Under Pressure: Why Burnout Among Midlevel Leaders May Be a Strategic Risk

Many midlevel leaders are struggling with persistent burnout, limited support and recognition, and a widening gap between them and senior leadership.

When burnout and stress go unaddressed, midlevel leaders may become less engaged and less confident in their roles—undermining their ability to retain talent and drive results.

Explore the full infographic for deeper analysis and practical implications.

View the infographic

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Reinforcing Organizational Bridges: Four Elements That Strengthen Midlevel Leaders

Jeff Pacheco

October 1, 2025

Bridges don’t collapse overnight—they weaken in silence. Once-impassible valleys and rivers are crossed without a thought, carried by structures so reliable we forget what it took to build them. Yet, every bridge demands vision, resources, precise engineering, and ongoing maintenance. For a bridge to endure, every part must work together. If one part falters, the integrity of the whole bridge is threatened.

As we discussed in a previous perspective paper, midlevel leaders are those bridges—spanning the gap between strategy and execution, linking senior leadership’s vision to daily realities. They carry the weight of transformation, unite teams, and keep the structure intact under pressure. But like any bridge, their strength depends on deliberate construction, reinforcement, and support.

Four Elements That Support the Success of Midlevel Leaders

Midlevel leaders are operating under immense pressure. They are expected to deliver results, lead transformation, and keep teams engaged—all while navigating shifting priorities and constant change. When the structural supports they rely on are missing, that pressure strains their capacity to perform. Agility erodes, execution suffers, and burnout accelerates, putting both short-term performance and long-term transformation at risk.

Our research at Harvard Business Impact Enterprise identifies four structural elements essential to midlevel leader strength: autonomy, empowerment, psychological safety, and recognition. Each is as vital as any beam or cable in a bridge—remove one and the entire structure is at risk.

• Autonomy: Autonomy enables midlevel leaders to act decisively, adapt quickly, and drive innovation. Entrusting them with meaningful decision making strengthens the critical link between strategy and execution. In our research, midlevel leaders who reported having autonomy showed a nearly one-third increase—rising to 62%—in effectiveness at demonstrating agility and adaptability in fast-changing environments.
• Empowerment: Empowerment means giving midlevel leaders the resources, authority, and confidence to act. This requires intentional effort from senior leaders—investing in training, fostering clear communication, and including midlevel leaders in strategic decision making. The payoff is clear: Empowered midlevel leaders are stronger at supporting transformation and better equipped to influence, execute, and sustain momentum.
• Psychological safety: Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as a shared belief that it’s safe to take risks and express ideas without fear of negative consequences. It grows from clear, predictable, and fair expectations paired with open communication. In our research, nearly seven in 10 midlevel leaders who felt psychologically safe reported meeting goals and expectations—compared to just 43% of those who didn’t. This freedom fuels engagement, sparks experimentation, generates new ideas, and fosters a culture of curiosity and smart risk taking.
• Recognition: Recognition keeps midlevel leaders grounded in purpose and value. When their contributions are acknowledged consistently, it reinforces their commitment and resilience under pressure. Our research showed the difference is measurable—weekly burnout rates dropped from 80% to 66% when midlevel leaders felt recognized by senior leadership. Recognition isn’t a courtesy; it’s a stabilizing force that sustains engagement, strengthens commitment, and helps leaders perform at their best even in challenging conditions.

Like engineering a bridge, each structural element has its own value and measurable impact. But true strength comes when every part works in unison. For midlevel leaders, it’s the combination of these supports that enables them to perform at their best, sustain momentum, and lead the organization forward under any conditions.

Inspecting the Bridge: Stress Testing Your Midlevel Leadership

Even the most impressive bridge must prove its strength before being opened for use. Engineers test every joint, cable, and beam to confirm they meet standards, can bear the bridge’s load, and will endure. Organizations must do the same with their midlevel leadership.

An initial “inspection” means systematically evaluating their performance against the four structural elements and, just as critically, assessing how well the organization supports them. Measurement reveals strengths, exposes stress points, and directs resources where they have the most impact.

But inspections aren’t a one-and-done exercise and often surface evolving needs. In our study, nearly 60% of midlevel leaders pointed to three areas they needed more support in for their success: greater decision-making authority, stronger work-life balance, and more efficient technologies. Addressing these requires more than periodic check-ins; it also calls for continuous feedback loops. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis call this making feedback a team habit by embedding smart intentional questions into meetings to solicit a steady stream of insights from midlevel leaders.

Build the Bridges That Carry Your Business Forward

A bridge is only as strong as the investment in its design, construction, and upkeep. The same is true for midlevel leaders. Strengthening their autonomy, empowerment, psychological safety, and recognition produces higher engagement, lower burnout, and greater innovation. These leaders become catalysts—driving transformation, connecting strategy to execution, and sustaining momentum through change.

Neglect midlevel leaders and cracks will appear under pressure. With consistent investment, midlevel leaders become the reliable, resilient structures that carry an organization from where it is today to where it must go tomorrow. The future of your organization depends on the bridges you build now.

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Why Psychological Safety Is the Hidden Engine Behind Innovation and Transformation

Michelle Bonterre

July 29, 2025

Last month, I had the privilege of attending Harvard Business Impact’s annual Partners’ Meeting, where Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, delivered an energizing keynote on psychological safety. Her session, “Psychological Safety: The Essential Underpinning of Successful Transformation,” left a lasting impression and a renewed sense of urgency about the environments we create for our teams.

At its core, psychological safety is the belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, that you can ask a question, admit a mistake, or challenge an idea without fear of embarrassment or retribution. And while the concept isn’t new, Amy reminded us that in today’s VUCA world, it’s more essential than ever.

Interpersonal Risk Translates Into Business Risk

Amy told a story about a company poised to lose billions that stuck with me. No one wanted to admit what wasn’t working. It wasn’t until one leader dared to speak up that the floodgates of honest problem-solving opened.

It underscored her key point: Interpersonal risk translates into business risk. When employees are afraid to speak up, we miss out on insights, preventable mistakes go unchecked, and opportunities for innovation are lost.

High-Quality Conversations Are a Leadership Skill

So how do we create the conditions for psychological safety?

Amy broke it down into three simple leadership behaviors:

• Frame the Work: Reframe challenges as learning opportunities, not tests of competence. For example, “We’ve never done this before, and we’ll need everyone’s input to get it right.”
• Invite Participation: Ask good questions—like “Who has a different perspective?”—to signal that dissent is not only welcomed but needed.
• Respond Productively: React with appreciation and forward-thinking, even when the news is hard. Instead of “How did this happen?,” say, “Thanks for that insight. How can we help?”

Psychological Safety and High Standards Are Not Opposites

One of the most powerful insights from the session was that psychological safety and high standards aren’t in tension; they are both required for high performance.

Without safety, teams may appear agreeable but remain silent. Without standards, teams may feel comfortable but lack rigor.

The sweet spot? A culture where it’s safe to speak up and where everyone is committed to excellence.

Reflection: What Kind of Environment Are You Creating for Your Employees?

Amy asked us to reflect on our own behavior:

• Do people around you feel permission to be candid?
• Do your meetings make people smarter or quieter?
• Are you actively listening for the idea that was never shared?

These aren’t soft skills. They’re leadership imperatives in a world that demands constant learning, experimentation, and course correction.

Final Thought

Psychological safety isn’t a policy; it’s a climate. And as Amy reminded us, it’s not the goal itself but the necessary foundation for everything that matters: innovation, quality, resilience, and transformation.

If we want our organizations to thrive in uncertainty, it starts with creating space for people to speak up, think differently, and learn boldly together.

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Readiness Reimagined: How to Build a Change-Seeking Culture

Jeff Pacheco

July 21, 2025

For years, “change-readiness” has been a strategic imperative. Organizations have worked to cultivate cultures that adapt quickly and execute decisively. But in today’s fast-moving, AI-driven world, readiness is no longer enough.

Adaptability is still essential—but at a greater speed. The next evolution is already underway: building a “change-seeking” culture. Unlike reactive, change-ready organizations, change-seeking organizations proactively scan for opportunity, challenge assumptions, and move early—before disruption demands it.

Why “Ready” Isn’t Ready Anymore

In Harvard Business Impact’s “2025 Global Leadership Development Study,” 40% of senior leaders said their organizations are placing a greater emphasis on building change-ready cultures. But the data also revealed a shift: 71% now say the ability to lead through constant change is critical, up dramatically from just 58% in 2024. Four in 10 said leading transformation is even more crucial now than it was just one year ago.¹

This reflects a growing acceptance that the need for change is continuous and widespread. And in this environment, the ability to respond quickly is less powerful than the ability to anticipate and act early.

What Defines a Change-Seeking Culture?

Change-seeking cultures don’t wait for change—they initiate it. These organizations:

• Encourage curiosity and experimentation
• Proactively identify new ideas and unmet needs
• Create psychological safety for taking informed risks
• Integrate feedback loops that accelerate learning

They position learning and development not as a support function but as the neural network of transformation—circulating insights, capability, and culture across the enterprise.

How to Foster a Change-Seeking Culture

To foster a change-seeking culture, organizations must go beyond encouraging agility. They must design for it. That means:

• Preparing people. AI is reshaping the way we innovate, and employees need a solid understanding of the tools involved to participate. Our research shows that organizations embracing hands-on learning are more effective at building AI fluency across roles.²
• Democratizing experimentation. Organizations can learn faster by getting more people involved in testing ideas. Vastly increasing the capacity to conduct experiments is becoming more critical for making decisions based on data instead of intuition.³
• Aligning experimentation with strategy. Innovation should be guided by a clear set of strategic priorities that matter to the business. This helps avoid experiments that generate a lot of creative ideas but may fail to deliver meaningful efficiency, value, or growth.⁴
• Fostering psychological safety. If employees fear retribution for failure, they won’t experiment. Leaders must model learning behavior, reward well-intentioned risk-taking, and create space to reflect on and learn from setbacks.
• Embedding feedback loops. Organizations need mechanisms for collecting, sharing, and acting on learning so that successful experiments scale and less successful ones inform future actions.

A Case in Point: Moody’s Moves First

Moody’s—a legacy financial institution—offers a compelling example. In a traditionally risk-averse industry, its CEO, Rob Fauber, chose to go all in on generative AI, even as many peers hesitated due to regulatory uncertainty and technical risks.

As profiled in Harvard Business Review’s “How a Legacy Financial Institution Went All In on Gen AI,” Fauber focused not just on technology but also on learning and culture.⁵ His team launched the initiative with three guiding principles: Make everyone an innovator, build on new ideas, and deliver real business impact.

They started with learning. Moody’s invested in internal academies, upskilling campaigns, and broad-based AI fluency. The enhanced capability of the organization’s workforce created conditions for accelerated innovation.

By late 2024, Moody’s was deploying an AI agent capable of producing risk reports in just one hour—a task that previously required a full week of human effort. The result wasn’t just improved efficiency. It was a proof point for cultural transformation.

The Leadership Gap

Despite examples like Moody’s, many organizations remain stuck in “wait and see” mode. In our 2025 global leadership development study, 52% of respondents said their company is placing a greater emphasis on building an AI-ready culture. Yet only 36% felt their senior leaders fully embrace AI as a core part of strategy and operations.

This mismatch between aspiration and behavior matters. Cultures take shape not just through systems and programs but also through what senior leaders talk about, reward, and demonstrate. If executives want change-seeking behavior, they need to embody it—openly experimenting, learning, and adjusting.

Getting Started: Building a Change-Seeking Culture

Building a change-seeking culture isn’t about launching a single transformation program. It’s about instilling an ongoing top-down and bottom-up capability for sensing and seizing what’s next. Organizations can take these actions to begin:

1. Start with learning and make it visible. Innovation still starts with people, but given AI’s central role in innovation today, building AI fluency across the organization is essential.
2. Create systems that reward initiative, not just execution. Recognize teams for surfacing new ideas, identifying inefficiencies, and learning from pilots—even when those pilots fail. Normalize the idea that progress can start with anyone’s ideas and initiative.
3. Hold leaders accountable for culture. Make effectively leading change, encouraging innovation, and fostering psychological safety core performance expectations, not soft add-ons.

The Bottom Line

Many organizations still treat change-readiness as a strategic endpoint. But in a world of constant reinvention, it’s only the beginning. As technology rewires markets, roles, and operating models, the ability to initiate and lead change—not just react to it—is the goal.

The organizations that will succeed are those where everyone, at every level, is expected to help chart what comes next. Change-seeking is not a capability confined to innovation teams or digital labs. It is a cultural imperative.

Standing still is now the greater risk. The advantage belongs to those willing to move first.

To find out more about how we can help your organization build a change-seeking culture, contact us today.

1. Harvard Business Impact, “2025 Global Leadership Development Study,” 2025. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/2025-global-leadership-development-study-fast-fluid-and-future-focused/ ︎
2. Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, “Learning Through Experimentation: Why Hands-On Learning Is Key to Building an AI-Fluent Workforce,” Harvard Business Publishing, 2024. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/learning-through-experimentation-why-hands-on-learning-is-key-to-building-an-ai-fluent-workforce. ︎
3. Iavor Bojinov, David Holtz, Ramesh Johari, Sven Schmit, and Martin Tingley, “Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?,” Harvard Business Review, January-February 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/01/want-your-company-to-get-better-at-experimentation. ︎
4. Rogers, David L., “The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation,” HBR.org, March 18, 2024. https://hbr.org/2024/03/the-missing-link-between-strategy-and-innovation. ︎
5. Stuart, Toby E., “How a Legacy Financial Institution Went All In on Gen AI,” HBR.org, March 25, 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/03/how-a-legacy-financial-institution-went-all-in-on-gen-ai. ︎

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The Importance Of Being Curious

Dalia Molokhia

“Why do I feel cold and shiver when I have a fever?”

I knew the day would come when my little girl would learn to talk and inevitably start asking those much-anticipated questions. The questions themselves weren’t worrying me.  I was actually looking forward to seeing where her curiosity would lie.

What was bothering me was whether or not I would know the answers.

In the age of the smartphone, this may seem like a silly worry.  Surely, the answers to almost everything would be just one Google away.

Still, I struggled with how I was going to prepare to become an all-knowing mother. Then one day it struck me: I didn’t need to have all the answers. What a great example I could set if I let my daughter know that I, too, am still learning. And I realized how much more I could learn if I took another look at things I thought I already knew the answer to with the curiosity of a child. My little girl’s mind is a beginner’s mind – curious, open to new ideas, eager to learn, and not based on preconceived notions or prior knowledge. I decided that I would approach her questions with a beginner’s mind, too.

Once I decided to become more curious, I started noticing that curiosity was becoming more prominent in the workplace, too. Leaders, it seems, don’t need to have all the answers, either. But they do need to be curious.

Curious about curiosity, I searched for answers, and found frequent references to Albert Einstein’s famous words, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” We might well quibble with the notion that Einstein had no “special talent,” but he wouldn’t have solved the riddles of the universe if not for his passionate curiosity. Then I came across another Einstein quote: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”

Curiosity’s reason for existence in the workplace

Decades ago, management thinker Peter Drucker placed knowing the right questions to ask at the core of his philosophy on strategic thinking. Many of today’s leaders have adopted Drucker’s “be (intelligently) curious” philosophy, an approach that is becoming more salient as the world increases in complexity.

Warren Berger, in “Why Curious People Are Destined for the C-Suite,” cited Dell CEO Michael Dell’s response to a PwC survey that asked leaders to name a trait that would most help CEOs succeed. Dell’s answer? “I would place my bet on curiosity.” Dell was not alone. Alan D. Wilson, then CEO of McCormick & Company, responded that those who “are always expanding their perspective and what they know – and have that natural curiosity – are the people that are going to be successful.”

Leaders don’t need to know everything. In fact, it’s an impossibility. Things change too rapidly for that. What worked yesterday can’t be guaranteed to work tomorrow. Disrupters are just around the corner. If you’re not one of them, you may well end up a disruptee. Today’s leaders need to be curious, and know how to ask the questions that lead them to consider new ideas.

How we can all develop curiosity

Becoming a mum has taught me how to handle my little girl’s curiosity. It strikes me that leaders in new roles also have to learn what to do and how to act in ways that are new and different. What I find works best is approaching your new role with a curiosity mindset, completely open to new ideas and suggestions. Here are some ways to develop your curiosity:

• Apply a beginner’s mind: Be open to and look for new and novel ways of doing things.
• Ask questions, listen and observe: Seek first to understand, not to explain.
• Try something new: Take a different route to work, read a book in a genre you usually avoid, go to an art gallery you wouldn’t normally go to. Each of these activities opens your mind to new points of view.
• Be inquisitive: Ask others their opinions, perspectives, and their approaches to certain things. Everyone does things a bit differently, and there are potential new answers and solutions to problems hidden in other people’s thinking.

These are a few of my ideas. I’d be interested in hearing yours. How do you stay curious?

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The Purpose Factor: Why Your Talent Strategy Depends on It

A global survey revealed that 52% of jobseekers would not accept a job offer if they did not know or agree with a company’s values or purpose, and 90% of respondents from another poll said that work should bring a sense of meaning to their life.

Explore the infographic to uncover more insights.

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The Ladder of Inference: Building Self-Awareness to Be A Better Human-Centered Leader

Craig Dickerson

May 8, 2025

“Contrary to popular belief, studies have shown that people do not always learn from experience, that expertise does not help people root out false information, and that seeing ourselves as highly experienced can keep us from doing our homework, seeking disconfirming evidence, and questioning our assumptions.”[i]

Boost Self-awareness with the Ladder of Inference

A study by Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning focused on the importance of human-centered leadership (HCL),[ii] but getting leaders to change behaviors or even see the need to change can be a challenge. Additionally, HCL is a complex topic with many facets, which begs the question: Where do I start? Helping leaders develop self-awareness might be a good place to consider.

Think of a time you were in the presence of a leader who lacked self-awareness—it shouldn’t be hard. Research indicates that only about 15% of people are sufficiently self-aware[i] and that there is less than a 30% correlation between people’s actual and self-perceived competence.[iii] That same research shows that a leader’s lack of self-awareness negatively impacts decision making, collaboration, and conflict management.

Self-awareness, a fundamental component of emotional intelligence, is a cornerstone of HCL, as it enables leaders to cultivate a deeper understanding of themselves and their impact on others. Leaders with strong self-awareness are attuned to their emotions, strengths, and areas for development, allowing them to make conscious decisions and navigate complex situations with clarity and integrity.

So, self-awareness is important, but how do you help leaders build it? A good first step is teaching them to use the Ladder of Inference, a model introduced by Harvard Professor Emeritus Chris Argyris.[iv]

The Ladder of Inference

The Ladder of Inference illustrates how people unconsciously climb a mental ladder of assumptions and beliefs based on their observations and experiences.

This process occurs rapidly and often subconsciously, leading individuals to filter information, make interpretations, and take action—all of which can be influenced by biases and past experiences. It represents what Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, would call a System 1 process.[v]

• System 1 is the fast, automatic processing that requires little energy.
• System 2 is the rational, conscious, effortful processing.

Kahneman explains how System 1 makes educated guesses to come to quick conclusions but shows no record of how it came to its conclusion. “System 1 does not keep track of alternatives that it rejects, or even the fact that there were alternatives.” The problem is that the guess it makes may be wrong (the conclusion as well) but you will believe it unless System 2 steps in to evaluate it. This often does not happen because System 2 is “lazy” or is often distracted. By using the ladder, we can employ System 2 to guide our conclusions and provide a framework to analyze them, with more faulty conclusions being identified and corrected.

Select data from available information

Imagine a ladder leaning against a wall, sitting in a puddle. The puddle in which the ladder sits is data or facts. The amount of data in any given situation is more than our brains can handle, so filters are applied. Two people looking at the same data will filter and retain different data, but no one will process all the data completely or in the same way. As you step on the first rung of the ladder, your brain selects and triages data, keeping some and ignoring others.

Add meanings to selected data

Up one step on the ladder, our brains push the data through the filters and lenses of our paradigms. These are biases, worldviews, and mindsets. Think of glasses with yellow lenses. When you first put them on, things look yellow; then your brain adjusts and everything looks normal until you take off the glasses, and then everything looks green. What you were looking at never changed, but how you perceived it did.

Interpret the data and make assumptions

On the next rung up the ladder, you interpret the data and begin to assign meaning to it. You make assumptions and fill in gaps. Have you ever been reading an email and realized that you were hearing the writer’s voice and tone in your head? The tone of voice you hear is likely your interpretation being added, and our interpretations are powerfully affected by context, experiences, and culture. This is also the step where you may start to assign valence to the situation: good or bad, threat or reward, benevolent or evil.

Draw conclusions from assumptions

As you get close to the top of the ladder, you draw a conclusion or an inference. From where you stand, your conclusion is clear, obvious, and important. Your inference feels like a fact, and you cannot imagine any other sane person coming to a different one. Because of this certainty, when we share our brilliant insight with others, we feel no need to explain how we arrived at it because the validity of our conclusion is so obvious to us but, sadly, not necessarily to anyone else.[vi]

Adopt beliefs based on assumptions

Adding complexity to the situation is the profound influence of our mental models—our ingrained values, assumptions, and beliefs about the functioning of the world—on the way each of us ascends our respective ladder of inference. To depict this concept visually, one could also liken these mental models to the sides of the ladder, providing structure and coherence to our reasoning process. For example, people who embrace the “think positively” mindset often infer that the world is largely benevolent. On the other hand, those who hold an “expect the worst” mentality are inclined to filter and judge occurrences in a way that reflects their negative outlook.[vi] Carol Dweck’s work points out how profound an impact mindset (fixed or growth) can have on behavior and outcomes.[vii]

This is how different people standing in the same puddle of data can wind up with their ladders against different walls, reaching vastly different conclusions.

Applying the Ladder of Inference to raise self-awareness

Self-awareness should increase the moment a person learns about the ladder. The fact that an opaque and mostly unconscious process is being brought to the consciousness is the first step (pun intended) in raising self-awareness. It is like breathing; if you pay no attention, it happens automatically. However, when you notice your breathing, you can control it. It moves from Kahneman’s System 1 to System 2,[v] from automatic to intentional.

The second step is to slow the process down and examine how we climbed the ladder—an act of self-reflection. What data did we choose? What data did we reject? What assumptions did we make? What biases may have influenced the process? Reflecting on the thought process and examining the assumptions we make can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our interaction with others. This is the beginning of self-awareness.

The Ladder of Inference is easy enough to teach and practice. Most people can recall a time when they jumped to a conclusion that later turned out to be wrong. Have them climb back down the ladder of that conclusion to analyze their reasoning. Also, have them reflect on the consequences of faulty conclusions.

Consistent awareness and evaluation of our ladders should lead to the insight that many of our conclusions that feel like facts are only strongly held opinions, although some learners may need help getting here. It can be uncomfortable to realize that many things you thought were solid facts are actually flimsy opinions, so your ego will put up some resistance.

Why is getting leaders to this realization important? Because, as pointed out earlier, most leaders overestimate their competency, so getting them to be less certain of their conclusions is beneficial. Certainty is the enemy of curiosity. Knowing is a barrier to learning. Why would I learn what I already know? Research shows that two outcomes of rising up the corporate levels of leadership are loss of empathy and an increase in hubris.[viii] The antidote is self-awareness and curiosity; the ladder supports both.

How the Ladder of Inference supports leadership fitness

In Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning’s study on HCL and a more recent paper, we propose that leadership fitness, like physical fitness, requires strength, balance, flexibility, and endurance.[ii] The ladder most directly supports the middle two.

We suggest that part of balance is the “ability to read situations more accurately by challenging subconscious encoding processes that lead us to ignore some cues in favor of others” that is, disrupting unconscious bias and default behavior patterns through metacognition, or thinking about your thinking. After consciously disrupting these thought processes, leaders display greater balance by intentionally choosing leadership behaviors. The ladder is a tool that helps leaders make implicit thought patterns explicit, allowing for analysis, choice, and correction in leadership style.

The ladder supports flexibility by interrupting habits. Does a person have the choice to act differently without noticing their default thinking? Maybe, but the chance seems slim. Imagine that you are driving home from work, tired and hungry. The traffic is really bad, and someone cuts you off. For most people, the response is automatic; the only option is what word is chosen to describe the other driver: jerk, idiot, moron.

However, those are conclusions. If that default process is interrupted and assumptions are evaluated using the ladder, you may realize that the person who cut you off may not be evil or lacking in intelligence and that there are many possible alternate conclusions. You might also realize that you yourself have accidentally cut people off before, and you are not evil or stupid, right? Now that you have access to different possibilities of how to react, you can choose to send positive thoughts toward that person, hoping they get where they are going safely. Before the ladder, you only had options; after the ladder, you have new possibilities of how to act. That is flexibility.

The bottom line

The Ladder of Inference is a simple but powerful tool for self-awareness that can be used in many situations to increase leadership balance and flexibility, supporting human-centered leadership. But this is not the limit of the application of the ladder in leadership. In the next post in this series, we will look at how the ladder can be used to support better decision making, manage productive conflict, and create space for building trust and collaboration.

For more on how the Ladder of Influence supports the four dimension of Leadership Fitness, download our paper “Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capacity to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity.”

Perspectives

Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capacity to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity

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[i] Tasha Eurich (2018), What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It), Harvard Business Review.

[ii] Harvard Business School Publishing (2024), Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capability to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity, Harvard Business School Publishing.

[iii] Erich C. Dierdorff and Robert S. Rubin (2015), Research: We’re Not Very Self-Aware, Especially at Work. Harvard Business Review.

[iv] Chris Argyris (1982), The Executive Mind and Double-Loop Learning, Organizational Dynamics.

[v] Daniel Kahneman (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Macmillan.

[vi] William R. Noonan (2011), Discussing the Undiscussable: Overcoming Defensive Routines in the Workplace, Rotman Management Magazine.

[vii] Carol Dweck (2016), What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means, Harvard Business Review.

[viii] Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro (2021), Don’t Let Power Corrupt You: How to Exercise Influence Without Losing Your Moral Compass, Harvard Business Review.

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Assess: How Inclusive Are You as a Leader?

See where you land on this chart to determine how far along you are when it comes to inclusion.

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The Vicious Cycle Preventing Your People from Adapting to Change

In Harvard Business Publishing’s survey of more than 3,400 full-time employees across 11 countries, 45% reported feeling stressed or burned out 1x a week or more.

Pressure to change faster, especially without sufficient support, creates more stress, uncertainty, and negative emotions, further increasing people’s resistance and the risk of failure.

By increasing people’s confidence, sense of well-being, and resilience to stress, human-centered leadership has the potential to help people adapt more easily.

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Top 4 Leadership Skills that Transform Employee Engagement

Harvard Business Publishing surveyed 2,361 full-time employees across job levels at companies with 5,000 or more employees. Four capabilities ranked highest for increasing team engagement and morale.

Dive into the infographic for more insights now.

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The Learning Experience Hybrid Teams Need

As hybrid work becomes the norm, employees are now seeking the ability to learn from anywhere. Adapting to this reality of flexible work schedules is crucial for leaders to effectively develop themselves whenever and wherever possible.

But what might this look like in action? Download our infographic for more insights.

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Driving Fulfillment at Work through Real Human-Centered Leadership

As the future unfolds, people will demand more support for achieving wellness and fulfillment within the realm of work in return for contributing their best efforts. Human-centered leadership can help meet that demand.

In this infographic, we explore four key examples of behaviors that human-centered leaders must balance for employee fulfillment.

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