(LISTEN TO THE NARRATED AUDIOARTICLE VERSION)
Much earlier in my career, when I was leading my first team, I believed that being credible meant being prepared, composed, and always a step ahead of everyone in the room. If someone asked a hard question, I felt an unrelenting pressure to respond quickly with the right answer, even when my thinking was still forming. I never named that pressure. Hell, most of the time I wasn’t even aware it was driving me around like a bumper car. It just felt like part of the job. So, I just worked harder, sped myself up, and carried it all on my back.
It took me longer than I care to admit to see how exhausted that belief was making me. It wasn’t because the work itself was hard, it was because of what I thought leadership required of me.
I see this pattern often in the leaders I work with. These are seasoned, senior leaders who feel an unspoken obligation to be the one who knows; the one who reassures; the one who steadies everyone else. From the outside, it presents as confidence. From the inside, though, it can feel like a constant buzzing in your brain that never fully stops.
What surprised me was this. The exhaustion wasn’t coming from the complexity I was living in. It came from the idea that I was supposed to have everything already figured out.
I absorbed this idea about leadership early on, that it meant having answers, that uncertainty was risky, and that pausing too long might reveal something I should have sorted by now. So we compensate, we explain, and we offer smart perspectives that are technically solid but not always fully landed, frankly.
And people can feel the difference, even if they can’t quite name what’s off.
I learned this the hard way when I became a new manager, leading a team for the first time, and trying to be everything to everyone. I was the one filling every silence, answering every question, smoothing every edge. If there was uncertainty in the room, I absorbed it and tried to resolve it on the spot. On the surface, I suppose it may have looked like leadership to some. But in my body, it made me feel wobbly and weak, because it felt like I was carrying the weight of everyone's success and career aspirations on my back. That was the signal that finally clicked for me. Leadership was never meant to be a one-person load-bearing exercise where you protect everyone from uncertainty, so they don’t have to navigate it.
And I was actually taking something away from my employees by being the one with all the answers: their chance to think it through for themselves, to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty, and to build their judgement and problem-solving chops in real time.
I've always believed that a leader's job is to create more leaders, not more followers. And yet there I was, unintentionally training others to hand their uncertainty over to me. I had become a pressure valve for the system.
When a leader consistently absorbs uncertainty like that, it shapes behaviour. People learn, without anyone ever saying it out loud, that you will hold the complexity, make the call, and carry the consequences. Over time, that chips away at your employees' autonomy, decision-making confidence, and a real sense of ownership. Capable, thoughtful people start to wait and seek permission, instead of thinking for themselves. That dynamic was unsustainable, not just for me, but for the team.
In fact, the leaders people trust the most are not the ones who respond the fastest. Research on psychological safety, led by Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School, consistently shows that leaders who slow the pace, tolerate uncertainty, and invite thinking build higher levels of trust and engagement. They’re the ones who are willing to stay with a question for a moment. They can say, “I’m still thinking about that,” without apologizing or feeling the pressure to fill the white space, and without making anyone else wrong for not knowing, either.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I would never ask you to walk into important conversations unprepared. This isn’t about being vague or winging it; it’s about knowledge versus judgment. There's a difference between knowing things and wanting others to see that you know the answers, versus exercising your judgment and making enough space for others to think, wrestle, and arrive at their own conclusions. Knowledge can sound confident and polished. Judgement shows up as steadiness and gives people enough orientation so that they can build the muscles to think for themselves. The importance of autonomy shouldn't be overlooked; it's one of the three most important human needs, and a huge factor in how we stay motivated and engaged at work.
While it's just a fact that I know lots of things, it's also true that I’m still learning plenty more. What has changed is my relationship to proving what I know. My role now feels less about projecting certainty and more about staying curious, asking powerful questions, and creating conditions where stronger thinking can happen, including my own.
That shift gave me back more energy than I expected, and it made my leadership feel sustainable in a way it never had before. And now, after all these years working with executives, senior leaders, and their teams, I can spot this pattern quickly, not because I have it all figured out, but because I’ve lived it from the inside and see how often it shows up in people who care deeply about doing a good job.
That expectation is powerful, and it’s rarely questioned. If you’re feeling the pressure to have all the answers in your leadership role, the following coaching challenge is designed to help you notice it, understand what’s driving it, and decide what you want to do differently.
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
This week, imagine that you are sitting on your own shoulder, observing yourself in action as you go through your days (I always picture the alien in Men in Black, with the tiny second head that pops out from behind his regular head). You are looking for moments where you notice the pressure to have the answers showing up. You may notice a tension in your body; a shift in your tone or behaviour. When you notice it, pause and reflect on these questions (take them one at a time):
What do you notice about what triggers the pressure to have the answers?
Where does the pressure typically show up in your body?
What might be underneath, driving that pressure? (You might see themes emerge, like a fear of letting someone down, or of looking unprepared, or it may be something else entirely.)
When you step in to carry that pressure for others, what might you be taking away from them, particularly related to their autonomy, confidence, or opportunity to think things through for themselves?
If this reflection resonates and you want support exploring how to lead with more ease and grounded judgment, reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.
