Your team experiences you through your behavior, not just your intentions. Most of us want to be good leaders. We want to support our people, communicate well, make good decisions, build trust, and create an environment where people can do their best work. In other words, most of us have pretty good intentions. But our teams can't see our intentions; they experience our behavior. I may intend to give someone room to solve a problem on their own; they may experience my silence

“I know I do that.” How many times have we said that about ourselves? Maybe you know you tend to take over when things aren't moving quickly enough. Or you know you get quiet when you're frustrated. You know you keep working a problem long after everyone else is ready to move on. You know you're likely to say yes when you really don't have room for one more thing. Knowing these things about ourselves is important. But here's the question: What are we doing with what we know?

Throughout this series, we've explored the 9 WHYs and the different ways people are naturally motivated to lead, communicate, solve problems, and create impact. Each WHY brings something valuable. And each can also create tension when that natural strength is overused, misunderstood, or simply different from the motivations of the people around us. That's one of the themes that showed up again and again throughout this series: The strength and the struggle are often connected