The Leadership Shadow: Why We Don’t Always Lead the Way We Intend To
Under pressure, our leadership strengths can start to work against us. The helpful manager starts jumping in before people have had a chance to work things out for themselves. The manager with high standards finds themselves rewriting other people’s work. The empathetic manager becomes so concerned about how feedback will land that they avoid saying what needs to be said.
At the time, none of these feel particularly unreasonable. There’s a problem that needs sorting or a mistake you can see coming. And perhaps tomorrow really would be a better time for that conversation. When we’re tired or stressed we fall back on what we’re good at because it’s worked for us in the past.
The trouble is, it often works this time too. You fix the problem. You catch the mistake. The difficult conversation disappears from today’s to-do list. That’s what makes these habits so easy to miss. It’s only later that the downside becomes clearer: people stop figuring things out for themselves, work keeps finding its way back to your desk and important issues go unsaid.
These behaviours become part of what is sometimes called a leader’s shadow: the effect our behaviour has on the people around us, including the parts we may not see ourselves.
“Under stress and challenge, the qualities executives have relied on to get them to the top and to achieve outstanding results can overshoot into unhelpful drives that lead to business and personal catastrophes.”- The Leadership Shadow: How to Recognize and Avoid Derailment, Hubris and Overdrive by Erik de Haan and Anthony Kasozi
The problem is that there isn’t always an obvious moment when a strength becomes a liability. Especially when, in the short term, it still seems to be getting results.
That’s where leadership development gets interesting. Most managers already know they should delegate, let people take ownership and give honest feedback. Knowing that isn’t usually the problem. Noticing what you actually do when the pressure is on is much harder. And that’s the bit you need to practise.
You can’t change a habit you haven’t noticed
Realistic scenarios and feedback can reveal habits that are otherwise easy to miss. The manager who wants to be helpful answers their own question before anyone else has had time to think. Someone trying to keep a difficult conversation calm becomes so careful that the message gets lost. These are small moments, but they’re often where a useful instinct starts working against us.
“Leadership takes practice, and practice takes time.” — James Kouzes & Barry Posner, Learning Leadership, 2016
This gives people something specific to work on. “Become a better communicator” is vague; “give people time to answer before stepping in” is something you can practise tomorrow.
A 2017 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, led by Christina Lacerenza, supports this approach. It found that leadership training was more effective when it included feedback, multiple learning methods (particularly practice) and sessions spread over time.
Changing your habit is only half the job
Even when you change the way you lead, your team may not change with you straight away. They’ve learnt what to expect from you, and those patterns can take time to undo.
If a manager has always stepped in when something goes wrong, their team may have learnt to bring problems upwards. When the manager starts holding back, people may continue asking for answers. For a manager whose instinct is to be helpful, not giving the answer can feel almost irresponsible. It would be easy to think, “They’re not ready for this,” and step back in.
And once again, stepping in works. The problem gets solved. The manager gets another little piece of evidence that stepping in was necessary, while the team gets another reason to bring the next problem upwards.
This is how leadership patterns can become self-reinforcing. The way we treat people can influence the behaviour we then see from them, an idea closely related to the Pygmalion effect. We can then mistake the behaviour we helped create for evidence that our original judgement was right.
Breaking that loop takes consistency. A manager trying to create more ownership may need to resist giving the answer, ask different questions and give people time to adjust. If challenge has previously been unwelcome, saying “I want you to challenge me” probably won’t be enough; people need to see that disagreement is genuinely received differently.
This creates an awkward period in leadership change: the old behaviour can feel effective because everyone has adapted to it, while the new behaviour can initially feel ineffective because nobody has adapted to it yet.
Good leadership development should prepare people for that. Leaders need to recognise this adjustment period rather than mistake it for evidence that the old way was right.
Your workplace has habits too
There’s another influence on how we lead that can be easy to overlook: the place we work.
After training, people return to the environment in which many of their habits developed and sometimes the behaviour they are trying to change is exactly what the organisation has rewarded them for.
The manager who constantly rescues struggling projects may be known as the person who “gets things done”. The leader who always has the answer may have built a reputation for being dependable. Someone who avoids difficult conversations may work in a culture where keeping the peace is valued more than saying what needs to be said.
That makes changing habits harder. You’re not simply asking someone to behave differently; sometimes you’re asking them to let go of something that has helped them succeed.
What should leadership development actually change?
By this point, there are three places worth looking:
1. The leader: Which strengths tend to get overused when the pressure is on?
2. The team: How have people adapted to those behaviours, and what does that adaptation reinforce?
3. The organisation: Which behaviours are being rewarded, even when they create problems elsewhere?
Looking at all three gives you a much better starting point than “we need better leaders”.
Turn the answers into something observable. Instead of “improve communication”, you might want managers to give clear feedback earlier.
Instead of “build accountability”, you might want clearer ownership and fewer problems being unnecessarily escalated.
You don’t need a long list. Choose one or two behaviours that would make a meaningful difference, give people opportunities to practise them and think about what will help those behaviours survive back at work.
What does this mean for leadership training?
At UNLRN, we put a lot of emphasis on practice. People need the chance to see what they actually do when the pressure is on, not just talk about what good leadership looks like.
But noticing the behaviour is only the beginning. They also need to try something different, get feedback and be prepared for what happens when they take that behaviour back to work: a team that is still responding to the old pattern, the pressure that makes the familiar response tempting and a workplace that may have been rewarding it all along.
What that looks like will depend on where someone is in their leadership career and the challenges they are facing.
Leadership training for first-time managers
Moving into management often means learning when not to rely on some of the strengths that helped you get promoted. Being reliable, knowing the answer and solving problems quickly are useful qualities. But if you keep being the person who fixes everything, your team can quickly learn to bring their problems to you.
UNLRN’s six-week First-Time Manager Programme helps new managers make that shift, with practice in delegation, feedback, trust, difficult conversations, meetings, presentation and influence.
Leadership development for experienced leaders
Experienced leaders face a different challenge: the habits they need to question may be the ones that made them successful. An approach that worked brilliantly in one role or organisation may become less useful as the context changes.
The more successful a habit has been, the less reason there has been to question it. UNLRN’s programme for experienced managers, leaders and executives gives people space to examine those patterns, test different approaches and broaden how they communicate, influence and lead under pressure.
Leadership training for specific challenges
Not every organisation needs a large leadership programme. Sometimes there’s one recurring problem worth tackling properly. UNLRN also offers focused leadership and management workshops:
Difficult Conversations: address challenging issues clearly and constructively before they escalate.
High-Impact Meetings: lead purposeful meetings that improve contribution, decisions and follow-through.
High-Trust Teams: build behaviours that strengthen trust, psychological safety and accountability.
Presentation & Influence: communicate ideas clearly and influence effectively, including without formal authority.
Core Management Skills: strengthen the everyday essentials of delegation, feedback, expectations and accountability.
Hiring & Interviewing: make better hiring decisions through more structured and effective interviews.
Leadership development matters most when the training room is gone, the pressure returns and people have to choose what they do next.
Leadership Training FAQs
UNLRN leadership training focuses on practical workplace challenges including communication, feedback, difficult conversations, trust, influence, meetings, delegation and accountability. Participants practise these skills in realistic situations rather than only learning the theory.
Yes. UNLRN’s six-week First-Time Manager Programme is designed for new and emerging managers making the transition from individual contributor to managing others. It combines core management skills with self-awareness, practice and application at work.
Yes. UNLRN’s programme for experienced managers, leaders and executives focuses on communication, influence, adaptability and leadership in more complex or pressured situations.
Yes. UNLRN also offers focused workshops covering difficult conversations, high-impact meetings, high-trust teams, presentation and influence, core management skills, and hiring and interviewing.
