I Got It Wrong. That’s When I Started Leading Right.

I had good intentions. That’s the part I keep coming back to. I wasn’t trying to control the process or shut anyone down. I thought I was helping. I thought I was making space for the team to move faster, think clearer, stay focused.

But I was wrong.

We were in the early stages of a high-pressure project. Big expectations, lots of visibility, and a real sense of urgency. Everyone was moving fast. Decisions needed to be made. And I noticed we were circling the same conversations again and again. So I stepped in.

I reframed the brief. I mapped out some possible directions. I cleaned up our board. And I did it all without really asking the team what they needed.

That’s where I slipped.

In my head, I was being proactive — a good lead, clearing the fog. But from the outside, I was steering without alignment. Shaping direction without bringing people with me. I wasn’t just moving fast — I was moving ahead. And it showed.

One of my teammates reached out privately and said something that stuck: “It feels like you’re solving for us before we’ve had a chance to solve together.”

That landed hard.

I sat with it for a while. And then I asked for time in our next sync to talk about it. No slides, no explanations. Just me owning it. I told them what I was trying to do, how it probably came across, and that I wanted to reset — with them, not for them.

It changed everything.

The dynamic shifted. People opened up. We started building shared context again. The tension I didn’t even fully realize I had caused started to ease. And we moved forward — slower, maybe, but better.

That moment taught me something I didn’t fully understand before: leadership isn’t about having the answers early. It’s about asking the right questions at the right time — and knowing when to get out of the way.

I still care about clarity and momentum. But I care even more about trust. And now I know that the fastest way to lose it is by trying to lead without listening.