On calls with cybersecurity professionals this past year, especially the ones with reportees, I’ve asked: what kind of leader are you?

They answer with confidence. “I’m open, caring, supportive, someone who people can come to easily, and someone who unblocks the team.” My next question: how do you know that’s true?

Silence.

I dig deeper: “What daily proof do you have of that?” “Have you heard that directly from the people you work with?”

As much as we have intentions, we don’t always take the actions that line up with them. I’ve been in that situation myself.

The first six months in my role as a Product Manager, my manager spent time explaining decisions that had been made before my arrival and why, brought me onto client calls for exposure, told me who to approach and how to get the most out of those conversations.

The following six months, after he didn’t get a promotion he had been working toward, his behavior changed completely.

He stopped showing up to our 1:1s, most times without a heads up. I’d join the call, wait fifteen minutes, ping him, and hear back hours later with no acknowledgement. The quarterly planning sessions during which we reviewed our direction for the next three months, he called “a waste of time.” My questions in Slack would stay unanswered for days. His explanation: “I’m not good at Slack.”

Recognition of my work disappeared. I received it from my peers, from his own manager, from other team leaders.

I decided to take the lead on the situation and scheduled a reset call. In the lead up to that conversation, he asked me three questions:

When did you ask for help and not get it? When did you want to discuss something and I wasn’t willing to? Did I ever tell you not to approach me with questions?

He was right. I hadn’t asked him for help recently. I had stopped booking time with him. I no longer felt safe coming to him.

Let me be clear: I am describing a set of behaviors whose impact he likely never saw.

Those behaviors didn’t stop at him. I felt it every time I sat down to do work I had once been proud of, as if I was making myself smaller.

He was consumed by his own frustration and couldn’t see beyond it, or the damage his absence was causing the team.

From that conversation, I left without the agreements I had been looking for. What I took with me was one thing he said directly: he held himself to very high expectations, and met himself with disappointment when he didn’t reach them.

I realized my behavior had changed in response to his, so I took a couple of days after that reset call to reflect.

After that conversation, I moved into what I started calling my “be the leader you wish you had” era. I thought about the kind of PM I wanted to be: approachable, someone who cared about people before the work, someone who built solutions and removed friction.

Then I asked myself: do I have proof?

I took the three things I had needed from my own manager and put them into practice with my team: positive reinforcement of what was going well to build trust; support in unblocking people when they were stuck; a continuous communication and feedback loop, applied in small, specific, and consistent actions every day.

I created dedicated meetings for blockers and recurring 1:1s with each member of my team. I started recognizing work weekly and focused on specific things because I had seen firsthand how quickly effort fades when it goes unrecognized, or when there is no room for feedback.

Of all the moments that followed, my favorite happened around the end of year holidays. Before the team meeting, I gave everyone a few minutes to write under each other’s name what they appreciated about how that person showed up and contributed.

A few weeks ago, while reviewing these newsletters, I caught myself thinking I needed to come back to what I preach: slow down at work, make time for creative outlets, and be present in my daily routine. I was describing an identity. My actions were telling a different story that week.

PS — Claiming an identity is easy. Finding the evidence for it every day is where the work actually begins.

See you Saturday.

Victoria Grandury
CEO & Founder, Limitless Rebel
LinkedIn