The Leadership Gap: When Leaders and Teams Experience Leadership Differently

Most leaders we work with genuinely want to lead well. They care about their teams, they want people to feel trusted and capable in their roles, and they want the business to be a good place to work.

When we ask them how things are going with the team, the answer is usually something like, “Pretty well.” The business is running, the team is capable, clients are being served, and nothing feels dramatically wrong.

And often that’s true.

But they often have a niggling thought that when they spend time talking with the team, there are small differences in how people describe the same environment. How people do their tasks. How people are slightly off the mark. How there is a slight gap in understanding how the business is designed to serve people, grow, and evolve. They're close, but they don't quite get the big vision. It's just not obvious enough to do something about.

And they rest in the knowledge that "It's ok, not everyone needs to understand. I'm the visionary, I'll keep working on it." Particularly female leaders. Who are grateful for what they've got, proud of what they've built... and don't really see a reason to rock the boat. No point being too bossy, too loud, too questioning, too snappy, too difficult. The team are 90% amazing after all.

But let's push this a little (we'll leave the self-worth conversation for another day).

Because usually when the leader has background niggling thoughts, the team probably do too. Even if it's not obvious enough to say.

A leader might feel they’ve created a lot of autonomy in the business, while the team feels hesitant to make decisions without checking first. A leader might believe they’ve explained the direction clearly, while the team feels like priorities shift more often than they expected. A leader might think of themselves as supportive and available, while the team experiences them as very busy and difficult to interrupt.

None of these differences means bad leadership. In most cases, the leader’s intentions are good, and the team generally respects them.

What these situations reveal is something we’ve come to think of as The Leadership Gap.

In our work, The Leadership Gap isn’t the difference between where a leader is today and where they should be in terms of capability or skill. It’s something quieter than that.

It’s the distance between how a leader believes they are leading and how that leadership is actually experienced by the team.

And that gap exists in almost every organisation.

Leadership is not something that happens only in the leader’s mind. It happens in the daily experience of other people. In the conversations they have, the decisions they feel confident making, the signals they pick up about what matters, and the sense they have of what is safe to own.

From the leader’s perspective, those things can feel quite clear. But the team is experiencing them from a different vantage point, often with less context and less visibility into the decision-making process, the thoughts and considerations behind it, and the broader context for why things are done a certain way.

Because of that, even very thoughtful leaders can find that the experience their team is having of their leadership is slightly different from what they intended.

Usually, the difference isn’t dramatic. More often, it’s a subtle drift.

A leader believes they are giving people space to take ownership. The team experiences that space as uncertainty about what they are allowed to decide.

A leader believes they are protecting the team from unnecessary complexity. The team experiences that as not always understanding why certain decisions are made.

A leader believes they are communicating priorities regularly. The team experiences those messages as evolving signals rather than a stable direction.

None of these interpretations are necessarily wrong. They’re simply different ways of experiencing the same leadership behaviour.

Over time, those differences begin to shape how the business actually operates.

If people are slightly unsure about ownership, they will naturally escalate decisions upward. If priorities feel fluid, people will focus on the immediate task rather than the longer-term outcome. If access to the leader feels limited (they seem too busy, too stressed, or generally unavailable), people will try to solve problems quietly rather than bring them into the open (remember: people are generally kind, respectful and thoughtful humans who want to do well at their job).

From the outside, the business may still look like it’s running smoothly. But internally, the leader can start to feel like they are holding more of the business together than they expected.

What’s interesting is that the solution usually isn’t about the leader becoming dramatically different.

Most of the time, the leader is already doing many things well. The work is simply about becoming more curious about the team’s experience of that leadership.

When leaders start asking questions about how their leadership is actually landing, rather than assuming their intentions are fully understood, the conversation inside the business shifts slightly.

People begin describing what helps them move confidently and what leaves them uncertain. Leaders start seeing where their signals are being interpreted differently than they expected. And together, they can adjust how the business operates to make leadership easier to experience.

Sometimes that adjustment is about clarifying decision ownership. Sometimes it’s about explaining the thinking behind a direction. Sometimes it’s simply about slowing down long enough for people to understand how their work connects to the bigger picture.

What matters is that leaders create a way to see the business from the team’s perspective.

Without that perspective, leaders mostly rely on their own view of how leadership is working. And that’s where the leadership gap quietly grows.

Remember: You can never experience your own leadership! So be courageous enough to ask.

When the team’s experience becomes visible, the gap usually becomes smaller quite quickly. Not because leadership becomes simpler, but because it becomes shared and understood.

The leader has a clearer picture of how their leadership is being received, and the team has a clearer understanding of what the leader is trying to create.

At that point, leadership inside the business starts to feel lighter. Decisions move closer to the work, people feel more confident in their roles, and the founder doesn’t have to personally carry quite as much of the organisation.

Not because they’ve stepped away from leadership, but because the experience of leadership across the business has become more aligned with their intention.

 

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Want to look closer at The Leadership Gap in your business, and how your leadership is experienced across your team?

The Leadership Gap is the difference between how a leader believes they are leading and how the team experiences that leadership. In many service-based businesses, that gap is subtle but influential in how the team makes decisions, takes ownership, and navigates priorities.

Through our Leadership and Team Experience Reviews (LATER: Let's talk about later now!), we help service-based small and medium businesses understand where those differences exist, and what small adjustments could strengthen leadership across the team.

You can learn more about LATER here.