Why Effective Leaders Get Branded as Problems

A high-tech executive I coached, Anna*, was told she had a “blind spot” just a year into her role. Her CEO admired her decisiveness, respected her clarity, and valued her confidence. At the same time, he began receiving complaints, which he relayed to Anna quickly. A pattern was clear: “She moves too fast.” “She makes decisions before the rest of us are ready.” “We’re always in catch-up mode.”

Anna took the feedback seriously, she adjusted her approach, but nothing changed. That is when I was brought in. A few stakeholder interviews later, something became clear: Her decisiveness wasn’t the problem. Her company had normalized over-consensus. Speed wasn’t valued; it was treated as recklessness, and urgency as inflexibility. Her decisiveness didn’t create friction. It exposed it.

Anna’s experience is not unusual. I see this dynamic often across senior leaders I have coached. A leader is told to “show up differently,” “be more strategic,” or “slow down.” When they try to adjust, nothing changes. The feedback stays the same; the narrative stays the same.

The result is predictable. The leader becomes frustrated, while the organization begins to question fit, initiate performance plans, and in many cases, quietly plan a replacement. The more important question is whether the organization is diagnosing the problem correctly.

The Evaluation Trap: A Strategic Risk

Organizations don’t lose great leaders because they are difficult. They lose them because they misdiagnose what makes them difficult. I call this the evaluation trap.

In talent reviews, leaders ask familiar questions: “Why did this leader go from strong to struggling?” or “What do they need to change?” The answers almost always converge in the same place: a behavior that needs to be fixed.

The issue is not a lack of data. It’s how the data is interpreted. Organizations default to what is most visible—behavior—while the context shaping that behavior remains harder to see. This reflects a well-documented bias: we over-attribute outcomes to individuals and underweight the environment around them. Competency models reinforce this pattern. They translate complex leadership dynamics into behavioral language, which is useful but incomplete. Over time, behavior becomes the default lens for all evaluation. If there is friction, the assumption is simple: The leader is the problem.

And when that assumption is wrong, the consequences are significant. Organizations don’t just misunderstand leaders—they make flawed decisions about promotion, development, and retention. The leaders most likely to fall into this trap are not underperformers. They are often the ones the organization depends on most—high-output, highly capable, and frequently described as “brilliant, but….”

The Consequences of Misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis is not just a flawed interpretation, it is a decision that impacts the leader. Once a leader is labeled incorrectly, every subsequent decision reinforces that label carrying some heavy consequences.

To the leader

Leaders invest time and energy trying to fix problems they don’t actually have, often suppressing the very strengths that made them effective. This creates a quiet erosion of confidence and clarity. Some leaders begin to second-guess their instincts and adapt in ways that make them less effective. Many eventually disengage, give up, leave, or are exited.

To the organization

Promotion decisions shift toward safer, more familiar profiles. High-impact leaders are held back. Strong effective leaders are asked to “tone down” rather than scale their impact. Over time, this creates a shift: organizations begin selecting for comfortable alignment over uncomfortable friction.

The Four Sources of Leadership Friction

When a leader creates friction, organizations tend to default to a single conclusion: the leader needs to change. That friction rarely comes from a single source. It is often shaped by a combination of factors, but in most cases, one is primary. The challenge is that these sources can look nearly identical on the surface. The same behavior can signal very different underlying problems depending on the context.

Without distinguishing what is primary, organizations risk addressing symptoms instead of causes, and reinforcing the very friction they are trying to resolve.

1. A true skill deficit

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one: The leader has a skill gap. They might struggle with prioritization, or they need to communicate more clearly or delegate consistently.

Leaders in this category often say: “I didn’t realize that mattered,” or “I had no idea that was the impact I was having,” or “I don’t know how to….” Teams say: “They’re trying, but they’re not there yet.”

This is the primary issue when:

• The behavior is consistently observed across contexts.

• Multiple stakeholders report recent, first-hand experiences.

• The leader cannot demonstrate the capability elsewhere.

In my experience coaching senior leaders, this is the minority of situations at the senior level. Capability at the senior level is usually not the problem, yet it is the cause organizations default to most often.

2. Historical reputation

I once coached a senior leader who had been passed over for promotion twice. Her manager supported her, but the promotion committee repeatedly declined her advancement. During interviews, one committee member admitted they hadn’t worked closely with her in nearly eight years. The feedback blocking her was based on an outdated memory. I call this organizational drift: when the system relies on outdated narratives rather than current evidence.

This is the primary issue when:

• Feedback is based on historical reputation, not recent evidence.

• Stakeholders lack current interaction with the leader.

• Language used is generalized and persistent over time.

Over time, these labels harden, even when behavior evolves. Stakeholders rely on memory, not evidence, and those with limited interaction often have outsized influence.

When the leader’s effort increases to self-correct, the perception doesn’t shift. Behavior change doesn’t fix this because the issue is organizational memory, not capability. We are rigorous about performance, yet research notes that while objective measures tend to eliminate bias, subjective assessments (like leadership behaviors) are “more vulnerable to bias” and create “inconsistency across leaders.”

3. Overextension of identity

Many leadership challenges are misdiagnosed as skill gaps when the real issue is strength overuse. The capability that once made a leader successful begins to constrain them because it is overused or used in a context that requires something different. There is a predictable arc: A strength becomes a habit, the strength is rewarded, the habit becomes an identity, and then that identity becomes a constraint.

For example, a decisive executive is perceived as controlling. The organization responds with “you must change your behavior” like “let go of control” or “empower your team.” However, the problem is not the absence of skill, it is the overextension of identity. The approach that worked at Level N becomes insufficient at Level N+1. Unless you distinguish between a gap and an identity constraint, you will tell the leader to fix the wrong thing.

This is the primary issue when:

• The behavior is a known strength taken too far.

• The leader can demonstrate range, but doesn’t apply it where needed.

• The issue appears at a new level, role, or context (N → N+1).

In many cases the organization rewards the behavior early, and then questions it later.

4. The system as a blocker

This is the most misunderstood trap. What looks like a behavior problem is often a systemic constraint—culture, structures, resources, incentives—that blocks a leader’s efforts. The leader appears problematic because the system is resisting them. This is a dangerous error: The leader is willing to change, but the system makes change difficult or risky.

The organization says it wants one thing but rewards another. A leader is told to think strategically but is measured on short-term output. They are asked to delegate but don’t have a capable team.

This is the primary issue when:

• The behavior is inconsistent with how the system actually operates.

• Incentives, resources, norms, or decision rights contradict expectations.

• There is a clear systemic reason that blocks the behaviour change.

This is what happened to Anna. Her decisiveness was framed as a personal flaw because it made people uncomfortable with their own slowness. In reality, the system had the blind spot. What looks like resistance is often organizational self-protection. In this category, performance is not an issue, the system is.

This does not remove accountability from the leader. It sharpens it by ensuring we are holding them accountable for the right problem.

How to Diagnose the Right Problem

When a leader’s “behavior” becomes problematic, organizations usually start with the wrong question: What behavior does this leader need to change? This assumes the diagnosis is correct. Here’s how to identify what is really causing the friction.

1. Focus on specific examples.

Confidence in a critique is often a function of repetition, not accuracy. Move the conversation away from subjective summaries like “they are too aggressive.” Instead, ground the evaluation in specific moments.

Ask stakeholders: “Walk me through the last time this showed up. What was the exact decision being made, and where did the execution break down?”

2. Validate the recency of the data.

Calibration discussions often evaluate leaders through a “rear-view mirror.” Put a rigid timeframe on the feedback.

Ask the detractors: “In the past six months, have you personally experienced this?” This prevents outdated narratives from blocking a leader’s advancement.

3. Distinguish between a skills gap and an overextension.

Not all problematic behavior reflects a lack of skill. Instead of trying to “fix” or suppress a behavior, try expanding the leader’s range by helping them dial their intensity up or down based on context.

Ask stakeholders: “In what situations do they already operate with a different approach, and how can they apply that muscle here?”

4. Reset the conversation with the leader.

Your role as a business leader is not to remove accountability, but to clarify it.

Try this conversation: “Before we decide what to change, we need to understand what is driving this. Is this a missing skill, an interpretation issue, or a rational response to the environment? Each requires a different response from both of us.”

A simple way to differentiate:

• If the behavior is consistent, recent, and observable → likely a skill gap

• If the feedback is outdated or secondhand → likely organizational drift

• If performance is strong but friction persists → likely overextension

• If the leader is attempting to change, but the environment makes that change difficult or unsustainable → likely a system issue

. . .

Ultimately, every talent decision rests on your initial diagnosis. If you assume the leader is always the variable that needs fixing, you let the system off the hook and risk neutralizing the very strengths that make your most valuable leaders effective.

The cost of misdiagnosis is not just ineffective development. It is systematically making the wrong leadership decisions. Before asking how to fix the leader, ask a harder question: What if the leader is not the problem and your diagnosis is?

Copyright 2026 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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