Sharpen Your Leadership Perception Before You Intervene
A conductor’s lesson in seeing the whole picture
“The problem you think you’re solving is rarely the real problem. Leaders who pause to ask what they’re missing save time, strengthen trust, and avoid fixing the wrong thing.”
The string section wasn’t blending. Every pass through the passage sounded disjointed—good individual playing, but no cohesion. I helped adjust bowing, articulation, dynamics, but it was still fragmented. Then, during a break, I noticed the principal violist sitting apart from the section, scrolling her phone. When we resumed, I asked a simple question: “How are we doing as a section today?” Silence. Then a second violinist spoke up: there’d been a scheduling conflict earlier that week, and the principal violist had made a unilateral decision without consulting the section. The resentment was palpable—and audible. Once we acknowledged the tension and agreed to handle scheduling collaboratively, the blend returned within minutes. The music hadn’t changed. The relationships had. I’d been conducting notes when I should have been noticing people.
It’s easy to mistake the symptom for the disease—especially under pressure to fix things fast. I’ve watched this pattern repeat in boardrooms, project teams, and family dinners: the problem you think you’re solving is rarely the real problem. Leaders who pause to ask what they’re missing avoid wasting energy on symptoms while the root cause festers untouched. Three diagnostic questions can sharpen that perceptual clarity before you intervene.
What am I seeing that confirms what I already believe?
We see what we expect to see. Psychologists call this confirmation bias—the tendency to notice evidence that supports our existing beliefs while filtering out everything else.¹ In that rehearsal, I expected a technical problem because that’s what I’d been trained to diagnose. Intonation issues? Check the instrument. Blend problems? Adjust the bowing. I wasn’t looking for relational friction because I’d already decided the issue was technical.
This happens in leadership constantly. A team misses a deadline, and you assume they’re not working hard enough—so you add accountability measures. But what if the real issue is unclear priorities, or a bottleneck you created by approving too many projects at once? What if they’re working harder than ever, just on the wrong things?
Before you intervene, pause: What story have I already decided this situation is about? What do I see that reinforces that story? Am I already convinced I’m right?
What am I assuming is true that might not be?
Assumptions are shortcuts. They help us move quickly through complex situations. But when we stop testing them, they become traps.²
I assumed the string section’s problem was technical because technical problems yield to technical solutions. I didn’t ask whether something else was happening beneath the surface—a conflict, a communication breakdown, a leadership gap I’d created. I assumed I understood the situation fully because I could hear the symptom clearly.
Leaders do this constantly. You assume your team knows what you want because you’ve said it before. You assume a client is satisfied because they haven’t complained. You assume a process is working because it used to work. But assumptions age poorly, and the longer they go unexamined, the more damage they cause.
Before you act, identify your assumptions and test them. Ask: What if I’m missing something? What if my story isn’t true? What if the opposite were true, instead?
What would someone outside this situation notice first?
Proximity distorts perception. When you’re inside a problem, you lose perspective. You see the details but miss the pattern. You feel the pressure but lose the context.
In that rehearsal, I was too close. I was hearing every note, watching every bow stroke, tracking every dynamic shift. I hadn’t learned then to step back far enough to see what was actually happening—that the music was fine, but the people weren’t. An outside observer would have noticed the non-musical issue straight away. They would have seen the body language. They would have felt the tension I was too busy to perceive.
Research on decision-making confirms this: leaders embedded in problems consistently overweigh immediate details and underweigh systemic factors that outsiders spot quickly.³ Fresh eyes matter—someone who isn’t emotionally invested in the outcome, who doesn’t carry your assumptions, who isn’t buried in the details. Sometimes the most powerful diagnostic question is simply: What would a stranger notice about this situation that I’ve stopped seeing?
Before you fix anything this week, find someone outside the situation and ask what they notice. Not what they think you should do—just what they see. Then listen without defending, explaining, or correcting.
The string section taught me something I’ve carried into every leadership role since: perception is a skill, not a gift. The leaders who see clearly aren’t necessarily smarter or more experienced—they’ve learned to slow down, question their assumptions, and widen their field of vision before they act.
That pause saves time. It strengthens trust. And it keeps you from solving the wrong problem while the real one festers unseen.
Before you fix anything this week, pause and ask: What am I missing?
If this reflection helped you see something more clearly, consider subscribing to The Maestro’s Dispatch for weekly insights on leadership, clarity, and joyful excellence.
Endnotes:
- Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2, no. 2 (1998): 175–220.
- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 79–88.
- Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 23–41.
