Most people assume leadership begins when they become a manager, an executive or a founder.
I don’t think that’s true.
The first leadership team you ever joined was your family.
Long before you led a company, you were learning how to navigate authority, conflict, trust, belonging, success, failure and uncertainty. You learned what was rewarded, what was punished, what could be spoken about and what had to remain hidden (or silent). Those lessons became the foundation of how you move through the world today; whether you realize it or not.
It’s easy to assume that what’s happening at work is about work. A disagreement in a meeting. A difficult boss. A communication breakdown. A culture issue. A founder who struggles to delegate. Sometimes it is. But often these moments are simply where much older patterns reveal themselves. More often, those patterns originated much earlier.
A leader who struggles to delegate may have grown up believing their value came from being competent and responsible. A leader who avoids conflict may have learned that disagreement threatened connection. A leader who needs constant achievement may have learned that love and approval were tied to performance. Decades later, these patterns show up in boardrooms, team meetings, hiring decisions and company culture.
Organizations are filled with people carrying invisible assumptions about how the world works. What makes someone trustworthy. What success means. Whether it is safe to speak honestly. Whether mistakes are acceptable. Whether authority should be challenged or obeyed. We rarely examine these assumptions because often we can’t see them and they feel like reality. Yet they often originate in the environments that shaped us.
This doesn’t mean our childhood determines our future. It does mean that awareness creates choice. The leaders I most admire are not the ones who have eliminated their patterns. They are the ones who can see them. They recognize when an old strategy is running the show and can choose a response that serves the present rather than repeating the past.
If leadership is influence, then leadership development is not just about acquiring new skills. It is also about understanding the operating system that sits underneath them. The more awareness we have of the forces that shaped us, the more freedom we have in how we lead others.
[Side note: I’m beginning to wonder whether leadership development is even the right term. It suggests we’re developing something new, when much of the work seems to be about becoming aware of the unconscious patterns already shaping how we lead. Perhaps it’s less about development and more about awareness, integration and choice. I’ll explore this idea in a future article.]
So, where to start?
A simple exercise: Think of someone who consistently irritates you.
Not someone you mildly disagree with. Someone who reliably gets under your skin.
Maybe it’s your boss. Maybe it’s a colleague. Maybe it’s a public figure. Maybe it’s the person who dominates every meeting, constantly self-promotes, never seems prepared or always needs to be the center of attention.
Our instinct is usually to focus on them. What’s wrong with them. Why they should change. Why they annoy us so much.
But before looking at them, it can be worth looking at ourselves.
When someone triggers us, there are usually three possibilities.
The first is that they are expressing a quality we have never allowed ourselves to embody. Perhaps they are outspoken, ambitious, confident, emotional, playful, powerful or visible (they “take up space”). The trait itself is not necessarily the problem. What creates the charge is that we have learned, somewhere along the way, that this quality is not acceptable for us. We judge in others what we have not yet claimed in ourselves.
The second possibility is that they are expressing a trait that we also possess but would rather not acknowledge. The controlling manager. The person who always needs recognition. The colleague who dominates the conversation. Sometimes what irritates us most is a reflection or mirror of something we can already find in ourselves if we are willing to look honestly.
The third possibility is that there is something real happening. Not every reaction is a projection. Some people genuinely behave in ways that are unskillful, harmful or misaligned with our values. The invitation is not to dismiss our reactions. It is to become curious about them before deciding what they mean.
One of the most useful practices I’ve learned is something called aversion immersion. Instead of avoiding the thing that triggers you, intentionally spend time with it. Watch the public figure who annoys you. Listen to the colleague you immediately dismiss. Stay present with the discomfort rather than trying to escape it. The goal isn’t to agree with them. The goal is to understand why they have such a strong effect on you.
This week, pick one person who consistently frustrates you. Write down the three qualities that bother you most about them.
Then ask yourself:
- Where might these qualities exist in me?
- Where have I suppressed them?
- Where do I overexpress them?
- What might this person be showing me that I have not yet been willing to see?
Sometimes the people who trigger us most are not obstacles on our path. They are mirrors. And if we’re willing to look carefully enough, they can reveal parts of ourselves that are asking to be understood, integrated and brought back into wholeness.
Your family was your first leadership team. And your first lessons didn’t stay at home—they came with you into every team you’ve joined and every team you’ve led. The good news is that they don’t have to define your future. The more we become aware of the invisible patterns shaping us, the more freedom we have to lead from choice rather than conditioning.
And perhaps that’s what leadership development is really about. Not becoming someone new (it doesn’t have to be another self-improvement project) but gently peeling back the layers of conditioning we’ve accumulated over a lifetime, so we can consciously choose what happens next.
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