We’ve all had those moments when we don’t show up as our “best selves”.

Maybe it’s the snippy comment to a colleague where your frustration comes out sideways. Or getting defensive and emotionally heightened when you’re caught off guard in a conversation.

It can feel like a momentary lapse, but composure is rarely just …

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Their interpretation isn’t a lie... It’s a story. And more often than not, it’s a highly convincing one.

But at best, it is a hypothesis.

We all do it. If you look back at your week, you can probably find some situations that have led you to construct a story or two. Perhaps someone on your team seems unusually quiet this week; or you haven’t received a reply to the email that was important to you; or your boss replies to your proposal with a two-word “let’s discuss”.

By Friday, you have a full explanation. You know exactly what they’re thinking and planning, and how this will impact you. You’ve probably also sorted out some motives and maybe even a timeline for how things will play out from here. This feels like insight.

But you haven’t checked a single piece of it. Instead, you’ve been constructing a story in your head.

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We are meaning-making creatures by design, and our brains absolutely hate a gap. If we’ve got a couple of observations and no explanation for how they relate to each other, we’ll weave a narrative around those elements so that they “make sense” to us before we even realize we’ve done it.

There are any number of situations that can throw us into internal storytelling, but some fairly common ones I’ve seen include:

• The Quiet Team Member: What are they planning? When you notice a shift in someone’s behavior and your mind jumps to a hidden agenda, an ulterior motive, or a plan you’re not yet privy to.

• The Unanswered Email: Why are they doing this? This is where silence or a slow response starts to feel like an active form of disrespect, and leaves us one click away from writing someone off.

• The Two-Word Reply: Where do I stand? When you get a one-liner from your boss inviting you to a meeting with no context after you’ve sent on your ideas. It’s the “let’s discuss” that leaves you bracing for an icky conversation that may never come.

Our instincts may well be right. The danger isn’t in actually having a hypothesis. It is in acting on it as a fact before we really have the data to confirm it.

Ladder of Inference

Creating a story usually comes out of a few ingredients. We usually find ourselves dealing with ambiguity. Our senses are piqued because something feels out of the ordinary or is different from what we would typically expect. This then leads us to start an interpretative sequence that ultimately relies on our own beliefs and perceptions… and that is where the train can go off the tracks.

Chris Argyris came up with a model he called The Ladder of Inference (which was popularized in Senge’s book - The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook), which conceptualized how our assumptions often quietly drive our decision to act, and how quickly that can happen.

The 7 steps briefly described are:

1. Observe Reality - We take in the facts of the situation.

2. Select Data - We start to focus only on what feels relevant to us. We can’t take in everything, so we focus on parts. This is where bias starts to creep in.

3. Add Context - Once we’ve selected our focus points, we start to add context. This is where we begin to filter through our own beliefs and experience.

4. Make Assumptions - We start to form assumptions. These are based on a mix of our beliefs and the facts we selected.

5. Draw Conclusions - Based on the climb through the previous steps, we start to interpret, through our perception, what the situation means, which begins to shape how we should act.

6. Adopt Beliefs - We now formalize these conclusions into beliefs. These beliefs then shape which data we notice in future interactions, which feeds back into the second step in the future. This is termed the “reflexive loop” - where our beliefs begin to increasingly color our judgment.

7. Take Action - This is where we move to start acting in ways that are based on what we believe and have concluded by climbing the rungs of the Ladder of Inference. But our actions are primarily driven by assumptions and stories, not facts.

(Based on the description offered by Asana here)

Watching the Climb, Rung by Rung

We’ve all been on the receiving end of an unanswered email, and the deafening silence it can create. Running this example through the Ladder of Inference, we can see how easily it happens:

• Observed reality - The email hasn’t been answered.

• Selected data - You’ve noticed it has been a week, and that this colleague is replying to other people, so it is just your email that isn’t being responded to.

• Added context - You remember they pushed back on something you decided last month.

• Assumption - So now you assume they’re deprioritizing you because of their feelings toward you.

• Conclusion - Leading you to conclude that they don’t respect you.

• Action - As a result, you send off a curt follow-up email outlining your frustration.

We climb from observation to action in a matter of moments, so quickly that most of the time we never even think to check our reasoning or slow down our response.

Then a reflexive loop takes hold, and the next time this colleague is slow to reply, we see it as proof that they are tardy, and our beliefs become even more deeply ingrained.

When it comes to stories about other people and their actions, motives, and intentions, if we go back down the ladder, there is room to learn more. What we often skip is their side of the story. Our jumps in reasoning and moving quickly to action are where things go astray.

Making the Climb Back Down

This is the practice. While we might scurry up the ladder, with our meaning-making minds creating a full narrative, we can walk ourselves back if we slow down and re-engage with the steps with clearer eyes. The questions leaders can ask themselves:

• What do I actually know? This is about returning to the bottom rung and separating the facts from the story.

• What else could explain this? To open up our minds, we need to challenge our assumptions. What alternative explanation might exist?

• What is one action that will get me real data? The only way to ensure that we’re not leading from stories or assumptions is to seek to understand. This could be a two-line conversation or a direct question to try and better understand the other person’s perspective and actions more deeply.

Hold Your Stories Loosely

The moment a client stops mid-sentence is one of my favorites in a session. Not because they have their story wrong, but because they’re noticing.

We will all make stories and keep scurrying up our own ladders of inference. We’re human, and it is how we make sense of the world. The skill comes from recognizing where we are on the ladder, and being willing to step down a few rungs before we act.

And if our story turns out to be true? Holding it loosely means you’re prepared, but you won’t do any damage while you wait to find out. So the next time you notice that you’re a long way through forming a full explanation, pause and ask yourself: how high have I climbed?

Perhaps we got defensive in a meeting because we were caught off guard.

Or we got short with someone after they caught us in the middle of something.

Or we unintentionally brought our funky mood into work and let it follow us into every conversation we had all day.

I recently put together content for one of my Leadership Circles on Self-Leadership, and it had me reflecting again on what it really means to lead ourselves. We often focus on leading others, but how do we lead ourselves well?

A simple morning practice can help us stay in a responsive mindset, and it works so well because of a couple of key emotional intelligence skills.

The Power of Emotional Self-Awareness & Emotional Self-Management

If I’m being honest, recognizing my own emotions didn’t come naturally to me. Growing up in an emotionally restrained family meant that emotions were never a mode of expression that I was familiar with. But I started my coaching career by coaching emotional intelligence, and quickly learned that emotional intelligence wasn’t just responding to the emotions of others and inspiring engagement, connection, and performance - but also being able to recognize and manage one's own.

Emotional self-awareness is a unique subset of knowing ourselves. While one can know what they value, for example, emotional self-awareness requires us to be able to connect with our emotional experience and bring it up into our conscious awareness. When we can do that successfully, we’re able to read our emotions, feelings, and reactions as a form of information in the moment. That is the first skill.

Only once we have strong emotional self-awareness can we move to managing those emotions. Once we can recognize an emotional response, only then can we create space to choose how we want to respond. So emotional self-management isn’t emotional suppression - rather, it is thoughtfully responding to, and expressing emotional data.

A great quote derived from Susan David’s work on emotional agility that echoes this:

“Emotions are data, not directives.”

When we live through that lens, we can recognize our emotional response, and also recognize that “we” - our higher-thinking conscious self - can choose how to respond to that information.

From Reacting to Responding

We’re all human, which means we’re emotional beings. It also means that we’re all going to be prone to our emotions getting the better of us at times.

Think about the moment late in your day when you can recognize that you’re emotionally exhausted and you should really take yourself out of public consumption because you have nothing good left to give. Perhaps you talk yourself out of it because of responsibilities?

Or the moment you recognize that you’re feeling harried because you’re overscheduled with back-to-back meetings. Do you push on through? Or do you politely leave 5 mins early to get a vital breather and reset, so you can bring a refreshed, refocused self into the next setting?

We often don’t give ourselves the permission slip we need to regroup and reset, because our minds give us a million other reasons to push through.

But if we want to be a grounded, calm, and focused leader, opening up that space and giving ourselves a moment to consider our response is one of the most powerful things we can do.

A quote that has stirred me since the start of my career speaks directly to the heart of this skill. It is oft attributed to the great psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl, although it is likely more a summary of his approach and sentiments than a direct quote. You may have seen it floating around:

Frankl’s sentiment captures the power of being self-aware enough to tune into our natural, human emotions, and then choose our response. This is where we make the crucial break from reactivity to responsiveness.

The Morning Practice

Most of us are running on auto-responding the majority of the time. While this works okay most of the time, most of us know we’re more effective when we’re considered and aware. But there is no doubt that intentionality is harder.

A simple practice that can add so much is a brief morning check-in. As someone who didn’t grow up naming emotions, or being thoughtful in how to respond to them, this is one practice that is essential in keeping me grounded.

The idea is to get yourself in the right headspace every morning and give a few moments of consideration to how you want to show up as a leader in the day right ahead of you.

The “space” that Frankl refers to, usually shows up in the moment when we’re already caught off guard or running on empty. A morning check-in allows us to get into that space ahead of time. It lets us decide, with our thinking, conscious self, how we want to show up. And that forward thinking means we’re much more likely to show up that way later, because we’ve already decided what to do.

It takes less than 5 minutes, but it will set you up to have a more thoughtful, responsive, and considered approach all day.

Here are the questions I encourage you to return to every day, before you start responding to the emails and requests:

• What are my top priorities today? (Where does my best effort deserve to go?)

• How do I want to show up today?

• What might stress me out or trigger me today? And how would my best-self respond to that?

• Who do I want to show appreciation or thanks to today?

We all think a little practice like this will add monumentally to an already overloaded task list, and I’ve generally seen most people talk themselves out of its usefulness before they’ve ever really given it a go. Old habits and routines die hard.

But the thing with this little morning touchpoint is that the 5 min of consideration it asks of you gives you back a calmer, more considered, and aligned day for the remaining 8+ hours ahead.

Thoughtful moments like this practice help us avoid the rumination that results from reacting emotionally, being short, acting defensively, and having our behavior not fully align with who we want to be. Instead of letting that funky mood follow us into every conversation, with some forethought, we can choose the tone we want to bring forward.

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Recently, I had a client who was struggling to find the right way to approach and motivate a senior direct report he had inherited. This team member, let’s call her Sally, had more years of experience than her leader did and had been in the role before he became the lead. It’s a tricky spot for any leader.

Sensing Sally’s motivation waning, the leader told me about how his solution was to become increasingly more directive and detailed in his oversight of her, as he was concerned she wasn’t “getting it”.

A newer, less experienced team member would likely have appreciated this closer connection and clear direction.

But as my client played out this scenario to me, I started to cringe, knowing full well that Sally's increasing disengagement was likely, in part, being hastened by his now zealous over-involvement - and it sounded like things were going sideways quickly.

Last week, I wrote about the difference between being a direct vs. directive leader, advocating for a less directive style as the approach that is likely to foster initiative, agency, and ownership in your team. I absolutely stand by that, but with a caveat.

Some situations actually may call for leaders to be more directive and specific in how things should be done. Like when you have a new team member who doesn’t yet know “how” to do something. Or a team member who lacks confidence and needs to know they’re heading in the right direction.

Sally knew “how” to do this job, and more direction was eroding their relationship further. So what did she need?

A skillful leader is an adaptable leader. While of course they will have an authentic expression and their own signature style, they avoid locking into one approach or a default pattern. Instead, they are mindful enough to step back and consider a situation, and then ask themselves: what is likely the best approach here?

Situational Leadership

A model I often find myself referencing with clients is the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership model.

It’s old-school, but it is a super useful frame that simply posits the best leadership style is the one that fits with the demonstrated level of commitment and competence of the team member you’re leading.

Blanchard most recently popularized the model in Leadership and the One Minute Manager, which I encourage you to read if you want to go deeper. But at a summary level, the four approaches are:

• Directing: High directive, lower support. For use when a team member has high commitment but lower competence (likely due to inexperience or being newer in a role).

• Coaching: High directive, high support. For use when a team member has increasing competence, but commitment may be starting to fall (often due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where our confidence often drops once we realize all we don’t yet know).

• Supporting: Low directive, high support. For use when commitment is variable, and competence is moderate to high.

• Delegating: Low support, low directive. The perfect match for a team member who is highly competent and self-motivated. Leave them to do their thing.

To access the direct link and an overview of the Blanchard SLII training model where this image came from, head here > https://www.blanchard.com/our-content/programs/slii

I talked this through with my client, and he immediately appreciated that his approach probably wasn't driving them closer towards the outcome he ultimately wanted.

On the Situational Leadership map, Sally was in the Delegating quadrant on most days. Her competence was never in question, but my client perceived wavering commitment. This may have pushed her into the Supporting square (rather than the Coaching bucket, which would have been more directive).

What she was receiving, however, was a Directing approach. It likely would have been the perfect match for her 15 years earlier, when she was in the beginning stages of her career and role… but it was a complete mismatch, and breeding disengagement from the level she was at now.

The fix here for my client wasn’t complicated. It was about backing off the close monitoring, avoiding getting down in the weeds with her (or up in her kitchen), and upping his connection and encouragement. He needed to give her the room to do the work she already knew how to do. This model highlighted that.

Every leader I coach has a team that they could plot across this entire map. That is the point. Your support person two years out of school needs something very different from your individual contributor with two decades of experience. A single style or approach isn’t going to serve them both.

Once you have the frame, the check becomes simple. The one question to ask yourself before your next one-on-one is: based on what I know about this person, how much direction and support would likely bring out the best in them?

Or more simply: how much water does this plant actually need?

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Character has been on my mind a lot lately.

In a world of rapidly evolving technologies and the ongoing discussion about human-focused leadership as its counterpoint, I can’t help but ask: why aren’t we talking more about the need for moral character?

My ongoing meditation on character coincided with my attending a half-day leadership event last week, where fellow executive coach Tricia Dege made a comment that really struck at my core. Her leadership lesson was to know your values ahead of time, so that when something challenges them, you’ll know how you want to react.

Tricia followed it up with a personal story that included asking yourself, as a business leader: would I want all of today’s actions reported in tomorrow’s newspaper?

Because the reality is that very easily can, and does, happen when you’re not leading in a character-driven way.

While your motivation shouldn’t be to stay out of the newspaper, I do think it is a good check on oneself to ensure that your actions are something you could stand by in the future if you really needed to publicly justify them.

It’s a solid gut check that your moral fiber isn’t out of whack, and that you’re not being blinded by the pressure of the moment.

But it takes deep self-knowledge, and knowing what you will, and will not, sign your name to.

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I absolutely consider myself to be a futurist. I believe, hopefully and optimistically, in the future of humanity. I’m a fan of AI and see its potential.

I also believe that with the tools we now have available to us, we’re on the brink of world-altering breakthroughs, and that we do have the ability to work out solutions to problems that plague our very existence.

And I also think we’ve lost connection to good old-fashioned value sets that used to keep people grounded when navigating this wild world. And this concerns me. How will our world evolve if we don’t have grounded leaders?

Religion - a place where many generations before us adopted their full value set from - is not the anchor it used to be decades ago. And arguably (and tragically), some religious institutions are no longer even well connected to their own professed value sets.

But this isn’t a post on the erosion of religion… It’s about what happens when we’re no longer anchored to a strong moral center, a core of aspiration that helps us self-edit our own behaviors and one that we can use as a measuring stick to monitor our actions against. For some, that center still comes from faith, but for others, it is built through more of a personal exploration. Wherever it comes from, we need one.

When Amodei says we need to slow down the rapid, unchecked evolution of AI because it needs to be done safely, with oversight and ethics, he is, at some level, quietly saying:

We can no longer only be driven by our blind desire for growth, greed, and control, and it is well time to bring online some deeper driving values - dare I say, altruistic ones.

That is a civic-minded plea and dilemma; not a commercial one.

It’s a call to think about the bigger whole, rather than the small thing in front of us. To think about our wider impact, rather than our measurable success. And it’s a warning that, unchecked, or without moral intervention, our current values-set is at risk of leading us straight toward disaster.

Whether Amodei, Musk, and Altman will get any support for this from the government is uncertain at this point. Perhaps because people don’t like regulation, rules, or restrictions in any way? They all fly in the face of “freedom”.

But is this the first smoke signal that we may have reached the far end of what individualism and an obsessive focus on “the self” can ultimately deliver in terms of our collective well-being?

All senior leaders face really hard decisions. When I’m there with them in a coaching conversation - talking about whether it is time to let someone go, or if a part of the business needs to close down, or if it’s time to recognize the model no longer works - I will often ask one simple question that brings them back to their center: What will allow you to sleep at night proud of the decision you made, even if making it is still hard?

That is a values question, but it extends further and asks them to check in with their conscience.

Ultimately, it is a simple consideration that encourages them to use the best judgment they absolutely can, knowing that all humans are imperfect, but to make a decision that keeps them aligned with the person they genuinely aspire to be.

Our current times, of complexity, chaos, and rapid change, are calling for leaders who are deeply grounded and steady.

We are desperate for leaders with character.

The job of a leader is to take care of many people… not just themselves.

And to unite people toward a common objective so that they can do more than they could do alone.

In the back-and-forth of the latest leadership theories, ideas, and fads, I think we’ve started to cut leadership up into a bunch of little skills, and we’re losing sight of the whole.

The world, our organizations, and we as a collective, need clear, morally guided, deeply considered leaders.

We need to start questioning the narrative that leadership is a bunch of skills that can be neatly packaged into perfected frameworks, and as long as you roll out the right skill at the right time, you’ll be a great leader. Or that leadership is proven through a list of resume titles.

The leadership the world needs now requires deep and considered judgment. We need leaders who are willing to step back for a moment, lead with conscience and conviction, and be decisive when the moment calls for it.

Great leaders lead from core principles, not tactics. And that isn’t what we’re seeing in today's leadership discussions.

The greatest leaders in history had moral character. They are the ones who, even when it was hard, did the “right” thing… not the easy thing. In fact, more often than not, the easy thing isn’t the right thing. We all know this to be true; it’s just hard to face it in the moment, but it is exactly what character looks like.

Truly grounded leaders aren’t constructed; they’re anchored. They are those who have done the work to understand themselves, know what they value, and recognize the lines they will not cross. They are led by an inner compass and can stay focused on its guidance even when the world starts pushing them around.

I think it’s well time to bring character, integrity, and good old-fashioned morals back to the center of the leadership discussion. In the chaotic and complex modern world we now inhabit, character is a non-negotiable core leadership attribute. Without it, we are left with leaders who don’t know how to stay steady themselves, let alone lead us through the current storms of modernity.

Challenges will keep coming, but great leaders know what they stand for ahead of time and how they want to show up before they do.

Based on my twenty years of practice, I’ve been working on a concept called Integrated Leadership. It’s focused on three core principles that I believe can bring us back to the heart of what great leadership looks like. By balancing Care for people, Character to keep us centered and doing the right thing, and ensuring Capability is a central leadership tenet, I believe we can find our way toward a simpler, principle-based model of great leadership. You can learn more about my thoughts on this here: https://www.katesnowise.com/integratedleadership. And subscribe to keep getting updates that align with this thinking.

How do we find that fine balance between providing clarity, but also avoid being a micromanager?

You may have come across the well-meaning leader who prides themselves on being clear, but whose team has quietly stopped bringing ideas forward.

Or perhaps you can recognize that sometimes you might be a little too detail-oriented in your instructions.

I remember working for someone like this early in my career. They likely thought they were giving me clear direction, but being on the receiving end, I felt like I was getting highly detailed instructions that left no room for me to take ownership of my work.

Every how was dictated, and ultimately that stifled my motivation and engagement.

While it can sound like being direct requires you to be directive, there is actually a huge difference between the two concepts. Knowing the difference can help you build a more engaged, empowered, and initiative-led team.

What vs. How - the difference between being direct and directive

• Being direct is about providing clarity. It is focused on the outcome, or what you’re trying to achieve, and why. It is destination-focused and highlights what good looks like. This leaves someone with a clear understanding of what constitutes success and what constraints they might need to consider.

• Being directive is about prescribing the route to get there. It falls into defining the how.

As leaders, it is easy to fall into a trap and get confused between these two. We may think we’re being helpful and specific, but it is easy to switch into “solving mode” and end up being the one who is directing all the actions.

With the best of intentions, we can risk putting too much energy into directing the details, and inadvertently not leave enough space for our best employees to really shine.

Highly directive behavior can show up like:

• Telling people exactly who to contact, what questions to ask, and what order to take routine steps in.

• Requiring approval for all decisions or action steps.

• Getting into the habit of rewriting work oneself, instead of explaining the needs and letting the owner revise the piece.

• Giving people solutions before asking for their ideas or recommendations.

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How being overly directive backfires

The tragedy is that being an overly directive leader actually stifles initiative.

When people know their role is to simply execute someone else's instructions all day, they stop exercising their own judgment.

Team members stop thinking for themselves, working through problems, and coming up with solutions, and instead, they can fall into the routine of waiting for the next instructions to move on.

Ultimately, this creates a loop of dependency.

In psychology, there is a concept called learned helplessness. Seligman & Maier originally described it in 1967. They noticed that dogs, when administered intermittent shocks, ultimately gave up and learned to be helpless. The poor pups realized they had no control over their situation, so they stopped trying to influence the events. They were conditioned to be helpless.

Teams that have highly directive leaders are also at risk of being conditioned. They end up thinking (albeit likely unconsciously): why bother thinking ahead and coming up with a solution when what we’re supposed to be doing will be dictated anyway?

The cruel irony is that the leader then reads that as passivity, and as evidence that the team has no initiative or judgment, and tends to become even more directive. The loop feeds upon itself.

The ultimate and unintended effect: the leader becomes a bottleneck to the process where the team begins filtering every small decision or action to their leader for approval before they get moving. This further proves the leaders impression, leading to a self-fulfilling cycle.

Direct the outcome but delegate the thinking

The way out… being direct ensures you have alignment and a shared understanding of what you’re trying to achieve, but it doesn’t create the dependence.

It’s the difference between ensuring your team knows exactly what you expect, while letting them find the path they want to take to get there.

Great leaders who create empowered teams direct the outcome, but delegate the thinking steps.

So as long as they get to the ultimate goal, they can go away and make a hundred little decisions without your input. They can use their own judgment to create the path that makes sense to them to achieve the goal.

The caveat: this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever take a more directive style. There are absolutely moments that may call for more direction. For example, the new hire who hasn’t yet mastered the basics enough to really bring that higher level of judgment to the table, or in a moment of crisis when there needs to be a quick and aligned response and have all contributors singing from the same hymn sheet. Both of these situations might require a more directive approach in the moment. At times, momentarily stepping into a more directive style might be the responsible thing to do; the aim is simply not to make this your permanent or default leadership style.

How to tell if you’re leaning Direct or Directive?

Being able to distinguish between being direct or directive is a key part of building the self-awareness needed to develop an empowering leadership style.

A few other things to ask yourself if you’re wanting to build more initiative, ownership, and agency in your team:

• Are my instructions describing an outcome or a route?

• When someone brings me a problem, do I first ask for their ideas or solutions? Or am I quickly jumping in with a fix or answer?

• Is my team showing initiative and able to move without me?

The biggest shift you can make is encouraging your team to lead with ideas and solutions, and to own the path they take to reach any outcome you need.

The higher we climb in leadership roles, the more important it is that our teams demonstrate real judgment, and can work without us. We simply cannot stay in the weeds if we’re being called to lead the wider vision for our teams and organizations.

The goal of creating a great team is not having a bunch of people who can execute perfectly on our explicit instructions. It is that they can make sound decisions, solve meaningful problems, and deliver strong results without us being the ones who outline every move.

So yes, be direct enough that no one is left guessing where you need to get to. Make sure the outcome is clear, and people know what they need to achieve.

But also be trusting enough that people can choose their preferred route to how they actually get there.

The reality is, things don’t always go swimmingly. Sometimes things get hard, and that requires leaders to dig deep.

Looking back on the year, I’ve had more than one client have to face the reality that their numbers aren’t where they want them to be, and that their teams feel like they’re losing momentum and energy.

And across the board, it does feel like hope has been in scarce supply lately. There is definitely an air of uncertainty lingering in the air presently. And that is, at best, unsettling and, at its worst, fear-inducing.

So how are we as leaders meant to stay hopeful and lead through the trickier moments?

It starts with recognizing that hopefulness isn’t an abstract feeling that simply arrives or doesn’t. But rather, it's a skill you can foster and develop.

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Hope vs. Optimism

Optimism is best characterized as that general sense that everything will work out. And most people are drawn to upbeat, optimistic people. They can bring a sense of levity when things feel heavy.

The flip side is that they can also feel naive and even annoying when things are truly going south. A little bit like they would rather put their heads in the sand and ignore reality when it doesn’t align with their desired vision.

Hope is different. C.R. Snyder, the psychologist who developed Hope Theory (1994, 2002), described hope as a motivational state built on active engagement and goal-directed thinking.

In his theory, hope is built on what we think and do.

So whereas feeling optimism might come and go, and feels very situation-dependent, hope theory suggests that we can actually construct a feeling of hopefulness, and we can also rebuild it when it feels like it’s lost.

The Three Elements of Hope Theory

Synder built Hope Theory around three core elements that interact and build on one another to bring hope to life.

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Goals:

We need to keep our eye on something meaningful to work toward. This means defining a clear direction that gives your actions purpose.

What are we trying to achieve?

And what are we working toward?

Without knowing where we’re aiming to get to, hope has nothing to attach to. A person with hope knows what they are working toward.

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Pathways Thinking:

Once you know where you are trying to go, pathways thinking is about recognizing there is more than one route that will likely get you there.

This means mapping out the actions you will “do” that will help you keep moving toward your ultimate outcome or goal.

Pathways thinking also includes the idea that, at times, you will find paths blocked. We need to expect the hurdles, rather than be demoralized by them, and resolve to find another path around them, never losing sight of what we’re trying to achieve.

Like the famous line from the children's chant We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, where the hurdles are all a part of the adventure, it’s about embodying an “If we can’t go over it, let’s go around it” type of approach.

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Agency Thinking: 

Agency thinking is believing you have the capacity to do it and holding close to that mindset. It is recognizing that you have agency in a situation, and your actions matter in continuing to move toward your ultimate goal.

Synder (2002) referenced the power of leaning into agency-building self-talk or beliefs like “I can do this” and “I’m not going to be stopped.” You can extend this to consistent messages you send your team, especially when things feel tough.

(For all the Ted Lasso fans out there, Ted’s “Believe” sign in the Richmond clubrooms is a perfect example).

Ted Lasso Believe Poster on Amazon

Synder highlighted the importance of the interaction between these elements and how they ultimately build on and reinforce one another. We need a goal to focus our energy toward, and then through both pathways thinking and harnessing agency we build the power and momentum to keep trucking through.

When we notice a sense of hopelessness, either in ourselves or our team, it usually reflects a breakdown in one or more of these components. Being able to diagnose that can help you recognize how to bring back a sense of energy and motivation to your group.

Applying Hope

Leaders are the ones that everyone looks to when it’s hard to feel hopeful. When you’re strategizing how to bring a greater sense of hope to your people, here are three things to consider:

• What are you aiming toward? What is the ultimate, higher-level outcome you’re all working toward? [Goals]

• What pathways are worth trying now? If Plan A isn’t working out, what does a Plan B or C look like? And which one will you try next? [Pathways]

• What evidence do you have that you can do hard things? Or that success is possible? [Agency]

The market, or organizational environment, isn’t always going to be in a natural upswing. Sometimes a team’s energy can feel funky, and sometimes the collective energy will feel off. But that doesn’t mean that we have to fall prey to the dominant or collective mindset.

Great leaders find a way to stay consciously and actively hopeful when the hard times hit.

Hope isn’t something we should wait to feel, but rather, it is something that we can decide and think our way toward. People aren’t looking for an ungrounded reassurance that things will be okay from their leaders; they’re craving an active belief that there is a way through, and that you can work to create that path together.

This coincides with me also contemplating an upcoming two-week vacation back home to New Zealand. I leave on Saturday.

As we were talking through her adjustment to this new role, we discussed the fact that she is in this golden time when she isn’t yet locked into expectations, habits, and ideas that can easily become the handcuffs that keep you trapped in the future.

I realized I was also in this phase here with Leadership Lately. The commitment is new, and the expectations and norms aren’t fully set, either with myself or with you, my reader.

And it got me thinking - this is one of the easiest times you will ever get to consider one simple question that can impact a whole lot.

What do I mean by Human Sustainability?

In a workshop I’ve given many times over on human well-being, stress, and how to avoid burnout, I have a slide of a simple burnout continuum.

If we’re simply unconsidered and don’t actually think about managing our well-being, we’re prone to running right through any of the warning signs that we’re tiring, and we’ll keep on going, falling further and further down the continuum until the only outcome is burnout.

I often use the analogy of our emotions being like warning lights on the dashboard of our car. If we can check in with how we feel, interpret the signals, and, more importantly, act on them, then we’re much more likely to stay in a healthy zone, which ultimately helps us maintain and sustain our contribution.

We don’t want to wait until the emotional exhaustion phase before we start taking actions that put us back into the engaged and well end of the scale. The aim isn’t to do something amazing once, and then flame out in a blaze of glory.

The aim is to show up well over a long period of time, delivering consistently and feeling good, because you’re functioning in your zone of human sustainability.

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Three Simple Considerations that Make Our Lives Easier

But how do we actually stay in this optimal zone, where we are regenerating our resources (or energy), and not overgiving of ourselves before it is too late?

Here are three simple thoughts I left my client with, and also reminded myself of today, that can help ensure we stay in the zone of sustainable ongoing contribution.

You Teach People How to Treat You

This is one of my favorite personal mantras. We teach people how to treat us.

We are constantly giving people signals about what we will and will not accept. Of course we usually do this completely unconsciously. But through our actions, asks, and boundaries, we teach people what we consider okay and not okay, and what we will and will not tolerate.

This is an essential lesson to learn when we’re talking about building our own sustainable well-being. We are the only ones who can monitor how we’re feeling from the inside, and it is our job to ensure that we push back early (albeit politely) when the asks of us are getting too great.

Don’t resentfully keep pushing through your own boundaries when you can politely hold a line that protects your well-being.

What does this look like at work? Maybe you’d prefer to shut off in your evenings, and want your team to do so too. So simply communicating that you won’t be checking email or Slack after hours, and if someone needs you, they will have to call you, is a simple, clear, and yet kind way of saying - I’m available, but only if you really need me.

That isn’t locking people out or refusing to do your job. It’s putting up a flexible boundary, much like a fence with a gate in it - “You can get to me, and I’m here, but you have one little hurdle in order to reach me.” And it is amazing how many people will check themselves before phoning, but will shoot off a Slack or email without giving it a second thought. Yet both may equally throw you off kilter after work hours.

You teach people what they can expect from you. And if you do this thoughtfully and consciously, you’re much more likely to set healthy limits that allow you to bring your best self to the fore in the longer term (and as a bonus, give others permission to too).

Calm before Chaos

I typically project calm on the outside, but my nervous system is not at all wired to be calm. I’ve been a sensitive soul for as long as I can quite honestly remember. I trigger easily on the inside, and stress and overwhelm most definitely rattle me. In understanding myself, Dr. Elaine Aron’s concept of Highly Sensitive People, or HSPs, really helped me make sense of this.

Along with this sensitivity, when I’m really feeling stretched, I can become a chronically chaotic version of myself. I call it the panic monkey. And if I let the panic monkey into the driving seat of my life, I can have a tendency to jump into a crazed way of attending to whatever is in front of me.

Thankfully, now I realize that frenzied action is never the most efficient or effective way to take care of anything.

Panic spreads panic. And the flip - considered calm spreads thoughtful action.

As part of this, if I can feel a sense of overwhelm increasing, I now recognize this is an invitation to calm my body so that I don’t get caught in an emotionally driven spiral. From there, I can reconnect with my thinking brain (i.e., executive prefrontal cortex) and actually start to thoughtfully attend with a bunch more logic to what is in front of me.

So my personal reminder is to start with calm. It can feel like delaying action in a moment, but 5 min of calming my body through breathing, movement, or writing brings me that much more focus in return.

Get a Plan

I have no idea who said it, but it’s brilliant.

You can do everything, just not all at once.

And there is only so much one human can create, output, or quite honestly do in a period of time. Being realistic about this will make your life infinitely easier in the long run.

I see having a plan much like creating a map through the chaos that is overwhelm and stress so that you can come back to it when you need regrounding. Map the route through before you start walking.

The benefit to this is that it should really start to become clear whether or not there is a path through the maze of obligations. And if it’s completely unrealistic, you can call in help or flag that earlier than the eleventh hour. We can get to everything, just not all at once.

It matters less to me how my clients like to approach their planning and organizing, and more that they simply do plan.

My personal practice isn’t rocket science. A simple glance at the beginning of my week, then I grab a piece of paper and write a list of daily tasks. Ultimately, I consider which one is the highest priority, and work around it from there.

Many tasks end up being transferred to the next day’s list because that reflects a busy person who only has so many resources to give.

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Human sustainability may make it sound like we’re a bunch of resources, but I think it is how we need to be thinking about our well-being.

What is going to be sustainable for me is a simple question that, if you ask yourself frequently enough, can gently reorient your commitments and actions toward what actually supports your well-being in the long term.

For my client, maybe that is to thoughtfully consider what job responsibilities she absorbs from the get-go, what really should fit in the role of her team members, what daily planning habits she needs, and how she wants to be communicated with.

And for me, asking that one question led me to decide that with Leadership Lately, if I am on vacation (or holiday in Kiwi-lingo), then writing here is also on hiatus. Because that will allow me to show up well and consistently in the longer term. So you can expect to see me back here in your inbox in just a couple of weeks, post-vacay! Practicing what I preach you might say.

It’s been years since I’ve written with any real consistency or created on a frequent schedule. My podcast was a regular commitment back in the day, which is exactly why I know that creation is like a muscle: the more frequently you train and the more reps you get in, the easier it gets.

Well what I can tell you is - my creation muscles have atrophied, big time.

And since the last time I actually was using this creative brain of mine consistently (looking back at my recordings, it really was pre-COVID, so let’s give or take 7 years), the world has changed in quite a curious way. We now have these phenomenal artificial intelligence tools that can do a lot of knowledge-generating at the touch of a button.

I’m a big fan of AI, and I do believe that all savvy leaders are actively exploring how to best utilize these tools and how they can augment and extend their capabilities. AI is clearly not going away, and there are real advantages we can gain from these amazing tools.

But there are also downsides and traps we ought to be aware of if we are, in fact, going to be savvy.

And I walked straight into a pothole of a trap... let me tell you.

The Allure of a Shiny Short Cut

I opened up my new Substack editing screen for the first time. Full of promise and the excitement of bringing Leadership Lately to life, I was met only by a cursor blinking back at me, begging me, borderline demanding me, to put some words on the digital page… and I had nothing.

Blank and completely lacking any inspiration.

My first thought was, “Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I should write about? This is hard!”

It is. Writing and creativity are hard. And they always have been.

But rather than allow myself to sit in the discomfort of that thought, and allow it to pull me deeper into my own thinking muscles, I decided almost instantaneously to divert my own thinking and look for an alluring shortcut.

My second thought quickly followed, and internally sounded something like: “Yay for AI! It can tell me.”

Now, one promise I will make is that AI will never ever write my Substack posts. This is me. In my voice. Typing at a screen. And it always will be.

But the allure and promise of AI is that it is supposed to make everything easier, right?

I wasn’t looking for AI to write a piece, but I did think AI could tell me what to write

To be honest, it felt like a genius move in the moment. “Let me use these amazing tools to give me insight and make this whole process of writing something meaningful quicker,” was what was running in the back of my mind.

So I decided to use AI as a research assistant of sorts, and to work out what the “Current Leadership Trends” my Substack readers might want to know about really were.

I went back right now to see how I had managed to tie myself up in knots. Gosh, no wonder! Even my prompt was a lesson in overwhelm!

I’d used one of those prompt generators that you throw ideas into, and then it creates an “expert prompt”. Processing it through Perplexity, it came back to me with a several-page report titled "What Leaders are Really Thinking About in 2026." Here is just a snippet of the crazy I was trying to digest all before writing a single word on a page.

The Great Flattening. Quiet Cracking. Manager Squeeze. Emotional Interior of Decision Making. Do you feel inspired reading that? I certainly did not.

So what did I do? Well, I used another AI tool to see what it would spit back out at me, all while holding out hope that somewhere in something, I would find a thread of usefulness that would miraculously inspire creativity in me.

Instead, I became completely lost in flat words and concepts that meant nothing, and found myself drowning in dry, meaningless information.

Cognitive Load

This is the "I should have known better" section.

Our minds can only process a handful of pieces of information at once in working memory. Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort we need to use to process information. When we get flooded with too much information, it can exceed our brain’s processing capacity, and much like a computer, our minds seize up like they’re frozen from having too many tabs open.

Once we get to that point, we’re on a path to struggling to make any decision and dealing with a mental fatigue that starts feeling like mind-fog. Ultimately this also impacts our ability to retain anything. We’ve fried the circuits and roll right into shutdown mode.

I can clearly remember sitting in a psychology lab during my undergrad studies, studying memory and testing each other to see how many numbers we could keep in mind at one time, and all the memory tricks needed to lengthen that string. It was considered about 7 back in the day. And it was bizarrely hard to do.

Here, with the “help” of AI, I had absolutely overwhelmed myself with an outrageous amount of information that was not easily processable, and with no clear signal or criteria to evaluate it. This “useful” report was full of data and trends, but they all felt meh to me. It was information for information’s sake that led me absolutely nowhere.

Could I have made this task better by writing a better prompt? Probably. For sure, the “expert prompt generator” (oh the irony) overengineered a prompt that made this whole exercise bizarrely useless and overwhelming, producing pages of unanchored information.

I didn’t need more information. I needed one idea that meant something to me. A thought that could spur my creativity, and that made me as a human connect with it. Not 100 more facts on the current state of leadership.

The Generation Effect

Looking out for the AI traps, and something that is perhaps even more relevant here is the generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Put simply, we understand and retain far more of what we ourselves have created than what we’re handed.

We know this inherently. When we wrestle with an idea, it lands better. We’re able to make more sense of it and find our connection with the material.

I experienced this on my podcast. I would interview authors and discuss the ideas from their books. Like a good podcaster, I would do my research and at least glance through their books (reading everyone is a lot!), and I’ll never forget once asking an author about a model she had discussed in her book that I found quite intriguing.

As I referenced it, I could tell she was completely blank and had no connection to the material whatsoever. I literally had to talk her through the entire model before she could speak to it.

It was clear as day that she had no idea what she had written about. She didn’t “know” her stuff. She had regurgitated a model she obviously never really used from Google or some other knowledge base. It wasn’t hers. She had no real relationship to the material. And because of that, she wasn’t able to make it come to life.

This is the risk we face. We’re moving into an age where we’re drowning in information, but risk starving for real knowledge. Information can’t become meaningful until we’ve metabolized it and made it our own.

The report I got back from Perplexity was pretty, yet utterly meaningless to me because it wasn’t generated by me. It was piles of ungrounded information. So instead of creating, I set myself up for a fishing expedition, glancing through pages and pages of information, trying to find something that hooked me, spoke to my experience, and I could write about meaningfully. Extra, and fully unnecessary “work”.

The alluring shortcut was never a shortcut. Information for information’s sake is not helpful. “Utilizing” AI in this context was merely a distraction that threw me, hook, line, and sinker, into cognitive overload and a disconnected data review. Thinking I was doing something useful led to a literal hours-long diversion

And after all that?

I had to walk away from my computer and the blinking cursor, to do a mind-numbing task for a couple of hours just so I could reset and clear my cluttered thinking, before being able to finally return and sit yet again in front of a blinking cursor, but this time only with my own mind and the need to dig deep.

Finally, I started writing about authenticity and how it went too far at work (which you can read here: Stop Bringing Your Whole Self to Work) . Just me with my raw ideas, needing to be molded into something on a page.

There is no doubt that AI can help us in so many ways. But it can also easily, and sneakily, become an exercise in collecting meaningless information that does nothing more than overwhelm and underdeliver, soaking up our precious energy in the process.

For something to matter to us, and really land, we need to have a hand in it. We have to feel connected to it and be a part of generating it.

Thoughtful leaders need to find this fine line with the AI tools they use. We want to stay connected enough to keep hold of the work, and avoid drowning in meaningless information that does nothing but make the work harder, not easier. That defeats the entire point of what we hope this technology can add to our lives.

Because information overload is not better thinking. It's just more data.

Post thought… I wanted to have a space to make a special mention of the dreaded em-dash. You know, this one —.

This is one of my greatest pet peeves and a total AI “tell” if you ask me! Do you agree? let me know in the comments below.

And the reason I feel like it is such a tell is that who even knows how to do an em-dash?! I had to Google-search it, and it proves my point. Who is actually pressing Option+Shift+Hyphen all at once to get an em-dash in the middle of a sentence just to make their point? No one. AI is.

It personally grates my gears not because I don’t like it, but because I’ve always written with dashes! But now, people probably think my writing is AI-generated because of that?! Ugh. So it goes.

So a note - you will see dashes in my writing. But not the em-dash kind, just the hyphen kind. Which is probably not grammatically correct, and if I write a book one day, I’m sure an editor will fix it. But for now… that is just how I write.

From my perspective, I’ve noticed a marked decrease in the number of organizations looking to talk about burnout. A few years ago, I was booked month after month for short talks on burnout, well-being, and how organizations could help their people take care of themselves and, hopefully, avoid burning out. It was definitely the trend of the moment. But I haven’t had this topic requested once this year.

Much of that initial boom was definitely born out of the COVID pandemic, when care-minded organizations were scrambling to come up with whatever they could to support their people. It was an urgent need, and in many cases, a well-being workshop probably felt like the best band-aid most had at the time. It made sense. Doing something is better than nothing at all.

But where is burnout in the conversation now? In my world, it feels like it evaporated into thin air.

I found myself wondering if it was simply a case of bigger fires burning that have diverted attention in a new direction? Or then again, maybe it was time to move on from burnout being a key part of our organizational vernacular, and it had simply done its dash?

Did the Business World Actually Move on From Burnout?

It feels like the question used to be - how do we balance all the important things? But that it has shifted to feel a little something more like: how do we ensure we keep up in a world that will probably never slow down again?

Pulling out the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends series for the last three years is fascinating fodder for my hypothesis.

• In 2024, Deloitte was addressing burnout directly, identifying work stress as a top concern, and using framing including “human sustainability”.

• In 2025, they moved to talking about workplace stress and declining manager mental health as part of a broader set of “tensions” that leaders must navigate between business performance and human well-being, and how leaders need to find the right balance between each of these polarities.

• And by 2026 (the report was released in March), the narrative has shifted strongly to speed, nimbleness, and maintaining competitiveness in an AI-powered world. There is a brief mention of “change exhaustion” as they highlight that the pressure on leaders is intensifying, but, notably, it feels like burnout and well-being have fallen off the agenda and been replaced by the need to keep up.

On the other hand, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in its 2026 State of the Workplace Report listed stress and burnout as among the most pressing workplace needs. My experience doesn’t suggest this is marrying up with the market demand right now.

It feels a bit like we have a gap between what HR professionals perceive as needed to take care of people, and what the market is demanding in terms of adapting to new realities.

The Pressure Hasn’t Decreased

What we do know is that the stress itself hasn’t actually decreased. In fact, there are many indicators suggesting the challenges facing leaders are only accelerating and coming in thick and fast. COVID was a moment in time that required rapid pivoting, and while it was a really whacky moment, leaders are now facing increasing business pressure, flattening organizations, and the challenge of adopting AI in a world that won’t let them forget it.

And the middle management “squeeze” is real. This is that tough spot where it can often feel like leaders don’t have high levels of control or influence, but that is paired by high expectations, and that can feel extra tricky and icky.

Recent data supports the idea that leader stress hasn’t abated. DDI’s 2025 survey found that 71% of leaders reported increased levels of stress, which is up from 63% in 2022.

Another recent stat based on Gallup’s Future Forum 2025 data (as reported by BTS) stated that 45% of middle managers report burnout, which is higher than any other employee group. And only 21% say they’re thriving.

So what is clear is that stress, and its exhausted equivalent, burnout, haven’t actually disappeared. But we also haven’t somehow become immune.

Maybe Moving on from a Burnout Fixation is Healthy?

I’ve always had a problem with how we’ve framed stress as a society. The pendulum swung so far that we’ve literally reached a point where people get stressed about the risk of being stressed. We collectively built up a fear around something that is a very natural, even adaptive, and helpful human response.

I’m not advocating for pushing people to unsustainable levels for unreasonable amounts of time. I am absolutely an advocate for employee well-being and building workplaces that value human contribution in a way that is sustainable. We need healthy businesses and healthy human contributors.

But I am also here to say that being uncomfortable, feeling a little overwhelmed maybe even stressed at times, having some constraints put on us, and pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone isn’t something we should be afraid of. In fact, it’s the very thing that can help us thrive as humans.

Eustress is the side of stress we don’t talk about enough. It’s the fact that most things we do that feel truly worthwhile and like a real achievement are intimately interwoven with stress.

When I ask people about what they are most proud of, they will always look back at things that stress cannot be separated from - raising children, completing college, or a huge work project that they initially thought might be beyond their capabilities. Every single one of those things is stressful, and that is part of what also makes it feel fulfilling and meaningful.

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Naming burnout so readily did give us a label for a problem that had long been overlooked - and that was overdue. But it can also keep us stuck in the predicament. Labeling almost everything as feeling burnt out can trap us, purely because it casts stress as an enemy.

And an ongoing fixation on avoiding stress is like looking straight into a black hole and trying not to be sucked in. We tend to do better if we focus on what we do want and seek, rather than on what we want to avoid.

Just like self-care was never going to be a one-way track out of burnout-ville, nor is a workplace with no pressure ever going to be realistic.

And, ironically, this is what I’m now being asked for by organizations and very much aligns with Deloitte’s 2026 Trend Report. I call it adaptability; Deloitte calls it nimbleness - but I’m pretty sure we can all appreciate that is just a game of semantics.

Burnout appears to have had its moment in the sun, but great organizations will keep doing the work of building healthy workplaces and creating environments that support well-being. I’m confident that it won't fall off their agenda.

And it also feels timely to put the focus somewhere else - into building the skillsets and mindsets that will help us thrive in a world that will keep throwing challenges our way. That is taking a future-focus and building toward what we all need.

We can all benefit from being more aware of our stress mindsets and focusing on flexing with ebbs and flows of life and work. But according to the stats, leaders have the most to gain, not just because of the example you can set, but also the payoff to your own well-being.

It’s shown up in comments and questions like:

“I want to build trust, but what am I supposed to do with the direct report who is constantly in my office spilling their guts? It’s exhausting.”

Or

“We support people being authentic at our workplace, and it’s a stated value, so how am I supposed to have the conversation about spaghetti strap tank tops and ripped jeans not necessarily representing our professional standards when facing clients? Do I just not go there even though everyone knows it isn’t the right fit?”

And

“Recently, a leader who reports to me had a completely inappropriate emotional outburst at work. She’ll say she was being authentic, but the team was left shell-shocked and now they’re all walking on eggshells. So do I just allow her right to authenticity to be damaging to other people’s ability to feel safe at work?”

The dilemma for leaders is real. These are all situations that are icky, and make me want to grit my teeth, but I know these leaders aren’t alone in what they’re experiencing at work.

So how did we get here?

And what does authenticity actually need to become if it’s going to help contribute to a better workplace community?

Authenticity at work went way too far

I want to be clear - “bring your whole self to work” was a correction for something very real. For the longest time, many people felt like they had to mask up and leave large parts of themselves at the door, and were managing how much of their identity was really safe to show. Telling those people that they didn’t need to do that was a genuine gift.

But it’s a case of the fix for one problem becoming the cause of another. What led free people to stop hiding also inadvertently gave others the permission to stop filtering altogether, and turn their backs on professional standards that are also essential to stitching our workplaces together.

Then pop psychology inflated the trend into something that felt like an expression of pure freedom, speaking to our individual needs to be in control and feel valued. We took this new face of empowerment, and we went all in.

Yet we’re not just a bunch of disconnected individuals living next to each other. We’re social beings, and at work, we’re charged with working alongside one another. In this setting, we have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to each other. We used to call meeting that responsibility character - doing what’s right even when it’s hard - and saw that as something to actually aspire to.

Authenticity itself isn’t the problem. It’s just that the authenticity we need is a demanding character-based virtue. What we’ve been sold is a flattering knockoff that is easy-peasy because it doesn’t ask anything of us. Its motto is - just show up as you feel, whatever that is.

We need a shot of “other-centeredness” to help balance out the overly “me-centered” authenticity we currently have. It is no surprise this is where it has currently landed, as it’s absolutely in lockstep with the current cultural moment.

We’ve been encouraged to take this individual focus through the self-help movement for decades now, and if you’re in the USA like me, it’s not hard to see that we live in a very individualistic society.

It’s woven into most of our psychological models, which tend to put the self right at the center. Authenticity is the modern face of self-actualization - a concept wrapped around realizing our full potential, personal growth, and self-directed authentic expression - which sat at the pinnacle of Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, where he framed it as the ultimate aim of human psychological development. “Bring your whole self to work” is simply this concept dressed up for the office.

But late in life, Maslow himself acknowledged that he had stopped short of human potential, recognizing that self-actualization, because it was only ever about the self, was utterly incomplete. He added the concept of self-transcendence - the idea of turning your energy outside of yourself and focusing it toward others - and realized it was an essential next step, sitting higher than the individualized approach on the path to becoming truly fulfilled.

Tragically, the textbooks never updated his model. And it’s clear that the workplace has yet to get a useful updated memo, too. Instead, we’ve taken self-actualization, added a good dose of authenticity-buzz, and dressed it up as “bring your whole self to work”, wrapping our culture and leadership philosophy all around it.

As can be predicted with most fads, we’re now at the extreme end of this trend and are seeing all the ways it isn’t working. “Bring your whole self to work” tells people to turn the lens inward and to make their own self-expression the central element.

What we need is to focus that lens more on others, beyond ourselves, and on our shared commitment to each other. Or in the case of work, toward being a thoughtful contributor to a greater whole, whether that is to the task at hand, our team, or our organization.

And here’s the thing - the individuals who are over-authenticating and overexpressing themselves at work aren’t to blame. This is the very narrative that has been encouraged for the last several decades. They’ve been given a permission slip. Because we’re the ones who jumped on the bandwagon, listened to a bunch of leadership gurus, took authenticity and self-actualization, and have effectively built a workplace religion around it. We did that together. But the thinking was incomplete. We have ignored that Maslow himself spent the end of his life saying he got the top of the pyramid wrong. We just need an idea reset.

The Diamond Metaphor

So how do we bring authentic self-expression back into lockstep with what it means to be professional, collegial, and considerate of those who work with and alongside us?

When I was trying to explain to an executive coaching client a couple of years back how we can be authentic without showing every part of ourselves, I landed on the metaphor of a diamond, and I've continued to find it helps illustrate my thoughts. We can be authentic without necessarily having to show every part of ourselves, but by instead finding the part of ourselves that meets the moment just right and bringing it forth.

A traditionally cut diamond has many facets, and depending on where the light hits, that area will reflect light and “shine”. We, too, are like diamonds. We are made of many parts, and we can consciously choose which parts of ourselves we bring forward to face the light, and which parts are better left in the background, so we can best meet the moment.

So if self-transcendence tells us that our focus should also be on what is outside of us, the diamond is how we direct our light. This is what thoughtful, character-based authenticity looks like. It allows us to be both real, and considered.

For example, I’m naturally shy, but there is a part of me that is a performer at heart. If I were to walk into a workshop and let the shy part of me lead, I would do a terrible job. That is a space where I need to hold a room, and so I need to dig deep and find the part of me that is a performer. She is in there; there is still me, but I do have to consciously bring that part forward. It is a facet of myself I have to bring into the light. Default-me would be shy. But performer-me is not a role I play, but an authentic part of me I can bring forward when I need to.

And this is useful authenticity. We all have parts of ourselves, and not every part needs to be shown at every point in time.

The Reframe

It’s bigger than the unhelpful behaviors we’re currently seeing in the workplace. The very concept of authenticity and the way it has been sold is actually the problem. We’ve drifted culturally toward a me-centered version of the concept, and we need to shift it toward a me-and-others-centered, balanced expression. Authenticity at work needs to be redefined. From self-actualization-focused to self-transcendent-focused.

We can value authenticity, and value professionalism and care for others. We can still be authentic and real, while also considering the impact our behavior has on others. They do not have to be mutually exclusive.

We need to rebrand authenticity so we all understand it is about bringing out the right parts of ourselves to meet the responsibilities of the moment.

Famous psychiatrist Viktor Frankl pointed us toward this self-transcendent approach decades ago. His reframe was to flip the question we ask from “What do I want from life?” to “What is life asking of me?"

We can do the same. At work, we can ask not, “How do I feel like expressing myself?” but rather, “What is this moment asking of me now?”

Our professional self should be the one coming to work, not necessarily our whole self. And leaning into our professional selves doesn’t mean we have to mask up; it just means we should be considerate about which parts of ourselves we’re bringing forth and ask ourselves whether they are the most effective for adequately responding to what the moment is asking of us, ensuring that they respect the freedoms and take care of others too.

Spilling our guts is a great match for a therapy session.

Sharing our thoughts, concerns, and maybe even frustrations, while also looking for solutions, is a better match for a discussion with our leader.

Ripped jeans are a good fit for a weekend with friends, but polished clothing is a better match for client-facing work when we’re representing a professional brand.

Leaders shouldn’t be afraid of clearly and explicitly redefining what authenticity looks like at work. We can’t expect our people simply to know when our cultural discussion has been so one-eyed (or self-focused) for so long.

But people are adaptive, and they will relearn and refocus if they know what is expected of them, and can see that they don’t have to give up being real and true in order to also be considerate of those they work alongside and of what the environment requires of them.

The simple message is that we need to recognize in ourselves, and highlight to our teams, that we can discern and choose which parts of ourselves to bring onto center stage at any given time.

You can still be real, but you should also be considerate. So maybe it’s time for us to stop encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work, and instead bring the parts of us that the moment actually needs.