What Limits Your Leadership Success? Change Beliefs to Change Behaviors

Q1 2026 is almost complete. How is this quarter shaping up for you, professionally and personally? If you’ve been following the Reflection Calendar, make sure to answer these questions before the end of the month:

• “What do I need to do to manage my personal growth and professional development more effectively?”
• “What is important for me to develop going forward?”

☎️ Book a 20-minute Discovery Call and let’s answer those Quarterly Reflection Questions together!

Last week, I attended an HBR webinar by presenter and Executive Coach Muriel Wilkins titled The Hidden Blockers Limiting Your Leadership. She spoke about how deeply held beliefs shape how we act and can sometimes hold us back, becoming ‘hidden blockers’ and ultimately impacting how we lead.

They are hidden because leaders don’t always recognize how much these common beliefs/blockers can prevent them from achieving certain outcomes, “such as leading at scale with clarity or developing capacity”. Muriel declares that 7 blockers operate “quietly in the background” and must be “uncovered, unpacked, and unblocked”.

I think about my recent conversation with Sherri Simpson on the HR Mixtape Podcast (listen here) — and realize that, even though we both come from very different angles, Muriel and I landed in the same place: the biggest blockers to effective leadership aren’t external. They’re internal.

Here are the four combined takeaways for leaders to reflect upon. Do any of these resonate as an opportunity for you to manage your growth and development moving forward? Perhaps you need to change your beliefs before you can change your behaviors.

💡 The beliefs that once made you successful may now be the ones holding you back. 
Beliefs that served your leadership in the past and may have been key to your previous successes may no longer serve you, like “I need to be involved” and “I know I am right.” This is why I challenge the “all-knowing leader” myth — because certainty and control worked in a slower world, but not one defined by today’s constant change.

🧠 Leaders can’t just change their behavior. They have to change their beliefs. 
While it is possible to focus solely on changing behavior, the results are short-lived. To change outcomes sustainably, the assumptions and beliefs that underpin behavior must be aligned with the desired outcome. If you believe that you “must be involved” or “can’t make a mistake” or “have to be right”, your behaviors won’t change. Vulnerability is a part of authentic leadership.

🔍 Self-awareness is a powerful leadership tool. 
As a big proponent of matching internal with external self-awareness, I assert that leaders must build both to see how a belief is limiting them (remember how your staff and colleagues see you behave reflects your beliefs). Honest self-reflection and acting on external feedback — not one’s performance — is what authentic leadership actually looks like.

🎯 How leaders coach themselves determines how well they lead others. 
Murial notes that a leader’s ability and capacity to coach others is limited by the capacity with which they can coach themself. Their capacity to transform themself increases their capacity to transform an organization. This is the heart of the Self-Aware Leader work I do — and it’s exactly where growth begins.

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So, which of these takeaways resonates most with you right now? Are you willing to coach yourself to uncover, unpack and unblock your hidden blockers?

Here’s to bringing your best self forward,

Loretta