Leadership Doesn’t Begin with the Goal – It Begins with You
We live in language like fish in water: born into it, moving through it – and that’s why we barely notice it.
I experienced this firsthand. For years I commuted between Germany and Singapore – until I finally moved. Physically I was there; emotionally I stayed in Germany. My inner dialogue was dominated by judgments: right/wrong, good/bad. Everything that didn’t match my expectations met resistance, which I located “out there.” That made it nearly impossible for me to be happy in Singapore.
It was only through my wife’s support and effective coaching that something began to shift. Not because the circumstances “out there” changed, but because I started seeing myself as part of the problem – and therefore as part of the solution. The resistance wasn’t in Singapore. It was in me: in my narratives, my judgments, my language. I was not yet free to be-with the situation in the way it was asking to be met.
That is where effective leadership begins: not as a technique, but as an invitation to encounter yourself in the midst of the situation – on the playing field, not from the stands.
The Inner Game
In 1974, Timothy Gallwey captured something in The Inner Game of Tennis that reaches far beyond sport: performance rarely fails for lack of ability. It fails for lack of inner freedom – through automatic judgments and the urge to control yourself instead of simply being present, free to be-with the situation as it unfolds.
You know this. The presentation where you’re more concerned with how you’re coming across than with what you’re saying. The conversation where you’re already forming your response before the other person has finished speaking. The relationship where “being right” has replaced “being connected.” You’re running on autopilot and calling it “that’s just who I am.”
Under pressure, when inner tension rises, we contract. Old self-images, familiar moods, well-worn reactions take the wheel. Not because we lack knowledge, but because in that moment we’re not free to respond effectively – not free to be-with the situation in the way it calls for.
Know Thyself
Above the temple at Delphi was an inscription: Gnothi seauton – know thyself. Not a piece of friendly advice, but a radical demand. Socrates made it the core of his method: don’t instruct; ask. Don’t provide answers; uncover assumptions.
Effectiveness begins where you’re willing to see yourself as part of what’s happening – not merely as an observer of circumstances. In The Matrix, it’s about the choice between the blue pill and the red pill. The red pill isn’t a solution – it’s the willingness to recognize your own involvement. Only then can action be more than reaction.
The Underrated Key Competency
Bill George and Peter Sims identify self-awareness as one of the most important leadership capabilities.¹ The Korn Ferry Institute points to data linking self-awareness to company performance.²
This is not about self-development as an end in itself. Self-clarity serves better judgment. Inner freedom raises the quality of decisions under pressure. Self-awareness is not the goal of effective leadership – it is the precondition. Those who don't recognize their patterns scale them into teams and organizations. Unreflected inner context produces leadership errors, cultural distortions, and repetitive loops.
Yet many development programs still focus primarily on knowledge transfer – as though change happens because people “know more.” But the bottleneck is rarely knowledge. It’s context: the invisible background from which we think, feel, and act. I've found that the smartest most experienced people in the room are often the ones most certain that their problem lies “out there,” and that they are "right." And that very certainty is the blind spot.
When Real Change Begins
Chris Argyris and Donald Schön distinguish two kinds of learning. In single-loop learning you correct actions, fix errors, adjust processes. In double-loop learning you question your context – the assumptions that generate your actions in the first place. Why do I think this way? What rule is driving me here? What am I holding as true without examining it?
In practice this is uncomfortable, because defences surface immediately. Argyris describes how people frequently respond to such questions in counterproductive ways.³ We see the patterns with crystal clarity in others – and miss them in ourselves.
As I shared in the beginning, I did this for a long time myself. I was convinced the circumstances were the problem. A turning point came when my coach asked me: “What are your results showing you about your context?”
Marcus Marsden puts it this way:
“In fact, looking at results is the only way to reveal context. Context creates content (results). Content reveals context.”⁴
The question did not change my circumstances. It opened a different way of being-with the situation — and with that opening, my possibilities for response widened. As long as you’re convinced the problem lies “out there,” you’re defending – mostly unconsciously – the very context that keeps producing similar results.
This doesn't mean that all problems reside in your own context. Organizations face real constraints: dysfunctional incentive systems, power asymmetries, poor appointments, toxic structures. Inner work doesn't replace structural analysis. Good leadership requires both: self-reflection on your own context and sober analysis of real systemic conditions. But without the willingness to see your own involvement, even the best analysis becomes a tool for self-confirmation.
Inner Freedom as Foundation
Martin Heidegger described what is at stake here in Being and Time. We find ourselves already “thrown” into a world shaped by interpretations, habits, and taken-for-granted assumptions. They form an invisible background that quietly determines what appears possible to us (context). Heidegger called this unconscious absorption in everyday life das Man: we do what “one” does, think what “one” thinks, and take it as our own.
He contrasted this with the possibility of Eigentlichkeit — authenticity in the deepest sense: the capacity to step out of this drift and take ownership of one’s own being. Not as a single heroic act, but as an ongoing movement – again and again opening oneself to the situation and responding from one’s own possibility.
This is what I mean by inner freedom. Not freedom from something, but freedom for something: for what the situation needs right now.
In concrete terms, inner freedom shows itself in a leader's capacity, even under pressure, to distinguish perception from interpretation, to receive criticism without immediate self-defense, to make conscious choices between impulse and action, to consider others' perspectives, to endure short-term emotional discomfort in favor of long-term responsibility, and to hold both decision and relationship in view at the same time. Understood this way, inner freedom is not a philosophical luxury – it is one of the hardest leadership competencies there is.
Heidegger also emphasized that every interpretation is accompanied by a mood – and moods are “predispositions for action.” Under pressure our moods narrow, and with them what we see as possible. Development here means regaining access to the possibilities that open up when you are truly present to the situation.
Humberto Maturana supported this from a biological perspective: we don’t respond to “the world” directly, but always through our internal structure. The same situation produces entirely different reactions in different people – not because of the situation, but because of their inner wiring. And that wiring is changeable.
Lisa Feldman Barrett confirms this from a neuroscientific angle: emotions are not hardwired reactions but actively constructed by the brain. Imagine your proposal gets rejected in a meeting. Your heart beats faster. If you interpret that through a context of “I’m not being taken seriously,” shame or anger might arise. If you interpret it through a context of “The team needs more information,” motivation and curiosity might arises. The same bodily sensation – but entirely different realities. The difference lies in the language through which you interpret the situation.
Heidegger later wrote:
“Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell.”⁵
Language doesn’t simply describe what is. It shapes what becomes possible. Fernando Flores took up this insight in his doctoral work at UC Berkeley, connecting it with Maturana’s structural determinism and John Searle’s speech act theory – a central contribution to an understanding of leadership that starts not with behavior, but with being.
Leadership as Natural Self-Expression
When you understand leadership this way, it is neither a position nor a toolkit. It is a relationship – with yourself, with others, and with the situation. And the quality of that relationship depends on how free you are to be-with what emerges.
People rarely fail in leadership situations because they lack knowledge. They fail because, in the moment, they are not free to be-with what emerges. Under pressure, patterns, moods, and old self-images take over. You become constricted, reactive, defensive – and lead from a context you have not consciously chosen.
And this context doesn't stay with you. It scales. In leadership, personal fear of letting go becomes micromanagement. Inner uncertainty becomes conflict avoidance or harshness. Unconscious control logic becomes bureaucracy. Unresolved insecurity becomes performative politics. The need for approval becomes unclear prioritization. What begins as a personal pattern on the individual level shapes culture, decision-making processes, and what people consider sayable and doable at the team and organizational level.
Inner freedom means having access, in any moment, to what the situation calls for. From that, effectiveness arises; leadership becomes a natural expression of who you are.
This kind of leadership does not begin with the question, “What should I do?” but with a more fundamental one: “Who am I being in this situation?” It requires less rigid planning and more presence. Less control, more clarity. Not a role to perform, but the freedom to be-with the situation as it unfolds.
What It Comes Down To
I began this article with the image of a fish in water. But as the saying goes, there is more to it than meets the eye. We are born into language, and language surrounds us. Development begins when we learn to step back and see the language — and the stories — we live in. Only then can we work more consciously with this creative force that shapes our existence.
As Bill George and Peter Sims describe it:
“It is your story that matters, not the mere facts of your life. Our life stories are like permanent tapes playing in our heads.”⁶
We are not human beings. We are human becomings – in a never-ending dance of learning, growing, and unfolding. Much of the world we live in is shaped by the stories and beliefs we have authored. Yet because we have forgotten that we are their authors, we have also forgotten that we can change them, transcend them, or let them go.
Notice. Take responsibility. Choose consciously.
Time for You
Where in your life are you currently running on autopilot – and calling it “that’s just who I am”? And what might become possible if, in that moment, you were truly free to be-with what emerges?
¹ Cf. Bill W. George and Peter E. Sims: True North – Discover Your Authentic Leadership, Jossey-Bass Inc., 2007, p. 69.
² Korn Ferry Institute, 2015, Newsroom
³ Cf. Chris Argyris: Reasoning, Learning, and Action. Individual and Organizational, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982.
⁴ Marcus Marsden, Start with Who: Reveal the Hidden Power of Identity to Create a Purposeful Life, Candid Creation Publishing LLP, 2022, p. 59.
⁵ Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism (1949), in: Pathmarks, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 239.
⁶ Bill W. George and Peter E. Sims: True North – Discover Your Authentic Leadership, Jossey-Bass Inc., 2007, p. 15.