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Most leaders don’t set out to be the problem. You took the role because you’re capable, driven, and you genuinely want to make an impact. You want results and you care about your team. You’re trying.
And yet, something might be getting in the way. Not your strategy. Not your skill set. You.
Insecure leadership is one of the most common and most costly problems in organizations today. And the hardest part? It’s almost impossible to see in yourself. The behaviors feel justified. Logical, even. They feel like good leadership. But if you’re honest, and I mean really honest, some of what you’re about to read might hit a little close to home.
Awareness is where everything changes (see Mind Your Mind). And the good news is, these things are fixable. We’ll get into exactly how. But first, let’s talk about what leadership insecurity actually looks like.
Think about the last big win your team had. When you talked about it with your peers or presented it upward, how often did you say “I” versus “we”? Did you name the people who actually drove it, or did you speak in generalities?
Insecure leaders hoard credit because somewhere, deep down, they believe recognition is a limited resource. If someone else gets it, there’s less for them. So wins quietly become theirs, and losses quietly become the team’s.
Here’s the truth: giving credit doesn’t diminish you. It builds trust, loyalty, and a team that wants to bring their best work to you. The leaders people remember most are the ones who made them feel seen.
This one is uncomfortable to admit but sit with it for a second. When someone on your team is exceptionally talented – when they get attention, generate great ideas, or outperform your expectations – what’s your gut reaction? Pride? Or something closer to anxiety?
Insecure leaders unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) sideline their strongest people. The high performer gets passed over for the visible project. The feedback they receive is vague and inconsistent. They start getting left out of key conversations. And eventually, they leave.
If your team is full of people who are good but never quite great, ask yourself why. The best thing that can happen to you as a leader is having people around you who are better than you at certain things. That’s not a threat, that’s leverage.
Do you ask to be CC’d on emails that don’t really need you? Or find yourself rewriting work that was already done well? Do you jump into decisions that should belong to your team?
Micromanagement almost never comes from a desire to control for its own sake. It comes from fear – fear of things going wrong, fear of being caught off guard, fear of becoming irrelevant if you’re not in the middle of everything. It feels like thoroughness and responsibility.
But it’s not. It signals to your team that you don’t trust them. And over time, they’ll stop trusting themselves. Initiative dies. Ownership evaporates. And you end up doing more work, not less, because your team has learned to wait for you before doing anything.
Be honest with yourself about how your meetings actually run. Are you asking questions or mostly making statements? When someone brings up an idea, do you genuinely engage with it, or do you tend to redirect toward your own thinking?
It’s easy to dominate a room without meaning to. You’re the leader. People defer to you. But if the conversation always flows back to your ideas, your perspective, your direction – you might be running meetings that feel collaborative but are really just monologues with an audience.
The best meetings leave people feeling like their voice mattered. If your team has stopped contributing, it’s worth asking whether that’s because they have nothing to say, or because they’ve learned it doesn’t go anywhere.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” ~ John Quincy Adams
How do you respond when someone pushes back on your idea? When a peer challenges your approach? When a 360 review comes back with something uncomfortable?
If your default is to defend, explain, or minimize, that’s a signal worth paying attention to. Insecure leaders interpret honest feedback as a threat to their status rather than useful information. So they surround themselves with people who agree with them, tune out dissenting voices, and gradually lose touch with what’s actually happening in their organization.
The leaders who grow are the ones who can hear hard things without falling apart. That doesn’t mean feedback is always right. It means you can take it in, sit with it, and decide what to do with it, rather than immediately building a case for why it’s wrong.
Think about whether your team knows what to expect from you. Are your standards consistent? Do people know where they stand? Or does your mood tend to shape how you show up – generous one week, critical the next, with no clear reason why?
Insecure leaders are often reactive, and reactivity creates unpredictability. When the team can’t read you, they spend energy managing your emotions instead of doing their work. They learn to wait for the right moment, soften their messages, avoid bringing problems to you. The result is a team that’s skilled at managing up, and less focused on actually moving forward.
Here’s what insecure leadership actually produces over time: your best people leave first, because they have options and they know when they’re being held back. The people who stay learn to play it safe. Innovation slows because nobody wants to take a risk they’ll be blamed for. And the culture you’ve built, whether you intended it or not, becomes one defined by caution, politics, and self-protection.
The hardest part? Most leaders in this pattern have no idea it’s happening. Because everyone around them has learned not to say so.
None of these things in and of themselves mean you’re a bad leader. You’re human. Every leader carries some version of these tendencies. The question is whether you’re willing to do something about it. Let’s get to the solutions.
Not just “do people like me” curious, but actually curious about your impact. Ask for feedback in ways that make it safe to be honest. Sit with what comes back. A coach or mentor who will tell you the truth can accelerate this faster than almost anything else.
Name people. Be specific. Do it publicly and do it often. Not because it’s a performance of generosity, but because it’s accurate, and because it sets a tone for the kind of team you’re building.
Pick one thing this week that you would normally insert yourself into, and don’t. Let your team own it. See what happens. Delegation is a muscle, and like any muscle, you build it by actually using it.
Stop asking “how essential am I?” and start asking “how capable is my team becoming?” The goal isn’t to be indispensable. The goal is to build something that works, and people who grow. If your team could run a project brilliantly without you, that’s not a threat to your value. That’s the whole point.
What specifically tends to activate your insecurity? Peer recognition? Public challenges? Feeling out of your depth on a topic? Get specific. When you can name the trigger, you can pause before reacting, and in that pause is where better leadership lives.
You don’t have to have it all figured out to be a great leader. You just have to be willing to look at yourself honestly, and keep looking, even when it’s uncomfortable.
The leaders who earn real loyalty, who build teams people don’t want to leave, who make a lasting impact – they’re not the ones who never feel insecure. They’re the ones who stopped letting that insecurity run the show.
Your team is watching how you handle the hard moments. The moments when someone outshines you, when feedback stings, when you have to choose between protecting your ego and doing right by the people you lead.
Those moments are where leadership actually happens.
What kind of leader do you want to be in those moments? That answer is worth more than any strategy or skill set you’ll ever develop.
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