For several years, I worked with a client at its annual retreat. Each year, the CEO opened with an encouraging call for innovation, respect and psychological safety. The values sounded solid. In the sessions that followed, though, I heard how far those words were from some employees’ daily experience. By the next annual retreat, the same call was being made again.

A director eventually raised a difficult possibility: some of the uncertainty people experienced might be coming from the top.

I’ve heard versions of that concern from other leaders. One director told me recently that everything in their organization felt frenetic, no matter how carefully their team planned, because their CEO was frenetic. The leader’s pace became everyone’s pace. A sudden change of direction could unsettle a week’s work. The leader’s anxiety became everyone’s anxiety. (I explore more about this in my article Deciding from Anxiety, Deciding from Clarity: The Inner State Behind Every Call You Make.)

It can be hard to see this when you are responsible for the whole organization. You may be trying to stay close to the work and help people succeed. Meanwhile, managers begin checking decisions they could have made themselves. Meetings become opportunities to find out whether your priorities have changed. People spend more time anticipating your response than exercising their own judgement.

The View from Altitude Includes You

When we talk about leaders gaining altitude, we usually mean seeing the bigger picture: strategy, resources, competing demands and how the pieces fit together. That view also needs to include the conditions in which people are doing the work. Your presence is part of those conditions.

Under pressure, it is easy to lose sight of this. You check in more often, ask for another update or step into a decision that belongs to someone else. From your position, those actions may feel responsible. To the people doing the work, they can signal that you do not trust their judgement, or that the direction might change again.

In their HBR article “You Think You’re a Good Collaborator. Do the People You Manage Agree?”, authors Ivan Matviak and Heidi K. Gardner conducted research with 10,000 professionals and 400 senior leaders. They found that “the more senior the leader, the more likely they are to underestimate the degree to which they engage in two key behaviours that are detrimental to collaboration: dominating conversations and micromanaging.” What this looks like is a leader may step in to share expertise and protect the quality of the work, without realizing that people are speaking up less or waiting for approval. While the motivations may be well-intentioned or sound, the behaviours undermine the confidence and willingness of others to collaborate. Honest feedback about those habits also becomes harder to come by as leaders rise.

For leaders in health care, social services and government with complex stakeholder dynamics and regulatory or public accountability frameworks, the pressure can be particularly intense. Funding may be uncertain, needs may be rising and decisions may have consequences well beyond your organization. Your team does not need you to pretend those pressures have disappeared. They do need to know what matters most, where they have room to act and when you will stand behind their judgement.

Here are three ways to gain enough altitude to see how your presence is affecting the people you lead.

1. Ask about a specific moment

Where did I help people think clearly, and where might I have shut their thinking down?

A broad question such as “How am I doing?” rarely gets you the most useful answer. Instead, ask a trusted colleague about a recent meeting or decision. Did you step in before hearing other views? Did your questions invite discussion, or make people feel they needed to defend their work? Ask what they noticed, then listen without explaining your intentions.

Your intentions matter, but they cannot tell you the full story of your impact.

2. Check your state before you step in

What am I bringing into this conversation, and what will others pick up from it?

When a problem arrives on your desk, pause before responding. Are you clear about what needs your attention, or are you feeling the urge to make the discomfort go away? I describe this kind of brief self-check in my award-winning book Lead Conversations that Count. It takes only a few moments, but it can help you choose how to enter a conversation.

You may still need to act quickly. The pause helps you bring clarity to that action, rather than passing your anxiety through the organization.

3. Know when your authority is needed

Does this decision require me, or have I stepped into work someone else can own?

Some decisions need a senior leader’s direct involvement, particularly when safety, public trust or accountability is at stake. In other cases, the most useful thing you can do is ask, “What are you seeing? What options have you considered? What do you need from me?”

Then give people the authority to follow through. If every answer must travel back up to you, progress slows and capable people learn to wait.

You cannot control every pressure facing your organization. You can pay attention to what happens around you when you enter a room, ask a question or change course. Gaining altitude gives you a clearer view of the system you lead, including the part you play in it.

If you’d like to reflect on how you’re leading right now, The Altitude Check is a short self-assessment and a good place to start.