The Leadership Lens I Didn’t Know I Was Wearing
What an early leadership experience taught me about recognition, self-awareness, and the difference between valuing someone and helping them feel valued.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to contribute a chapter to the recently-published book, Valued: The Power of Investing in Others, edited by Matthew J. Dickerson.
My chapter tells a story from much earlier in my career, when I was managing a talented employee and genuinely believed I was doing a good job of showing him how much I appreciated his work. I recognized his contributions, created opportunities for him to be seen, and encouraged him to step into the spotlight when he'd earned it.
There was just one problem: I was doing all of that through my own perspective.
At the time, I thought I had a pretty clear idea of what good recognition looked like because I knew what made me feel valued. It took an outside perspective for me to see that I had quietly turned my own preferences into a leadership default.
That experience taught me a distinction I still find useful today: valuing someone and making that person feel valued aren't necessarily the same thing.
The excerpt below is about the moment I began to see that gap more clearly, and what it forced me to examine about the way I was leading.
About fifteen years into my corporate career, I had been working at a startup for some time and was excited to lead a small but mighty marketing team. As with many startups, the organization was nimble, everyone knew each other well, and each individual’s performance (or lack thereof) was on clear display to the broader organization.
We had an attractive company culture, and talented employees generally stayed at the organization with longer tenures as a result. Additionally, we were quick to give credit when and where credit was due. That was my experience with my own supervisor there, and with many supervisors before him throughout my career. Thankfully, they were always ready to share the spotlight when it came to recognizing my efforts.
I thought I knew what great leadership looked like, and I wanted to honor that intent to recognize others as I carried out my own leadership responsibilities. At least that was the story I told myself.
The Moment I Thought I Was Doing It Right
A colleague whom we’ll call Colin interviewed for a role on our marketing team a few years after I joined the organization. He had spent over five solid years with his previous organization, had significant digital marketing experience, and had a fresh perspective on content strategy. Additionally, he seemed genuinely interested in the freedom we talked about providing to teammates for fine-tuning their work.
During the interview process, I didn’t think we’d lure him away from his other job prospects. After all, he was top talent, and sometimes the total rewards package and degree of risk associated with startups are not as compelling as working for a larger enterprise.
Therefore, you can imagine my excitement when he accepted our offer and started working with our company. True to my extroverted nature, I was ready to onboard Colin to the organization with a welcoming fervor!
As the weeks turned into months and Colin and I grew to know each other better, our day-to-day workflow was going pretty well. He was able to hit the ground running producing content for our website and managing marketing workflows. He always had great “outside the box” ideas to share during our one-on-one meetings. It was energizing for me to have an experienced colleague on the team who helped us level up our output and garner more exposure for our organization’s products.
Riding that wave of energy, I wanted to make sure that Colin had a voice in our company meetings. After all, I took pride in developing others, and making sure that he was publicly recognized felt like the right move to show that I was investing in him in the way that others had invested in me throughout my career. As a startup, our entire company met monthly to talk through goal progression, client support trends, and major marketing campaigns and to celebrate notable achievements.
Now that he had spent some time settling in at our organization, I expected him to feel more comfortable voicing his ideas and concerns in larger group meetings. Or, at a minimum, I thought he’d at least contribute his thoughts in the somewhat smaller leadership meeting that I occasionally invited him to attend.
When Colin seemed content remaining quiet during most meetings, I started to take notice. Yes, he did offer a rare comment from time to time, and it usually struck a brilliant chord with others. But I wanted more from him in that meeting format, and I knew he was capable of it.
I started inviting him to share his thoughts in the group setting when I spotted a facial expression that suggested he had a comment or idea. Other times when he remained quiet, I found opportunities to share one of his ideas with the group on his behalf and credit him to make sure he enjoyed a spotlight moment.
Although sometimes this caught him off guard, he usually recovered in stride with a humble smile and punctuated the moment with a short remark or a simple “thank you.” I knew Colin was a selfless and giving person; that was evident from the way he talked about spending time with various organizations and family members outside of work. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising to me that he tried to brush off praise by saying “anyone could do this.”
That pattern continued for a while. I kept at it, as my frame of reference as an extrovert was to seek multiple connections with many people—and what better way to do that than by celebrating positive accomplishments in a group meeting?
Colin never quite stepped into that spotlight though. He always had a slight energy shift in those moments: a subtle avoidance of eye contact with others, a restless movement in his chair, a centering breath. In those moments—and as selfless as he was—I assumed he was just shirking the spotlight so that others could have their turn.
But something started to feel off to me as I noticed those energy shifts in him more frequently. Nevertheless, I thought I was investing in him, so I continued to nudge him into the spotlight. I didn’t realize until later that I was instead projecting my own motivations onto him.
Why I Believed This Was Leadership
A little back story: Growing up, I was the kid who was involved in as many activities as possible. I lived out in the country on a farm, so I really enjoyed going into town and connecting with others through clubs and sports to add more variety to my life.
I loved playing different sports. Although I was never the best player at any of them, I did often serve as the connective “glue” for my team—rallying others who were down, communicating frequently on the court or field, and seeing patterns emerge that might cause a change in gameplay.
I thrived on the momentum that came from a team working together as well as the visibility that our work afforded us in the community. It’s no surprise, then, that I’m a
number three on the Enneagram assessment (aka “The Achiever”),
an “Achiever” in my top five Clifton StrengthsFinder strengths, and
a “Galvanizer” for one of my top two Working Genius attributes.
Conclusion: I’m comfortable with public affirmation for hard work. It’s inevitable given my behavioral hardwiring, previous work experience, and upbringing!
I wanted to provide this same transparent affirmation on behalf of Colin’s accomplishments. From my perspective, providing public recognition of the passion and labor that someone else put into an activity they care about was an intentional, thoughtful gesture.
I was giving Colin the praise and attention that fuels achievement-minded extroverts because that was my own lens. However, sometimes in our early leadership journeys we can confuse our own preferences with universal principles.
The Collision of Two Narratives
Colin continued producing quality work, and I continued hoping that he would become more comfortable sharing his perspectives in group meetings.
The turning point in our working relationship snuck up on me one day relatively close to his one-year anniversary with the company. Our owner had brought in an outside firm to conduct a Predictive Index assessment debrief with our entire group.
We had already individually completed the assessment ahead of the meeting and reviewed our own related reports. I was pretty familiar with the assessment as one of our products integrated with it, but I had never personally attended a group debrief about it.
I was looking forward to seeing how each employee’s profile interacted with other profiles so that we could continue to fine-tune relationships internally as well as relate more easily to our customers who also used the assessment.
At one point during the meeting, the facilitator placed every employee’s profile type on a spectrum and then presented the results for all to see on a screen. We could not tell which employee matched which profile type at that point, and the facilitator started noting likely profile-driven behavioral tendencies between different groups of people.
Finally, he paused, then chuckled a bit before beginning to describe one particular pairing between a supervisor and direct report. He went on to explain that they were essentially completely opposite profile types, and that the supervisor was an extreme extrovert, comfortable with a different schedule every day, and highly process-oriented. In contrast, the direct report was very introverted, didn’t like to be the center of attention, and was content to keep refining work longer than most would require.
In fact, the more the facilitator described the details, the more I had a sinking feeling that I was the supervisor “culprit.” We were a tight-knit team, so the facilitator felt comfortable laughing a bit and musing that we might be driving each other crazy in our working relationship—if we were not thoughtful about how we were each hard-wired.
I was surprised to come to this realization, then embarrassed, and then I started rationalizing my own past behavior in my head. Hearing the narrative about the likely friction points between myself and Colin was my “a-ha” moment.
Embarrassment aside, eventually I thought, “How is Colin feeling at this moment?” With a bit of personal disgust, I slowly came to the realization that what has always energized me could very likely cause him to slowly die inside. Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic, but you get my drift.
Being a part of that facilitated meeting that day was eye opening for me, and it deconstructed the story I had been telling myself about great leadership.
It wasn’t that I was wrong about Colin being talented, despite his preference for remaining relatively quiet in group meetings. I was wrong about how he liked to be seen and recognized. My reframe from that moment on was closer to the following:
Public praise does not necessarily prove a leader’s investment in a direct report.
Rather, recognition—done in a way that honors the individual’s personal preferences—shows thoughtful and supportive investment by a leader.
My own recognition narrative had shaped my previous action, and that action had distorted Colin’s work experience.
Recognizing that I had been leading through my own lens was an important moment for me. It was also only the beginning.
Understanding why I had approached recognition and leadership the way I did didn't change the experience I had already created for my employee. And becoming more self-aware didn't automatically tell me what he needed from me instead.
That was the harder part: learning to separate my good intentions from the impact they were having, and becoming more curious about what it meant for him to feel seen, supported, and valued.
It's a lesson that has stayed with me well beyond this particular work relationship. We all bring our own wiring, experiences, preferences, and assumptions into the way we lead. Self-awareness helps us see that perspective. Leading other people well asks us to look beyond it.
And that's where I'll pick up this story in the next installment: what happened after the realization, and what I began to learn about adjusting my leadership to the person in front of me.
P.S. If this idea resonates with you, Valued: The Power of Investing in Others, edited by Matthew J. Dickerson, brings together a range of perspectives on what it looks like to invest in people in ways that are meaningful, practical, and human. I’m grateful to have contributed a chapter, and I’d love for you to check out the full book.
