Most people in most organisations claim to be tired. My guess is, you do too. My controversial take is that they aren't really tired, they're just tired of is going around in circles. Bored senseless by the same meetings, the same issues, the same tensions, the same priorities and the same problems reappearing in different forms year after year, yet having to call it ‘progress’. Putting on a productive face when they'd really rather be doing something else. This is the life too many so-called 'leaders' are propagating in their organisations and it’s leading to something too scary to acknowledge – your people are bored and disenageged.

Leaders routinely turn up with stories about their people. The person who just isn’t quite smart enough, the one who doesn’t take ownership, the person who has plateaued. The conflict avoiders, the ‘emotional’ ones, the ones who frustrate and piss off others … the list goes on. I’ve heard them all before, and until the revolution occurs* no doubt I’ll hear them again. But when the other person is the entire explanation, the leadership opportunity is missed.

Most ‘leaders’ approach development as a set of interventions. Something goes well: they recognise it. Something goes badly: they address it. A review cycle comes around: they talk about performance. Once, maybe twice a year. When a confronting problem becomes too difficult to ignore: they have a conversation. This isn’t leadership: it’s management.

One of the most dangerous assumptions a leader can make is that they know what someone is capable of. The irrational yet highly desirable certainty of ‘knowing’. You can’t help but attach to how your people are going today. The truth is their performance today has no bearing on their actual potential. How do you know what’s truly possible? The truth is, you don’t.

It’s an all-too-common leadership delusion: that your belief (of lack of belief) in your people isn’t obvious. The truth is, it’s written all over you – in your language, your behaviours, your body language, the responsibilities and challenges extended to your people and the standards you uphold. I can see it long before you can, and I know how significant the impact is on your people. Everyone knows subconsciously when someone doesn’t believe in them. And it can’t help but affect them.

Pretty Woman is one of my all time favourite movies. I don’t know if it’s the rags to riches story, the finding love in the most unorthodox places or the unbridled sass of Julia Roberts that has drawn me in over and over again (it’s pretty much the only movie I’ve seen more than 3 times - a stat only trumped by the Ted Lasso series - but that’s for another time). There are so many great one liners from the movie but I reckon this one is the most underrated:

Brutal truth. Your under-performers aren't missing the mark because they lack potential. It's because silently, in a moment, you let go of one thing: belief. You stopped expecting performance from them … and that belief became self-fulfilling. "But I've got evidence" - you'll dispute me!

Most leaders turn up for coaching with a complaint. Someone who is difficult, a team that lacks ownership, a culture that’s become passive, a standard that keeps slipping, or a problem that seems to keep returning no matter how many times it is addressed. Often, they can describe the issue with great fluency. They have examples, evidence, history and, in many cases, legitimate frustration. But underneath the gory story, there is something far more revealing.

Most leaders don’t have difficult conversations. They have conversations they make difficult. They walk in carrying a conclusion, dress it up as feedback, add a little frustration, and then become surprised when the other person becomes defensive. But what did they expect?

Most leaders are trying to build a culture of growth with a tool that makes automatically makes people defensive. Then wonder why their culture isn’t where they want it to be.

Every leader has noticed it's easy to lead people who are like you. We’ve all hired these people, enjoyed working with them and the experience has made us feel like we are great leaders. It's great for the ego and the bottom line. It's the other people that challenge us.

Most leaders think ‘developing’ people means giving them feedback. Which explains why most leaders aren’t developing people at all. What they are doing is smoothing off the edges. Why? Because feedback (the primary tool for ‘developing’ people) lives only at the edges of performance.

Most feedback is fundamentally useless. Not because it is wrong, but because it is too “blurry” to do anything with. Let me explain. A 'leader' says, “You need to develop your strategic thinking,” and feels they have given developmental feedback. The person nods, tries to look reflective, maybe even writes it down, but walks away with almost nothing useful.

One of the clearest distinctions between ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ can be diagnosed in what it creates in the people around you. Management creates dependency. Leadership creates autonomy. Every high performer I have ever seen would be described as autonomous. And yet most leaders today are unknowingly creating the opposite.

Unsurprisingly, step foot inside most organisations and you'll hear endless conversations are about the work: the project, the task, the update, the deadline, the result, the problem that needs to be solved before the next meeting. Cool – these conversations need to be had, but it’s generally not what people care about the most.You know what people really want to talk about?

Most leaders assume performance is a straight-up reflection of capability. Someone performs well, so they must be capable. Someone performs poorly, so they must not be. It sounds logical, and it is certainly convenient, because once we decide someone’s performance is simply who they are or what they are capable of, we don’t have to look much further.

For years, I thought endlessly about how to effectively influence and motivate my team. How to speak in a language that would ‘bring them with me’. How to get them to care about the things I cared about, move in the direction I wanted to move, and perform at the level I believed was possible.

Most leadership development is a waste of time. It’s not that it’s wrong – but because it happens in safe spaces where you’re not really tested.

I sit with highly experienced leaders - people who have been leading leaders for decades - and think surely I’m telling them how to suck eggs … but each time it’s a revelation

Culture is one of those things everyone agrees matters but few know definitively how to change. Everything initiative is a test; a hopeful reach for things that look like change and ‘could’ have impact.