This article builds on an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Recalibrate, where I explore how leaders can stay grounded, clear and intentional in the midst of ongoing change. This book will align your inner clarity with your outer influence. If you’re keen to know when it’ll be launched, please sign up here for the pre-orders.
“Outstanding leaders inspire people to do it for themselves. That’s about freedom.” – Penny Ferguson
Leadership doesn’t end with what you intend. It begins with what others experience. Every interaction leaves a trace. A feeling. A story someone tells themselves about what it’s like to work with you. Whether you realise it or not, your tone, your timing, your facial expression, even your silence, shape trust and connection.
I don’t believe most leaders set out to cause harm. Very few wake up thinking, ‘Today I’ll ruin things for my team’. The tension usually lives somewhere else. In the space between good intention and unintended impact. And that space is where leadership maturity begins. I’d love to share three techniques that I work with leaders on in the coaching room to super-charge their impact with their team, internal and external stakeholders and… it even works with your partner and family!
I don’t believe most leaders set out to cause harm. Very few wake up thinking, ‘Today I’ll ruin things for my team’. The tension usually lives somewhere else. In the space between good intention and unintended impact. And that space is where leadership maturity begins. I’d love to share three techniques that I work with leaders on in the coaching room to super-charge their impact with their team, internal and external stakeholders and… it even works with your partner and family!
The perception gap: Why intent isn’t enough
In communication theory, the interpersonal gap concept describes why what one person intends and what another hears can diverge, even with the best motives. This is foundation of the Intention vs Impact model: the sender encodes a message with a certain purpose, and the receiver decodes it through their own context, expectations and emotional filters. Sometimes creating misunderstanding.
In leadership research, this space is often referred to as the “perception gap.” You know your motives. Others only experience your behaviour. Research shows that intent doesn’t automatically translate into impact and paying attention to others’ experience, reaction and (when done well) response, is key to connection and trust.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence reminds us that self-awareness and self-regulation are core leadership capabilities. Not because leaders need to be perfect, but because they need to understand how they are being experienced. Social psychology also shows us something important: humans fill in missing information with assumptions. If you don’t explain your intent, people create their own version. And that version is shaped by many things, including their (biased) history, stress levels and fears.
Imagine two circles:
- One is your intention.
- The other is your impact.
The bigger the gap between them, the greater the misunderstanding. The lack of trust erodes in the gap. Not feeling psychological safe weakens in the gap. Stories get written in the gap if there is a lack of clarity. But here’s the hopeful part: you can close it. And you close it with curiosity, practising emotional agility and being clear on your intent.
A simple and effective tool: Intention vs Impact
The Intention vs Impact model is deceptively simple, but powerful. You can start here by planning conversations around the impact you want to have and how that frames your intention and composure in a situation.
Let’s start with reflection (which is always a good tool for all leaders). Cast your mind back to a situation with your team or a stakeholder this week and ask:
- What was my intention?
- What might have been the impact on other/s?
- What evidence do I have?
It sounds obvious. But it’s rare to plan and reflect this way. In the rush of deadlines and decisions, you move quickly. You assume clarity. You assume alignment. You assume people understand why you said what you said. But others don’t see your internal dialogue. They only see your delivery.
When you begin naming both your intention and your desired impact before conversations, something shifts. You become more deliberate. More transparent. More grounded. You stop leading on autopilot and become an adaptable and skilled communicator. And great communicators have enduring relationships, which translates into excellent leadership over time.
I’d like to now step you through three powerful situations and ways you can strengthen your impact on others.
#1: Two questions that change everything
When I coach senior leaders, I often ask two questions:
- What do people say about you when you leave the room?
- What do you want people to say about you when you leave the room?
There’s usually a pause. Consideration and some hesitation. Then honesty in how people respond to me.
A leader I worked with, Andy, smiled when I asked him these questions. His CEO had briefed us to look at a move from an autocratic style to a more inclusive one. And these two questions helped crystalise the point. Andy prided himself on being decisive, moving at pace and helping keep the team achieving. But his team experienced him as distant. He wasn’t trying to create distance. His intention was efficiency and empowerment to get what needed to be done ticked off. The impact was disconnection and misalignment between him and the team.
Once he recognised the gap, he began adjusting using small habits in meetings and interactions. He asked more open-ended questions. He invited input before making final decisions. He slowed his responses in meetings or purposely delayed by 24 hours to consider the input of others. Those two questions above now sit on a post-it note by his computer. As a way to plan for meetings, and ensure Andy is pacing for all, not himself. This is a leadership recalibration. Not reinvention. One adjustment that makes a massive difference in how your leadership can impact others.
#2: Your ‘state on being’ shapes your impact
Another client, Becki, had to navigate a prickly boardroom dynamic with a stakeholder while protecting her team’s stability. You know when the head of another team comes in and tries to blame and make excuses for their team’s lack of accountability? Instead of entering the situation as she had previously, with her defence up and all the examples she needed to rattle off, she asked herself a powerful question we’d been practising in coaching sessions, ‘Who do I need to be for this conversation?’
She realised her impact and the outcome depended less on her words, and more on her state. She chose calm over defensive. Solution-led over emotional. She described embodying the energy of an eagle. Soaring above the noise, watchful rather than reactive.
That’s emotional intelligence in action. Becki was able to get to a result where the team didn’t watch her bulldozed and instead felt protected. And the outcome, decisions that worked for both teams and felt fair.
Before high-stakes conversations, ask yourself:
- What energy am I bringing in?
- Is it useful for the result I want to achieve?
- What do I want this person to feel, think and/or do when we leave the room?
Your internal state is contagious. When you regulate yourself, you regulate the room.
#3: Feedback as an impact moment
Feedback is such a dreaded and misunderstood part of leadership. It’s sloppy, inconsistent, avoided or delayed, and fearful leaders often make it about themselves. Many of my coaching conversations veer into training, to skill leaders in techniques and feed my desires to normalise these conversations. Whilst studies show close to 85% of us dread the six words, ‘Can I give you some feedback’ – most of us also crave to know if we’re doing well, on track and if there are adjustments we can make to improve. The irony, right?
A client, Mary reframed feedback entirely into an experience with her team to remove the stigma and infuse the conversations with energy and optimism. For her, it became an act of connection not correction.
Mary would stage the conversation through the below prompts and pause for her team’s involvement and contribution to the conversation, at each stage.
- “I’m giving you this feedback for this reason….”
- “Here’s what I noticed… (the behaviour/s)”
- “Here’s why it matters….” (linking back to successful role performance, strengths, growth areas, KPIs, values and behaviours of the org etc)
- “So how would you tackle this next time?” and when positive reinforcement, “How can you keep working this way?”
Using this model explained her intention. She named the behaviour. She invited ownership from her team member.
The result? People didn’t just hear feedback. They felt care. That is how you build psychological safety. Not through slogans, but through clarity and congruence. And taking the time to have these essential calibration conversations.
Another favourite ‘hard conversation’ example came from Ned, who had to let a team member go for performance reasons. It was his first time. He was nervous. But he was clear about his intention: to be honest, kind and fair.
He paced the conversation carefully. He stayed calm. He aligned his tone with his purpose. Afterwards, the former team member reached out to thank him for how respectfully it had been handled. That’s the power of alignment. Even hard conversations can preserve dignity when your intention and impact match.
Leadership to create freedom
Penny Ferguson, founder of the Living Leader leadership program and author of The Living Leader, draws a powerful distinction. She says managers create control. Control tightens. It directs. It manages outcomes. Leaders create freedom. Leadership, in her words, creates the freedom for others to think, act and grow.
That freedom isn’t soft. It doesn’t mean a lack of standards. It means people feel safe enough to contribute, to take ownership, be curious and try something different, and to stretch. As a leader, every interaction you have either expands freedom or restricts it. Your tone can open space or close it. Your clarity can calm a room or create confusion.
You don’t control how others interpret everything. But you do influence the conditions. The emotional climate. The safety. The respect in your delivery. Your job is not to manage perception perfectly. Your job is to take responsibility for your side of the gap, so your leadership creates more freedom than control.
Experiment a little…
Before your next feedback or high-stakes conversation, take five minutes to plan who you need to be and the ideal conditions.
Clarify your intention
What do you want them to know, feel and do?
Consider potential impact
Given their pressures and personality, how might this land?
Adjust intentionally
Refine your language, tone or timing to narrow the gap.
And afterwards, if you’re unsure, ask, “I want to check how our conversation and my feedback came across to you. Can you share how it’s landed?” That single question repairs misunderstandings before small fractures build into cracks and breaks.
Leadership isn’t defined by what you meant. It’s defined by how you were experienced.
In an ever-changing landscape of work, where pressure is high and pace is relentless, your impact becomes your navigation tool. Not perfection. Not certainty. Awareness of who you are being. Each time you pause and be intentional, you recalibrate. Each time you reflect and adjust the next time, you recalibrate. You narrow the gap. You strengthen trust. These aren’t dramatic reinventions. They are small, deliberate shifts that shape how people feel in your presence.
And when your intention and impact align, you don’t just lead tasks. You inspire people to join, alongside you, to go on a mission together and enjoy the way to your success. That’s leadership that endures.
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