Leadership becomes more visible as responsibility increases, but much of the information leaders need becomes less obvious. People become more careful about what they say, hierarchy influences whether problems are raised, operational demands compete for attention, and the people doing the most preventative work can become almost invisible precisely because nothing goes wrong. Meanwhile, leaders themselves are being watched far more closely than they sometimes realise, not only during presentations, meetings and formal decisions, but in the ordinary interactions between them.
Experience has made me more attentive to those signals, although I am wary of claiming that noticing something means I have understood it correctly. A quiet meeting may indicate frustration, fear or disengagement, but people may simply be tired. Someone hesitating before raising a concern may be responding to the leader’s previous behaviour, but cultural expectations about hierarchy may also be influencing their decision. A colleague describing a problem may want advice, reassurance, an opportunity to speak freely or simply enough space to work out what they think.
The challenge is that leadership requires us to pay attention without becoming overconfident about what we believe we have seen. Ignoring quiet signals means missing information that could help us understand people and organisations more effectively, while interpreting every signal too quickly risks creating explanations that are more about the leader’s assumptions than the reality of the situation.
After many years in leadership, I increasingly think that experience is partly about learning to notice more while assuming less.
What People Learn From Being Around You
I have always tried to encourage people to bring problems to me. Staff have sometimes hesitated because they knew I had a lot on my plate, but my response has generally been that dealing with difficult issues is part of my job. I would rather know about something and decide how to handle it than discover later that someone deliberately protected me from information because they thought I was too busy.
However, approachability is more complicated than simply telling people that the door is open. During my time working in Africa, I experienced a situation where people chose not to bring an important problem to me. The issue directly affected me and my family, yet those involved were reluctant to say anything because I was the senior leader and they did not want to worry me.
My initial perspective was straightforward. There were two reasons they should have spoken to me. First, the issue needed to be raised with me as their leader, and second, it affected me personally as a member of the family involved. From my cultural perspective, withholding that information did not make sense.
Their intentions, however, were good. They believed they were showing respect and consideration, and their understanding of hierarchy, responsibility and care was different from mine. The experience reminded me that leaders can work hard to make themselves approachable and still misunderstand why people choose not to approach them. What feels like avoidance or unnecessary deference to one person may feel like respect to another.
That does not remove the need to address the issue. We had the conversation and I explained why I needed people to bring things to me, both professionally and personally. What mattered was recognising that changing the behaviour required understanding where it had come from rather than assuming people had acted irresponsibly.
Approachability is also communicated through much smaller interactions. Giving someone your attention sounds simple, yet leaders regularly undermine it without intending to. A phone rings, an email appears, someone passes the window or another person arrives at the door with something that will apparently take only a minute.
I have become more conscious of not looking at my phone when I am speaking with someone, although there are occasions when I need to explain that a particular call has to be answered. The more difficult situations are often when a senior colleague arrives while I am already meeting with someone and attempts to begin another conversation. The interruption is usually introduced as something quick, but allowing it sends a message to the person already in the room about whose time and concerns matter most.
I have had to become clearer about protecting those conversations. If I am with someone, I am with them. Unless the matter is genuinely urgent, the person interrupting can speak to my PA, leave a message or trust that I will return to them. That boundary can occasionally feel uncomfortable, particularly when the person waiting is more senior, but repeatedly abandoning one person’s time because someone with greater status has arrived teaches everyone involved something about how the organisation really works.
Leaders are always teaching people how to approach them, what will receive their attention and whose concerns are likely to take priority. Much of that teaching happens without any deliberate intention from the leader.
I learned that lesson very quickly when I first moved into leadership. Within my first week, I was making mistakes, and fortunately someone was willing to tell me directly that I was getting something badly wrong and needed to change what I was doing. I still make mistakes and expect to continue making them because experience does not remove human error, poor judgement or the possibility of handling something badly.
The difference is what happens next. Leaders can spend their energy defending the decision, explaining their intentions and protecting their credibility, or they can acknowledge the mistake and do something differently. One of the principles I have returned to repeatedly is simple: do not prove it, improve.
People notice which option a leader chooses. They notice how you react when challenged, whether you thank people, how you behave after difficult meetings, whether you keep promises and how you treat people who can do nothing to advance your career. Leadership is visible in far more moments than leaders control, which means credibility is built less through managing impressions and more through behaving consistently when you have forgotten anyone is paying attention.
Notice More, Assume Less
One of the most useful sources of information in an organisation is the atmosphere around people, although it is also one of the easiest to misinterpret. The mood before a meeting begins, the way people respond when someone enters a room, unusual silence, changes in body language and the absence of conversations that would normally take place can all tell a leader that something may be happening.
The important word is may.
I would never walk into a room, notice an atmosphere and immediately address it as though I knew what everyone was thinking. I could be completely wrong, and announcing that people appear unhappy, disengaged or angry may create a problem that did not previously exist. Noticing an atmosphere gives me a reason to pay attention, not permission to diagnose it publicly.
Sometimes I investigate afterwards by speaking with people and trying to understand whether anything needs attention. At other times, I leave it alone because people are allowed to be disappointed, frustrated or a bit miffed without leadership turning every emotional response into an issue requiring intervention.
Where there is an obvious reason for the atmosphere, I may acknowledge the situation without telling people how they feel. Something has happened, it would be understandable if people were feeling angry, disappointed or unsettled, and if anyone wants to talk further, they know where I am. That creates an opportunity for conversation without requiring people to accept my interpretation of their emotions.
The same caution matters when people come to leaders with problems. One of the easiest mistakes to make is to begin solving the problem before understanding what the person actually needs. A colleague starts describing a difficult situation and, because leaders are accustomed to making decisions and resolving issues, we begin offering advice before they have finished explaining what happened.
Over time, I have become more willing to make the purpose of the conversation explicit. Knowledge of the person and their body language can provide clues, but rather than relying entirely on those clues, I might say that it sounds as though they want some advice, that they seem to need reassurance, or that I can see something is weighing heavily on them and they are welcome to speak freely. The important distinction is that I am offering an interpretation they can correct rather than deciding what they need on their behalf.
Not every problem requires a solution from the leader. Sometimes people need to think aloud, test their own reasoning or simply speak without being interrupted. Becoming helpful too quickly can prevent leaders from becoming useful.
The need to notice carefully also extends beyond the people who report directly to us. I once observed someone being spoken to by their line manager in a way that concerned me. I did not directly manage the person involved, and I did not know enough about the wider context to intervene immediately or assume that my interpretation was correct.
Instead, I checked in privately and asked how the meeting had been for them. Their initial response gave me an indication that there might be more to discuss, so I explained what I thought I had observed, asked them to correct me if I was wrong and gave them the choice of whether they wanted to talk about it.
They did.
The situation had not been enjoyable, and what I had seen was not an isolated experience. What stayed with me was the importance of creating the opportunity for someone to speak without forcing my interpretation onto them. Leaders need to notice how people are being treated by other leaders, because psychological safety can be damaged through individual relationships even when the wider organisation repeatedly claims to value openness, trust and respect.
When people watch a colleague being interrupted, dismissed, laughed at or made to feel foolish, they learn from the experience even if nothing was directed at them. They become more cautious about asking questions, offering ideas or admitting mistakes because they have seen what may happen to someone who takes that risk.
Fear of embarrassment can silence people long before fear of failure does. Leaders who want challenge, honesty and new ideas therefore need to pay attention not only to whether people are speaking, but to what happens when they do.
What Urgency Makes Invisible
One of my biggest regrets from earlier periods of leadership is allowing operational matters to push strategic thinking aside. There was always something immediate that needed attention, and the nature of leadership means that many of those issues were legitimate. Problems had to be solved, people needed answers, decisions had to be made and the organisation had to continue functioning.
The difficulty is that operational work provides immediate evidence of productivity. Something was wrong, you dealt with it and the problem disappeared. Strategic work rarely provides the same satisfaction because its impact is slower, less visible and easier to postpone. Developing people, strengthening systems, planning ahead and identifying problems before they grow can always be pushed into next week when something more urgent arrives today.
I have had to work deliberately on this because being busy is not evidence that a leader is spending time on the things that matter most. An organisation can become extremely efficient at reacting to problems while making very little progress towards preventing them.
That is one reason I have come to value the idea of relentless routines. Culture is not built through occasional speeches about expectations or values, but through the principles and behaviours leaders return to consistently enough that people know what will happen when something goes wrong.
For me, one of those repeated principles has been do not prove it, improve. When a mistake happens, the most useful question is rarely how we can demonstrate that we were right all along. The better question is what needs to become better because of what we have learned.
Repeated principles matter because culture develops through accumulation. Leaders reinforce expectations every time they follow through on a promise, challenge poor behaviour, recognise someone’s contribution, admit a mistake or respond consistently to a problem. They also shape culture through everything they repeatedly ignore.
The same issue of visibility affects the people whose work prevents problems. Organisations naturally notice the person who resolves a crisis because the problem and the solution are visible. The people who anticipated the difficulty, corrected an error, challenged a decision or prevented the crisis from happening may receive far less attention because there is nothing dramatic to remember.
I have been fortunate to work with PAs who have prevented me from making more mistakes than I probably realise. They have challenged communications, told me when something was wrong, corrected issues before they travelled further and provided a safeguard around my own leadership. Looking back, I am not sure I have always acknowledged that contribution as much as I could or should have.
The same is true of administrative staff, cleaners, maintenance teams and many other people whose work is most successful when nobody notices it. Rooms are ready, buildings function, systems work and problems disappear before they reach senior leaders. Their contribution can become invisible because competence often looks like nothing happening.
Experience has made me more conscious that recognition should not depend entirely on visibility. Some of the most valuable people in an organisation are not the ones repeatedly rescuing difficult situations, but those whose preparation, judgement and consistency mean fewer situations need rescuing in the first place.
Reducing The Space For Uncertainty
Earlier in my career, I spent far more time worrying about difficult conversations before they happened. I would imagine how someone might respond, rehearse arguments and consider the different ways the meeting could go wrong. Over time, preparation and experience have reduced much of that anxiety.
I now spend more of my reflective energy after the conversation, considering what went well, what I could have handled differently, whether I understood the other person properly and what needs to happen next. Proper planning helps because uncertainty becomes more manageable when I know why the meeting is happening, what needs to be discussed and what outcome I am trying to achieve.
Interestingly, I still experience the opposite side of this. When someone suddenly asks to meet me without explaining what the meeting is about, I can spend considerable time wondering why. The absence of information creates space for possibilities, and those possibilities are rarely reassuring.
That experience has made me more aware of what leaders create when they summon people to meetings without context, delay conversations unnecessarily or allow uncertainty to continue when a small amount of information could reduce it. There may be legitimate reasons why everything cannot be shared, but that is different from giving people nothing.
Uncertainty has a habit of growing in silence. People rehearse conversations that have not happened, interpret behaviour without enough information and imagine outcomes that may bear little resemblance to reality. Once a proper conversation begins, assumptions can be corrected, misunderstandings clarified and people can start working with facts rather than fears.
The same principle applies to mistakes. Leaders sometimes create uncertainty because people do not know whether an error will be acknowledged, hidden, defended or blamed on someone else. The response teaches people whether honesty is safe and whether taking responsibility is genuinely expected throughout the organisation or only from those without positional authority.
I learned within my first week of leadership that people were watching more closely than I realised, and I was fortunate that someone chose to tell me directly that I needed to change what I was doing. Years later, I still depend on people being willing to do that because leadership experience has not made me immune to poor decisions or mistakes.
What experience has changed is my understanding of how much information exists in the quieter moments around leadership. The colleague who hesitates before approaching, the person whose attention is repeatedly interrupted, the atmosphere before a meeting, the employee who stops contributing after watching someone else being embarrassed, the strategic work that keeps being postponed, the PA who prevents a mistake nobody will ever know about, and the anxiety created by a meeting invitation with no explanation all tell us something about how an organisation feels to the people inside it.
Not every signal requires intervention, and not every interpretation will be correct. Leaders can cause considerable damage by assuming that noticing something gives them complete understanding of it.
The responsibility is to remain curious enough to notice, cautious enough to question our assumptions and consistent enough to act when the pattern becomes clear. Over time, leadership may become less about having better answers and more about becoming better at recognising what deserves another question.
The quiet signals are always there. The challenge is learning which ones need our attention, which ones need more understanding and which ones simply need enough space for people to be human.
If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.