Most leaders I work with are obsessed with their achievements.
They track them, compare them, celebrate them, and quietly measure their worth by them. Achievements are loud. They show up on the dashboard, in the performance review, and on our resumes. So that is where almost all of a leader’s attention goes.
One step upstream of achievements are actions. The behaviors leaders know they need to change. The interrupting, the over-functioning, the saying yes too fast. They have been trying to change these behaviors for years, and the change never quite sticks.
One step upstream of actions are assumptions. The quiet beliefs running underneath every choice. Have you ever noticed how you assume that if you do not hold it together, everything will fall apart? Do you ever recognize that you assume your value comes from being the smartest in the room? If you don’t recognize how your assumptions drive your actions, you can get into a lot of trouble.
Upstream of all of it is attention. Where a leader’s focus lands in any given moment. What they notice, what they brush past, what they give weight to. Attention is the first cause of everything that follows, and it is the place almost no leader looks.
Attention drives assumptions. Assumptions drive actions. Actions drive achievements. This is the engine of our achievement, and most of us are completely unaware of its power.
Why leadership self-awareness has to start at the source
In my opinion, this is the subtle reason so many leadership development efforts fail.
Leaders set bigger goals and build better plans. They focus on action, but their assumptions haven’t moved. Their attention hasn’t moved either, so their actions snap right back to what they were, and the new outcome never arrives.
You cannot change the result without changing the behavior. You cannot change the behavior without changing the belief. And you cannot change the belief without first noticing where your attention has been all along.
The Scottish psychologist R.D. Laing once wrote:
“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
That is what real leadership self-awareness asks of a leader. We have to notice that we are failing to notice how our attention, assumptions, and actions shape everything. We have to be willing to look at the input, not just the output. We have to notice what we have been noticing, and question the assumptions we have been treating as facts.
That is where lasting change actually begins.
The self-awareness shift
The leaders who grow the most do not start with their achievements. They look upstream and pay attention to their attention.
They get curious about what captures their attention. They catch themselves when they are distracted, defensive, or disengaged. Then they examine the assumptions feeding those moments. From there, the actions begin to shift on their own. And the achievements follow, almost as a byproduct.
This week’s subtle shift
Shift your focus and choose to look upstream.
- If you normally push on achievements, move to actions. What is one behavior you know is holding you back?
- If you normally wrestle with actions, move to assumptions. What belief is keeping that behavior alive?
- If you are already working on assumptions, . Where does your focus go by default, and what would change if you pointed it somewhere else?
You do not need to work the whole chain this week. Just move one step upstream.
That is where a self-aware leader’s growth actually begins.
