If you know what your people are capable of, the more important question becomes, do you know who they become around you?
When I was a kid, my father once told me to go and find him a stick.
Not for the garden. You can probably fill in the rest.
As a kid, I definitely wasn’t thinking about the irony of this situation, I was thinking, there is no way out of this.
I had to go and find the thing I was going to be punished with. The other 2 options I drummed up weren’t much better.
I didn't have language for what that did to me psychologically and certainly hadn't heard of The Self-Determination Theory.
I know the language now and it can help leaders understand what your behaviour when you come with a title, does to people.
Deci and Ryan's work identifies three basic human needs. When these are met we perform better.
An unwitting leader can miss any or all three.
Autonomy, our sense that we have some choice
Competence, our sense that we can act competently in a situation
Relatedness, our sense of connection and that we matter to other people.
Looking for a stick, I felt demoralised. I didn’t feel like I had any control, say or that I mattered in that moment. The person who was supposed to make me feel safe, became the person I was frightened of.
The more power someone else holds over your outcomes, the more your behaviour can shift from choice to calculation.
We learn very young who can be challenged and who can’t. We work out when it is worth explaining ourselves, when silence is safer, and if honesty will come with a cost.
Those lessons do not disappear when we grow up and move into the workforce. When people have leadership titles, they can let that do too much heavy lifting.
If we were raised to respect to authority, as adults, we prepare, edit and execute differently around authority in the workplace. Perhaps decide how strongly you already believe something, before deciding how strongly they want to disagree with it.
That matters because leaders have enormous influence over the conditions in which other people think and contribute.
Gallup has found that managers account for around 70% of the variance in team engagement. Their 2026 reporting also shows that manager engagement itself fell sharply, from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025.
So many leaders globally are not exactly skipping into work themselves. There is an 2006 piece of research I like because the experiment is fascinatingly simple.
Adam Galinsky and his colleagues asked people to draw a capital E on their forehead with their finger. Some participants had first been put into a psychological state designed to make them feel more powerful over others.
Those participants were more likely to draw the E so that it looked correct from their own perspective. Conversely, those put in a low power state, drew it backwards, so it was correct for those facing them.
More power, was associated with less spontaneous perspective-taking.
So once we have more status, information or authority in a job, it’s important to check in. Am I doing a lot more talking or telling than asking and perspective seeking?
You might genuinely believe, My door is always open. It’s important to know your team will remember how you responded the last time somebody walked through it with bad news.
Research on employees speaking up, shows they read the room first.
- Who has the power here?
- How open are they to being challenged?
- Is challenge genuinely welcomed?
- Will saying this make a difference, and what might it cost me if it lands badly?
The leadership blindspot
The more authority you have in the room, the more your reactions can shape whether other people use their voice. Yet from your side of the table, it can be surprisingly difficult to see just how much people are adjusting themselves around you.
That is The Sleepwalking Effect™ in leadership.
No bad intent required.
It can be something as ordinary as answering too quickly
Correcting before the person has finished
Rewarding certainty
Becoming visibly impatient when someone complicates the plan
Asking for honest opinions after you have already made your own preference very clear.
People are exceptionally good at reading a room. The important question is whether you are too?
The ACT Reset
Awaken. Notice what changes when you enter. Who becomes quieter? Who becomes more careful? Who starts watching your face before they finish their point?
Curiosity. Instead of asking, “Any questions?”, try asking, “This is what I am seeing what am I missing?” You may get a much more useful answer.
Try. Speak later. Ask one more question before offering your view. Thank the person who changes your mind, particularly when other people are watching.
Your slightly uncomfortable challenge this week.
Ask someone who works closely with you:
“What do I do that makes it easier or harder to disagree with me?”
Then listen.
Do not explain what you meant. Do not correct their interpretation. Do not rescue yourself with, “That’s interesting, because what I was actually trying to do was…” Do not correct their interpretation, because your intention is not the interesting bit. Their experience is.
As much as you might like to, you cannot measure how approachable you are from your side of the desk.
And perhaps one of the more useful questions in leadership is not simply what people achieve around you.
It is: What does being led by me bring out in them?
When I was a child looking for that stick, the person with the authority had already determined what would happen next. My job was to comply.
Leadership should create the opposite experience.
The more authority you have, the more responsibility you have to make sure other people still experience agency. That they can question, challenge, offer a different view and occasionally tell you something you would rather not hear.
Because people will always read the person who holds the power.
When they read you, do they edit themselves? Or do they learn that their judgement is genuinely wanted?
Will you take the slightly uncomfortable challenge this week, and resist the urge to explain the answer away?
Sources
Gallup. State of the Global Workplace 2026. Gallup reports that managers account for approximately 70% of the variance in team engagement, and that global manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025.
Galinsky, A. D., Magee, J. C., Inesi, M. E., & Gruenfeld, D. H. (2006). “Power and Perspectives Not Taken.” Psychological Science, 17(12), 1068–1074.
Satterstrom, P., Kerrissey, M., & DiBenigno, J. (2022). “The Hierarchy of Voice Framework: The Dynamic Relationship Between Employee Voice and Social Hierarchy.” Research in Organizational Behavior, 42, 100179.
