I was given a team before anyone asked if I was ready. And I said yes before I understood what yes meant.

That's not a complaint. Most leaders I know got into leadership exactly the same way. The opportunity came, they said yes, and then they figured it out in real time, usually under pressure, usually in ways that cost the people around them something they didn't intend.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. About what I wish I'd known. About what I actually needed, which turned out to be very different from what I thought I needed.

What I thought leadership was

When I took that first role with a team, I had a clear picture in my head of what being a good leader looked like. It looked like being prepared. Having answers. Being the calm one in the room. Getting results through people without making it about yourself.

None of that was wrong, exactly. But what I didn't understand was that those things are outputs. You can't manufacture them. And trying to perform them without the foundation underneath is exhausting in a way that's hard to name, because from the outside, you look like you're doing fine.

I thought leadership was mostly about behaviour. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to understand that it's mostly about identity.

The gap that showed up

The gap between the leader I intended to be and the leader who actually showed up was visible in the small moments first.

A team member brought me a problem I didn't have an answer for, and instead of saying I didn't know, I pivoted to something else. A conversation got tense and I moved past it too quickly, because I was more uncomfortable with the tension than they were. I made a decision without bringing the team along, and then was genuinely surprised when they pushed back.

None of that looked like failure from the outside. But I knew something wasn't quite working. I was doing the behaviours. But I was doing them from the wrong place, from anxiety, from the need to be seen as capable, from a version of leadership I'd assembled from environments I'd moved through rather than something I'd actually chosen.

What I actually needed

What I needed was not better communication techniques. Not a framework for difficult conversations. Not a time management system.

I needed someone to help me understand who I was as a leader and where that picture had come from.

I needed to be asked: What kind of leader do you actually want to be? Not what kind did you inherit from the environments that shaped you. Not what kind felt safest to become. What kind aligns with what you actually believe about people, about how teams work, about what real leadership requires of you?

That's a question most of us have never been asked. We've been developed in every other direction. But the foundational question, who are you as a leader and is that who you're choosing to be, often goes completely unasked.

I didn't have access to that kind of space. So I learned it the slow way.

What I want for the leaders who come to us

When Cathy and I built Leading Teams Academy, this was one of the things driving it. The number of capable, committed leaders who are working hard, trying hard, genuinely caring about their teams, but leading from a picture of leadership that was never quite theirs to begin with.

The Foundation modules start exactly here. Not with frameworks or toolkits. With the question of who you are as a leader and what kind of leader you want to become. Because everything else builds on that foundation. Without it, the behaviours are just performance. With it, they actually land.

I want the leaders who find us to have the conversation I didn't get to have early enough. The one that gives them a real foundation rather than just better techniques for managing without one.

One thing I know for sure

The leader I am now is not the leader I was when I first said yes to that team. And the difference is not that I got more experienced, or more skilled, or more confident.

The difference is that I understand who I am as a leader and why. I understand where my defaults come from and which ones I want to keep. I know the gap between the impact I want to have and the impact I'm actually having not perfectly, and not always comfortably, but honestly.

That's the work. And it never really ends. But it does get to feel like yours.

If you're in a leadership role right now whether you put your hand up for it or it found you before you were ready this is your invitation to find a real home for that work.

Founding members join Leading Teams Academy at $297 CAD a year, for life.

Come find us at https://teammattersnow.com/leading-teams-academy

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