Are We Asking Leaders the Wrong Question?

Many leaders are tired.

Not just busy. Not just stretched. Tired.

When leaders come into coaching or leadership development, they often arrive with a mix of hope and discouragement. Hope that something will help. Discouragement because leadership development can feel like one more thing they need to figure out, one more thing they need to fit into an already overloaded schedule, and one more area where they may or may not be successful.

Many leaders genuinely want to be better leaders. They care deeply about their people. They care about their organizations. They want to make a positive difference. At the same time, many will tell you that the leadership and management part of their job is the hardest part of what they do. As practitioners, we hear this every day. And yet I wonder if there is something important we are missing.

The Story Leaders Tell

At the beginning of a coaching engagement, we usually ask leaders to tell us their story. What’s happening? What’s working? What’s not working? Where are the challenges?

The interesting thing is that leaders rarely tell a story that is only about themselves.

They tell us about team members. Some are high performers. Some are struggling. Some positions are vacant. Some people are new. Some people are difficult. They tell us about their manager. Sometimes it is an inspiring relationship. More often, it is complicated. They tell us about peers, politics, competing priorities, organizational initiatives, resource constraints, hiring freezes, technology implementations, employee surveys, culture challenges, and strategic goals.

In other words, leaders don’t describe isolated leadership challenges. They describe a system. And yet something interesting often happens next. After listening to this rich, complex picture, we frequently move rather quickly toward a different question:

“What should you do differently as a leader?”

It is a natural question.

It is also, I think, an incomplete one.

Why We Keep Coming Back to the Leader

To be clear, I am not arguing that leaders don’t matter. They matter tremendously. Nor am I arguing that organizations should stop investing in leadership development. I have spent my career helping leaders grow and become more effective.

What I am questioning is our tendency to treat leaders as the primary solution to every organizational challenge.

When employee engagement is low, we ask what leaders should do. When people are burned out, we ask what leaders should do. When trust is low, we ask what leaders should do. When communication breaks down, we ask what leaders should do.

There is a reason for this.

Leaders are the most visible and accessible point of intervention in a complex system. Changing a person feels more manageable than changing a system. A leader can attend coaching. A leader can receive feedback. A leader can complete an assessment. A leader can create a development plan. Organizational systems are far messier.

The challenge is that when we consistently focus on the leader as the primary lever for change, responsibility can become concentrated in the leadership role in ways that are neither accurate nor helpful.

The Problem Isn’t Responsibility

I don’t think the problem is responsibility.

I think the problem is inaccurately locating responsibility.

Some leaders take on far more responsibility than belongs to them. They conclude that if their team is struggling, they must not be leading effectively enough. If a peer is difficult, they need to figure out how to fix it. If organizational processes are burdensome, they need to work harder to compensate for them. If people are disengaged, they need to find a way to inspire them. Over time, this becomes exhausting.

Other leaders move in the opposite direction. They locate nearly all responsibility outside themselves. The problem is the team. The problem is the organization. The problem is senior leadership. The problem is the system.

Neither response is particularly helpful.

In both cases, responsibility is being located inaccurately, and when responsibility is located inaccurately, development becomes less effective.

A Different Conversation

What if one of our responsibilities as practitioners is not simply helping leaders improve, but helping leaders more accurately locate responsibility?

What if, before immediately asking, “What should you work on?” we first helped leaders understand the system in which they are operating?

Not the entire organization. Not a massive systems analysis. Just the leader’s immediate reality. The people around them. The organizational dynamics that directly affect them. The pressures they are carrying. The responsibilities they have assumed. The responsibilities others may have handed to them. The responsibilities that may actually belong somewhere else.

Imagine how different the coaching conversation might become if we explored questions like these:

• What belongs to you in this situation?
• What belongs to your stakeholders?
• What belongs to the organization?
• What can you directly control?
• What can you influence?
• What should you request?
• What responsibility are you carrying that may not actually be yours?
• What responsibility are you avoiding that may, in fact, be yours?

Those questions don’t reduce accountability.

They clarify accountability.

Helping Leaders Carry the Right Responsibility

One of the risks in leadership development is that we unintentionally help leaders become more skilled at carrying responsibility that doesn’t belong to them. We give them another tool. Another framework. Another competency. Another hiking pole to help them continue climbing the mountain.

But perhaps there is another possibility.

Perhaps part of our role is helping leaders determine what they should actually be carrying in the first place.

Leadership responsibility is not fixed. It is situational.

The responsibility of a leader with an inexperienced team is different from the responsibility of a leader with a highly capable team. The responsibility of a leader navigating significant risk is different from the responsibility of a leader pursuing innovation. The responsibility of a leader in a resource-constrained environment is different from the responsibility of a leader with abundant resources.

The question is not, “What should leaders always do?”

The question is, “Given this situation, what is fundamentally your work as a leader right now?”

That is a much harder question.

It is also a much more useful one.

Where Assessments Fit

This is one of the reasons I believe assessments can be so valuable when used thoughtfully. Assessments help us understand how leaders see themselves, how others experience them, and the conditions in which they do their best work. Their greatest value, however, may not simply be identifying development opportunities. Their greatest value is helping practitioners and leaders have richer conversations about responsibility, influence, action and sustainability. 

Not simply:

“How can I become a better leader?”

But:

“What is my work as a leader in this situation?”

That is a different conversation.

And I suspect it is one that many leaders are longing to have.

A Simple Responsibility & Influence Mapping Exercise

So here is what I’m experimenting with. I am working on resisting the temptation to move directly from assessment feedback to outcome objectives to developmental goals.

Instead, I’m working on spending ten or fifteen minutes exploring three questions together.

1. Where is responsibility currently sitting?

Asking the leader to describe the situation they are facing and then identify which parts of the challenge primarily belong to:

• Me as the leader
• My key stakeholders (direct reports, peers, manager, customers, partners)
• The organization (processes, priorities, resources, structure, culture)

Simply naming where responsibility appears to sit often creates immediate clarity.

2. Where do I have influence?

For each area, I’m invite them to ask themselves these questions:

• What can I directly control?
• What can I meaningfully influence?
• What can I only request?
• What is currently outside my influence?

This helps separate ownership from wishful thinking.

3. Given everything we’ve uncovered, what is fundamentally my work as a leader right now?

Not next year.

Not in the ideal organization.

Not if everyone behaved differently.

Right now.

Then I invite them to answer two final questions:

• What is one conversation I need to have with a stakeholder that could shift responsibility to where it more appropriately belongs?
• What is one conversation I need to have with the organization—or one request I need to make—that could remove unnecessary burden or improve the conditions for success?

Only after those conversations do I think it makes sense to invite them to explore this question:

What is the one thing I want to develop in myself that will help me lead this situation more effectively?

Notice that leader development hasn’t disappeared.

It has simply been placed in its proper context.

The Opportunity for Practitioners

As practitioners, we have an opportunity.

Not to let leaders off the hook.

Not to blame organizations.

Not to excuse poor performance.

But to help leaders more accurately locate responsibility.

To help them see where responsibility belongs. To help them identify what can be influenced. To help them understand what should be requested. To help them clarify what is fundamentally theirs to own.

When we do that, something interesting happens.

Leaders often stop trying to carry everything. Not because they care less. Not because accountability disappears. But because they finally have a clearer picture of what their work actually is.

And when that happens, leadership development stops feeling like one more burden.

It starts feeling like a path forward.