The Cards-to-the-Vest Problem: Insecurity in Leadership

You have been in the room where everyone knows the right call and nobody will make it. That is not a process problem. That is insecurity, wearing a business suit.

In this episode, Kim breaks down what insecurity actually looks like at the top, and why it has almost nothing to do with a leader protecting the organization. It's a leader protecting themselves from it. When the question quietly shifts from "what's best for the mission" to "what keeps me safe," decisions stall, credit flows up, risk flows down, and your best people learn to stop sticking their necks out.

People are the currency. How they treat each other is the load-bearing wall. Insecurity at the top puts a crack in that wall and hangs a picture over it. This one is about taking the picture down.

Leadership After 5. New episodes for the leaders still thinking about it after hours.

email: kim@thekpadvisorygroup.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Welcome to Leadership After Five. Hi everyone, I am Kim. And if you've been listening for a while, thank you for being here. If you're new, hi, would love to connect with you. You can reach out to me at Kim at the KPAdvisor Group.com. You can also find me at Kim Perkins on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you. So it's been a couple weeks since I've done a podcast. And to be honest, I've been head down. Okay. I've been head down on a couple of projects, and I wanted to give this podcast its due justice. And every time I would sit down, something would like distract me, and I decided I was gonna wait. So that is the reason for my delay. But I'm back and I came with the goods, okay? So tonight we are talking about insecurity in leadership and not the personal kind you work out in therapy, the structural kind, the kind that gets built into how a whole organization behaves until people stop noticing it and start calling it, hey, that's just how we do things around here. Because here's what I believe, and it's the thing I want to stress test with you for the next, you know, 10 or 15 minutes. A building full of insecure leaders is a building that cannot decide. I'm gonna say it one more time. A building full of insecure leaders is a building that cannot decide. And a building that cannot decide is not protecting itself, it's protecting the people at the top from their own individual risk. Everything else is downstream of that. So let's start with the tell, because insecurity at the top almost never announces itself. And that's the trick of it. A frightened leader does not walk in and say, I'm afraid. No, a frightened leader hedges. Decisions that should take a day take a quarter. Everything, and I mean everything, gets socialized before it gets decided. Which is a very polite word for spreading the blame thin enough that no single person can ever be held to the call. Credit flows up, risk flows down. You get leaders who keep their real opinion hidden until they can see which way the room is leading. And then, surprise, that is where they land too. You get meetings after the meeting, and you get that beautiful phrase, let me loop in a few more people used, not to get better input, but to get more cover. Now notice the through line. Every single one of those behaviors is a way of not being the person whose name is on the decision. That is the whole game. Cards to the vest. Because if I never show you my hand, you can never tell me I played it wrong. That is the definition I want you working with tonight. Insecurity in leadership is not a feeling, it's a behavior, it is the consistent choice to stay uncatchable. So here's the part I want you to sit with because it reframes everything. Insecure leadership is not a leader protecting the organization. It's a leader protecting themselves from the organization. When a leader is secure, the math is simple. One question: What is the best decision for the mission, and I will carry the weight of it? When a leader is insecure, a second question quietly takes over the first. What decision keeps me safe? What move protects my standing, my optics, my personal downside? And those two questions are not the same question. Most of the time they point in opposite directions. The bold, correct call almost always carries personal risk. It always does. The slow, committee-shaped non-decision almost always protects the individual while it slowly starves the mission. So the next time you are staring at an organization that cannot make a decision, don't ask what's wrong with the decision. Ask a better question. Ask who in this room is afraid and what are they afraid of losing? Nine times out of ten, that is your answer. The decision was never the problem. The exposure was. People are watching. They're always watching. And when they watch leaders hide their cards, defer every call, and make very sure they are never the one left holding the bag. Your workhorse learns the unwritten rule of the place in about 90 days. Don't stick your neck out. Being right is not rewarded here. Being uncatchable is. So your best people stop bringing you their boldest thinking. And here's the part that should sting. It's because they read the pattern correctly. They watch what got punished and what got protected and they adjusted. Smart people always do. Now you've got a building full of talented people playing not to lose. And an organization playing not to lose actually does not win. This is the load-bearing wall talking. People are the currency. How they treat each other and specifically whether they feel safe being honest with each other is the wall the whole structure rests on. Insecurity at the top puts a crack in that wall, and then it hangs a nice picture over the crack and hopes nobody looks. Folks, you can hire brilliant people, and you can also pay them really good. If the pattern teaches them to hide, you will never see the thing you actually hired them for. So let's get to the part you came for. What do you actually do about it? And I want to be honest before I give you the moves. Whether the insecure leader is above you, next to you, or if we're being real tonight, whether it's you, because most of us have been the card to the vest leader at some point. I know I have. The question is never, am I ever insecure? Everybody is. The question is, do I let it drive? Again, this can be both professional and personal. Your insecurity should never be in the driver's seat. All right, let's get to the moves. Five moves. Here's number one. Name your risk out loud. Insecurity survives in the dark. The moment you say in the room, here is exactly what I'm worried about with this decision, and here is why I'm making it anyway. You have done something radical. You separated the fear from the choice. You are allowed to be afraid and decisive at the same time. Most leaders think they have to feel confident before they can actually act confident. I think that's backwards. You act and you let the confidence catch up to you. Alright, two, put your name on the call. Stop laundering decisions through a consensus you don't actually have. If it's your call, say it's your call. I decided this, if it's wrong, it's on me. Like take ownership. Do you know what that does to a room when you do that? It gives everyone else permission to stop hiding too. Ownership is contagious in the exact same way that cover seeking is contagious. You get to pick which one spreads. Alright, three, reward the neck, not just the outcome. If you only celebrate people when the bet pays off, you are quietly training everyone to stop betting. So catch someone taking a smart, well-reasoned risk that did not work out and back them in public anyway. That one act moves the pattern more than any values poster you will ever hang on a wall. Four. Now I may lose some of you with this, hopefully not. Stick with me. But four is shrink the meeting. Not every decision needs to be 11 people. When you catch yourself widening the circle, ask the honest question: Am I doing this for better input or for more cover? If it's cover, you already know the answer and you're avoiding it. Decide with the people who actually own the work and let the decision be seen. Five, stop rewarding the hallway. This is the one that nobody talks about. You know what I'm talking about? The meeting after the meeting. Yeah, well, that meeting only has power because you give it power. When someone comes to you privately to relitigate a call that should have been challenged in the open, send it right back to the open. Hey, so-and-so, good point. Bring it Thursday in the room. The shadow conversation dies the second it has to happen in the light. Now, let's go back to what I said earlier about being gone for two weeks. And I said to you, I don't even know if it's been two weeks. Has it been two weeks? It's been a little bit, right? But I was busy. But another reason was I wanted to give this episode the justice it deserved. And I had a stretch where I caught myself doing the thing. Soften the call I knew was right, because I did not want to absorb the individual hit if it went sideways. Widen a circle, I did not need to widen, had the cards to the vest all day, every day. So I had to do the exact five things I just handed you. Name it, own it, which, if you're keeping score, is what this is. Here's where I'll leave you. Insecurity in leadership is not a character flaw you were born with. It is a decision you are making over and over, usually without ever noticing. Every time you choose your own safety over the mission, that is you choosing. And the good news buried inside that is if it's a decision, it's reversible. You can choose the other way in the very next meeting. The leaders people actually follow are not the ones with no fear. They are the ones who let you see the fear and decide anyway. That's the whole thing. That's the pattern worth building. So put your cards out there, put them the table, play the hand, let them see it. Well, if this episode resonated for you, I would love to hear from you. Please send me an email at Kim at the KPAdvisoregroup.com or find me on LinkedIn at Kim Perkins. This has been real, and I hope to see you in the next episode. Take care.