What Great Leadership Teams Need to Unlearn to Evolve
Written by Paul Grainger, Founder of Unlock Dynamic
As founder of Unlock Dynamic, Paul Grainger is a trusted strategic partner to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Operating Officers (COOs), and senior leadership teams navigating pressure, change, and complexity. With over 25 years of experience across startups and multinationals, he helps ambitious organisations thrive by addressing the behavioural realities most leadership programs overlook.
We often expect people to lead differently as they become more senior: to step back, ask rather than answer, and see beyond the immediate problem. Yet the behaviours that made them valuable are often the very ones they are now expected to use less. What happens when success itself starts making leadership more difficult?
The moment
“What was the bug? How did this get through? How do we fix it?” During a recent leadership workshop, one participant described the questions the team would typically ask when a bug appeared. The sequence was simple: find the problem, understand what caused it, and fix it.
But as the conversation continued, a different question emerged. Why had there been seven issues? From there, the discussion moved beyond the individual bugs towards how the work was being planned and how early technical leads were being brought in. Only then did one participant reflect: “I think something that we don't do is we don't take a step back from the issues.”
What’s really happening?
The interesting part of this exchange wasn't the bug itself. It was what happened as the leaders began looking at the same situation from different distances.
One bug required a solution. Seven bugs suggested a pattern. Look further back, and the problem began to shift again, towards how the work was being planned in the first place.
This is where the familiar advice to “see the bigger picture” or “be more strategic” can be misleading. Leadership isn't simply about stepping back from the detail. Sometimes getting closer is exactly what's needed. The challenge is knowing which altitude the situation requires.
When solving isn’t enough
The difficulty is that fixing the immediate problem often works. The issue gets resolved, the team moves on, and everyone feels productive. When the next challenge appears, the same process begins again: identify it, understand it, fix it.
But when this becomes the default response, organisations can become very good at solving problems without becoming equally good at seeing them. Each issue may be dealt with effectively while the conditions producing those issues remain untouched. The danger isn't that leaders are failing to solve problems. It's that they may be solving them too close to where they appear.
When success gets in the way
Many leaders have spent years being rewarded for knowing the details, interpreting what’s happening, solving difficult problems, and stepping in when things go wrong. Often, those are precisely the strengths that helped them reach this point.
Then leadership asks something different. Step back. Ask rather than answer. Make judgements without knowing everything. For those whose value has been built on knowing and solving, that can be surprisingly difficult.
Perhaps this is why “be more strategic” is easier advice to give than to follow. Leaders don't always need to unlearn their weaknesses. They may need to unlearn their strengths, not by becoming less good at them, but by becoming more intentional about when to use them.
The cost of the wrong altitude
The goal isn't simply to get leaders out of the detail. Sometimes closer attention is exactly what's needed. The more useful question is whether leaders are choosing where to focus, or returning to the altitude that feels most familiar.
Staying at the wrong altitude has a cost. If leaders stay too close for too long, decisions slow, opportunities are missed, and teams become dependent on senior leaders. If they stay too far away, warning signs can be missed until they become rework, customer problems, lost revenue, or people leaving.
Strong judgement requires movement. Sometimes leaders need to zoom in, sometimes zoom out. The challenge is recognising what the situation requires and changing altitude when it does.
What effective leadership teams do differently
Effective leadership teams aren't necessarily those that stay furthest from the detail. They are able to move between levels without becoming stuck at one.
They know when an issue needs closer attention and when it requires them to step back. They can examine the detail when it matters, then zoom out far enough to notice patterns, connections, and consequences that weren't visible before.
The difference is not distance, but choice. Rather than allowing the problem in front of them to determine where their attention goes, they pause to ask: What’s needed now? Does this require immediate action, closer attention, greater curiosity, or a wider view?
The evidence
Research published in Organization Science in February 2025 suggests that effective strategic thinking isn't simply about seeing the bigger picture. In one experiment involving 181 mid- and high-level managers, researchers found that managers benefited from moving between concrete and abstract thinking: getting close enough to identify individual symptoms, then stepping back to connect them and understand their underlying causes.
Stanford research published in February 2026 points in a similar direction. Too much concrete thinking can obscure wider patterns, while too much abstraction can create blind spots of its own. The researchers also suggest that teams can deliberately move between these perspectives, allowing different frames to reveal different possibilities.
The implication for leadership teams is simple: better judgement may depend less on finding the right perspective and more on knowing when to change it.
Beyond the right decision
Every time a leadership team responds to a problem, it is doing more than solving that particular issue. It is also reinforcing how the team decides where to place its attention the next time something happens. Sometimes better leadership judgement means deciding not only what deserves attention, but what deliberately does not.
If the instinct is always to move towards the problem in front of them, that response can gradually become automatic. Part of developing better judgement is unlearning the reflex that leadership always requires getting closer.
Over time, one of the most valuable capabilities a leadership team can build is knowing not simply what needs solving, but what matters most.
The one question
The next time an important problem lands in front of your leadership team, before moving immediately towards a solution, ask:
"Do we need to get closer to this, or step back?"
The question forces a useful pause. The value isn't in agreeing on the answer. It's in making the choice conscious rather than allowing familiarity or urgency to make it for you. Because better judgement isn't about always seeing the bigger picture. It's knowing when to change the view.
Read more from Paul Grainger
Paul Grainger, Founder of Unlock Dynamic
Paul Grainger focuses on helping capable leaders and teams sustain strong performance over time, beyond conventional approaches that frequently fail to hold up under daily pressure. Drawing on decades of experience, he blends human insight and modern science to offer a practical alternative to conventional leadership thinking. A consistent theme in his work is identifying the invisible performance drains that quietly cost organizations time, energy, and focus.
