Some decisions are made long before they are actually acted on, quietly settled internally while the outward routine of daily work continues unchanged. The gap between the two can stretch out for months, sometimes waiting on nothing more than someone else finally asking the question directly, out loud, in a moment no one had planned for.
There is a way to correct someone that leaves them capable of correcting themselves, and there is a way that simply leaves them ashamed. The difference matters far more than most leaders realize.
Sometimes the person who ends up growing the most is the one the room was least sure about at the start, and recognizing that possibility requires a leader willing to look past a current gap toward a capacity that has not yet been demonstrated.
Not every leadership decision comes with a clear answer about who is telling the truth. Sometimes a leader has to decide anyway.
Every leader is surrounded by people who see a version of her. Almost no one sees all of her.
Sometimes the person who exposes the biggest gap in your leadership is not on your team at all.
Trust rarely breaks through open conflict. It usually breaks through something quieter, a moment when someone you trust lets you believe something that is not true.
Every leader has agreed to something she did not actually want, without ever saying the word no out loud.
Most failed ideas do not fail loudly. They fail in silence, one unanswered message at a time, until the person who started them stops mentioning them altogether.
Every leader eventually stays somewhere past the point they knew it was time to leave. The cost of that decision rarely shows up right away.
Every leader believes their organization would survive without them for a while. Not every leader has actually tested that belief.
There is one sentence that keeps more leaders stuck than any bad system ever could: By the time I show you how to do it, I could have done it myself.
