sits around waiting to be thoughtfully allocated. Those gains get claimed, or they evaporate.

In 2025, Microsoft analyzed billions of anonymized Microsoft 365 records and found that the average worker receives 117 emails and 153 Teams messages every weekday. It described an “infinite workday” stretching from early-morning email into late-night inbox checks. The warning leaders should sit with is this: AI can accelerate a broken system unless organizations also rethink the rhythm of work.

I've coached enough senior leaders to know that warning is right on the money. Adding a faster tool to an already-overflowing workday and inefficient systems doesn't create breathing room. It just teaches the broken system to run faster while pouring in just as much, if not more.

THE WORK ISN’T JUST OUTPUT, IT’S DEVELOPMENT

Imagine that you’re a junior analyst who spends hours reviewing data and preparing a first draft, only to notice that two numbers don't quite line up. Much of that labor might be ideal for AI assistance, but it’s not ideal for your development. You’re also learning which anomalies deserve attention, developing a feel for what "normal" looks like, encountering your own assumptions, making mistakes, and discovering why those mistakes matter. You’re building judgment because your apprenticeship is built into your everyday work.

According to a 2026 OECD review, generative AI can be a genuine boost to learning, offering personalized help and fast access to information. But it also flagged a real risk: people leaning on AI output without stopping to evaluate it. Whether that hurts critical thinking long term depends on how the technology gets used, whether it becomes a tutor and practice partner that sharpens our thinking, or something that steals the learning opportunity from us by supplying the answer before we've wrestled with the question. Most organizations haven't yet decided which one they're building toward.

A POLISHED ANSWER CAN HIDE AN EMPTY TOOLBOX

That same Harvard Business School research also compared three groups doing web-analyst work: 12 experienced web analysts, 26 marketing specialists with adjacent skills, and 40 technology specialists whose day-to-day work had little in common with writing investment articles. With AI assistance, all three groups scored about the same on conceptualization. Then came the writing, and the gap showed up: the technology specialists' articles scored roughly 13 percent lower on quality than the other two groups.

Put simply: AI can give you the map, but you still need experience to navigate the terrain. That matters for leaders because AI-assisted work can look impressively complete while hiding how little the person behind it actually understands.

We can no longer assume that a polished first draft reveals much about someone’s real capability. The risk appears when leaders mistake output for judgment. It usually shows up later: when circumstances change, when the AI gets something wrong, or when the employee has to defend the recommendation under pressure. The question is not just “can they produce it?” It is “can they explain it, challenge it, adapt it, and tell you when it should not be trusted?”

RECOVERED CAPACITY NEEDS AN OWNER AND A PURPOSE

Plenty of people have a legitimate claim on recovered capacity. The organization wants output. Employees need relief from unsustainable workloads. Teams need time for learning and collaboration. Customers benefit from more attention. Leaders finally get room for the strategic work that operational urgency keeps crowding out.

So who decides? Leave it undecided, and your existing habits will fill the vacuum for you. Here’s what I’ve noticed: in a volume-driven culture, the time becomes more volume. In a meeting-heavy culture, it becomes more meetings. In an understaffed team, it disappears into the backlog before anyone even notices it existed. "Saving time" isn't a full AI strategy on its own. We still have to decide what the recovered time is for, who benefits, and how we'll explain that decision to our people.

Part of that decision is knowing which friction to protect. Some is worth killing off (nobody needs the character-building experience of reformatting the same information into six different templates). But other effort is developmental, not wasteful. Struggling with a problem before you consult AI builds your reasoning and confidence. Drafting a first recommendation reveals the gaps in your own understanding. Reviewing the source material yourself exposes contradictions that a tidy AI summary would smooth over for readability. Remove the friction, and you create capacity. Remove the developmental effort, and you create dependency.

I'm not suggesting we ban AI from developmental work; that would kill off real learning too. What I am suggesting is designing the process on purpose: have the employee form their own view first, then compare it against the AI's output, identify where they diverge, verify the evidence, and explain the final recommendation in their own words. Sure, this will be slower than just taking the first polished answer, but it builds the judgment they'll actually need when the answer isn't obvious, when the context shifts, or when the technology gets it wrong.

PRODUCTIVITY NEEDS TWO SETS OF METRICS

Most organizations are already tracking the usual productivity measures: cycle time, tickets closed, drafts produced, cost per transaction, AI usage rates, error rates, and throughput per employee. And we can all agree these are important. But they don’t tell us whether AI is building a healthier system or merely helping a strained one move faster.

The missing column should track what actually happens to recovered capacity: hours reinvested in learning, manager coaching hours, rework and escalation rates, employee workload scores, after-hours activity, time spent on complex problem-solving, quality-review outcomes, protected learning time, and whether people can still explain, challenge, and defend the work AI helped produce.

Does the AI technology build up our human capability, or just erode the practice that builds it? If experienced employees developed their judgment by doing the reps, how will less-experienced employees develop theirs without them? Are workloads genuinely getting more sustainable, or just expanding to soak up every bit of gain that AI hands you?

If the only thing people can point to after AI adoption is "we process more work, faster," don't be surprised when employees conclude the reward for becoming more efficient is simply more work. That's not a recipe for enthusiastic adoption. It never has been.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Over the next two weeks, pick one area of your team's work where AI is already saving time, or soon will. Work through these questions:

1. What capacity could realistically be recovered, and how would we know?

2. If nobody makes an explicit decision, where is that time most likely to go by default?

3. Ideally, what portion should improve performance, and what portion should strengthen learning, relationships, innovation, or workload sustainability?

4. What judgment have experienced employees built by doing the work AI may now perform?

5. How will newer employees build that same judgment without the same reps?

6. Where should AI assist, and where should employees still be expected to think, attempt, question, wrestle with, and decide for themselves?

7. What would a fair, transparent conversation with employees about recovered capacity actually sound like?

The future of work will be shaped by what AI becomes capable of doing. It will be shaped just as much by what leaders choose to do with the capacity it creates, and by what they still ask human beings to practice, learn, and own.

If this is showing up in your organization after an AI rollout, a retention concern, a succession pipeline where judgment gaps are surfacing earlier than expected, or a reorg redefining what “senior” means, I’d be glad to help you explore it through an executive coaching lens. Reach out for a free exploratory conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

For readers who want to explore the research behind this article in more depth, here are the links:

• Harvard Business School Working Paper: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/download.aspx?name=26-011.pdf

• Microsoft 2025 Research: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/2025-the-year-the-frontier-firm-is-born

• 2026 OECD Review: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-digital-education-outlook-2026_062a7394-en.html

WHAT’S YOUR ‘-NESS’? (And Are You Making the Most of It?)

Long before we acquired the title, built the résumé, learned the leadership language, and figured out which parts of ourselves were considered suitably professional, there was something distinctive about how each of us showed up in the world. A particular combination of gifts, instincts, values, passions, and quirks. Something people could feel in our presence, even if neither they nor we had a name for it. I call that our “-ness.”

I get to work with some pretty remarkable people, each with their own way of thinking, connecting, creating, and contributing. One leader brings order to situations that feel chaotic to everyone else. Another can walk into a tense room and help people exhale. Someone else asks the question that can cut through six weeks of circular discussion and gets everybody looking at the real issue.

These abilities may not appear in their job descriptions. They may never have been formally taught. Often, the person doesn’t even recognize them as unusual.

That’s the funny thing about our most natural gifts: because they come naturally to us, we assume they come naturally to everyone. They don’t.

WHAT EXACTLY IS OUR “-NESS”?

Our “-ness” is the distinctive combination of qualities we bring to the people and situations around us. It includes our strengths, values, talents, passions, instincts, emotional range, and ways of seeing. It’s less about what we do than about what becomes possible because we are there.

My own “Leslie-ness” is rooted in creativity, empathy, emotional intelligence, decisiveness, and an insatiable curiosity about why people do what they do. It helps me see patterns in people’s behaviour, understand their wiring, and find language or metaphors that allow them to see themselves differently.

My husband Imre’s “-ness” is different. He plans, anticipates, and takes care of details that help other people feel safe. He is naturally in service, often noticing what someone will need before they know they need it.

Neither combination is better. They create different kinds of value. When I ask a coaching client, “What is your Steve-ness?” or “What is your Diana -ness?”, the question often earns me a puzzled look followed by a laugh. That’s useful. Playfulness can sometimes get us past the polished leadership answer and into something more honest. Then the exploration begins:

• What do people consistently come to you for?

• What becomes easier when you’re involved?

• What do you notice that others often miss?

• When do you feel most fully yourself?What would be lost if you stopped bringing that part of yourself to your work?

Those questions take us somewhere a competency assessment can’t always reach.

OUR “-NESS” IS FOUND IN OUR IMPACT

Many of us initially describe our “-ness” with a collection of adjectives: creative, kind, analytical, courageous, funny, calm, strategic. That’s a useful beginning, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. To understand our “-ness,” we also need to understand its effect.

Consider the difference between these two descriptions: “I’m highly analytical” and “I help people find clarity inside complicated problems”. The first names a quality. The second reveals its impact.

In my own example, “I’m empathetic” becomes “People tell me things they haven’t been able to say anywhere else.” “I’m creative” becomes “I help people see possibilities they couldn’t see before.” “I’m decisive” becomes “I help groups stop circling and commit to a direction.”

Our “-ness” lives at the intersection of what comes naturally to us and what it makes possible for others.

There is research behind the value of bringing our natural strengths to work. A 2025 meta-analysis study examined character-strength use across workplace studies and found meaningful positive associations with both work performance and employee well-being. In plain language, possessing strengths matters, but having the opportunity to use them matters just as much. If we don’t, we risk knowing exactly who we are but still working in ways that leave our best qualities sitting unused in the parking lot.

HOW LEADERS LOSE TOUCH WITH THEIR “-NESS”

As leaders become more senior, they receive an astonishing amount of information about who they are supposed to be. They should be more strategic, more decisive, more diplomatic, more concise, more inspiring, more executive-like. Some of that feedback may be useful. Leadership requires range, and most of us need to develop capabilities that don’t come naturally.

The trouble begins when expanding our range turns into replacing ourselves. A warm, relational leader believes that ‘executive presence’ requires emotional distance. A thoughtful leader starts giving instant answers because everyone else at the table appears certain. A creative leader becomes so consumed by operational demands that she stops imagining or being curious. A naturally direct leader learns to soften every message until nobody knows what he actually thinks.

Eventually, these leaders can become highly skilled versions of someone they believe they are supposed to be. They may still perform well and may even be promoted, but leadership starts to feel more effortful, and the people around them often sense a lack of authenticity, like something has gone missing.

Development should give us more ways to be ourselves. It shouldn’t require us to become unrecognizable.

WHEN OUR “-NESS” BECOMES TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

There is another possible complication: a natural gift can become less helpful when we apply it unconsciously. Our strong empathy muscles can turn into absorbing everyone else’s emotions. Our decisiveness can become impatience and recklessness. Our creativity can keep producing possibilities when the team desperately needs a decision. Our need to be helpful can steal the development opportunities from others. Our calmness can look like detachment. Our desire to serve can lead us to carry work that belongs to other people.

Researchers studying character strengths have explored their underuse, overuse, and context-sensitive use. Our qualities are not innately good or bad, the real question is whether we are using the right strength, in the right amount, for the situation in front of us.  This doesn’t make the strength less authentic. It makes the leader more discerning.

Creativity is part of my “Leslie-ness”, but that doesn’t mean every executive coaching session needs twelve new ideas, a framework, and an elaborate metaphor involving an air-traffic control tower. Sometimes the most useful contribution I can make is to stop creating and help someone choose.

Our “-ness” always comes with a shadow side, and knowing the shadow allows us to use the gift with greater skill.

MAKING MORE OF WHAT IS ALREADY THERE

Once we have language for our “-ness,” we can become more intentional about where and how we use it. We can ask:

• Where am I currently making the best use of these qualities?

• Where have I been muting them to fit someone else’s image of leadership?

• Where might I be relying on them too heavily (an over-strength)?

• What situations bring out the clearest and most generous expression of them?

• What do I need to develop so that my natural gifts have even greater impact?

That last question is especially important because embracing our “-ness” doesn’t mean giving ourselves permanent permission to avoid what’s uncomfortable. “I’m a big-picture person” can’t become an excuse to ignore details that affect other people. And “I’m direct” doesn’t release us from considering how our message will land. “I’m highly relational” does not mean we can avoid a difficult performance conversation. Authenticity without self-awareness can become self-indulgence. Our work is to honour what is natural in us while developing the range to use it responsibly.

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Set aside 30 minutes when you’re unlikely to be interrupted. Give yourself enough time to get beyond the first, polished answer and reflect on these questions:

1. What do people consistently experience or receive when I’m at my best?

2. What comes naturally to me that I may have underestimated because it seems ordinary?

3. Where am I currently suppressing part of my “-ness” to match someone else’s idea of leadership?

4. When does one of my natural gifts become too much of a good thing (an over-strength)?

5. What could become possible if I used my “-ness” more intentionally?

You might also ask three or four people who know you in different parts of your life:

“When I’m at my best, what is distinctively me?” Don’t ask only colleagues. A longtime friend, sibling, partner, former employee, or adult child may recognize something your professional world has never named. Listen for patterns, particularly in the impact people describe.

WHAT WOULD BE LOST WITHOUT YOUR “-NESS”?

Finding our “-ness” isn’t about manufacturing a personal brand or finding three marketable adjectives for our LinkedIn profile. It’s about understanding the particular contribution we are equipped to make.

And once you’ve done the deep work of identifying your -ness, know that it's likely to evolve as you do. There isn’t one permanent definition. We keep growing, and different parts of us will become more visible as our lives and leadership evolve. But there is often a recognizable thread running through all of it: the way we help, challenge, steady, connect, illuminate, seek clarity, create, or make things possible.

Ask yourself, “What is my ‘-ness’, and are the people I lead, my peers, and my leaders, getting enough of it?”

If you’d like support in deepening your self-awareness, understanding your distinctive leadership strengths, and expanding the impact you’re able to create, reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.

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

 (LISTEN TO NARRATED AUDIOARTICLE VERSION)

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.