In these moments, it is tempting to focus on external obstacles like organizational bureaucracy or employee attitudes. However, recent research reported in Harvard Business Review by Muriel Wilkins suggests that the most significant limiting factors often lie within: our own “hidden blockers”.  Additional detail is provided in her book, Leadership Unblocked.

Hidden blockers are unproductive beliefs so ingrained and habitual that we are often unaware they even exist. Despite their invisibility, they quietly shape every aspect of how we think, feel, and act, ultimately dictating our performance and professional outcomes.

Based on an analysis of many leaders, the research identified seven beliefs that frequently stall careers:

• “I need to be involved”: The drive to touch every detail, which leads to micromanagement and team stagnation. You slow down the decision-making process and become a bottleneck.
• “I need it done now”: A demand for immediate results that creates false urgency and triggers burnout. People rush their execution and become numb to your requests.
• “I know I’m right”: A belief that shuts down collaboration and stifles innovation. You miss good input from others and make sub-optimal decisions.
• “I can’t make a mistake”: A fear of failure that encourages perfectionism and risk avoidance. Your belief that you need to be flawless is unhealthy for you and others.
• “If I can do it, so can you”: Setting unrealistic expectations by assuming others must work exactly like you do. Everyone has different talents.
• “I can’t say no”: The inability to set boundaries, resulting in blurred priorities and overwork. This further exacerbates the “I need it done now” problem.
• “I don’t belong here”: Impostor syndrome that leads to self-sabotage and reduced influence. It also reduces your visibility and ability to communicate.

To overcome these barriers, leaders can apply a three-step framework designed to get them “unstuck”.

1.  Uncover the blocker by recognizing the problem and naming the specific belief creating it.

2.  Unpack the belief by reflecting on where it came from and how it is currently limiting your growth.

3.  Unblock yourself by reframing that belief into something productive and embedding that new perspective into tangible action.

Real organizational transformation cannot occur until there is a fundamental change in the consciousness of leadership. By identifying and reframing your own blockers, you spark a cycle of personal growth that leads to positive collective change and extraordinary achievement for your entire team.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Wilkins, M.  “The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back,”Harvard Business Review, November – December 2025.

High-performing leaders often fall into a “fixing” cycle.

When something goes wrong, they always come to you.  And sure enough, you are able to fix it – whatever “it” is.  Over time, this creates a toxic dependency. The more you fix, the less others have to. Your reliability effectively masks systemic issues, allowing broken processes and underperformance to persist because you are there to catch the falling glass.

The personal cost of this dynamic is significant. While you are busy firefighting and compensating for the gaps of others, you lose the bandwidth for the high-level strategic work your role actually requires.

By acting as the “fixer,” you are essentially teaching your colleagues that they don’t need to be fully accountable because you will always provide the rescue.  Your greatest strength has become a liability.

To reclaim your impact, your reliability must become strategic rather than reactive. Here are some ideas from a recent article in Harvard Business Review to help you make a fundamental shift in how you see your role:

• Surface the Gaps: Instead of quietly fixing a broken workflow, highlight the friction. Let the system feel the pressure of its own inefficiencies so that long-term solutions can be implemented.
• Clarify Decision Rights: Be explicit about who owns what. If a task isn’t yours, resist the urge to take it on simply because you can do it faster or better than the person responsible.
• Distribute Accountability: Leading effectively means ensuring that accountability lands where it belongs. Your goal isn’t to carry the load alone, but to ensure the team is structured to carry it collectively.

Stepping back from the role of “fixer” isn’t about withdrawing; it’s about leading with better judgment. By letting go of the need to be the constant hero, you create space for your team to grow and for your organization to become more resilient. True leadership isn’t about being the most reliable person in the room – it’s about building a system where reliability is shared.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Velasquez, L.  “When Being the Most Reliable Leader Becomes a Liability,” Harvard Business Review online, February 27, 2026.

However, many of us do not take enough time to celebrate and savor our wins.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review points out the downsides of moving on too quickly to the “next goal.”  We miss out on three critical benefits:

1.  Refuel Motivation: Celebrating an achievement provides a crucial moment of positive reinforcement. It allows you to connect the hard work you put in with the satisfying outcome. This connection is essential for recharging your internal battery.

2.  Validate Your Strategy: A win is evidence that your chosen approach was effective. By celebrating, you mentally record what worked, making it easier to replicate that successful strategy in the future. If you rush past it, the valuable data of success is lost.

3.  Build Confidence and Anchoring: The modern business climate is defined by uncertainty, scrutiny, and nonstop demands. Acknowledging an achievement—even a small one, like a successful presentation or an on-time deliverable—serves as a stabilizing force. It helps you stay anchored and energized.

Acknowledging your own achievements isn’t self-indulgence; it’s a strategic necessity. Start by integrating small, simple habits into your routine:

• Practice a “Moment of Notice”: After a successful outcome, take 60 seconds to simply notice it. Don’t immediately check your email or jump to the next item. Acknowledge the achievement with a simple: “I did that well.”
• Keep a Success Log: Maintain a brief log (a simple document or notebook) where you record daily or weekly wins. These notes serve as an external source of validation to look back on when self-doubt creeps in.
• Share the Success (Authentically): When a team win occurs, share it widely and specifically. Credit the individuals and explain how their efforts led to the positive result. This reinforces the behavior and makes the team feel seen.

We are at the perfect time of year to begin practicing this!  Take some time at your next team meeting to list your key accomplishments for 2025.  Celebrate!  Do the same thing for yourself, personally.  Don’t let these moments slip by. Noticing your successes will help you build the confidence you need to keep moving forward.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Chaplin, L. N.  “Most Leaders Don’t Celebrate Their Wins – But They Should,” Harvard Business Review online, November 10, 2025.

We often look externally when these challenges occur.  However, the biggest factors limiting most professionals lie within: their own unproductive beliefs, which a recent Harvard Business Review article calls hidden blockers.

These beliefs are so ingrained and habitual that most of us aren’t even aware they exist, yet they quietly shape every aspect of how we think, feel, and act. To break through, you must first identify which of these seven hidden beliefs is operating in the background.

These limiting beliefs, when left unchecked, keep you locked in unproductive patterns and undermine your ability to lead with clarity and impact:

1. I need to be involved. The belief that you must be part of every detail at every level, which leads to micromanagement, bottlenecked decisions, and prevents your team from taking ownership.
2. I need it done now. The belief that immediate results are required, no matter what. This creates false urgency, resulting in rushed execution, increased errors, and burnout for everyone.
3. I know I’m right. The belief that you—and only you—have the correct answers. This shuts down collaboration, causes you to dismiss valuable input, and leads to missed opportunities for innovation.
4. I can’t make a mistake. The belief that your performance must be flawless. This fuels unhealthy perfectionism, promotes indecision, and encourages you to avoid the necessary risks required for growth.
5. If I can do it, so can you. The belief that others’ performance must mirror your own to be acceptable. This leads you to set unrealistic or unnecessary expectations and limits your ability to develop diverse talent.
6. I can’t say no. The belief that you must always step up when asked. This results in overwork, blurred priorities, and poor boundary setting, significantly eroding your strategic time.
7. I don’t belong here. The belief that you don’t fit in at your current level or position. This is the root of debilitating impostor syndrome and self-sabotage, reducing your visibility and influence.

The work of a great leader is not just managing others; it is mastering the inner game of leadership. The process involves three key steps: Uncover (recognizing and naming the belief), Unpack (understanding its origin and cost), and Reframe (creating a new, more productive belief).

By actively challenging these assumptions—by giving up the need for perfection, constant involvement, or universal approval—you begin to achieve your full potential. What begins as personal professional growth becomes positive collective change, which in turn leads to extraordinary achievement for your entire organization.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Wilkins, M. M.  “The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Back Leaders,” Harvard Business Review, November-December 2025.

So here’s my feedback to those of you who fall into this category: It does not have to be this way!  You have the talent and skill to give very good feedback!

In this blog, we are going to focus on your team members who are doing pretty well (or even very well) but can be even better.  If you want suggestions on underperforming team members, please check out this blog on Performance Improvement Plans.

Following are some suggestions on how to give effective feedback, with some ideas from a recent Harvard Business Review article.

1. Change Your Mindset. Providing feedback is an opportunity for you and your team member to collaborate on their professional development. We all know that we can improve and progression in our careers depends upon this.  Proactively schedule at least two feedback meetings per year and make sure you have funding to send team members to professional development programs.
2. Ask Them to Initiate. Prior to each meeting ask: “Please send me three ideas you have for improving your performance. These can be ways in which you can improve and/or ways you can become even better at some of your responsibilities.”  Review these ideas prior to the meeting.
3. Set the Big Picture Context. As you begin the meeting, remind them of the purpose: “As you know, I am committed to supporting you with your continuous improvement and professional development. Let’s discuss ways that you can continue to improve and grow.”
4. Discuss their Ideas First. Ask them to explain more about the ideas for improvement that they sent you. Ask them for Action Plans for working on each idea.  Offer support for training if that would be helpful.  If you have additional ideas, just suggest only one per meeting: “I also suggest that you consider working on . . .  What do you think?”
5. Make Sure it is a Dialogue, Not a Monologue. Listening is just as important as speaking. This dialogue builds trust, and it often uncovers critical information that you might have missed.

Giving effective feedback is a learned skill, not an innate talent. By adopting these five suggestions, you can move beyond your apprehension and build a culture of open communication, continuous improvement, and mutual respect.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Fernandez, M.  “4 Strategies to Help New Leaders Give Feedback, Harvard Business Review online, July 15, 2025.

Every leader loves it when their team performance is humming along nicely.

But, if this is always the case, you may be losing out on a great learning opportunity through “productive failure.” 

There are many goals that you really do not want a person or team to fail at – such as processing payroll on time or submitting a required report to a government agency.  And many of these goals are binary – you either get them done or not.

Other goals, however, have a performance range.  How big is our profit margin?  What are our quarterly sales numbers?  What is our Net Promoter Score?

Let’s say that you have been working hard on Net Promoter Score (customer loyalty) and your numbers are pretty good – but it would be great to get them higher.  Here is how you can use “productive failure” to learn and grow.

1.  Challenge Your Team to Set a Hard Goal.  Inspire your team to reach even higher and explain the payoffs for the team and the organization.

2.  Assure Them that Learning and Creativity are Paramount.  While achieving the goal is important, explain that the main thing is to try new ideas that you can learn from.

3.  Create a Safe-Fail Zone.  Tell the team – and keep reinforcing this – that this is a “safe-fail” zone in which they are empowered to try new ideas, even if they do not work 100%.

4.  Design and Implement New Ideas.  Enthusiastically implement your new plan and be sure to document the new process.

5.  Don’t Freak over Failure.  If you set the goal high enough, then it is likely your team failed.  You can acknowledge this – but remind the team that they had tried new, creative ideas – which was the main point.  This step is crucial, or your team may never try anything new again.

6.  Conduct an After Action Review.  With a focus on learning, review everything the team did and what you can do better the next time.  Celebrate the learning!  Check here for more on After Action Reviews.

Continuous improvement and growth is a serious competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced work environment.  Use “productive failure” to keep your team improving their Mission Impact.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Morris, S.  “To Help Your Team Learn, Set Them Up for Productive Failure,” Harvard Business Review online, November 6, 2024.

When faced with this situation, we need to figure out: Is this a talent issue, a training issue, a management issue, a motivation issue, or more likely – a combination.  Often “Performance Improvement Plans” – PIPs – are used in this situation.  Here are some ideas on how to use them effectively, based on an article from Harvard Business Review.

First, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can you imagine this employee someday as a high performer?
• Have you checked out all possible extenuating circumstances?
• Have you given yourself a “management checkup” to be sure you are managing them well? My favorite is the Gallup Q-12, which you can check out here.
• Have you given them time to improve as a result of your routine management process – which includes seeing clear expectations and providing feedback?
• Have you asked for some third-party co-workers to give you feedback on the situation?

Once you can say YES to these things, then it is time to approach the employee about a PIP.

1.) Begin with a positive attitude.  “Rob, we have discussed the fact that you are not meeting expectations in certain areas of your responsibility.  We now need to create a more formal process that is designed to support you in being the high performer I believe that you can be.”

2.)  Look for root causes.  Design a training program for the person that addresses the specific root causes of the performance issue.

3.) Focus on the future.  Don’t bring up the past or this will feel punitive.

4.) Set clear expectations with a timeline.  Make sure that these are in writing and clearly understood.

5.) Provide ongoing feedback.  Stay in communication about how the process is going and discuss their performance compared to the expectations.

Performance Improvement Plans are typically for about six months, maybe longer.  At the end of the agreed upon time, you need to make a decision.  If the employee is clearly not meeting expectations, then a change needs to be made.

However, if they are highly motivated, with values that match your organization, then you might consider that this is a “talent” problem.  That is not a reason to keep them in their current job.  But, it might be a reason for you to find a role in the organization that is a better fit for their talent.  This should not be confused with “unloading a problem.”  It should only be done if you sincerely think they would be a good fit elsewhere.

Otherwise, you need to let the employee go – as humanely as possible.  Remember that their hiring is a shared responsibility.  Your organization thought they would be great at this job.  Hopefully they will find a good fit elsewhere.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Davey, L.  “When a Performance Plan Could Help Your Employee,” Harvard Business Review online, November 6, 2024.

What happened?

All too often it is because somewhere along the line, someone failed to do what they promised and no one called them on it.  They were not held accountable.

Lack of accountability is a huge problem in organizations.  In fact, Patrick Lencioni names this as one of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team in his great book by that title.

What can you do to master holding people accountable?  Check out these ideas from a recent Harvard Business Review article.

*Don’t Make a Request of Your Entire Team.  Often, a good idea surfaces during a team meeting and there is excitement!  “Yeah, let’s do that.”  Don’t assume that someone is going to take the initiative.  Ask a specific person to take the lead.

*Make Sure the Your Request is Very Specific.  Next, make sure that you are very clear about what you are asking the person to do.  “Thanks Rob, just so we are all clear, please do the following (specifics) by (date).”  And include a time of day if that is needed.  This sounds simple and basic but is all too often missed.

*Explain the Context.  Once again, don’t assume the person you are asking understands the background.  Maybe the boss is leaving on vacation soon and this is why you need the request fulfilled so quickly.  There are a whole host of reasons that could be helpful for your colleague to understand about the context of the request.

*Counter Vague Responses.  Sometimes you might here back “Sounds good,” “I’ll get right on it,” or “I’ll see what I can do.”  Do not accept these!  Say something like “Just to be clear, will you have completed what I requested by that date and time?”  If they hedge, then ask them for a specific date and time that will work for them and negotiate an agreement.  Don’t let the vagueness continue.

*Follow Up!  Keep track of what people have promised to do.  If they do not hit the deadline, then follow-up with them.  If you have a lot of deliverables to track, you may want to ask someone to assist you.

Few things can be more frustrating than having a strong plan that fails because someone did not follow through on a promise.  Use these tips to make sure your team members stay on track for success.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Ringel, R.  “Mastering the Art of the Request,” Harvard Business Review online, August 4, 2023.

*Do Your Research.  For example, if you are going out to buy a car or a home, make sure that you do research ahead of time so you know what the market is like.  If you are looking for a pay raise then try to find out what comparable jobs are paying.  This will come in very handy when you are looking at alternatives.

*What is your Target Point?  What do you want – ideally?  What do you think is the right salary number for you or the right price for the house you are selling.  Be realistic – but stretch some as well.

*What is your Reservation Point?  This would be the minimum salary you would take or the lowest price you would sell the house for.  Take some time to get very clear on this BEFORE you start negotiating.

*What is your BATNA?  This is your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.  Do you have a second job offer that you could take?  Could you rent your house instead of selling it?  Do you need to sell now?  The stronger your BATNA then the stronger your bargaining position when you begin your negotiation.  You may want to take some time to strengthen your BATNA before negotiating.

NOTE: You should typically NOT reveal your Reservation Point or your BATNA during a negotiation, as this could place you at a disadvantage.  These should be kept private and are meant to help you guide your negotiation activity.  Exceptions could include sharing your Reservation Point only if the negotiation is at an impasse and you are about to walk away.  Or, if the other party is not moving in a positive direction and you have a surprisingly strong BATNA – such as another great job offer – then you may want to share it.

There are many resources that can assist you in becoming a better negotiator – including a great book: Getting To Yes.

We negotiate many things in our lives – including many “smaller” things than cars, houses, and salaries.  Being fully prepared for these negotiations can pay off in big and small ways for you.

Pre-Covid, many managers judged the performance of people on their team by how busy they looked in the office.  It was “management by activity.”

During Covid, many managers freaked out – “How do I know my people are working?”  Most of them just got used to not knowing and were happy that things did not fall apart.

As offices reopen, it is time for those managers to learn two fundamentals that so many supervisors get wrong: Set Outcomes and Reward Performance.

Set Outcomes.  One of the most important responsibilities of a manager is to specify the results that you want each person on your team to produce.  Don’t give them a list of activities that you want them to carry out.  List the outcomes that you want from the activities.

A classic example is sales.  You don’t want your sales people to conduct “x” number of meetings with potential clients, you want them to make sales.  As you work to turn a list of activities into outcomes, ask yourself “to what end” are they doing the activities.

Reward Performance.  Once you have set outcomes then you can reward your people for the results they produce – their actual performance.  Do not fall into the trap of having your team members set goals at the beginning of the year and then rewarding them according by the extent to which they reach the goals.  This will only encourage people to set low goals.  Home Run hitters are not rewarded for whether they met their goal for how many home runs they hit in a year.  They are rewarded for how many home runs they actually hit.  Check out this blog for more.

Once you set outcomes and reward performance, your micro-managing days are over.  Your people can work wherever they want as long as they produce the results, and you don’t have to watch over them – even if they actually are in the office.