For leaders, the new year brings about thoughts of renewed energy and a list of new challenges to solve. We here at Corporate Path Leadership propose an additional challenge for 2026: to reflect on how you can inspire others and learn to let go more by trusting your team in the next 12 months.
A November/December 2025 Harvard Business Review article titled “The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back” inspired this idea. In it, author Muriel Wilkins identified seven common behaviors that were a hindrance to leaders. While all seven have merit, the three that really struck me were the following:
- I need to be involved
- I need it done now
- I know I’m right
Immediately, I had detailed visions of working with leaders in the past that carried all three of these attributes and secretly cringed to think that at times I may have demonstrated some, or all of these behaviors as well. In each scenario of working with leaders with these characteristics, I vividly remember feeling anxiety in the working environment and second guessing my own value and contributions.
If you think about times when you’ve worked with a leader with these attributes, how did that make you feel?
Of course, it is natural that as someone ascends the leadership ladder in an organization, they are counted on by others for continuing to operate at a high level of performance and contribute to the success of the team and company. However, often with that success comes the feeling that they cannot let go or show any slack — not even for a minute.
As leaders excel though, they also need to realize that with their success advancing in title and roles it is more important to demonstrate that leadership by mentoring and shaping others, than it is to continue with individual contributions. Remember, your success is based on all of the people reporting to you and working with you. You should be making sure that those individuals are not just participating, but thriving as part of your team.
Let’s talk about all three leadership hindrances and how you can work to diminish their impact and substitute more inspirational behaviors in their place.
I NEED TO BE INVOLVED
This is what most people recognize as classic micromanagement. From the leader’s perspective, if they are not involved then they aren’t available to stop something from going wrong. That leads to two problems:
- People who work for you are afraid to ever make a mistake (big problem)
- People who work for you feel like they can’t make a decision on their own (even bigger mistake)
The Fix: As a leader, you need to recognize that you have limited time and that your broader team is there to make sure all of the team/department goals can succeed. In order to succeed, you must delegate both responsibilities and decisions to the broader group. Your job as a leader is to clearly set the expectations and communicate the goals and needs for the team, and then work to identify who should be responsible for various aspects of team goals and tasks and how decisions should be made.
In some cases, it is fine for you to still be involved in making a final decision. In other cases, you should only be informed of the decisions or given opportunities to offer additional perspectives before a final decision is made.
What you will find is that when your team members have the freedom to make contributions without your involvement each step of the way, it will give them the confidence and inspiration to help show their value and how they can be an integral part of the team’s success. You are setting the stage and still leading the way — but not having to helicopter in and out of everyday tasks. Our previous blog post on 4 Ways to Adapt Your Leadership Style as You Move up the Career Ladder can help guide you in this transition.
I NEED IT DONE NOW
Sometimes leaders think that by instilling urgency, they help to make a team more productive. Don’t get me wrong — urgency is important! However, when everything is a fire drill nothing becomes a priority. Random urgency over a longer timeframe just leads to accelerated employee burnout.
So how do you focus on the right kind of urgency?
As a leader, you should hold up the mirror to yourself to see how well you are set up to organize the team to focus on the right department/company priorities. From my past experience, when urgency is random, there is always an issue with the leader not thinking they have the time to organize priorities (or not understanding how to organize priorities).
The Fix: The next time you start to text or call someone about an issue that has just landed in your lap, stop and think about how the issue factors into other tasks/responsibilities in motion. As a leader, you can be far more effective at understanding what priorities your employees already have, and helping them to understand how something new should fit into what is on their plate already.
It is far better to have one or two check-ins with your employees each week talking about all priorities and needs instead of firing off a series of random new assignments without context. You and your employees both win by being aligned in knowing priorities and workloads.
After the initial pulse check, if the project is still urgent use these Five “Must Have” Leadership Planning Stages to Keep Even the Most Fast-Tracked Projects on Task as a planning and prioritization guide.
I KNOW I’M RIGHT
This is a tough problem to crack. As a leader, if you see the world only in shades of black and white (right or wrong), you can become myopic in believing that your experience as a leader equals the fact that you will always have the right answer (or best answer) for the group.
The fallout is significant! Team members stop sharing ideas, stop caring about what they are working on and just wait for you to provide the answer so they can move on. This leads to frustration, turnover and a sense of resentment. Worse yet, the team doesn’t benefit from any other answers or ideas that could have surfaced from someone else’s perspective.
The Fix: The solution for this challenging behavior is simple. You as the leader should place a higher focus on gathering the team together to think of all possible solutions and work as a team to continue to invest in those ideas that have the most merit. That doesn’t mean that you have to stifle your ideas – but it does mean you have to make a purposeful effort to encourage and surface ideas from all team members. Our Creating a Collaborative Environment That Encourages Idea Sharing can help guide you in this transition.
Next Steps
The common denominator for this post is to start out in the new year by taking a strong step back to see how you can learn to let go of some of these potential bad leadership behaviors. Even if you don’t feel you have any of these three behaviors, you can still invest in the advice above to help encourage more team member contribution, decision-making, collaboration and prioritization to make this year the best year yet for your team!
If you are unsure what your leadership hindrance(s) are, or you just need areas of focus for self-improvement, an Individual Development Program is the perfect tune-up to get you ready for the new year. Connect with us today to customize program topics based on your needs.