Here’s a thought experiment I sometimes suggest to clients: think about the two or three things that frustrate you most about your team or your organization right now. Write them down if it helps.

Got them?

Now ask yourself — gently, honestly — whether any of those things might be connected to something you’re doing. Or not doing.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about recognizing something that is both humbling and liberating: leaders have an enormous, often invisible influence on the patterns around them. Your pace becomes the organization’s pace. Your tolerance for ambiguity shapes how your team approaches problems. The things you pay attention to signal what matters; the things you ignore signal what doesn’t.

A client of mine once complained that her team was too cautious, too slow to act. When we dug into it together, she realized she’d been personally reviewing decisions that her direct reports were more than capable of making on their own. She wasn’t micromanaging. She cared about quality. But her team experienced it as a lack of trust, and they responded by waiting for permission they didn’t need.

Once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it. And within weeks of stepping back, the team started stepping up. Not because they suddenly became more capable, but because the space was finally there for them to use the capability they already had.

The best leaders I know make a habit of turning the mirror on themselves. Not to beat themselves up, but because they understand that when you’re at the center of an organization, you’re often the last person to see your own impact clearly.

It takes courage to look. But what you find is almost always something you can do something about. Which is more than you can say for most of the things you were frustrated about a minute ago!