The “Hidden Blockers” That Are Limiting Your Leadership Potential

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0:20Welcome to HBR on Leadership. Case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts. hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. I'm HBR Executive Editor, Alison Beard. In this episode of Women at Work, hosts Amy Gallo and Amy Bernstein talk to author Muriel Wilkins about beliefs and blockers that hold leaders back. In her new book, Leadership Unblocked, Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential, Muriel finds that often these limiting factors are internal. Here's Amy Gallo. All right. So, Muriel, before Amy B. and I tell you about the awareness we got from reading and reflecting and that it was a bit of painful awareness at the time, can you just tell us what you mean by a hidden blocker and how would someone know that's what they have?

1:10Yeah. So a hidden blocker is basically a belief. It lives on the inside of you, which is why it's often hidden because you're not even aware that it's there. And a belief for simplicity's sake is a truth, something that you think is true. We all have beliefs and some of them are based on facts. most of them are based on our perceptions, the lens through which we look at the world, which has, quite frankly, nothing to do with what's happening at the moment, but is a reflection of everything that has happened to us beforehand. And so the reason I call them hidden blockers is, one, because we're often not aware of them, so they are hidden until you can bring them to the surface.

2:03But second, they often block us from being able to reach the goals that we have for ourselves unwittingly because they are serving another purpose, but not necessarily the purpose that you want to have, which is to reach whatever professional goals or personal goals that you have. Yeah.

2:21Amy Bernstein:So some of the signs that you describe of, you know, struggling with one or more of those blockers, they include low morale, stalled advancement, resentment. They sound like problems we blame on others. Why is it so hard to see that we might be the common thread? it? I mean, think about it, right? Like when you have to blame yourself for something, what does it mean? It means that you have to do something about it. So I think it's very easy to look at others to blame for what might be happening. And in effect, it's not to say that others aren't contributing to it. But what most of us don't do is say, how am I contributing to the issue that's at hand or the challenge that I'm facing.

3:09And when we can start looking at what our own contributions are, at the very least, we can make some movement there. Because once you start making movement, it will change the dynamic of the circumstance no matter what. And in my role as an executive coach, which is what I've done for over 20 years now, my role is to help my clients or the individuals that I'm working with, figure out how to be as successful as they can be within in the context that they're in. My role is not to change the context. And so as much as my clients hate it, at the end of the day, you know, what I always tell them is you're the one who's sitting in front of me.

3:46So you're the only one who I can work with in terms of making a difference. So let's talk about what choices you have in front of you for what you can do differently, keeping in mind, again, that everything is co-created. So the minute that one individual changes the way that they behave or respond, it automatically changes the dynamic. Yeah.

4:09Amy Bernstein:So my blocker is I need it done now. And I used to see that as like one of my strengths that you sent me an email. I responded almost immediately, slack, even faster. And I hit this point of exhaustion not too long ago where I realized I cannot do that anymore. It's just, it was counterproductive and it was burning me out. And so I realized that I was making this kind of fundamental mistake, which was, I was not separating the urgent from the important. And then relatedly, I was letting other people's urgency be my urgency. And I realized from that that I needed to first make the distinction between the urgent and the important and kind of stick to it, not get blown with every puff of wind.

5:08Yeah, this is a really common one. And I want to sort of touch on a few things that you said, Amy. The first is you used to think of this as a strength of yours. Well, the fact of the matter is it was perceived as a strength of yours when it served you well in the capacity that you were in, probably when you were an individual contributor earlier on in your career. I mean, I remember when I came out of college, like my first job and for a long time afterwards, that is what got me great credibility with my bosses. The minute they said jump, I was like, how high? Let's go. Right. I was more urgent than they were.

5:46Like I was figuring out what was urgent for them and solving it before it became urgent for them. OK. But then this this belief, though, is one of the ones that really holds people back from leading at scale. So one of the things that's key here is recognizing are the mantras or beliefs or principles that we live by at certain points of our career or in certain organizations, do they necessarily serve us well when the situation or the context or the goal has changed? And in your case, it does not to continue with the I want it done now across the board because you are now leading at a much bigger scale with a lot of people wanting you to do things urgently, but not necessarily the most important things.

6:39Right.

6:40Amy Bernstein:And just to your earlier point about, you know, how hard it is to realize that these are things that, you know, are built on beliefs rather than facts. My behavior was habit. There was no mantra. It was, you know, decades and decades of habit. And so understanding it took some work. Yeah. And also, I'm realizing so much of this is internal work, but you have to sort of undo what others look to you for. That's right. A lot of people benefit from our behaviors, you know, and what is it going to mean now if, you know, Amy B is not responding to all her emails within four hours? Oh, my gosh. And so all it means is that there's a dynamic that now needs to be renegotiated.

7:30And that's what I talk about is if you can own your part of the dynamic, the minute you make a change, the dynamic changes. So let it start with you. So Amy B., let me ask you a question. If you had to reframe from I need it done now to a different belief that you think would best serve you right now, what would that be for you?

7:50Amy Bernstein:Well, so what I do now is before I even open my inbox or look at my Slack, I start out thinking, what do I need to get done today? What needs to happen so that everything else that needs to happen can happen, right? So setting priorities and sequencing my own activities. Yeah. And then when I look at the inbox, I'm scanning for, you know, the white hot stuff that I need to deal with. And the rest of it, I kind of just leave it unread. Yeah. So I hear that as, I hear that reframe is moving from, I need it done now to, I need to focus on what actually needs to get done today. Exactly. Which there's a small nuance there.

8:39Amy Bernstein:Well, it's also me taking control and not being controlled by other people's requests. It was just super responsiveness. Yeah. I mean, look, this is a really common one. And I think to really unpack it, you have to sort of understand what the source of it is, right? Because this I need to do it now did not just start, you know, a couple of years ago. And for everybody, it's different. You know, I know for myself that I need to do it now came from a place of the more productive I was, the more accolades I got, right? And that's nice to get accolades. And so why not keep getting those accolades?

9:20At the end of the day, it was a way of being valuable. And so I had a strong identity to productivity being where I pinned all of my value until it came at too much of a cost. Yeah. Well, the blocker I identify most with the I know I'm right. The point of this chapter where you start talking about things that may have led you to have the sit and blocker. I was a little like, was she sitting in my therapy sessions? Because like, you know, you were pleased a lot for having the right answer. You were often told that you were smart and publicly recognized for it. You excelled academically. You rarely like I was just like, oh, my gosh, of course I ended up with this know it all blocker.

10:04It makes so much sense. And yet you're blind to it because it serves you so well. Until it doesn't. That was the interesting thing about reading that chapter is that you don't try to convince the client example, Philip is his name in the chapter. You don't try to convince him that he doesn't know it all. You're just trying to convince him that his sort of arrogance and impatience is standing in his way. So it's not that he doesn't have the right answers. And I'm saying it's not that I don't have the right answers. It's that the fact that I'm not including others in the decision. I mean, I think the real cost of the blocker is that I end up making other people feel small because I don't leave room for them.

10:48My thoughts, my ideas, you know, my confidence takes up so much room that it just hurts the connection, to be honest. Right. And, you know, Amy, gee, if your goal was solely around knowing the answer, then we're good. Like, keep doing what you're doing. Keep being the first person to give the answer. Keep having the answer. But if you are now defining your success as, I want to make sure we get to the right answer, solving the problem is important. And I don't want other people to experience being around me as being, quote unquote, small or not included. Or if that is also part of my leadership, right, the way that I want others to experience my leadership, then in a way, that belief is not supporting that goal.

11:39So it always comes back to what's your goal? What is it that you want as a leader? How do you want others to experience you? And as well as how do you want to experience yourself? Yeah. Can I tell, I don't think I've ever shared this on the podcast, but when I realized this was a problem, the sit-in blocker for me was when I was working as a consultant, I had a colleague who had become a good friend and we were working on a project. And at the end of a meeting, he looked at me and I'll change the curse word, but he said, do you know at the end of every sentence, there's a silent, you idiot, that you don't say, but it's in your tone?

12:19and he said it and I was like at the time we laughed about it ha ha ha and I still I'm like mortified but that moment of feedback was really harsh and yet such a I mean thank you to Rosario who gave me that who like took the leap to say that because I had no idea yeah and Amy G I have a story to one up on you I went through the exact same thing I literally rolled my eyes at someone

12:52after and I to this day I can see it I remember doing it and and I know what was going through my head was I know the answer to this and this person here doesn't know what the heck they're talking about and this was very early on in my career and I remember it was in consulting as And the partner pulled me to the side and he was like, okay, so you can't do that. And I was like, do what? You mean have every answer all the time? And he said, and he said, I know you knew the answer, but that wasn't your job in that meeting. Your job was to let the client get to the answer. You were just there to be supportive and to answer questions if they had them.

13:39Yeah. Yeah. Amy B. and I are pretty aware at this moment of what our hidden blockers are, although maybe we have more too. But if you had coached us five years, 10 years ago when we weren't as dialed into this, like how do you get people to develop the awareness that these exist and what their specific one is? So, you know, I see my job as helping facilitate that thought process with the goal of that anyone who I work with, and that is my goal with the book as well, can do that for themselves so that they can coach themselves. And I think the first place to start is to recognize when there's some dissonance that is important enough to the individual for them to want to change.

14:30And that dissonance either needs to be with themselves, they're feeling like the way I'm behaving is not aligned with either who I want to be or who I believe I am. That's number one. Or there's a dissonance between how they're behaving and external. So what that looks like a lot of times is the boss says this is unacceptable, or the organization says this is unacceptable, or everything that I'm using to kind of externally measure my success, the promotion, company results, that presentation, the outcome is not aligned with what I want. And so it's dissonance for most individuals that creates this sense of need for change.

15:14And I will say for a lot of my, not even a lot, all of my clients, I always tell them it's actually not about changing the belief. It's having more range your beliefs so that they are aligned with what it is that you want, which is where we start getting into, you know, the most mature leaders are the ones who can hold conflicting beliefs at one point. This is the both and. They can hold different beliefs and operate with them because they have enough maturity and wisdom and discernment to be able to say, okay, yes, this is a time where I need to have the answer. And this is a time where that belief doesn't serve me and I'm not going to do it.

15:58So the first is like, usually when somebody asks me to work with them is because there's a tension. It's not because everything's going well. And so you have to feel that tension that makes you wonder, there's something that's not working as well as I would like it to. Again, most people don't think it's them. They think it's somewhere out there that something is not right. And then the second is to really get curious. What is happening right now in you that's making you experience this in the way that you're experiencing it? And what would you need to believe? What would you need to believe in order to be able to meet that goal that you now have?

16:39And so it's through a series of questions. And there's no way I could go to a client and just say, you know what your hidden blocker is? It's that you think you, you know, need it done now. It's more in that they're seeing that something isn't working. And I said, well, what do you want to have work? They're like, well, I want to feel like I'm being productive and I can make decisions. Okay. Well, what would you need to believe in order for that to happen? And they'll say, ah, you know, I would need to believe that I don't need to respond to all of my emails within four hours. Okay. So what would you need to believe?

17:10I need to believe that certain things are being taken care of, and that I can delegate certain things, and that there are certain things that are really urgent, and that's what I need to focus on. And then we work down that thread. If you were to do that, what would look different? Well, I love the what would you need to believe? You know, look, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, and I give all credit to those who are. But at the end of the day, whether you're at work or outside of work, we all have these fundamental human needs, which are, we need to feel like we're safe, we need to feel like we're connected and we belong and we need to feel like we're worthy and valued.

17:49The issue is that many times we try to like force circumstances to make it happen, which is where these beliefs come from. For me, the one around I need it done now, or I have the answer came from a place of I need to feel valued. And this is the best way I can show my value. So I'm going to go for it. But part of what needs to happen as we lead is we need to evolve and grow, which to me is the biggest business case for leadership development. We need to grow to a place where we're not looking for these external circumstances to feed that. Because as long as we're looking for those external circumstances to feed that, we move into control.

18:29We try to control people. We try to control systems. We try to control, which is very different than management and leadership, right? And it starts becoming very unproductive. And that's where we start, you know, getting people like my clients who need help to move through those things, because not only is it blocking them, but it's blocking their teams and sometimes organizations. Let's talk about other people's blockers for a moment. Because sometimes you notice someone else, right? Like thinking about the I need to be involved chapter and you list signs like joining meetings that you don't need to be in, being resentful about your workload, insisting on being CC'd on things.

19:11Like sometimes we see those behaviors in other people. Is there any way to help someone you work with see this as a blocker? Okay. So here's the thing. Part of this is that like we wait till the moment or the situation to figure out how do I now show people that they could be doing something differently. And this is to me where modeling leadership is important. If you have shown all along as a leader or as a colleague that you are very self-aware and that you take that self-awareness seriously, that you do the work, believe me, people are watching. And you have much more permission and leeway to say, hey, you know what, colleague, can I share something with you about what I've experienced?

20:05And you use yourself as the role model. Okay. So that to me is always the first place to start. The second place or the subsequent place is to, you need to ask for permission from people to actually provide them with help, even if you're a manager.

20:22Amy Bernstein:So how do you ask for permission? You know, if you came and we're having coffee, Amy B, or I can walk into your office and you're like, oh, my God, I've got 10 ,000 emails in my inbox. And I would be like, so do you mind if I kind of give you some thoughts and some suggestions or that we talk through this right now? And you have every right to say, no, I don't want to. Most people will not turn it down. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then you move into, well, what's going on? Like, why do you feel, right? You try to figure out that dissonance. Do you want to feel something different? Is it that you want a different result?

20:59What is it that you want? And you're like, oh my gosh, I can't, you know, these decisions. Okay, well, here's what I'm noticing. Can I give you a little bit of my observations? I don't even think you have to call it feedback. Like feedback is so loaded, right? Can I share with you my observations? I'm seeing you respond, you know, very quickly. And like, I'm just curious, what's driving that for you? Yeah.

21:20Amy Bernstein:So back to the person who always needs to be involved, has to be at the meeting, needs to be CC'd on the email. What if you said to them, why do you need to be at the meeting? What if you kind of interrogated it with an open mind? Would that be helpful? Would that help move them? Look, I think that it really depends on your relationship with that individual. If there is high trust, you've had these types of conversations, this person is used to you kicking the tire with them, you know, on them, no problem. That question with all those conditions not there can also lead to some defensiveness in them shutting down and actually defending the hidden blocker, right?

22:06Which is why I think it's very important to add context. Why are you asking that question? And that's when it is, look, you know, I noticed that you're in these meetings and I know you're also really busy. Like, can I, do you mind if I just share my observations or ask you a couple of questions around that?

22:25Amy Bernstein:That makes sense. Yeah. I want you to. Okay. Like, and, and I don't even think it's why it's, what is it that's making you have to come to these meetings? And the minute they start to, They're usually will blame it on other people. Okay. I have to be there. Oh, okay. Well, what would happen if you weren't? Oh, and what is that causing any difficulty for you? Again, let's remember if it's not causing dissonance for the individual or causing any type of tension or difficulty, they're not going to be open to any type of input that you have on this. Okay. And if we think that we can actually influence them and get them to change the belief or whatnot without them wanting to, that's a form of our own control.

23:13So this is not about manipulating and controlling others. It is about them being able to get out of their own way, but they have to get out of their own way. And you're just there to facilitate it if they'd like. Yeah. Amy B., how have you pointed out to other leaders when you've noticed they might have a hidden blocker?

23:34Amy Bernstein:Well, I didn't have that language and that structure in my head when I've done it in the past. I only just read Muriel's book. But what I have done is when someone I'm close to has complained about something, I'm always so busy, I don't have time to catch my breath. and the same person also needs to be included in every conversation and every meeting on every email thread. I've asked, why do you really need to be in that? You know, your deputy is handling it. Do you not trust her to make a good decision? Are you worried that you're going to miss something important? Are there other ways that you can catch up?

24:21Amy Bernstein:I've also pointed out how how complicating it is to demand that this person need to be included in everything. I mean, every additional person you add to a meeting makes that meeting that much more complicated to schedule, for example. And very little gets decided in meetings with 15 people in, you know what I mean? And so I try to point out that there are behaviors that this person can control that are both causing the pain and by modifying them could alleviate some of the pain. Yeah. And I think what's critical here is people can modify behaviors, right? But if they don't modify the thing that's driving the behavior, it's short-lived is the issue.

25:22And I think that that's what I realized after years of coaching. I could coach on new skills and I could provide new actions and new strategies and approaches. but it wasn't sustainable because the operating system that supports those new actions and those new skills, which are the beliefs, weren't in place. And so they would then revert back to the old behavior quite quickly. So I want to get your help on something, Muriel.