The same behaviors that drive leadership success can become traps when they are overplayed or left unchallenged.
Being decisive, direct, analytical, driven, or highly relational can help leaders get results. But some of these qualities can also create blind spots. Under pressure, behavioral tendencies become more pronounced, profoundly influencing how we make decisions, communicate, and lead others.
That was the focus of my recent conversation with Malcolm Le Lievre, managing director and founder of Peak Output. Malcolm and I have known each other since 2002, and we share a long-standing interest in:
What makes people tick
Why people make the decisions they do
How behavior influences performance
In his current role, Malcolm draws on his 20 years of corporate experience across different countries, cultures, organizations, and joint ventures. That experience gave him a broad perspective on leadership, decision-making, and the ways our strengths can sometimes become leadership traps.
Self-awareness is the starting point for recognizing where our natural behaviors can become liabilities. Malcolm learned this through 360-degree feedback that showed him a gap between his intent and how his behavior was experienced by others.
His intent was good, but his direct, fast-paced approach could cause people to pull back rather than speak up. The feedback helped him see something he had not recognized on his own: how he showed up as a leader could affect the environment he was creating.
This is an important distinction for any leader. Knowing your intent is not enough.
You need to understand how your behavior is experienced by the people around you.
As leaders become more successful, take on greater responsibility, and build a reputation for making good decisions, people around them may become less willing to question their assumptions or decisions. This is Authority Bias, and it can make it difficult for leaders to see the blind spots in their own thinking. Over time, that lack of challenge also makes it easier for leaders to believe their own rhetoric, which contributes to Overconfidence Bias.
This dynamic can be amplified by a leader’s natural behavioral style. A fast-paced, confident, questioning, or authoritative approach may cause others to hold back, even when the leader is simply trying to understand an issue or make a sound decision. A question intended to provide assurance, for example, can feel intimidating depending on how it is delivered.
The leadership challenge is to recognize when your position and behavioral style may be discouraging the very feedback you need to make better decisions.
Understanding your own behavior is only the first step. Leaders also need to understand how their team members think, what they naturally do well, and where their tendencies may create challenges.
Some people are strong at generating ideas. Others are better at detail, process, and implementation. Neither approach is inherently better. Each can bring value to a team when the leader understands where people are most effective.
But teams can develop their own blind spots when they lose behavioral balance. Malcolm described working with a group of talented leaders who had similar personalities. Because they approached problems in similar ways, they were able to move quickly, but they were also missing perspectives outside their shared way of thinking.
Behavioral diversity can help a team question assumptions, see risks that others may miss, and consider alternatives before settling on a decision. For leaders, understanding those differences is part of creating a team where people can challenge the thinking rather than simply reinforce it.
Innovation requires leaders to not only take risks, but to create an environment where people feel free to contribute and challenge ideas. A strong idea can become weaker when one person tries to develop it alone, particularly when that person is operating from their own natural biases.
One approach Malcolm discussed was running ideas up the flagpole, getting more minds involved, and really fleshing each one out. The goal is to give people the opportunity to test assumptions, challenge the thinking, and make the idea stronger.
Creating that kind of collaboration requires a psychologically safe environment and vulnerability from the leader. You need to be willing to say that you have an idea but aren’t sure it’s the right one. This can open the door for others to contribute, creating the kind of shared thinking that leads to better ideas.
“As a leader… we all have the responsibility to create the space for people to thrive.”
Malcolm Le Lievre
Leadership influence is shaped by both the authority of the position and the personality of the person in it. Malcolm describes leadership as having a double X factor: positional power and personality power. Both can impact how people respond to a leader and how willing they are to challenge their thinking. That is why having a deliberate challenge process can be so valuable.
“We should be, within our organizations, creating a challenge process.”
Malcolm Le Lievre
This becomes particularly important when leaders are dealing with biases such as Sunk Cost Bias or Selection Bias. Once we have invested time, reputation, or resources in a decision, it can become difficult to step back and reconsider it.
Behavioral awareness can help leaders recognize these tendencies and create challenge processes that make it easier to question decisions before they become more costly. But keep in mind that challenging a decision is only useful if the discussion is grounded in good data. Otherwise, people can end up arguing from intuition rather than working toward the right decision.
Behavior influences how we see a situation, how we respond under pressure, and how others experience our leadership. We cannot eliminate our natural tendencies, but we can become more aware of them and build the right challenges around them.
Malcolm's approach comes down to three steps:
Know yourself. Understand your behavioral strengths, tendencies, and potential blind spots.
Know your team. Understand the strengths, drivers, and perspectives that different people bring.
Reframe the challenge. Look at the problem differently and consider how the situation might change if certain assumptions or constraints were removed.
The goal is to become more self-aware so we can use our strengths without allowing them to become leadership traps.
Self-awareness is not about changing who we are. It is about understanding our biases and natural behaviors well enough to recognize when they may be getting in the way.
That’s important because we need enough awareness, and enough challenge around us, to keep those things from making decisions for us. And we’ll be better equipped to navigate leadership traps rather than fall into them.
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