Looking back, I can see how deeply I believed in effort, action and initiatives.
If something was not working, the answer seemed obvious: think harder, take more responsibility, put more structure in place, push things forward… organize another meeting.
And to be fair, sometimes that did help. I have mostly led sales and service organizations, where speed, structure and action do matter. But not always.
What took me longer to understand was that effort and change are not the same thing. Sometimes more effort simply creates:
– more movement
– more follow-up
– more conversations
– more meetings
– more attempts to get things back on track.
And because all of that looks responsible, it is easy to believe that progress is happening. But often it remains just a belief. This constant action can create a false sense of security. A feeling that because something is happening, something must also be changing.
But based on my experience the same tension remains, resistance returns and the same lack of ownership comes back – just in a new form.
That was an uncomfortable thing for me to see. Because it meant that some problems were not continuing because I or my team was passive. Issues were continuing because what was underneath had not yet been seen clearly enough.
Often, underneath it all, there is a deeper question for yourself or your team:
“Does this truly matter to me – not only professionally, but personally?”
That changed something important in the way I think about leadership. It made me less interested in asking only:
“What else should I do?”
And more interested in asking:
“What is it that keeps creating this?”
“And does this truly matter to me – not only professionally, but personally?”
For me, that is where leadership starts to become more effective and where things can finally begin to move.
