What does being led by you, bring out in other people?

What If You’re Someone Else’s Sleepwalking Effect™?

Your people are learning how to lead from somebody. How much are they learning from you?

At 22 I walked out of a spinal unit in Adelaide after breaking my skull, neck and spine in seven places. I was incredibly grateful to be alive because I was the only one of my new 12 friends who did walk out of there. I went home to New Zealand and got my first real job, as a travel agent.

It was a learn-on-the-job kind of job, and I didn't ask questions because I didn't want my manager to think he'd hired the wrong person. I didn't put my hand up for courses either. I waited to be noticed. Waited to be invited.

My results were spectacularly average. Nobody had sat me down and instructed me to behave like that. I'd learned it somewhere. We watch. We absorb. We adapt. Have you considered who is watching you?

Our brains are superbly efficient, so when a behaviour works once, keeps us safe, or wins approval, we use it again.

It starts to feel less like a behaviour we observed and more like our identity. The shift is subtle, but before we know it, we identify as the quiet one. We assume they know how clever we are. We prefer not to speak up until we’re sure what will come out matches our intellect. This is The Sleepwalking Effect™. Behaviours repeated so often we stop noticing we're choosing them.

The question for leaders: If we learn our patterns from the people around us, which patterns are people learning from you?

Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged. In Australia and New Zealand it's 21%. That means up to 8 out of every 10 people in a room, knows what disengagement feels like. The biggest drop in the last 12 months? Managers and leaders.If your engagement is low, what does being led by you bring out in them?

Gallup puts the cost of low engagement at around $10 trillion in lost productivity, about 9% of global GDP. That's a lot of capable people holding back, and every one of them reports to somebody.

In 1982, researcher Dov Eden ran a study with 105 male Israeli military defence trainees. It was shared with instructors which of their trainees had high command potential, so these instructors were led to expect higher performance outcomes from them.

Those trainees had in fact, been picked at random. On objective achievement tests those trainees subsequently performed better. They were reported to have more positive attitudes, and more positive leadership behaviour.

It’s part of what became known as the Pygmalion effect: expectations can influence how we treat people, and those differences in attention, challenge, opportunity and encouragement can in turn affect motivation, self-belief and performance.

The science has been tested many times since. The effect is real, although it varies considerably by context. A leader’s belief won’t magically create ability that isn’t there. But expectations change behaviour. We give people different levels of attention, challenge, opportunity and encouragement and that can influence what they believe they’re capable of and what they go on to do.

Silence works the same way. Detert and Edmondson found people at work follow unwritten rules about when it's safe to speak or appropriate. Nobody writes those rules down. People read them off the leader. Have you considered what people read off you?

The ACT Reset

• Awaken. Notice who goes quiet when you walk in.

• Curiosity. Whose leadership style are you running? Yours, or one you inherited from a boss or a parent? Does it need an upgrade?

• Try. In your next meeting, ask the quietest or most junior person what they’re seeing before the senior voices weigh in. Signal that their perspective is wanted. Then wait, longer than feels comfortable if necessary.

One slightly uncomfortable experiment

Ask three people you lead one question this week: "What do you think people do less of, when I'm in the room?" Then listen. No correcting their interpretation, or cheerful little “that's interesting, because what I was actually trying to do…”

Just data.

Leadership is a human responsibility before it's a business one.

And perhaps one of the most useful questions a leader can ask isn't: What are my people bringing to the table?

It's: What does being led by me bring out in them?

If you're brave enough to ask the three-person question, I'd genuinely love to hear what you discover.

Sources: 

• Gallup. State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report. Global employee engagement was 20% in 2025. Gallup estimated low engagement cost the global economy approximately US$10 trillion in lost productivity, around 9% of global GDP.

• Gallup. State of the Global Workplace: Australia and New Zealand data. Regional employee engagement was 21%.

• Eden, D., & Shani, A. B. (1982). “Pygmalion Goes to Boot Camp: Expectancy, Leadership, and Trainee Performance.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 67(2), 194–199.

• Detert, J. R., & Edmondson, A. C. (2011). “Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work.” Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461–488.