Dear Reader
One of the biggest surprises for me in leadership was realising how many tensions sit beneath the surface of what we often call βgood leadership.β
Not obvious right or wrong answers.
Tensions.
Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting on two I see repeatedly in CEOs and leadership teams and honestly, in myself too:
π How much visibility is helpful before it becomes control?
π When does stepping in to help quietly become rescuing?
βTrust but verifyβ
I recently heard an entrepreneur say:
βI trust my team. But I also verify.β
At first, it made me uncomfortable.
Because verification can sound like mistrust.
But it reminded me of something much earlier in my career when I was leading a large product team for a major retailer.
Every so often, the CEO would become deeply involved in one seemingly tiny issue:
Gravy granules.
Customer complaints had increased after ingredient changes years earlier, and he would personally review the issue, ask detailed questions and attend taste tests.
At the time, I remember thinking:
Surely he has more important things to focus on?
What I later realised was this:
He was not really testing the gravy granules.
He was testing the system.
Could we detect declining quality?
Could complaints escalate appropriately?
Were standards slipping quietly?
Could leadership trust the information flowing upwards?
One product had become a proxy for whether the wider organisation was functioning properly.
That experience fundamentally changed how I think about dashboards, visibility and leadership oversight.
Not because leaders should micromanage.
But because strong leaders often need enough visibility to trust intelligently.
The hero leader trap
Another leadership tension I see repeatedly:
Stepping in too quickly.
I know this one personally because I used to do it constantly.
The team was exhausted.
Pressure was high.
So I would:
β’ Finalise the paper
β’ Take over the workshop
β’ Do the late night revisions
β’ Step into difficult meetings
Partly from care.
Partly because I thought:
βI can do this faster.β
And if I am honest, there was probably some martyr leadership in there too.
βI do not want the team working late, I will just do it myself.β
The problem is:
What feels supportive in the short term can quietly create dependency in the long term.
Over time:
β’ Teams escalate instead of thinking
β’ Ownership weakens
β’ Leaders become bottlenecks
β’ Organisations rely on heroic leadership instead of strong systems
At the same time, I have also seen leaders overcorrect:
coaching endlessly without enough clarity or modelling.
At one point, I remember quoting the old medical mantra:
βSee one. Do one. Teach one.β
Sometimes leaders doing the work is itself a teaching moment.
Not rescuing permanently.
But modelling:
β’ How to think
β’ How to prioritise
β’ What good looks like
β’ How decisions get made under pressure
Then moving back into coaching mode.
A few things I believe more strongly now
β’ Trust and accountability are not opposites
β’ Visibility matters
β’ Coaching matters
β’ Clear standards matter
β’ Leaders stepping in occasionally is not failure
β’ But rescuing teams continuously usually is
And perhaps most importantly:
High performing teams are not built in a quarter.
They are built through repetition, clarity, feedback, prioritisation and trust over time.
Usually much longer than leaders expect.
π What leadership tension have you found hardest to navigate?
Warmly,
β
βLizβ
βStrategic Advisor | Former CEO | Founder, Volante
Based in Kenya, available globally
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