When the Leader You’ve Become Doesn’t Feel Like You
Getting to the point of having a leadership position takes a lot of drive, time and effort. Have you ever had that feeling that when you have got there (done well too likely, even if you don't want to brag about it), it creeps up on you: that sense of having lost a bit of clarity or sense of self in the new context along the way?
Of course you are still you but that sense of being in touch or sharp with your own thinking is hard to see as clearly as it was before. I don't mean navel-gazing or going into therapy territory but more about proactively getting back to the level or sharpness or vision you know you usually have but have momentarily lost.
This fogginess is more common than is widely recognised. It is increasingly so, given how much is being asked of leaders and founders in the present climate. The speed at which we are all working means it can be a natural consequence when taking on new roles or juggling multiple projects especially.
How it happens
It is one of those things where you don't know how it started but what you can describe is how it feels once you notice it.
Making those small adaptations over time, where you might have made one adaptation in isolation, then another, then another. These might be for example, softening your point of view due to the environment or holding back in a meeting. None of these adaptations feel significant individually. When they all add up, without you intending it, you are now a version of you that is functioning well but somewhere underneath you are aware that you are not firing on all guns blazing.
The most telling version of this is when someone takes on a new role or opportunity at a time that was not quite right but was too good an opportunity to let pass. Over time something starts to erode, that clear sense of their own judgment they had before, that confidence in their own reading of a situation. The opportunity itself was fine. It was the gap between who they were and what the role kept asking of them that needed looking at, and the longer it went unaddressed the wider it got.
Sometimes it is simpler than that. A leader reaches the point of waking up wondering whether they still want to do what they do. The work has become relentless and all-consuming and the connection to what it was originally for has got lost in the volume of it. They have not stopped being good at it. The why has just got harder to find.
What the research shows
A systematic review of nearly 200 papers on leader identity, published in Organizational Psychology Review in July 2025 by Hammond, Thrasher and Vogelgesang Lester, found that as leaders move into more complex roles, their sense of themselves as a person and their sense of themselves as a leader can pull apart. The demands of the role start to override their own thinking and they end up operating from what the role requires of them rather than from themselves or their own values.
Research by Kragt and Day at the University of Western Australia found that how clearly a leader has internalised their own authority significantly predicts both their development and their career progression over time. How clearly you know yourself as a leader affects how well you lead. When that clarity erodes, so does the quality of the thinking you bring to your work or life.
That being said, to view this as a failing would not be the truth or fair to yourself to be honest. This is what complex roles do to people who take them seriously and stay in them long enough.
The question then is not whether this type of thing happens but whether you notice it and decide it is worth addressing.
Do you recognise any of this?
So how do you know when it is happening before you wake up one day feeling meh? The signs tend to show up in the texture of the work. Decisions that used to feel clear take longer than they should and you are stalling without knowing why. You know what you would say in certain rooms if you were being straight about it, and you are aware somewhere that you are holding back.
One of the more specific things I pick up in coaching is when people have high expectations of themselves, especially with a history of perfectionism (no judgment, I am one myself), is that the standards someone holds themselves to start to feel like a burden rather than a quality they express. The thoroughness that made them good at what they do has become the reason things cannot quite get finished or handed over, those just one more tweak or rewrite moments before sending. The standard of the quality of work has not changed but what has changed is the relationship with it.
Why now rather than later
The most common response to this kind of experience is to think I am too busy, I will get to this when things are quieter or settle down. In practice, things rarely settle. New challenges come up, one gets busier or distracted by the next project. What was underlying gets deferred again.
A 2025 review published in ScienceDirect found that despite organisations spending an estimated $81 billion on leadership development in 2024, only 23% of employees believed their organisation's leaders had the capabilities to lead effectively through complexity, with identity misalignment identified as one of the main contributing factors.
Leaving this unaddressed tends to compound over time. One's thinking gets less clear and the distance between how you are operating and what you know you can bring gets wider. The longer this continues the more effort it requires to address it.
What helps
Working on your identity and who you are in what you do improves decision quality, increases self-awareness and gives a greater sense of direction. This is backed not only by what I have observed in practice but by research on identity work and the benefit of coaching. A 2024 study from Henley Business School found these outcomes show up most consistently when leaders work on this.
What I also find is that this kind of work moves faster with quicker outcomes than people expect. The clarity that was there before has not disappeared, it has just become harder to access. Getting back to it is really about clearing what has been getting in the way of what you already know rather than learning something entirely new.
When you have this specific type of thinking space, with someone who has no stake in what you decide and enough experience to read what is happening, ahem ha, what changes first is usually not the specific question you arrived with but the thinking underneath it. The weight feels lighter. A comment I hear again and again at the end of each session is "I feel so much lighter." When you give yourself the kindness that done is good enough or that imperfect action is better than perfect inaction, the standard that felt like a burden becomes something you are choosing again rather than managing. The version of you that is showing up in the room starts to feel more like the you who is doing active thinking in the present moment.
For some people a single focused session is enough to surface what has been sitting there and then agree the most useful next steps. The Unblur Intensive is specifically designed for that moment, a 90-minute one-to-one to get underneath what has been accumulating, find what is actually there and leave with enough clarity to act without adding more pressure to the week. For others we might find it is the beginning of longer work and want to go deeper over more sessions. Either way it starts with a conversation.
Getting back on track with what makes you you and in tune with your clarity again changes the quality of your thinking. In my experience that has a much wider and lasting effect than people expect and changes how people approach everything thereafter.
A free discovery call with me is where that starts, with no sell or obligation.
Book a discovery call or email penny@katherineashmore.com
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References
Hammond, M.M., Thrasher, G. and Vogelgesang Lester, G.: A Systematic Review of the Leader Identity Research, A Road Map for the Rigorous Study and Advancement of Leader Identity. Organizational Psychology Review, Sage, Volume 15, Issue 3, July 2025. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20413866251351752
Kragt, D. and Day, D.V.: Predicting Leadership Competency Development and Promotion Among High-Potential Executives, The Role of Leader Identity. Frontiers in Psychology, University of Western Australia, 2020. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7419574/
Bourne, D., April, K. and Dharani, B.: Editorial, Identity work in coaching: new developments and perspectives for business and leadership coaches and practitioners. Frontiers in Psychology, Henley Business School, University of Reading, December 2024. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11683902/
ScienceDirect: Navigating complex environments requires complex leaders, 2025. Citing Future Market Insights and Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2023. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000768132500103X
