The Leader I Won't Be

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That was not an isolated incident. It became a pattern, one I eventually stopped being surprised by, which is its own kind of quiet damage. I learned to walk into every evaluation, every check-in, every casual hallway conversation with a low hum of anxiety, because I could never be entirely certain which unspoken expectation I might be about to discover I had failed.

I remember rehearsing conversations with her in my car before I even walked into the building some mornings, trying to anticipate what mood I might encounter, what unspoken standard might surface that day. That kind of anticipatory bracing is exhausting in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has not lived inside it. It is not the workload that wears you down. It is the constant, low-level vigilance, the sense that the ground rules might shift without warning and you will only find out after you have already stepped wrong.

I do not think that leader set out to create that atmosphere on purpose. I think, more likely, expectations lived so clearly in her own mind that she genuinely did not register how invisible they were to everyone standing outside of it. That distinction matters to me now, as a leader myself. Harm does not require malice to still be harm.

I did not walk away from that season bitter, though I came close more than once, particularly in the months right after I finally left that role. What I walked away with instead was an unusually clear, almost photographic picture of exactly the kind of leader I refused to become, which turned out, over time, to be more useful to me than any positive example could have been.

I learned, specifically, that I am only as successful as my team actually is, not as successful as I personally appear to be while they struggle around me. I learned that it is my responsibility, not theirs, to develop them well enough that they can eventually thrive and grow beyond whatever I originally taught them, rather than staying dependent on me to interpret unspoken standards forever.

I built my entire early leadership practice, in some ways, as a direct response to that season. Every expectation I now set gets written down, shared before the evaluation, not discovered during it. Every standard I hold someone to, I make sure they have had genuine access to in advance. It is not a particularly sophisticated leadership philosophy. It is simply the opposite of what was done to me, applied as consistently as I know how.

I did not arrive at that practice immediately. My first few years leading my own team, I caught myself, more than once, assuming people understood things I had never actually said out loud, the exact pattern I had resented so deeply from the other side of the table. Recognizing that in myself was uncomfortable in a specific way, because it meant the lesson had not fully taken yet. It took real, deliberate effort to close the gap between the leader I believed I had become and the leader I was actually still practicing to be.

I think that gap is where most leaders actually live, somewhere between the leader they have consciously decided to become and the older, inherited patterns still quietly operating underneath, unexamined, until something forces a closer look. I do not think I have fully closed that gap even now. I think I have simply gotten faster at noticing when the old pattern resurfaces, and quicker to correct it before it costs someone else the same disorientation it once cost me.

I do not know what became of the leader I worked under during that season. I have not spoken with her in years, and I do not carry the bitterness toward her I once did. What I carry instead is a strange kind of gratitude, the specific kind that only comes from surviving something difficult and later understanding exactly what it built in you. She never intended to hand me a leadership education. She did anyway, simply by being the leader I was determined never to become.

Being led badly is not wasted experience. It is sometimes the clearest curriculum a future leader will ever receive, if she is willing to study it honestly instead of just surviving it.

Every unspoken expectation she held me to eventually became an expectation I made absolutely certain to say out loud to my own team, sometimes almost to a fault, because I never wanted anyone under my leadership to sit in their car after a review, replaying a conversation, trying to reverse-engineer a standard no one had ever actually given them.

If you are currently working under leadership that leaves you guessing, uncertain, and quietly exhausted by standards you cannot quite locate, I want to offer you a reframe alongside the very real difficulty of that season, because both things can be true at once. You are collecting information right now that most leaders never get access to until it is far too late to use it well. Pay close attention to exactly what is missing, what you wish someone had told you, what you wish had been named before it was tested. It will very likely become the thing you build most intentionally once it is finally your turn to lead.

-- Dr. Rhonda

The Next Step: If you are leading a team right now and wondering whether your expectations are as clear to them as they are to you, take The Close the Leadership Gap Diagnostic™. It is built to help you close exactly that kind of invisible gap before it costs you trust.