A Leader’s Mindset: Why Most Management Problems Are Identity Gaps

What a leader’s mindset is, and why it comes before the tools

Most leadership problems look like skill gaps, and they are not. They are identity gaps. I saw it in a manager who knew exactly how to hold an expectations conversation and simply never held it. And I saw it in myself: last August I started writing 12 posts in two weeks and finished none. The ideas and the knowledge were there. I was not.

That is why it is worth starting not with a list of tools, but with the question of who you are as a manager, which values lead you, and how you see yourself inside the organization. When those answers are clear, the tools start to work. When they are not, even the best tool stays on paper.

The same logic applies to trying to imitate famous managers. You cannot copy Steve Jobs’s micromanagement of Apple’s design, or Jeff Bezos’s silent reading of a six-page memo at the start of every meeting, and call it your way. These are not tricks. They are part of those managers’ identities. The hard part of management is that it depends on you, on your beliefs and on your communication style.

The tool: self-examination before your managerial identity card

• What values lead me, and how should they be expressed in my current role?
• How am I perceived in the organization, compared with how I see myself?
• External mapping: Gallup’s CliftonStrengths assessment to find your five core themes, DISC to map your management style, and a questionnaire for colleagues and friends you trust, who will answer honestly and supportively.

Limiting beliefs: the story we tell ourselves

Almost every manager who hits a wall, whether from negative feedback or missed targets, gets stuck because of a limiting belief. One of the most common is “I can’t act like the ideal manager”: that mythical figure who always knows what to do, decides in a split second, and is assertive and charismatic. This belief is dangerous because it frees the manager from responsibility.

There are several fixed perceptions I meet again and again, and each has an answer:

• A good manager must be the most professional expert in the room. Leadership relies on teamwork, coordination, critical thinking and leading a process, skills unrelated to personal expertise.
• I must never show doubt or difficulty. Conscious vulnerability increases trust and adaptability.
• My role is to supply answers. Quality questions create systemic thinking and ownership.
• Conflict means something is wrong. A well-managed conflict is a condition for growth, innovation and good decisions.

A case from the field: in our first meeting a manager told me he was crazy and neurotic and needed to calm down. I asked for examples, and he listed ten at a dizzying pace: he must arrive prepared for every meeting, and in work plans he prepares a solution for every problem in advance. I reflected that he is actually managing risk and does not want to be surprised. He answered “yes” with excitement. That is called being proactive. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves is usually negative, and good questions can flip the interpretation.

The tool: three steps for working with a blocker

• Identify. Notice statements like “I wait to be invited,” “I avoid speaking in meetings unless asked,” or “I feel I have to prove I belong.”
• Understand. A blocker is not external circumstances and not a lack of technical skill. It is the story you tell yourself.
• Reframe and act. Instead of “if only I were more assertive,” phrase a specific challenge, for example “how do I become more sociable in order to build a network for my career,” and choose one small action. You start small and discover the demon isn’t so bad.

Impostor syndrome: why it doesn’t disappear with promotion

Impostor syndrome is a state in which people with proven achievements are convinced their success came from luck, or from an ability to fool others. The voices are familiar: “any minute now they’ll find me out,” “I’m not really good enough,” “I’m not one of them.”

A manager said exactly this to me just before a promotion to a senior management role. In front of me sat a brilliant, focused person with a proven record throughout his career, who for years had been waiting for someone to shout that the emperor has no clothes. I asked him about his ability to learn something new at supernatural speed and to separate the essential from the trivial. He objected: that is not a real talent, a senior manager needs strategic thinking. I told him that strategic thinking is exactly learning the problem, understanding what is essential and what is trivial, and focusing on the essential.

What the research says. The term was coined in 1978 by Clance and Imes, who described high-achieving women. A 2011 review by Sakulku and Alexander estimates that about 70% of people will experience at least one episode of the phenomenon during their lifetime. Two myths worth releasing: it is not a phenomenon of women only, and it is not reserved for the young and inexperienced. As you rise in rank, responsibility and exposure grow, so the inner voice tends to get stronger, not weaker.

What helps? In my experience, coaching that provides an external reality check. It is very hard to refute a story you tell yourself on your own, and much easier when someone hands the facts back to you.

Managerial courage and executive presence are muscles

Managerial courage begins exactly where the comfort zone ends, when there is vulnerability and a real risk of failing. In a first coaching session, a group manager told me in frustration that to succeed he had to do many things, but he did not have the mandate. When a manager says “I don’t have the mandate,” he is in practice waiting for someone to tell him what to do, while he is expected to take the reins and lead. This is exactly the hard transition: from being measured on your own output to being measured on the output of others.

Part of courage is the ability to be disliked. I hear many managers looking for a solution everyone will be happy with. I understand the need; as an Adler Institute graduate I know the human need to belong. But a manager has to deliver results, and almost every decision is a potential source of friction.

Executive presence is not charisma, and not the image of a tall man with a deep voice who walks into the room and the room goes quiet. I define it as the ability to read a situation quickly and act well under pressure. A manager told me that in executive meetings her voice gets lost. I translated the complaint into a request: you want your presence to be felt and to make others stop and listen. Presence is a synergy of skills that can be developed, among them courage, composure and ease with senior leadership.

The tool: graded practice

• List tasks that require courage and rank them from easy to hard.
• Choose a safe situation to start in. For example, the next time an employee asks a question: first listen, then ask clarifying questions, and only then explain the reasoning.
• Prepare in advance: choose the meeting in which you will voice your opinion and decide what you will say and how.
• Don’t wait for the big moment. The muscle is built on small tasks.

Values and authenticity: Walk the Talk

You can be authentic all the way to getting fired. Authenticity has become a trend, and in its name some managers stopped thinking about the role and the business goals and became people who say whatever is on their mind. What makes a leader effective, and not just authentic, is the combination of skills, such as a clear vision that recruits employees to a shared goal, with personal values and beliefs.

A new department head I coached walked into the room and said she would never be a good manager. Her progress had been phenomenal, but she had to hold a wake-up conversation with an employee and could not. In her view a manager has to be tough and a bit mean, and that clashed with the vision she had built: to be an empowering, teaching and inclusive manager. When two perceptions clash, the tendency is to get stuck. In practice there was no clash here. What is needed is alignment between the values and the actions.

The higher you rise, the more complicated the dilemmas get. In executive meetings and board meetings you meet the junction between commitment to the organization, commitment to the team and professional values. Managers don’t struggle there because of the pressure. They struggle because every time they have to decide anew who they are in the situation.

The tool: a healthy separation between who you are and your role

• Cultivate interests and relationships that do not depend on your role.
• Maintain digital boundaries, for example a fixed daily hour without email.
• Practice a success experience that is not professional: writing, cooking, sport or volunteering.
• After a hard experience ask three questions: what happened, what do I learn from it, and how do I apply it tomorrow. Failing in a role is not failing as a person.

Measure effort, not just outcome

A manager said to me: “I want to cry, I’m a failure, I worked on this project for so long and in the end we didn’t succeed.” It is a natural reaction. The education system, the army and school always measured us by successes and not by investment, and our self-worth became tied to the result. But nobody acts in a vacuum, and results are also shaped by others’ decisions. Moving from judging results alone to focusing on effort and doing cultivates a growth mindset.

Interpretation determines not only the experience but also the next action. A client arrived disappointed from a failed meeting with an important customer. When I asked “failed?”, it turned out the meeting had been cut short and the customer had asked for materials in Hebrew. Read differently: the customer asked for another meeting, and her fear about her English turned out to be unnecessary. This is not advice to see everything positively. It is the work of stopping, deciding and phrasing a new interpretation.

And back to your superpower: it is the strength that works in you naturally and without effort. Three ways to find it: ask what always surprises you that others don’t do, ask friends to describe your five core strengths, and take a test such as Gallup’s CliftonStrengths.

When what worked before stops working

There is a moment every promoted manager knows: what used to work for him no longer works. The problems look objective, staff shortages, overload, unclear expectations, and he gives 200% and sees no change. The obvious explanation is the Peter principle. I don’t accept it. I suggest identity questions: how am I perceived in the organization compared with how I see myself, and how should my values be expressed in the new role.

The dangerous trap in a senior executive’s career is not weaknesses. It is over-reliance on one proven strength, such as rare technological understanding or analytical sharpness, which becomes a weight as the role gets more senior. As Marshall Goldsmith wrote, what got you here won’t get you there. The required move is from outstanding employee to orchestra conductor. For technologists it shows up in communication too: from direct, logical communication to a story that connects the team to a purpose and moves it to action.

And some beliefs stop people completely. A senior tech manager, 47, told me he had circled an idea for a startup for several years but missed the train, since there are no successful founders over 30. The data says otherwise: in a study by Azoulay, Jones, Kim and Miranda, the average age of founders of the fastest-growing ventures (one in a thousand) was 45.

How this connects to the Identity-Aligned Leadership Cycle

In the Identity-Aligned Leadership Cycle I work with, this stage rests mainly on the clarity step: identity, values, role and direction. Effective leadership starts with clarity about who you are and what you stand for, and that is exactly what a leader’s mindset is about.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a skills gap and an identity gap?

A skills gap is when you don’t know how to do something. An identity gap is when you know and don’t do it, because something in your self-perception clashes with the action. In my experience, most managers who get stuck are in the second situation, which is why another course does not solve the problem.

Does impostor syndrome pass with experience?

Usually not. It is not reserved for the young, and at later stages of a career it tends even to get worse, because responsibility and exposure grow. What helps is an external reality check: someone who hands you back the facts about your achievements.

Is emotional intelligence an innate trait?

No. Nobody is bad at all the components of emotional intelligence. Everyone is strong in some and weak in others, so a focused development plan is possible and effective.

Where do I start working on a leader’s mindset?

By identifying one belief that stops you, and by phrasing your managerial identity card: your values and what they look like in behavior. Then you pick one small task that practices the change, and don’t wait for the big moment.

Sources for the data

The tools and cases on this page are based on my LinkedIn posts, linked throughout the text. These are the sources for the data:

• Sakulku, J. & Alexander, J. (2011). The Impostor Phenomenon. International Journal of Behavioral Science, 6(1), 73-92
• Azoulay, P., Jones, B., Kim, J. D. & Miranda, J. Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship. NBER Working Paper 24489