Before You Label the Behavior – A Liminist Leadership Reflection Tool
Earlier in my career, I was known for speaking up. I had ideas, and I was willing to challenge the room when I believed something mattered. I was thoughtful, vocal, strategic, and often the person willing to say what others were still circling around.
Over time, I started saying less.
That shift was not because I had fewer ideas or cared less about the work. It was also not because I had lost ambition, confidence, or strategic perspective. I had learned things. I had watched how certain ideas landed in certain rooms. I had seen when speaking up created momentum and when it created unnecessary resistance. I had become more discerning about timing, relationships, power dynamics, and impact.
Later, someone new to the leadership team questioned whether I could be a serious CMO. Alas… they had only known the quieter version of me.
That moment stayed with me because it revealed something leaders do all the time. They saw the behavior. They did not know the history underneath it. They did not know what had changed, what I had learned, what I valued, or what I was trying to protect.
This happens in workplaces every day. Someone is quiet, and we assume they lack confidence. Someone is deferential, and we assume they lack initiative. Someone is humble, and we assume they lack ambition. Someone protects family time, and we assume they lack dedication. Someone takes time to think, and we assume they are hesitant. Someone is relational, and we assume they avoid conflict.
Sometimes those interpretations are accurate. Often, they are incomplete.
That is the core leadership issue: before we label a behavior as a leadership gap, we need to get curious about the value, norm, pressure, or lived experience underneath it.
Behavior is information. It is not the whole truth.
When Familiarity Gets Mistaken for Leadership
Most leaders are not trying to misread people. They are often doing what they were taught to do: look for signs of confidence, ambition, decisiveness, executive presence, commitment, and readiness. The problem is that many of those signs are shaped by cultural norms, organizational norms, family systems, and personal values.
In some workplaces, confidence sounds direct. Ambition sounds visible. Commitment looks like constant availability. Initiative looks like challenging authority. Executive presence looks like speaking early, often, and with certainty.
Those behaviors may reflect strong leadership. They may also reflect a narrow version of leadership.
This is not simply an opinion. The GLOBE Project studied more than 17,000 middle managers across 62 societies and found that expectations of effective leadership vary across cultures. In other words, what looks “leaderlike” in one environment may not be interpreted the same way in another.
That matters because many organizations unintentionally reward one leadership dialect and then treat other values-based behaviors as deficits.
A person who values harmony may not interrupt or challenge publicly, not because they lack confidence, but because they believe disagreement should preserve dignity and relationship. A person who values respect for authority may not jump in with a counterpoint in front of a senior leader, not because they lack initiative, but because they were taught that challenge should be offered with care and timing. A person who values humility may not easily name their own contributions, not because they lack ambition, but because they believe credit should be shared.
The problem is not the value. The problem is when the value gets interpreted through a narrow definition of leadership.
This is where well-intended development conversations can go wrong. Feedback may be based on a real behavior, yet still miss the deeper truth. A leader might say, “You need to speak up more,” when the more useful conversation is, “What matters to you about how and when you speak up?” A manager might say, “You need to be more visible,” when the better question is, “What would visibility look like in a way that still honors humility and integrity?”
The behavior may need to change. The value underneath it may need to be honored. Both can be true.
The “I’m Sorry” Example
One of the clearest examples of this tension is the phrase “I’m sorry.”
There are apologies that repair harm. Those matter. I am not talking about those.
I am talking about the reflexive “I’m sorry” that appears when someone has done nothing wrong.
“I’m sorry, I need to leave for my child’s appointment.”
“I’m sorry, I cannot make that 7 p.m. call.”
“I’m sorry, I need more time to think.”
“I’m sorry, I have a different perspective.”
“I’m sorry, I need to care for my parent.”
On the surface, this language may look like over-apologizing, people-pleasing, weak boundaries, or lack of confidence. And sometimes it is limiting. A senior leader who apologizes every time she names a legitimate need may unintentionally weaken her authority.
Yet underneath the apology may also be something worth respecting. It may reflect care. Humility. Relational awareness. A desire not to inconvenience others. A family or cultural norm that taught respect through deference. A lived experience that taught someone to soften their needs in order to remain accepted.
If we only correct the behavior, we may miss the value. Worse, we may teach the person that growth requires them to become less caring, less humble, or less relational.
That is not the point.
The point is to translate the value into language that carries more authority.
Instead of, “I’m sorry, I need to leave at 4,” the person might say, “I need to leave at 4, and I will send my notes before I go.”
Instead of, “I’m sorry, I disagree,” the person might say, “I see this differently, and I want to walk through why.”
Instead of, “I’m sorry, I need more time,” the person might say, “I want to give this the thought it deserves. I can come back with a recommendation tomorrow.”
That is not abandoning care. It is care with clarity. It is not abandoning humility. It is humility with ownership. It is not abandoning harmony. It is harmony with honesty.
That distinction matters because the goal of leadership development should not be personality replacement. The goal is more precise translation between values and effective behavior.
Why Mislabeling Behavior Becomes Expensive
When leaders misread behavior, the cost is not only emotional or relational. It becomes a business issue.
If quiet is mistaken for lack of strategy, thoughtful people may be left out of bigger conversations. If humility is mistaken for lack of ambition, strong contributors may be overlooked for stretch opportunities. If family commitment is mistaken for lack of dedication, organizations may quietly reward unsustainable availability instead of meaningful performance. If respect for authority is mistaken for lack of initiative, talented people may never be taught how to challenge upward in a way that works for them and the organization.
The result is a misallocated opportunity. The wrong people get noticed for familiar signals, while the right people may be underestimated because their leadership does not look like the dominant prototype.
There is research behind this too. Harvard Business School research summarized in Working Knowledge found that supervisors were more likely to perceive extroverted employees as passionate, even when introverted employees reported similar levels of excitement and motivation. That is a problem because “visible passion” can start to stand in for real commitment.
A similar pattern shows up around ambition. McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report found that women remain highly ambitious and just as ambitious as men, with 7 in 10 women wanting to be promoted to the next level. For younger women, that number rises to more than 8 in 10. That matters because leaders can misread quieter self-promotion, different communication norms, or caregiving boundaries as lower ambition when the ambition is very much there.
Family commitment is especially vulnerable to misinterpretation. Research on flexibility stigma shows that people who need or use flexibility can be viewed as less committed because they violate the “ideal worker” norm, where dedication is equated with constant availability. That is how a value like family responsibility can become mislabeled as a lack of dedication.
This shows up in talent reviews, succession planning, sponsorship, promotion decisions, and everyday feedback. It also affects the person receiving the feedback. When someone repeatedly hears that their way of showing care, respect, humility, or discernment is a problem, they may begin to wonder whether advancement requires self-abandonment.
That is where development can become personally expensive.
The immediate consequence is not some distant retention problem years from now. It can begin in the next meeting, the next performance conversation, or the next moment someone decides it is safer to say less, need less, challenge less, or reveal less of who they are.
This is one reason research on attribution bias, covering, code-switching, and psychological safety matters. Leaders are not just evaluating performance in a vacuum. They are interpreting behavior through their own assumptions, and employees are often managing how much of themselves is safe or acceptable to bring into the room.
Deloitte and NYU Law’s research on covering found that 60% of U.S. workers reported covering at work. Of those who covered, 74% reported negative impacts, including 60% who reported negative impacts to well-being, 56% who said covering hurt their commitment to the organization, and 54% who said it hurt their ability to do their jobs.
That is not a soft issue. That is a performance issue.
When people feel they must constantly monitor how they are perceived, the work becomes more than the work. They are not only doing the job. They are managing acceptability.
That creates drag. Emotional drag. Cognitive drag. Leadership drag. And over time, organizational drag.
Pressure Is Part of the Story, But Not the Whole Story
Values are not the only thing underneath behavior. Pressure may be there too. So may fear, exhaustion, grief, past experience, psychological safety, power dynamics, or burnout.
Someone may be quiet because they value discernment. They may also be quiet because the room has taught them that speaking up is risky. Someone may defer because they value respect. They may also defer because they have been punished in the past for challenging authority. Someone may protect family time because family is a core value. They may also be exhausted from carrying too much for too long.
Psychological safety matters here because people reveal more of their thinking when they believe it is safe to do so. Deloitte’s covering research found that only 50% of workers said their team leaders create the psychological safety necessary for them to uncover. That means leaders may be evaluating behavior without realizing they are only seeing the version of the person the environment allows.
This is why leaders need curiosity before correction.
That does not mean every behavior is acceptable. It does not mean leaders avoid accountability or explain away performance issues. It means accountability becomes more accurate when the diagnosis is more accurate.
A behavior can be limiting someone’s impact and still be connected to something honorable. A leader’s job is to understand both.
A Mentor Offers a Path. A Coach Helps You Find Yours.
This is also why different kinds of support matter.
A mentor can be incredibly valuable because a mentor offers lived experience. A mentor might say, “Here’s how I learned to speak up,” or “Here’s what worked for me when I needed to become more visible.” That kind of guidance can help someone see possible paths they may not have imagined.
A coach serves a different role. A coach helps someone understand their own path. Instead of starting with advice, a coach might ask, “What matters to you about how you speak up?” or “What would visibility look like if it still honored humility?” or “What are you trying to protect when you choose not to push back?”
Both forms of support have value. So do sponsors, advisors, consultants, therapists, managers, and training programs. The issue is fit. If someone needs access, they may need sponsorship. If someone needs technical expertise, they may need advising. If someone needs healing, therapy may be the right support. If someone needs a skill, training may help.
Yet if the real work is understanding what a behavior is protecting, expressing, or honoring, and then translating that into a more effective leadership behavior, coaching is often the right tool.
There is a reason this distinction matters. Coqual’s sponsorship research found that 34% of people of color without sponsors were satisfied with their rate of advancement, compared with 56% of those with sponsors. Sponsorship changes access. Coaching changes ownership. Mentoring shares experience. Therapy treats and heals. They are different tools for different needs.
The coaching evidence is also meaningful. A 2023 workplace coaching meta-analysis found positive effects across outcomes, with especially strong effects on skill outcomes and moderate effects on affective outcomes. That supports what many leaders experience in practice: coaching is not simply about feeling better. It can help people build skills, self-awareness, clarity, and behavior change they actually own.
A coach does not begin by assuming the behavior is the problem. A coach gets curious about what the behavior is connected to.
Before You Label the Behavior
Here is a simple reflection tool leaders can use before turning behavior into a conclusion.
First, name what you actually observed.
This sounds obvious, yet many feedback conversations skip this step. “She lacks confidence” is not an observation. “She did not speak during the meeting” is an observation. “He is indecisive” is not an observation. “He asked for another day before making a recommendation” is an observation. The cleaner the observation, the more useful the conversation becomes.
Second, notice the story you are adding.
What are you making the behavior mean? What leadership norm are you using to evaluate it? What kind of confidence do you tend to reward? What kind of ambition do you tend to notice? What kind of communication feels most credible to you? Every leader has a lens. The goal is not to have no lens. The goal is to know when your lens may be too narrow.
Third, ask what might be underneath.
The behavior could be connected to a value, a cultural norm, a family system, a personality style, a past experience, a pressure response, a skill gap, a lack of psychological safety, or a real performance issue. The point is not to excuse the behavior. The point is to understand it accurately.
Fourth, ask what the behavior may be protecting, expressing, or honoring.
This question often changes the entire conversation. A person may be protecting trust, expressing humility, honoring respect, protecting belonging, expressing discernment, honoring family, protecting energy, or honoring integrity. Once you understand that, development becomes less about erasing something and more about translating it.
Finally, decide what needs to change and what needs to be preserved.
Sometimes the behavior is working. Sometimes it is limiting impact. Sometimes the person needs clearer expectations. Sometimes the environment needs to become safer. Sometimes the person needs skill-building. Sometimes the leader needs to challenge their own assumptions.
The best leadership development conversations hold both questions at once:
- What needs to change so this person can be more effective?
- What needs to be preserved so this person does not have to abandon themselves in order to grow?
Growth Without Self-Abandonment
The goal is not to become more corporate. The goal is to become more effective without losing what matters most.
A person who values harmony does not need to become combative. They may need to learn how to disagree with clarity and care. A person who values humility does not need to become performative. They may need to learn how to make their impact visible in service of the work. A person who values respect does not need to become rebellious. They may need to learn how to offer a thoughtful challenge upward. A person who values family does not need to prove dedication through constant availability. They may need to communicate priorities, capacity, and commitments more clearly.
This is where values-congruent behavior change matters. Self-Determination Theory and self-concordance research both point to a similar idea: people are more likely to sustain change when it is connected to autonomy, internal motivation, and values they actually endorse. In practical leadership terms, behavior change sticks better when people can see themselves in it.
Research on authenticity at work reinforces this point. One study of 867 workers found that authenticity at work predicted higher job satisfaction and lower burnout. That makes intuitive sense. People can technically “fit” into an environment and still feel alienated from themselves inside it.
That is why growth without self-abandonment is not just a nice phrase. It is a leadership development standard.
When leaders learn to look beneath behavior, they do not lower the bar. They make development more precise. They help people build credibility, performance, and trust in ways that are sustainable because those behaviors are connected to who the person actually is.
The next time you find yourself labeling someone’s behavior, pause long enough to ask:
- What did I actually observe?
- What story am I adding?
- What might this behavior be protecting, expressing, or honoring?
- What needs to change?
- What needs to be preserved?
- What kind of support would actually help?
That last question matters because not every development need requires the same kind of support.
- Sometimes the right next step is a mentor who can offer a path.
- Sometimes it is a sponsor who can create access.
- Sometimes it is training, clearer expectations, or a manager willing to adjust the environment.
- Sometimes it is therapy or EAP support when the issue is tied to grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, or persistent emotional distress.
- And sometimes it is coaching, especially when someone needs to understand what a behavior is protecting, expressing, or honoring and translate that value into a more effective way of leading.
That pause may change the feedback you give. It may change the support you offer. It may change how someone sees their own growth. And it may help you recognize leadership potential you would otherwise miss.
Behavior is what we see. Values are often what drive it. Before we label the behavior, we owe people, and our organizations, the discipline of looking a little deeper.