Before you try to fix a leader, make sure you’ve identified the real problem
How good are your team leaders? Are they a huge business asset, or more of a problem?
We have worked with many businesses where leadership is a problem, but we have also worked with many businesses where leadership is perceived as the problem, only to discover through our work that the real issue was something entirely different.
Leaders are often called ‘difficult’, ‘too bossy’, ‘too full of their own importance’ or ‘a micromanager’. When we work with a business where leadership is brought into question, whether that be the most senior person or a departmental head, we always dig beneath the surface to establish whether that is really the issue and to uncover the true cause of the friction being felt.
Looking beyond behaviour
How a leader behaves is what employees see. What too many businesses miss are the things that shape that behaviour. Someone’s behaviour is highly visible, whereas what causes it is less so. This sometimes leads to a good leader taking the blame for poor performance when it is actually the behaviour of the wider group that determines the outcome.
If there is unrest in a business, leadership is often the first assumption and the obvious place to look. But what if that assumption is wrong?
The consequences can be significant. Poor decisions are made about retention, promotion and development. Many capable leaders and high performers have been lost because their contribution was misunderstood or undervalued. There is also a tendency, once someone is labelled incorrectly, for every subsequent decision to reinforce that identity.
This can create a domino effect that is far from positive. Promotion decisions shift towards safer, more familiar profiles – “John has been here 20 years, he deserves a promotion and he’ll be a safe pair of hands.” High-impact leaders are held back. Strong leaders are asked to ‘tone it down a little’ rather than maximise their impact.
Over time, organisations begin selecting for peace and quiet rather than productive challenge. So let’s look at the things that typically cause friction.
Four common causes of leadership friction
1. Absence of essential skills in team leaders
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. The leader has a skill gap.
They might struggle with prioritisation, need to communicate more clearly or fail to delegate consistently. Leaders in this category will often say things like:
“I didn’t realise that mattered.”
“I had no idea that was the impact I was having.”
“I don’t know how to…”
Their teams will typically say:
“They’re trying, but they’re not there yet.”
The absence of skill is likely to be the main issue when:
• The behaviour is consistently observed across many aspects of the business.
• Many people report recent and first-hand experiences.
• The leader cannot demonstrate the capability elsewhere.
2. Dated opinions
People develop and change, but sometimes a judgement about a leader is based on something that happened years ago rather than on current evidence.
Dated opinions can be an issue when:
• Feedback is based on historical reputation rather than recent evidence.
• The people forming these opinions have little current interaction with the leader.
Over time, these labels harden, even when behaviour evolves. People rely on memory rather than evidence, and those with limited interaction can often have excessive influence.
When a leader works hard to correct the issue, perceptions often fail to shift. Behaviour change does not solve this because the issue is organisational memory, not current capability.
While objective measures tend to reduce bias, subjective assessments such as leadership behaviours are much more vulnerable to it.
3. Overextension of the leader
Many leadership challenges are misdiagnosed as skill gaps when the real issue is the overuse of a leader’s strengths.
The capability that once made someone successful begins to constrain them because it is spread too far, overused or applied in an area that requires something different.
A strength becomes a habit, the strength is rewarded, the habit becomes an identity and then that identity becomes a constraint.
Take a decisive executive. They may become perceived as controlling. The business responds with “you must change your behaviour”, “let go of control” or “empower your team”.
However, the problem is not the absence of skill. It is the overextension of the leader’s identity.
The approach that worked brilliantly in Operations may not work in Sales or Marketing. You must distinguish between a skill gap and an identity constraint, otherwise you risk telling the leader to fix the wrong thing.
Overextension can be the issue when:
• The leader’s behaviour is a known strength taken too far.
• The leader can demonstrate range but does not apply it where needed.
• The issue appears at a new level, in a new role or within a different area of the business.
In many cases the business rewards the behaviour early and then questions it later.
4. The system is the blocker
This is perhaps the most misunderstood trap.
What looks like a behaviour problem is often a systemic constraint – culture, structures, processes, resources or incentives – that blocks a leader’s efforts. The leader appears problematic because the system is resisting them.
The business says it wants one thing but rewards another. A leader is told to think strategically but is measured on short-term output. They are asked to delegate but do not have a capable team around them.
The system is likely to be the issue when:
• The behaviour is inconsistent with how the system actually operates.
• Incentives, resources, norms or decision rights contradict expectations.
• There is a clear systemic reason that blocks the behaviour change.
In this type of scenario, a leader’s decisiveness can be framed as a personal flaw because it makes others uncomfortable with their own lack of urgency.
In reality, it is the system that has the blind spot. What looks like resistance is often organisational self-protection. In this category, performance is not the issue – the system is.
Fixing the system does not remove accountability from the leader. It sharpens it by ensuring they are held accountable for the right problem.
Diagnosing the real problem
So how do you diagnose the right problem? Start with the right question. Don’t begin by asking, “What behaviour does this leader need to change?” That assumes the diagnosis is correct and that the leader’s behaviour is the issue.
Here is how to identify what is really causing the friction.
1. Focus on specific examples
Confidence in a critique is often a function of repetition, not accuracy. Move the conversation away from subjective summaries such as “they are too aggressive”. Instead, ground the evaluation in specific examples.
Ask: “Walk me through the last time this happened. What was the decision being made and where did things break down?”
2. Confirm the recent nature of the information
Don’t rely on distant history. Put a clear timeframe around feedback.
Ask: “In the past six months, have you personally experienced this?”
This prevents outdated experiences or interactions from blocking a leader’s development or progression.
3. Distinguish between a skills gap and overextension
As we have discussed, not all problematic behaviour reflects a lack of skill. Rather than trying to suppress a behaviour, look at how you can broaden the leader’s range.
Ask: “In what situations do they already operate differently, and how can they apply that approach here?”
4. Reset your conversation with the leader
Your role as a business leader is not to remove accountability, but to clarify it.
Try this conversation:
“Before we decide what needs to change, we need to understand what is driving this. Is this a missing skill, a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation or a rational response? Each requires a different response from both of us.”
A simple way to differentiate:
• If the behaviour is consistent, recent and observable – it is likely to be a skill gap.
• If the feedback is outdated or second-hand – it is likely to be organisational drift.
• If performance is strong but friction persists – it is likely to be overextension.
• If the leader is trying to change but the environment makes that change difficult or unsustainable – it is likely to be a system issue.
Ultimately, every decision you make on talent rests on your initial diagnosis. If you assume the leader is always the thing that needs fixing, you let the system off the hook and risk eliminating the very strengths that make your most valuable leaders effective.
The cost of misdiagnosis is not just ineffective development. It is systematically making the wrong leadership decisions. Before asking how to fix the leader, ask a harder question:
What if the leader is not the problem and your diagnosis is?
Want some experienced help in developing and retaining your leadership team? We’d be delighted to have a conversation.
Want some experienced help in developing and retaining your leadership team? We’d be delighted to have a conversation. My email address is david.turner@tinderboxbd.com
David Turner
MD Tinderbox and Director of The Growth Experts
