How to Examine the Leadership Expectations Shaping Your Decisions

A practical guide to identifying which leadership expectations
belong and which need to go

“You didn’t wake up one day and invent your leadership philosophy. You built it—piece by piece—from books, mentors, conference talks, and a thousand small moments of influence. But when was the last time you asked whether those leadership expectations still serve you?”

I was sitting in a community committee meeting where everyone agreed on the importance of alignment. It was one of those words that seemed to unite the room—until we tried to act on it.

As the discussion unfolded, the decision-makers began expanding what “alignment” required of us. It wasn’t just about shared priorities anymore. Now it included communication style, pacing, tone, personal buy-in, public messaging, and unspoken expectations about how our work should feel as it unfolded. Each explanation sounded reasonable on its own. Together, they created more fog than clarity.

Others around the table stopped asking questions—not because they understood, but because they didn’t know where to start. The language had grown so full that no one could tell what was actually being asked of them.

That’s when a line from Proverbs came to mind, and I offered it to the room—not as a rebuke, but as a pause:

“When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.” (Proverbs 10:19, ESV)

It shifted the moment. We stopped adding more explanation and did something simpler instead: we defined what we meant by alignment. One sentence. Plain language. Clear boundaries. Only then did the conversation regain its footing.

Leadership confusion doesn’t usually come from a lack of passion or intelligence. It comes from words that have grown so flexible they no longer carry weight. Discernment begins when we notice that drift—and decide, in advance, to anchor our language before it anchors us.

Anchored leadership starts with anchored language. When we take time to define the words driving our decisions, we stop being pulled in competing directions. Every leader can cut through cultural noise by following three practical steps: identify one message you’ve absorbed, ask where it came from, and decide whether it still serves you.

Identify One Leadership Message You’ve Absorbed

You didn’t wake up one day and invent your leadership philosophy. You built it—piece by piece—from books, mentors, conference talks, podcasts, organizational culture, and a thousand small moments of influence. Some of those messages serve you well. Others create quiet tension you can’t quite name.

Start here: notice one expectation you carry about leadership. Maybe it’s “leaders should always be visible.” Maybe it’s “good leaders never show doubt.” Maybe it’s “effective teams require consensus before action.”

Write it down. Don’t evaluate it yet. Just name it.

This first step isn’t about judgment—it’s about awareness. You can’t discern what you haven’t noticed. Research confirms this: organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that while 95 percent of people believe they are self-aware, only 10 to 15 percent actually demonstrate it.¹ Most leadership confusion begins not with bad advice, but with unexamined advice that’s accumulated without permission.

Ask Where That Message Came From

Once you’ve named the expectation, trace it backward. Where did you pick this up? Was it a book that shaped your thinking early in your career? A mentor whose style you admired—and unconsciously adopted? An organizational culture that rewarded certain behaviors? A reaction to a past failure or criticism? A broader cultural narrative about what “strong leadership” looks like?

This step requires honesty. Sometimes we discover that a belief we’ve held tightly came from a source we no longer trust. Sometimes we realize we adopted someone else’s strength as our own standard—and have been exhausting ourselves trying to live up to it.

The goal isn’t to dismiss every outside influence. It’s to stop letting influences operate in the background, unexamined. When you know where a message came from, you can evaluate whether it still belongs. As Harvard Business Publishing’s research on the Ladder of Inference notes, “studies have shown that people do not always learn from experience, that expertise does not help people root out false information, and that seeing ourselves as highly experienced can keep us from doing our homework, seeking disconfirming evidence, and questioning our assumptions.”²

Decide Whether It Still Serves You

Now comes discernment. Ask yourself: Does this expectation align with who I’m called to be? Does it fit the context I’m leading in right now? Does it strengthen my leadership, or does it fragment it? Am I carrying this because it’s true—or because I’m afraid to let it go?

Not every leadership principle applies universally. Not every piece of wisdom fits every season. And not every expectation you’ve absorbed deserves to shape your decisions.

Some messages need to be released. Others need to be refined. A few—the ones rooted in truth, calling, and clarity—need to be anchored deliberately, so they can guide you when the noise returns.

Without discernment, the most familiar voice sets the direction. With it, you decide which voices guide you.

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Leadership language matters—not because words are magic, but because they shape how we think, decide, and lead.³ When our language grows vague, our leadership grows reactive. When we anchor our words, we anchor our presence.

As Jon Acuff observes in Soundtracks, the thoughts we rehearse most become the ones that drive our actions—and far too often, we let those thoughts run unchecked.⁴ The same is true of leadership language: the messages we absorb without examination become the standards we exhaust ourselves trying to meet.

This week, as Words Matter Week reminds us, is a fitting time to examine the messages shaping your leadership. Notice one. Trace it. Test it. And if it no longer serves you—let it go.

You don’t have to carry every expectation that’s been handed to you. You just have to carry the ones that are true.

One Takeaway Action Item:
This week, write down one leadership expectation you carry.
Trace where it came from. Then ask: does it still belong?

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Endnotes