That's Just Who I Am!

“That Is How I Get Results”

“I know I can be very direct”, he told me. “Sometimes probably too direct. But that is also how I get results.”

He was a senior manager with a strong delivery record. He had taken over difficult projects, confronted poor performance and brought order into situations where others had hesitated. His results were real, and so was the respect he had earned.

The feedback from his team was equally real. People prepared excessively before speaking to him. They avoided bringing unfinished thinking into meetings. Some waited until they had a solution before mentioning a problem. Others had stopped challenging his assumptions because the discussion became too quickly focused on why their argument would not work.

He did not reject the feedback. He understood it. Yet every attempt to discuss a different way of responding reached the same point:

“If I change too much, I will lose what makes me effective.”

I have heard versions of this sentence in many coaching conversations.

“If I become softer, people will take advantage.”

“If I stop checking everything, quality will fall.”

“If I give them more time to discuss, we will never decide.”

“If I show uncertainty, I will lose credibility.”

“That is simply who I am.”

What You Fear You Will Lose

When a manager defends a behaviour as part of their character, the behaviour usually carries a history of success.

Perhaps directness helped them survive in a political environment. Personal control may have protected an inexperienced team from serious mistakes. Speed may have distinguished them from colleagues who talked endlessly and delivered very little. Constant availability may have built the reputation that led to promotion.

They are therefore protecting more than a habit. They are protecting a formula.

The internal logic is understandable: this approach produced results, recognition and authority. Changing it could weaken the very qualities on which their professional identity was built.

The conversation becomes difficult when the manager assumes that the result and the behaviour are inseparable. Being respected becomes inseparable from being intimidating. Maintaining standards becomes inseparable from checking everyone’s work. Decisiveness becomes inseparable from closing discussion quickly.

The fear underneath the resistance is often specific: “Without this behaviour, I may no longer succeed.”

Success Can Become a Fixed Formula

I once worked with a manager who personally intervened whenever a project entered difficulty. He was very good at it. He could quickly understand the technical issue, identify the missing decision and push people towards action.

His intervention frequently rescued the project. It also taught the organisation to wait for him.

Project managers escalated before fully using their own authority. Functional leaders delayed difficult conversations because they knew he would eventually step in. He became increasingly overloaded while describing everyone around him as insufficiently accountable.

His behaviour still produced results. It also reproduced the conditions that made his intervention necessary.

This pattern is common during transitions into more senior roles. A manager continues to use the capabilities that made them successful at a previous level: personal expertise, close control, speed, pressure, availability and the ability to solve almost anything.

The new role requires a wider result. The manager must still deliver, while also increasing the judgement, authority and capacity of others.

A behaviour that once demonstrated competence can later prevent competence from developing elsewhere.

Change, Transformation, or Better Calibration?

The word change creates unnecessary resistance in many leadership conversations.

Managers sometimes hear it as an attempt to remove an imperfection: become less demanding, less forceful, less ambitious, less yourself. Transformation can sound even more threatening, as though the person who built the career must now be replaced by someone fundamentally different.

I prefer the word calibration.

Calibration preserves what is valuable and introduces greater discernment into how it is used.

A direct leader does not need to abandon directness. They need to distinguish between a moment that requires a clear challenge and one that requires curiosity before judgement.

A controlling manager may still need close oversight during a crisis, an audit or a critical delivery phase. The same level of control applied to every capable employee will weaken ownership and increase dependency.

A fast decision-maker may remain fast when time is genuinely scarce. In a strategic discussion, speed can close down information that has not yet been expressed.

The quality itself is rarely the full problem. The automatic use of that quality across different situations creates the cost.

Leadership development gives the manager more than one available response. The choice then depends on the situation, the people involved, the risk and the result required.

Your Organisation Is Already Adapting

Leaders sometimes say, “People know how I am.” Usually, they do.

They know when to approach the leader, how much detail to bring and which words are likely to trigger an impatient reaction. They learn to test ideas elsewhere before presenting them. They soften bad news. They avoid raising questions in public. They wait until the leader appears more receptive.

The manager may interpret this adaptation as efficiency. Meetings are focused. Disagreement is limited. People arrive well prepared.

Yet some of that apparent efficiency comes from invisible work performed around the leader’s reactions.

The organisation pays through slower escalation, filtered information, reduced initiative and excessive dependency on one person’s judgement. Senior managers may remain unaware of the cost because the people around them have become skilled at absorbing it.

When everyone else must calibrate around one leader, the leader has less access to what the organisation genuinely thinks, knows and fears. In other words, the leader cuts himself off from the organisation, without even noticing.

What Needs Calibration in Your Case?

A request to “change your style” - as I often hear in coaching in the preparation of the feedback discussions with various managers - is often too vague to be useful. Feedback such as “be less controlling” or “listen more” can also ignore the real risks the manager is trying to manage.

A more practical conversation begins elsewhere.

Which quality are you trying to preserve?

What result do you believe depends on your current behaviour?

Where does that behaviour still serve the situation?

Where are people already compensating for it?

What alternative response would protect the result without creating the same organisational cost?

These questions make the situation more precise. They also protect the leader from two poor choices: rejecting the feedback entirely or applying it so literally that they weaken a genuine strength.

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If a current situation came to mind while reading this, bring that exact situation into a coaching conversation. We can examine what your existing approach has helped you achieve, what it may now be limiting, and how to expand your choices without losing the qualities on which your leadership has been built.

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