By Annaline Panagiotou | Group Human Resources Manager / Intelligent Leadership Coach (JMG)
Early in my career, I worked alongside a manager who was talented, driven, and convinced they had all the answers. Meetings were efficient — nobody disagreed, decisions moved fast. From the outside, it looked like a high-functioning team. It wasn’t.
What I was witnessing was a team that had learned speaking up carried a cost. People had quietly noticed that a key client was pulling back — shorter meetings, slower replies, a shift in tone. Nobody said a word. By the time it surfaced, the relationship was beyond repair. I will never forget the manager’s reaction. Not anger — genuine disbelief. How did I not know this? Why was I not told? It was the question of someone who had never realised that they themselves were the reason for the silence.
The crisis wasn’t caused by a lack of skill or strategy. It was caused by silence. And silence, I learned that day, is never just an absence — it is a response to the environment a leader creates. That experience shaped how I think about leadership ever since.
One of the most underappreciated realities of leadership is how profoundly lonely the role can feel — and how important it is when that loneliness is truly understood. The moment a leader grasps that they stand apart, something shifts. They see that every decision, every action — even those that are unintentional — sends a signal. That signal will not land the same way with everyone. Each person interprets what they observe through their own unique reference point — past experiences, previous managers, personal history. What one person barely notices, another may carry for the rest of the day.
This is not a burden — it is an opportunity. If unintentional actions carry this much influence, imagine what intentional ones can do. A leader who responds to mistakes with curiosity, who invites the quietest voice in the room to speak — that leader is deliberately building trust, day by day.
The teams that perform best are not always the most talented. They are the ones where people feel safe enough to say “I’m not sure this is right” — before it becomes a crisis. But none of this is possible without honest self-awareness — and research by Tasha Eurich shows fewer than 15% of leaders actually have it. The way a leader thinks they show up and the way they actually do are rarely the same thing.
Leadership thinker John Mattone describes this as the relationship between the inner core and the outer core. A leader’s inner world — values, beliefs, self-image, unresolved fears — directly shapes their outer world: how they communicate, how they respond under pressure, how safe or unsafe they make those around them feel. Most of this happens unconsciously, and most leaders never examine it.
The invitation is not to be a better communicator. It is to look inward — honestly and courageously — and ask: what in me might be creating the silence around me?
Because the teams that thrive are not led by perfect leaders. They are led by self-aware ones.
