Leadership, Self-Awareness and the Work of Building Better Organizations
Photo credit: Carlos Costa via Unsplash
A conversation with Senior Executive Coach LaVonne Dorsey on developing self-awareness, why different perspectives matter and what it takes for leaders to get out of their own way.
After exploring the differences between coaching, therapy and mentoring, our conversation with LaVonne turned to another question: What sometimes gets in a leader’s way?
As a senior executive leadership coach and facilitator working with leaders and organizations, LaVonne Dorsey sees a consistent pattern. Most organizational challenges are not really about strategy. More often, they are about people: working with people, hiring, managing, growing and sometimes even letting go of people. For leaders, that often means looking closely at how leaders show up in that work, how they interact and how often their own assumptions, reactions or blind spots make it harder for others to do their best work, and for the organization itself to work well.
“The dysfunction we’re talking about,” she explains, “is the inability for people to get out of their own way.” It is not that organizations lack capable people. It is that energy gets pulled into patterns, reactions and dynamics that make it difficult to focus on what actually matters. “It just sucks your energy,” she says. “You can’t focus on what you really want to do because there’s so much you get into a swirl about.”
When Experience No Longer Works
One of the more challenging moments for leaders comes when the tools that have served them for years suddenly stop working. LaVonne recalls coaching an experienced HR leader with more than forty years of leadership experience. He had spent his career with high-functioning teams and was highly capable in his role, but in a new environment, he found himself overwhelmed.
“He had never worked in a highly dysfunctional organization,” she says. The shift was not about competence. It was about context, and how leaders adapt in a changing environment.
“You’ve worked with high-functioning people for a very long time,” she told him. “This is new for you. You cannot operate in the same way because they’re not high-functioning. You were working with PhDs. Now you’re working with third graders. It’s a very different landscape.”
Helping him see that the platform he was on had changed became essential. The skills he had developed over decades were not wrong. They were simply not sufficient for the environment he was now in. Once he could see that, he could begin the work of making the changes needed to shift the situation.
Emerging Leaders: Partnership or Burning It Down
LaVonne sees a similar dynamic with emerging leaders entering organizations with strong opinions but limited perspective. In one situation, a group of these individuals challenged established leadership in ways that came across as dismissive and, at times, disrespectful. The leadership team was surprised by the tone and behavior, but LaVonne saw something else going on.
“To be honest, I was a little shocked, too,” she says, “but I also said, this is what we’ve done. We’ve given that generation the authority to be disrespectful instead of saying, you don’t know everything. We need to be able to listen to one another.”
In other words, the issue was not a lack of energy or engagement. It was how that energy was being expressed and directed, pitting one group against another.
At one point, speaking to the emerging leaders, she reframed the conversation with a direct question: “Are you here to be in partnership in creating something bigger together, or are you here to burn the house down and you have no tools to rebuild it?”
The distinction is an important one. Leadership, in her view, requires more than critique. It requires the ability to contribute, to listen and to work with others toward something shared: a common goal.
Self-Awareness Is Not Optional
At the center of all of this is self-awareness. For LaVonne, the question is simple, but not easy:
“What don’t I know?”
Without that question, leaders can become fixed in their perspective, unaware of how their behavior is affecting others or limiting what is possible. With it, there is room to grow. Self-awareness allows leaders to stop, reflect and readjust. It shifts leadership from reaction to response with insight and intention.
Who Is at the Table and Why It Matters
Conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging are not abstract or theoretical for LaVonne. They are directly tied to how well decisions get made in organizations.
“We have to ask, who is at the table, who gets to make decisions and who has access to power,” she says.
Without a range of perspectives, leaders are making decisions with incomplete information. Data tells us over and over that different experiences and viewpoints strengthen the work, but only if those voices are heard and people have a real opportunity to contribute. What matters is whether people in an organization genuinely feel part of what is being created together.
The implications show up in everyday practical realities. She points to the cost of childcare, housing and elder care as real-life examples, particularly in expensive cities like Seattle, where the lack of access to resources creates barriers that are difficult to overcome. Those pressures shape who has the time, energy and support to participate fully at work, much less step into leadership roles.
“If you don’t have privilege and don’t have access, you can’t really be successful,” she says. “You’re stuck.”
Leadership, in this context, is not only about results. It is about creating conditions where many different people can participate, thrive and grow. It also calls leaders to understand these barriers and welcome as many perspectives as possible, including ones they may not initially agree with or may even feel challenged by. The goal is to make better decisions from a broader and more complete understanding of the situation.
The Work of Leadership
For LaVonne, one sign that coaching is working is when clients begin to notice their own patterns and how those patterns are negatively impacting their lives, recognizing behaviors that have become “knee-jerk” or automatic and learning how to adjust. Eventually, leaders reach a point where they can pause and think, “Oh, I’m doing that thing again.” That growing self-awareness, and the ability to move beyond old ways of doing things, is where the work begins to shift, allowing leaders to move more powerfully toward the impact they want to have.
Ultimately, the work of leadership is not about having the right answers in every circumstance. It is about how well leaders relate to others, how willing they are to continually examine themselves and how able they are to adjust when it is clear that something is not working. When leaders are self-aware and can get out of their own way, they create more space for others to contribute, make better decisions and help build better organizations.
For leaders who feel stuck or are working through a rough patch, an executive coach, trusted thought partner or even a mentor can help turn insight into meaningful action that strengthens the team and organization.
This reflection connects to our broader perspective on integrating practice as a development strategy, where we examine how leaders translate insight into action and practice in the moment. It builds on our earlier reflections on steadiness and humanity by asking what leadership development looks like in real life.
Getting Out of Your Own Way: Questions for Leaders
Where might I be relying heavily on past experience, and is it serving me well now?
What patterns or reactions do I notice in myself, and what impact are they having on my work and relationships?
How am I showing up to others in moments of tension, disagreement or change?
What might I not be seeing or understanding right now, especially from people whose experiences differ from my own? Who might help me see this more clearly?
Who is sitting at the table, and who is not? How does that shape the decisions we are making?