Let Go of the Beliefs That Limit How You Lead

What It Covers

Executive coach Muriel Wilkins discusses her book Leadership Unblocked, explaining how hidden beliefs like needing immediate results or always being right block leadership potential. Amy Bernstein and Amy Gallo explore their own limiting beliefs, learning to identify internal blockers, reframe assumptions, and create sustainable behavioral change through self-awareness and mindset shifts.

Key Questions Answered

• •Hidden blocker identification: Leaders recognize blockers through dissonance between their behavior and desired outcomes, such as stalled advancement, team resentment, or exhaustion. The key question becomes asking what you would need to believe differently to achieve your goals, rather than blaming external circumstances for professional challenges or team dynamics.
• •Urgency versus importance framework: The need-it-done-now blocker served individual contributors well but prevents leading at scale. Leaders must distinguish between urgent requests and important priorities, setting their own daily agenda before responding to others' demands. This requires renegotiating expectations with teams accustomed to immediate responses and reclaiming control from reactive patterns.
• •Know-it-all blocker costs: Leaders who always have the right answer make team members feel small and excluded from decisions. The real leadership goal shifts from knowing the answer to ensuring the team reaches the right answer together. This blocker often stems from being rewarded for intelligence and academic excellence throughout early career stages.
• •Sustainable behavior change requires belief work: Coaching new skills and actions without addressing underlying beliefs leads to short-lived results and quick reversion to old patterns. Leaders must modify the operating system of beliefs that drives behavior, not just surface-level actions. Organizations attempting structural changes without addressing collective assumptions face long-term frustration and misalignment.
• •Helping others see blockers: Leaders gain permission to help colleagues identify blockers by modeling self-awareness and doing their own internal work first. Ask permission before offering observations, establish context for questions, and identify whether the person experiences enough dissonance to want change. Attempting to influence without their readiness becomes a form of control.