How Does Your Leadership Land?

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 as a lack of support.

I may intend to make sure something is done well; they may experience my constant checking as a lack of trust.

I may intend to avoid unnecessary conflict; they may experience my silence as a reluctance to address an issue.

I may intend to move things forward quickly; they may experience me as impatient or dismissive.

None of that necessarily means my intentions were wrong. It means what I intended and how my leadership landed weren't necessarily the same thing.

And that's worth paying attention to.

Pay Attention to the Gap

Last week, I wrote about how good intentions don't always lead to positive impact.

I think one of the challenges of leadership is learning to pay attention to the space between the two.

We know what we meant, we know why we made the decision, and we know we were trying to help. The other person only knows what they experienced.

That's where self-awareness starts to move beyond understanding ourselves to recognizing how we show ourselves to others. We need to become curious about how we are experienced by others.

• How do people experience me when I disagree with them?

• What happens to my communication when I'm under pressure?

• Do people know what I expect, or do I assume I've made it clear?

• When someone brings me a problem, does my response make it more or less likely they'll bring me the next one?

These aren't always comfortable questions, but they can be really useful ones.

Look for Patterns, Not Perfection

Noticing how we're perceived doesn't mean we have to analyze everything we do or change how we act every time someone responds differently than we'd hoped.

Leadership sometimes requires making difficult decisions and holding people accountable. There will be disagreement, and even thoughtful leadership can be misunderstood.

The goal isn't to make sure everyone is always happy with us. The goal is to become aware of the patterns.

If one person misunderstands something I said, perhaps it was simply a misunderstanding. If people regularly leave my conversations unsure about what I expect, I may need to look at how I'm communicating.

If one person is uncomfortable bringing me bad news, that may be about them. If everyone hesitates to bring me bad news, I probably need to get curious about me.

That's not about blame.

It's about having enough self-awareness to recognize that we are part of the environments we lead.

Intent Still Matters

I don't want to dismiss intentions. They matter.

Our values, our motives, and our reasons for the choices we make are important parts of leadership.

But good intentions don't exempt us from paying attention to their effects.

When something doesn't land the way we intended, we have an opportunity to get curious about the gap.

Maybe we need to explain something differently.

Maybe we need to listen before responding.

Maybe we need to ask a question instead of making an assumption.

Maybe we need to apologize.

Or maybe, after considering the feedback, we decide we wouldn't change anything at all.

Self-awareness doesn't require us to change every time. It gives us the opportunity to choose intentionally.

And that's the point.

We can't control how everyone experiences us, but we can pay attention to how we're showing up.

Because our teams don't experience the leaders we intend to be.

They experience the leaders we are.