Could your team be teaching you something?

Your team is a reflection of you.

It's one of the seven leadership principles that underpin my coaching, and probably the one people challenge me on the most.

Every time I say it, I wonder whether someone hears: "So you're saying every problem in my practice is my fault?"

That's not what I mean.

We know people make their own choices. You can't make someone care, you can't make someone take ownership, and you can't stop that one person who seems to arrive late no matter how many conversations you've had.

What I do believe, though, is that people are influenced by the environment they spend their time in. More than we realise.

And as leaders, we're constantly shaping that environment, not just through the conversations we have or the standards we set, but through something much less obvious.

The beliefs we hold, the assumptions we make, the things we worry about, the things we avoid, the way we respond when something goes wrong, the version of ourselves that walks into work each morning.

Our team don't just hear what we say, they experience us.

That might sound a little unusual, but stay with me.

Take Angela. She came to a coaching session feeling completely fed up.

"I don't know why nobody takes ownership," she said.

"They bring me every decision, every problem, every tiny question. It's like they can't think for themselves."

As is often the case, I was far more interested in Angela than I was in her team.

So I started asking questions.

"What happens when someone makes a mistake?"

"I'll usually step in."

"And if someone does something differently to how you would?"

"I'll explain a better way."

"And if they're taking too long?"

"I'll probably just do it."

Now, it would have been easy to conclude that Angela needed to delegate better, but I've learned over the years that behaviour is usually the end of the story, not the beginning. I'm much more interested in what sits underneath it.

So I asked her something different.

"What does staying in control give you?"

She talked about patient care, high standards, efficiency, consistency. All perfectly reasonable answers.

But we stayed with it.

Eventually she said, "If something went badly wrong, I'd feel responsible."

We sat with that for a moment.

"And if that happened... what would it mean about you?"

"It would mean I'd failed."

There it was.

Not a delegation or team problem. A belief.

One she'd been carrying for years.

That a good leader keeps everything together.
That a good leader catches mistakes before they happen.
That a good leader never lets the standards slip.

So I became curious again.

"Does this only show up at work?"

She laughed.

"Oh no."

Angela organised every family holiday.

Remembered every birthday.

Booked every appointment.

Managed the finances.

If something needed doing, she assumed it was hers to carry.

And that was the moment - control wasn't something Angela did at work, it was simply how she'd learned to move through the world.

This took Angela’s coaching journey in a new direction as we began exploring what control had been protecting all these years.

Over the following weeks, we didn't make huge changes. We looked for small moments where she felt the urge to jump in, to rescue, to take over, or to give the answers. And instead, she’d pause and ask:

"What do you think?"

She told me it felt incredibly uncomfortable.

There was a lot of tongue biting.

A lot of resisting the temptation to step back in.

She worried people would make mistakes.

She worried standards would slip.

She worried she'd be judged.

But that's exactly why we started with small, safe experiments.

Not to prove anything, just to see what happened.

And slowly, something did.

• People brought her fewer problems.
• They started making more decisions for themselves.
• They seemed more confident.

Can I tell you with certainty that Angela's inner work caused those changes?

No. I don't think human relationships are that simple.

But I do find it fascinating how often I see something similar.

A leader begins looking at themselves differently, they start showing up differently, they ask different questions, they become a little less controlling, a little more trusting, and a little more present. And somehow, the team begins responding differently too.

Whether you explain that through psychology, emotional contagion, systems thinking, or something more intuitive doesn't really matter to me.

What matters is that I've seen it often enough to stop dismissing it as coincidence.

Which brings me back to where we started.

Your team is a reflection of you.

Not because they're copies of you, or because you’re responsible for every behaviour, but because people don't just respond to your words, they respond to what it feels like to be led by you.

So perhaps the better questions are these:

• What behaviour in your team frustrates you the most?
• What might that behaviour be inviting you to look at in yourself?
• If you changed the way you showed up, how might your team experience you differently?
• And what might become possible from there?

I'd love to know what you think.