A client recently received the results of a 360 assessment, and one of the clearest themes in the feedback was that people often experienced him as not present. They noticed that during meetings he would often be doing other things like checking his phone, reading/answering email, or generally multitasking while someone else was speaking. From their perspective, the behavior suggested that he wasn’t fully listening or engaged in the conversation.
As we unpacked the feedback together, however, another perspective emerged. He wasn’t disengaged. In fact, his mind was often doing the opposite. He was taking in information from multiple places, making connections, tracking what was happening across the conversation, and processing several dimensions of what he was hearing at once. Multitasking wasn’t necessarily a sign that he wasn’t paying attention; it was part of how he naturally processed information and navigated complexity.
That doesn’t make the feedback irrelevant. If people are experiencing a leader as distracted, that experience matters, regardless of what is happening internally for the leader. But it does invite a deeper question about what we are actually measuring when we evaluate leadership behavior.
Are we measuring leadership effectiveness by the quality of the impact or by how closely someone’s behavior conforms to what we’ve decided leadership is supposed to look like?
That question reaches far beyond one leader or one 360 assessment. It touches something much bigger about the way we have designed our organizations and, perhaps more importantly, the assumptions we continue to carry forward without questioning them.
The Invisible Rules We Rarely Question
Every organization has spoken and unspoken rules about what a “good” leader looks like. A good leader listens. A good leader is present. A good leader communicates clearly. A good leader doesn’t interrupt. A good leader focuses on one thing at a time. A good leader follows the process, collaborates well, stays consistent, and works effectively within the system.
Most of these expectations have value. The problem isn’t that they exist. The problem begins when we confuse the behavior we’ve associated with an outcome for the outcome itself.
We say we want presence, and somewhere along the way, presence becomes sitting still, making eye contact, and giving one person our undivided visual attention. We say we want collaboration, and collaboration translates to participating in meetings according to an accepted set of behaviors. We say we want professionalism, and this means showing up in ways that feel familiar and comfortable to the organization and/or certain individuals within it.
But are all of the expectations actually the thing we need? Or are they simply the way we’ve learned to recognize what we desire to experience?
In my client’s situation, he may need to change something about the way he shows up in meetings. Perhaps there are moments when multitasking genuinely interferes with connection, and he gets to be more deliberate about what he is doing. Perhaps it would be helpful to communicate to his team how he processes information, so they aren’t left to interpret his behavior on their own. And then there are also situations in which his ability to process multiple streams of information is an asset rather than a liability. In actuality, this trait is what makes him ideal for the role he holds within his company.
The deeper leadership work isn’t about deciding that one side is right and the other is wrong. It is about becoming curious enough to understand what is actually happening and intentional enough to determine what needs to change and what doesn’t.
The Cost of Adaptation
This matters because most of us have become exceptionally good at adapting to our environments.
We learn very early what gets rewarded and what doesn’t. We learn how to behave in classrooms, workplaces, relationships and systems in ways that increase our chances of being accepted and successful. Over time, we can become so accustomed to modifying ourselves that we stop asking whether the way we are operating is actually our own.
We learn to sit still when we naturally want to move. We develop our speaking patterns to sound professional in fear of coming across as unschooled or unpolished. We suppress instincts that don’t fit the process or norms. We train ourselves to be more predictable, more agreeable or more amiable. And because adaptation can produce tangible rewards, we can mistake our ability to fit into an environment for evidence that the environment is actually a good fit for us.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adaptation. In fact, the ability to adapt is one of the most important capabilities a leader can have. The question is what we are adapting to, what we are adapting away from and how much do we normalize our adaptations and think they are ways we need to be or identify ourselves?
There is a difference between shifting your approach so that your value can be better received and changing yourself so completely that you lose access to the very qualities that make your contribution unique. One expands your situational impact and the other can diminish the actual value you are here to deliver.
This is where I believe we need to rethink some of the conversations we are having about talent and leadership development. Instead of immediately asking, “What behavior does this person need to change?” we might first ask, “What am I actually seeing?” What is underneath the behavior? What is this person naturally bringing into the environment? Where is that valuable? Under what conditions does that value become most useful?
Sometimes the behavior creating friction is a genuine limitation that needs to be addressed. And sometimes, it is an expression of a strength that has not yet found the right context, language or structure through which to be expressed effectively.
Knowing the difference requires more than a competency model. It requires a deeper level of awareness.
Feedback Gives Us Information. It Doesn’t Always Provide the Whole Story.
This is also why I don’t believe the answer is to dismiss feedback in the name of authenticity.
There is a temptation in today’s world to say, “This is just who I am,” as though authenticity means we shouldn’t have to consider how we affect other people. But that’s not authenticity. In reality, it’s often just another form of adaptation, one that protects us from having to look at the ways our behavior is impacting the environment around us.
My belief is that authenticity and accountability belong together.
If my team experiences me as distracted, I need to care about that experience. At the same time, I also need enough self-awareness to understand whether the behavior they are interpreting as distraction is actually a meaningful part of how I process, think, create or lead.
The work is to hold both truths at once: this is how I naturally operate, and this is how other people are experiencing me.
Now what?
Within this gap is where leadership becomes much more nuanced. Rather than forcing an individual to conform to the organization’s preferred version of “presence,” for example, we can look for ways to preserve what is valuable about their natural operating style while making the influence of that style more intentional and understandable to the people around them.
Hey, Guess What? We’re Building Organizations for a Future That Doesn’t Look Anything Like Our Past
This becomes even more important when we look at what organizations are being asked to navigate today. The pace of change has accelerated. Technology and AI are reshaping roles and workflows, and businesses are being asked to innovate while simultaneously becoming more efficient. Leaders are navigating greater complexity, faster decision cycles, changing employee expectations and environments where the answer is often unclear until we are already moving.
And yet many of the systems we continue to operate within were designed for a very different world.
We still rely heavily on standardized approaches to leadership, communication, performance, career development, meetings, productivity and organizational structure. There is a reason for that. Systems create consistency, and consistency can create scale. But systems can also become rigid when we forget why they were created in the first place.
The challenge is that the systems and norms we create to solve problems can eventually become constraints themselves. A process designed to create efficiency can become cumbersome. A leadership norm intended to create stability can limit how people lead. Even a definition of professionalism that once helped establish credibility can unintentionally suppress originality, while performance expectations designed to create accountability can slowly become expectations of conformity.
The irony is that we may be holding onto these familiar ways of operating at precisely the moment when organizations need more of what they can diminish: creativity, discernment, originality, adaptability, curiosity, courage and the ability to see what others don’t yet see. The question, then, is not whether these structures were wrong. It is whether they are still serving the organizations and people they were designed to support.
What If the Problem Isn’t the People?
We often talk about organizations needing to develop their people. We identify gaps, create plans, provide training, and ask leaders to become better versions of themselves. At the end of the day, all of that has value.
However, there is another question worth asking: What if the environment itself is limiting the expression of the talent it is trying to develop?
Imagine a highly strategic thinker working inside a system that rewards constant tactical responsiveness. Think about an innovative leader within a culture where every deviation from precedent is treated as risk. Consider a person who naturally sees across functions being evaluated primarily on the narrow boundaries of one role. And how can a leader whose greatest value comes from challenging assumptions, explicitly or implicitly, thrive when s(he) is told being a “team player” means not challenging the prevailing view?
We might look at these situations and expect the people in them to adapt. If we do, we should be asking whether the organization needs to adjust itself, as well. And as we can imagine, that is a much harder question because it shifts the conversation from individual development to organizational design.
From Adaptation to Potentiation
Over my career as an executive coach, I have become increasingly interested in the distinction between helping people adapt and creating the conditions in which people can become fully potentiated.
Adaptation considers how a person can become more effective within the environment that exists. Potentiation creates the path to what is possible when we understand a person’s unique talents and gifts, and we take the time to create the conditions for that value to be fully expressed.
Honestly, neither eliminates the other, and healthy organizations need both.
It’s good for people to develop the capacity to flex, communicate across differences, understand their impact and meet the needs of the environment around them. It’s also essential for organizations to become more sophisticated about the environments they are creating, the behaviors they are rewarding and the message these things send into the culture of the company.
For sustainable cultures within thriving organizations, the objective is not to make everyone operate the same way. It is to create, cultivate and consistently deliver enough clarity around outcomes, accountability, values and purpose that people have room, security and support to bring their own intelligence and approach to the work.
The problem may be that we have become too accustomed to defining leadership, performance, collaboration and innovation by the way they are “supposed to” look.
Human beings do not all contribute, lead, communicate or create in the same way. And when someone doesn’t fit the pattern we have established, we can be quick to see the person as the problem rather than questioning the environment around them.
What if some of the people we have labeled as difficult, unconventional, distracted or resistant are actually showing us where our definitions have become too narrow?
What I tend to see is that, often, the opportunity is not to change the person, but to become more discerning about the environment that has been created and whether it truly allows people to contribute at their highest level.
The Deeper Conversation
This is where I believe the discussion about leadership communication needs to go next.
We have learned what it is to have crucial conversations: the difficult feedback, the conflict, the performance issue, the expectation that isn’t being met. And these are necessary, but there are deeper discourse opportunities underneath that we don’t always have the courage to engage.
Asking the more probing questions like …
Why am I doing what I am doing?
What am I actually trying to accomplish?
What part of the way I lead is intentional, and what part is simply what I learned leadership was supposed to look like?
What am I adapting to?
What am I breaking away from?
Where does my natural way of operating create value, and where might it create friction?
What does my environment truly need from me?
And what do I need from my environment in order to do my best work?
These inner inquiries require leaders to know themselves well enough to articulate their own truth, while also being willing to hear what others around them need to share.
I believe, this level of communication needs to come first, before leaders honestly have what they need to conduct the more difficult conversations with others.
This form of leadership requires us to move beyond defending our intentions and become curious about our impact. It asks us to shift from blaming the environment and examine and own the choices we’ve made within it. It also invites organizations to move beyond telling people how to behave and become more intentional about understanding what certain behaviors actually mean and why particular interpretations are considered acceptable, in the first place.
The Future of Leadership Might Be Less About Fitting In
We are entering an era that will demand more from people than simply the ability to execute established ways of working. The organizations that can navigate what is coming will need people who can think differently, see differently, challenge assumptions, connect dots, make decisions amid uncertainty and bring perspectives that may not fit neatly inside the existing structure.
That doesn’t mean we abandon standards, accountability or organizational discipline. In many ways, those things become even more important. What it necessitates is becoming more discerning about the difference between a standard that protects what matters and a norm that simply keeps in place what is familiar. I do believe that distinction may be one of the most important leadership conversations of the years ahead.
Simply put, when we ask people to continually adapt themselves to fit an environment, we may gain consistency while losing something far more valuable, which is the full expression of what those people have to contribute. By designing environments that allow people to understand their own value, communicate it clearly, work with others who may operate differently, and contribute in ways that are both authentic and accountable, we make room for the change and growth that need to enter.
The leadership work in front of us now is not to create more leaders who are better at fitting the mold, but to build organizations mature enough to recognize when the mold itself needs to change and prepared to take the action necessary to make this happen.