What If Your Leadership Certainty Is Wrong

You can’t lead well if you’re constantly guessing what people “meant”. We dig into the assumption trap that shows up in everyday leadership moments and turns normal human behaviour into labels like disengaged, difficult, lazy, or resistant. When we let those stories run the show, we don’t just misread one person, we start building a culture based on suspicion instead of clarity.

We walk through real workplace scenarios leaders wrestle with all the time: someone is late, someone misses a deadline, someone goes quiet in meetings, or someone pushes back on change. Instead of defaulting to motive, we talk about what might actually be happening: unclear norms, mismatched expectations, caregiving demands, stress, fear, low confidence, or a lack of psychological safety. We also unpack how “common sense” differs across jobs and backgrounds, and why the loudest voice in the room isn’t always the best idea, especially when introverts and internal processors need space to think.

We also connect the dots to burnout and performance. When priorities are unclear and everything is urgent, people’s brains narrow under stress and creativity drops, making innovation an impossible ask. Our big takeaway is simple and hard: curiosity is a leadership skill you can build, and the questions you choose become the employee experience. If you’re ready to lead with more clarity and less mind reading, listen now, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave an honest review.

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Transcript

Welcome And Series Setup

Dr. Katie 0:00

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Path to Leadership. I'm Dr.

Rhonda Jolyean 0:03

Katie and I'm Rhonda Jolene.

Dr. Katie 0:06

And we're so thrilled to have you here. Thank you everyone for listening and for sharing. And I am so excited to continue these conversations on the stories we tell ourselves.

Rhonda Jolyean 0:18

Well, this conversation specifically, I think you're going to bring a lot of interesting conversation, interesting examples. I have a few from my past, and I know that people will be intrigued because a lot of us are working through team dynamics, and it's hard enough to control the stories in our heads. We definitely can't control the stories in our teams. So yeah.

Dr. Katie 0:52

Absolutely. And I, as we were preparing for this episode, I think so much about my clients that I work with all the time. And I'm constantly having to challenge their assumptions on their teams, their peers, their supervisors, everything, because it's so easy, as we've talked about in the last two episodes. If you haven't listened to those, pop back and listen to those. You don't have to have listened to those to listen to this one, but we tell ourselves so many stories that it's easy in leadership for us to go down

How Leader Stories Shape Culture

Dr. Katie 1:25

this drain sometimes as well.

Rhonda Jolyean 1:28

Yes. And it's easier for us to, as leaders, if we have awareness about this, to then be able to have a jumping off point for growth and to change stories as we'd like.

Dr. Katie 1:40

Yeah. Yeah. And I think about when we think about leaders, thinking about, you know, how often do we just make an assumption that an employee doesn't care about something, or assume that someone's resistant to change, or label them as being difficult, or, you know, all the different things. Leaders tell themselves stories that ending up end up shaping culture in a positive or negative way.

Rhonda Jolyean 2:08

Yes. And I think that this is a good time to bring back something that you had mentioned a few episodes ago. And I was really thankful for it. For this conversation, Katie and I can only bring our own experiences, and that is of two white privileged women from the Midwest of a certain age, 40s and 50. And we will never have the experiences of people who have other colored skin, other disabilities, who live elsewhere in other countries, etc. So please keep that in mind when listening. And we would love to hear other stories and other perspectives. So we will be able to only have that many experiences

Privilege Lens And Invite Other Views

Rhonda Jolyean 2:55

when going through this. So and if you do have other perspectives, we would love to hear it. So please write in, DM us. We would be happy to have those conversations.

Dr. Katie 3:05

Yeah, yeah. It would be great. Because I just know the, you know, I know the common things that I see in the workforce of exactly, you know, people feeling employees are disengaged and so they don't care. And it's like, well, but what, but why? Why are they disengaged? Or, you know, they're not committed to the organization. But but why are they not? Right. Yeah. I think there's so much to that.

Rhonda Jolyean 3:32

Yes. And we will never, I mean, we'll never be Gen Z. So we'll never have that perspective. We will never have the perspective of somebody who has to work three jobs because they are a single parent, etc. So again, take that for what it's worth when listening to this episode.

Dr. Katie 3:50

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And you know, it's interesting as you were thinking, yeah, as you mentioned that yesterday, Abby and I were leaving the house and we were heading out of our neighborhood, and there was a wreck. Thankfully, it wasn't super serious, but

A Wreck And The Cost Of Assumptions

Dr. Katie 4:05

it was a woman in a minivan who appeared to be a mom making some assumptions, but she had car seats in the car. So a mom. And then there was a kind of older gentleman, and he was in an Amazon vest, and you know, his car was full of Amazon packages. And I told Abby, I said, My heart just hurts for both of them. Whatever happened, because you know, the the mom, you know, maybe she's running her kids to school or whatever. And then the Amazon driver, you know, he's he's that's his job is to deliver packages and with a wrecked car, how does that impact his life and impact what he's doing and his family? And you know, there's just so much that that happened in that moment that my heart was just aching for for both of them.

Rhonda Jolyean 4:56

Well, hopefully he had a leader, and and maybe this person has a job that she went to as well, that they had leaders who were thinking outside of themselves and didn't have made-up stories in their head that were negative. Yeah. But you know, you never know. So I know we're gonna talk about things like the assumption trap and other things. So yeah, I'm excited to hear about some other examples that you know from your experiences.

Dr. Katie 5:25

Yeah, and I the the assumption trap is something we all fall into, right?

The Assumption Trap In Leadership

Dr. Katie 5:30

We we just fill in the rest of the stories. We've talked about this, and so if someone is late for work, the you know, we could the assumption is they're not committed or that they're lazy or that they're irresponsible, or really the truth may be that they're a caregiver and that they were waiting for home health to show up before they could leave the house. It could be, as a mom, I know my kids only got sick on the way to school. Like they never got sick at convenient times. It was either after hours when the doctor was closed or on the way to school, right? And so then you're having to double back into, you know, trying to get everything done. And so it's easy to make an assumption on why someone's not showing up on time, but it is important to understand what's what is the real problem, what it what really is happening.

Rhonda Jolyean 6:22

Yeah, I think another assumption that's interesting is that they should already know that they should show up on time because some people, and I'm not gonna label I'm not gonna label anything, but I think some people could have thought that the policy that there wasn't a policy. So if they don't know, that could also be not you know their fault because they didn't know it was a policy. So we have to understand what's not only what's really happening, but also, you know, instead of making assumptions, we have to get to the root of what is happening.

Dr. Katie 7:00

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's interesting too, like thinking about policies and just even like behavioral norms at work. I always say common sense isn't common, and that's not like it's 14 degrees outside, put on a coat, but it's like how I grew up in business and how you grew up in business is wildly different. And so I may have spent the majority of my career in a business that was super flexible, and you did come and go, and you didn't have a hard set start time. And if if I come into the business and no one ever says that to me, I'm gonna think everything's fine.

Rhonda Jolyean 7:36

Totally.

Dr. Katie 7:38

Yeah. So well, and and the other thing, the the resistance, that someone's resistant. They're resistant to change,

Policies Norms And Being Late

Dr. Katie 7:45

they're resistant to get in line, they're resistant. I I'm always curious, like, what's the what's the resistance? And for me, is it resistance? Let's let's go back to the emotion wheel, emotional, emotions wheel, we talked about many, many episodes ago. Like, what are their emotions? Are they resistant? Are they scared? Are they intimidated? Do they have some imposter scenes? Like, why are they resistant? What yes, what is the dot dot dot to that?

Rhonda Jolyean 8:11

Yes. As someone who has been a behavior change strategist for many changes, I can tell you that somebody isn't just flat out resistant to all things. It is either certain things and or they have specific feelings about specific things. So whereas they might be resistant to a computer software change, they might be scared of going to see a new doctor because of health insurance change, but they that same resistance might show up because of it. You know, so you have to, like you said, you have to get to what is actually happening.

Dr. Katie 8:56

Yeah. And I think leaders are trying to interpret behaviors without understanding the causes. Uh, and so we're not seeing the real, the

Resistance Has A Real Emotion

Dr. Katie 9:05

real root of of what's happening.

Rhonda Jolyean 9:08

Yes. Yeah.

unknown 9:10

Yeah.

Dr. Katie 9:11

Well, and I was gonna say, you know, when we think about what really could be happening, you know, maybe if an employee is really quiet in a meeting and the leader's story that they're telling themselves is they're not engaged, they're not interested. But we know that there's a lot of other alternatives to that story.

Rhonda Jolyean 9:28

Oh, yeah. Like the example I used last time of, you know, who knows what's happening at home.

unknown 9:35

Yeah.

Dr. Katie 9:35

Yeah.

Rhonda Jolyean 9:36

Yeah.

Dr. Katie 9:36

Yeah. Well, and you know, we've talked about psychological safety. Maybe they don't feel safe to speak up. Maybe they don't feel confident. I love my introverts as I am an extrovert. I love my introverts. Internal processing. I I always in meetings, I always such a big word. I often time, I try always, but sometimes fail, to identify introverts and extroverts in internal processors and external processors because we just assume that the loudest people in the room have the best ideas when really those introverts are processing and and getting the information down before they speak up.

Rhonda Jolyean 10:14

That's so true. I worked with somebody once who I never could understand why he never spoke up in meetings because he had great ideas. And I worked with him for I want to say eight years, and he never ever spoke up in meetings or hardly ever. And that was just his personality. He didn't, you know, he knew that there were just louder people in the meetings, i.e. me. And you know, but I would always, you know, knock it over and say, like, hey, this person has an idea. But the yeah, some people just don't want to fight with the louder people in the room, and that's okay. And so I love that idea of trying to identify those people and really getting to the heart of what do people prefer and what is really happening so that you as a leader can make those adjustments as needed.

Dr. Katie 11:12

Yeah, I think it's so important. And another scenario I see all the time and think about all the time is when employees miss deadlines, right? It's a leader can easily say, well, they're not accountable or they don't care about the work or that they're not reliable. But really, I I see this with clients all the time where they there's lack of clarity or lack of prioritizing. If everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. And

Quiet In Meetings Is Not Apathy

Dr. Katie 11:40

so everyone's trying to spin a hundred different plates, so they can't get anything done because everything's being asked of them.

Rhonda Jolyean 11:48

Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Katie 11:51

And and also, we've talked about this before, you know, the having difficult conversations, their supervisors aren't having difficult conversations with them to understand, and they're not having difficult conversations back, which can cause so many issues in the workplace. And so we're never gonna get our stories straight if we just get mad and avoid them.

Rhonda Jolyean 12:13

Yes, and difficult conversations are difficult for a reason. Right. And we always say humans are hard, and we have to have those difficult conversations, specifically if you're gonna be a people manager. That just comes along with it, and humans are very hard. And when it comes to people who might be missing deadlines or having quote unquote behavioral issues in the workplace, it can also be due to stress. So we've talked about this before, but our brains, when we encounter stress, one of the things that happens is not only do we have that negativity bias, but we get so focused and so everything becomes narrow. Our perspective becomes so focused on one thing just to try to help us survive, that our creativity basically gets shut down. So if you're expecting people to speak up in meetings and have creative ideas and be innovative and be happy and jovial all the time, that's not going to happen. When you have several plates that you're spinning and all of these priorities, and there's no clarity, that risk of burnout when it comes to that narrowing focus and that lack of creativity, that is an impossible ask for leaders to put on to their employees. There's no way that people are going to be productive and hit goals when they don't have the environment mentally, physically, psychologically around them to be able to expand those possibilities and to grow creatively. So it's up to us as leaders to really help provide

Missed Deadlines Clarity And Priorities

Rhonda Jolyean 14:10

that space. Gone are the days where it's just hey, pleasantries, sign checks, do expense reports, etc. We really have to holistically help our team to thrive in the workplace.

Dr. Katie 14:27

We do. And and part of that being holistic is we have to stay curious, right? As leaders, the best leaders stay curious. They ask the questions what am I assuming? What information am I missing? What conversations have I not had? I always used to say when I did HR full-time, the first time that an employee didn't get the job done or didn't hit the mark or didn't whatever. My first question was shame on us. Like, what did we not communicate effectively? What did we not provide? What did we not do? And how can we help them be successful? And I think so often we fall to certainty, right? I was clear. You know, I gave them the deadlines. Did you? And do you stand firm in your deadlines or do you constantly move the goalposts, goal, goalposts because other priorities? Like all of those things. And I think that certainty gets in the way of us really understanding the stories that that we're imposing on our teams.

Rhonda Jolyean 15:29

I completely agree. And it's hard to be curious when you're making assumptions and when you have stories going on in your head yourself. So if you're curious about yourself and your own stories, you'll get better at the patterns that your brain gets used to at questioning your own stories. Then you'll be able to then question the stories that you tell about your team. So then curiosity will become more of a muscle memory for your brain. Just like we build up our physical muscles, curiosity can be something that we work at and that we build on, which that gives me hope. Truly.

Dr. Katie 16:13

Yeah, me too. Me too. And I think, you know, as leaders really lean into this and really understand this, they understand why it's so important. Because what we tell people often, how we behave, how we treat people, that's what becomes the culture of employee experience. Like it's we set the

Stress Narrows Focus And Fuels Burnout

Dr. Katie 16:35

tone as leaders. And if we're constantly living in, we talked about last episode, negativity bias or confirmation bias, or if we're constantly looking at the bad in people, we're going to create a very toxic culture for the organization that can be very damaging, not just for our team, but overall.

Rhonda Jolyean 16:58

Gotta take care of ourselves and then be able to take care of our team.

Dr. Katie 17:04

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, and so this was a short and sweet episode. And just because it's short doesn't mean that it's not wildly important because it is. And next week's episode, we're gonna talk about how do we rewrite the stories that no longer serve us? How do we create healthier narratives for ourselves and for our teams? So make sure as you listen to the first three parts of this series and you're like, okay, so what? What am I gonna do about this? Next episode is gonna be all about that.

Rhonda Jolyean 17:38

Yeah, I would ask people to really think about a story. You know, we've asked people to think about stories that you've learned from your childhood or that a mentor has told you, or that you've taken from a partner, etc. Things about individuals. Maybe this week, observe what you are telling yourself about your team or what your team, the stories that go around in the team, maybe that you witness from peer to peer. Then that way, when we talk about rewriting those stories, you'll have an example that you can hold in your head while we're talking about that. I think that would really help people out. I'm gonna come up with a couple stories that I've seen in companies that I've worked with and for. And I know Katie, you always have great examples. So we can talk through that, and then that might also spark some ideas for folks.

Dr. Katie 18:28

Yeah, yeah. I have I have several. Like I started the episode, I am constantly challenging the amazing leaders that I'm fortunate to work with. I'm constantly challenging them on this thinking. And so I'm really excited to share some of those and quite frankly, some of the hard work that they do and that that I have done that has really re-rewired how we how we lean into this.

Rhonda Jolyean 18:54

Oh,

Build Curiosity And Own The Culture

Rhonda Jolyean 18:55

I'm excited for the next episode. I need to rewrite some stories, so I'm gonna be taking notes.

Dr. Katie 19:04

Very good, very good. Well, like I said, short and sweet, but not not because it's not important. So thank you everyone for joining us. Please share this podcast. I would imagine that you're listening to this and you have people on mind. Feel free to share it with them. Clarity is kindness, feedback is a gift, all the things that Rhonda sometimes loves and sometimes doesn't.

unknown 19:30

Yeah.

Dr. Katie 19:30

But I will pass on the episode.

Rhonda Jolyean 19:33

Yeah, I mean, sharing it with somebody. I know these episodes I've shared with people that don't even want to hear about leadership, or you know, we always say everyone's a leader, but not everybody always believes that. And so they don't always listen to all of our episodes, but I know these specifically have been resonating with a lot of the female identifying people in our lives. And I think sending this to somebody you love and just saying, hey, you know, I know that we've talked about this on one of our dates or at a happy hour when we've had coffee, and maybe just thinking about how you can support each other in dismantling some of these stories is a really fun exercise in friendship.

Next Steps And Rewriting Narratives

Rhonda Jolyean 20:20

And or that's what I talk about with my friends. I don't know. I'm at that age.

Dr. Katie 20:25

Yeah, me too.

Rhonda Jolyean 20:27

So, but yeah, we appreciate the support. Please like and share and give us feedback, give us reviews, honest reviews. We appreciate the reviews and we are just so thankful for you. If you're listening, you are our audience, and we we just love you.

Dr. Katie 20:46

Yeah, we do, we do. Well, I as I there's so much more I want to say, but I'm not gonna ruin it for next episode. So I'm just gonna zip it in, bring the bring that for the next episode. So we will just say thank you everyone for listening. Have a fantastic week, and we'll talk to you next time on the paths of leadership. Bye, everyone. Bye.