We Asked 42 CEOs and Founders: What Was Your Most Toxic Leadership Habit?

A toxic pattern therapy helped me name was “control through urgency”: I’d use my intensity to force clarity fast, especially when a client’s business model was complex and the stakes were high. In practice, that meant I’d jump straight to solutions and treat emotions (ours or the client’s) like noise–then wonder why execution felt heavy.

Therapy helped me see I was confusing speed with safety, and that my job as Chief Client & Operations Officer is to create containers where strategy can actually land. I replaced urgency with “explicit alignment”: 10 minutes to define the decision we’re making, the success metric, and the owner–then I shut up and listen before we build.

You can see the difference in work like MSPB’s physician transition videos: instead of rushing to “ship content,” we slowed down to script for specific patient anxieties, chose warm familiar settings, and directed calm delivery so the message preserved trust. Internally, that same approach reduced reactive Slack spirals because the team knew what mattered (clarity, continuity, compliance) and what didn’t (my adrenaline).

Culture-wise, breaking the pattern shifted us toward accountability without cortisol: fewer last-minute pivots, more honest pushback, and better cross-functional handoffs between creative, ops, and analytics. The team got permission to be precise–not just fast–which is where performance marketing actually gets sustainable.

Madeline Jack, Chief Client & Operations Officer, Blink Agency

Working with a business coach revealed a toxic pattern I had fallen into: as a founder I was stepping back from day-to-day issues and avoiding direct, constructive confrontation. I was allowing small problems to fester instead of addressing them clearly and promptly. We trained managers on specific language and workarounds so conversations stayed productive and not personal. Breaking that pattern led to measurable improvements, including a 15% decrease in refunds and redo orders and record-high employee retention. Most importantly, managers acted sooner and people felt safer speaking up, which changed how we solve problems.

Eric Turney, President / Sales and Marketing Director, The Monterey Company

Through therapy, I discovered a pattern of over-functioning in my leadership style as I was always trying to resolve problems that were outside my area of purview. For instance, when a project fell behind schedule, rather than letting others solve the problem, I would create a new plan to rectify the situation myself, while doing so at a much faster rate than they could possibly hope to complete the work themselves. While these actions may have appeared to be taking ownership, in reality, they were building a culture in which team members were trained to escalate issues at an early stage, as well as wait for me to relieve their pressures.

Changing this behavior had a profound impact on the way I approached leading the team. I have established a simple rule (in 1:1 and stand-up meetings) to identify the problem, ask the individual for two potential solutions, and then make a decision about the best place to provide assistance versus where to allow the individual to solve the problem. Changing this behavior established a much greater sense of accountability and confidence across the team. The impact of these improvements is noted within most product development teams, by way of improved decision-making, less frequent emergency escalations and higher levels of predictable sprints. From my experience, the calmness within a team increases significantly when the leader stops providing emergency assistance to that team for every aspect of their work. Hopefully, this has clarified my position.

Abhishek Pareek, Founder & Director, Coders.dev

The pattern was taking everything personally and making my team pay for it without realising that was what I was doing. When someone missed a deadline or a client gave negative feedback, I didn’t yell or blame openly. Instead I went quiet. I withdrew energy, gave shorter responses in meetings, and became subtly unavailable. I thought I was being measured and professional. My therapist helped me see I was punishing people with emotional distance.

She pointed out that I’d learned this behaviour long before becoming a CEO. Growing up, disappointment in my family was never expressed directly it was communicated through silence and withdrawal. I had inherited that template and brought it straight into my leadership without examining it. When something went wrong at work, my nervous system treated it as a personal rejection, and I responded the only way I knew how by pulling back to protect myself.

The effect on my team was corrosive in ways I hadn’t seen. People started managing my mood instead of managing their work. They would delay sharing bad news, over-qualify every update, and watch my face during meetings to gauge whether it was safe to speak honestly. One senior hire told me during her exit interview that she never knew where she stood with me, and that the unpredictability of my emotional availability was exhausting. That conversation was painful but necessary.

The change started with learning to notice the withdrawal impulse in real time the tightening in my chest, the urge to close my laptop and go quiet. My therapist helped me build a small pause between the trigger and the reaction, enough to ask myself whether the situation genuinely warranted distance or whether I was retreating out of hurt feelings.

I began replacing withdrawal with direct, brief honesty. Instead of going cold after a missed deadline, I would say something like this concerns me can we talk about what happened. Five seconds of straightforward words instead of two days of silent tension.

The culture shifted faster than I expected. Within a few months people brought problems to me earlier, bad news surfaced sooner, and the team stopped walking on eggshells.

Raj Baruah, Co-Founder, VoiceAIWrapper

I used to fire people way too fast. Like, absurdly fast. Someone would miss a deadline or screw up a client shipment and I’d have them out the door within 48 hours. I thought I was being decisive and protecting the company culture. My therapist helped me see I was actually protecting myself from the discomfort of having hard conversations.

Here’s what was really happening: I’d hired someone, they’d make a mistake, and instead of coaching them through it, I’d convince myself they “weren’t a culture fit” or “didn’t have the drive.” Then I’d fire them and immediately start looking for their replacement. Rinse and repeat. At one point in my fulfillment company, we had 40% turnover in management roles over 18 months. That’s catastrophic.

My therapist asked me a question that broke me: “What are you so afraid will happen if you tell someone they disappointed you?” I realized I was terrified of conflict because my dad never gave me feedback growing up, just silent disapproval. So I’d replicated that exact pattern but made it worse by adding the guillotine.

Once I started actually managing people instead of just evaluating and executing them, everything changed. I implemented a simple rule: nobody gets fired for a first-time mistake unless it’s illegal or puts someone in danger. Period. You get clear feedback, a plan to improve, and accountability. Our management turnover dropped to under 10%. More importantly, people started taking smart risks because they weren’t walking on eggshells.

The best part? The people I almost fired in their first 90 days became some of my strongest leaders. One guy botched a major client onboarding in week six. Old me would’ve cut him loose. Instead we did a post-mortem together, rebuilt the process, and he ran that department for four years.

Turns out firing fast isn’t decisive leadership. It’s just expensive cowardice with a productivity veneer.

Joe Spisak, CEO, Fulfill.com

One pattern I had to confront was being what I’d call an “idea fountain.”

As a founder of a nationwide mobile notary agency, I’m constantly thinking of ways to improve our systems, solve problems, and grow the business. I used to share those ideas in real time with my team, thinking it would help move us forward faster. But in reality, it was creating noise.

From my perspective, it was momentum. From their perspective, it was constant change and noise.

It started to create uncertainty-questions like: Is this a new priority? Do I need to shift what I’m doing? Is our process changing again? That kind of environment makes it harder for a team to feel confident and grounded in their work.

Therapy and coaching helped me step back and recognize that not every idea needs to be shared immediately. Timing and containment matter.

Now, I capture ideas in my own system first (even something as simple as an idea list in my phone), and I’m more intentional about what gets introduced to the team and when.

That shift has made a noticeable difference. The team has more stability, more confidence in the process, and more clarity on where to focus their energy. Instead of reacting to constant inputs, they’re able to execute well on what’s already working-and that’s ultimately what moves the business forward and keeps clients happy with our service.

Angelina Nguyen, CEO/Founder, Team Signings

One pattern therapy helped me identify was feeling the need to step into every problem too quickly.

Early on, I thought being a good leader meant always having the answer and moving fast to fix things. In practice, that created a subtle issue. The team became more dependent, and I was unintentionally limiting their ownership and decision-making.

The shift was learning to pause and ask better questions instead of immediately providing solutions. Instead of stepping in, I would ask how they were thinking about the problem and what options they saw.

Breaking that pattern had a clear impact. The team became more autonomous and confident in their decisions, and the quality of thinking improved across the board. It also changed the culture from one where problems were escalated upward to one where people take ownership and solve things closer to where they happen.

The main lesson was that speed in leadership is not always about acting faster. Sometimes it’s about creating the space for better decisions to emerge.

Louis Ducruet, Founder and CEO, Eprezto

As the Director of Business Development at InCorp, one thing I had to confront with time was my tendency to micromanage. Once I started letting go a bit more, trusting people to own their work and make decisions, I noticed a real shift. The team became more confident, more engaged and more willing to take initiatives. People felt trusted and valued, which led to better collaboration and more creative thinking.

In a place like Singapore, where talent is highly capable and expectations are high, trust plays a huge role in keeping teams motivated. Good leadership isn’t about controlling everything but it’s about creating an environment where people can do their best work. Letting go wasn’t easy, but it made a difference for both the team and the business.

Jessica Liew, Director of Business Development, InCorp Global

One toxic leadership pattern therapy helped identify was over-controlling communication. Wanting to review too much, especially around customer calls and messaging, slowed response times and made the team less confident making decisions on their own. In a fast-moving service business, that kind of bottleneck creates frustration quickly.

Breaking that pattern meant putting clear call-handling scripts, escalation rules, and response-time targets in place, then trusting the team to act without waiting for approval. The result was faster responses, fewer missed opportunities, and a culture where people felt more ownership and confidence in their work.

Dennis Holmes, CEO, Answer Our Phone

One pattern I had to work on in my leadership was micromanaging. I thought I was just being detail-oriented and making sure everything was done right. But with time, I realized it was actually limiting the team. It didn’t give them enough space to think, take ownership or be creative. Then I started focusing more on trusting the people around me. Once the team felt that trust, they became more confident and more invested in their work.

What I’ve learned is that leadership isn’t about controlling everything but it’s about creating the right environment for people to do their best work.

Jack Nguyen, CEO, InCorp Vietnam

The toxic pattern therapy helped me reveal the fear-based micromanagement, rooted in unresolved perfectionism. I convinced myself that control equaled quality. Research by Toor and Ogunlana confirms that leaders gradually become driven by personal authority, producing abuse of power, narcissism, and coercion as compounding behaviors. I was living that data.

Therapy revealed I was manufacturing a culture of fear, and according to published organisational research, fear induces cognitive paralysis in employees, directly harming their emotional and intellectual responses at work. My team’s motivation was silently eroding.

Toxic leadership accounts for 35.1% of job satisfaction variance related to management and 17.1% related to seniority and pay, meaning my behavior had measurable financial consequences.

Once I changed control with psychological safety and two-way communication, voluntary contribution increased visibly. Research confirms that toxic leadership inflicts serious, enduring harm on individuals, groups, and entire organizations. Healing one leader genuinely healed an ecosystem.

Fahad Khan, Digital Marketing Manager, Ubuy Sweden

With 12 years steering campaigns at e-commerce giants like Ubuy, I’ve led high-stakes teams through launches that doubled revenue overnight. There is a question that always trips me up is the toxic habit which nearly tanked my leadership: micromanaging every pixel-perfect ad tweak. I’ve come up with this pattern from the past flops I couldn’t shake, but it ultimately stifled creativity, leaving my team burned out and second-guessing their best ideas. Therapy has flipped the script, showing this behaviour as “control anxiety” rather than high standards.

To break the cycle, I start delegating “ownership zones” on a weekly basis, such as letting designers own A/B tests fully, a strategy supported by Harvard Business Review’s studies on trust. I also scheduled “no-interrupt” deep work blocks which successfully cut my check-ins by 70% and ran anonymous feedback rounds monthly to rebuild psychological safety, a concept famously validated by Google’s Project Aristotle. The impact was immediate: team morale soared, voluntary turnover dropped 40%, and innovation spiked with 25% more campaign ideas greenlit, fostering a culture of bold, collaborative wins rather than fear-based perfectionism.

Fahad Khan, Digital Marketing Manager, Ubuy Canada

I am an Engineering Leadership Coach, and therapy helped me realize that my habit of micromanaging was actually destroying my team in Singapore. I used to hover over every daily meeting and jump into their code to make “quality tweaks.” My therapist helped me observe that this behavior screamed distrust rather than true leadership.

This toxic pattern was poisoning our culture in several ways. My team stopped coming up with their own ideas because I was always interfering. Two of my senior developers quietly resigned because they didn’t feel trusted. I realized my perfectionism was actually just a mask for my own insecurities.

Once I identified this, I made some big changes. I replaced my constant check-ins with simple meetings every two weeks. I gave people full ownership over their work, and told them that, “You are responsible for this entire feature from start to finish.” I also started giving public credit for their wins instead of taking it myself.

The transformation was incredible. Our team engagement scores improved by 72%. The complex features are now completely handled by my junior developers on their own.

Faizan Khan, PR and Content Marketing Specialist, Ubuy Singapore

The pattern therapy helped me identify was one I would never have named toxic in myself, because from the inside it felt like high standards. From the outside, it was experienced as something considerably more damaging.

I had convinced myself I had built a culture where people could bring problems freely. What I had actually built was a culture where people learned which problems triggered my intensity and quietly stopped bringing those ones. My reaction was never aggressive in any conventional sense but it was unpredictable enough that people developed sophisticated systems for managing my emotional state rather than managing actual problems.

That is the genuinely toxic part. When your team allocates cognitive energy to predicting your reactions they have less available for honest work and for bringing you information you actually need.

Therapy helped me see this through examining what happened in my body before I responded to difficult news. The physiological activation preceded my response enough that I could learn to interrupt it and choose my engagement rather than simply react.

The cultural shift was slow and then profound. Problems started arriving earlier, when still manageable. Disagreements surfaced where I could actually respond to them.

The irony is that the pattern I believed reflected high standards was actively undermining the quality of work I cared most about.

Sovic Chakrabarti, Director, Icy Tales

Honestly, the toxic pattern I had to confront was the need to control every client interaction myself. Early on at Donahue Real Estate Advisors, I believed that my relationships and my judgment were the only thing standing between a client and a bad lease deal in Pittsburgh. That’s a suffocating way to run a business.

What changed it was recognizing that hoarding decisions wasn’t protecting clients – it was slowing down their outcomes. When I started genuinely delegating research, market analysis, and early-stage conversations, the work got sharper, not weaker.

The culture shift was immediate. People stepped up when they had real ownership. For tenant clients here in Pittsburgh navigating competitive office submarkets – Downtown, Southside, Cranberry Township – that meant faster, better-informed recommendations without everything bottlenecking through me.

If you’re a Pittsburgh business evaluating office space right now, this matters to you directly: you want an advisor whose entire team is engaged in your deal, not just the person who answered the phone. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to at Donahue Real Estate Advisors – pure tenant representation, no landlord conflicts, fully present from the first market survey to the final lease signature.

Jack Donahue, SIOR, President & Founder, Donahue Real Estate Advisors

After 30 years in the industry, therapy helped me identify a “hero complex” where I felt I had to personally handle every 24-hour emergency call. I realized this was actually a toxic lack of trust that prevented my team from developing their own expert troubleshooting skills.

I started stepping back during complex Kohler and Generac installations, letting my technicians lead the commissioning and customer walkthroughs. This shift moved me from being a bottleneck to being a mentor, allowing the team to take full ownership of their work.

Breaking this pattern transformed our culture into one of proactive problem-solving, which was essential for expanding our services across the Lower Peninsula. Now, my team has the confidence to provide top-tier reliability without needing me to hover over every project.

Eric Osburn, Owner, Osburn Services

As the Operations Director at Middletown Self Storage, I’m deeply involved in ensuring our day-to-day operations run smoothly across our multiple locations, which definitely puts me in a position to reflect on leadership patterns. One toxic pattern therapy helped me identify was my tendency to over-rely on personal oversight for every detail, driven by a desire for perfect “seamless logistics” and “exceptional customer service.” I thought I needed to be involved in every little thing to maintain our high standards.

Therapy helped me see that this micromanagement wasn’t actually leading to greater efficiency or better service; instead, it created bottlenecks and disempowered my team. I learned to trust my incredible staff more, focusing instead on developing clearer processes and empowering them with autonomy.

Breaking this pattern significantly impacted our company culture and operational flow. Our teams at both the Aquidneck Avenue and Valley Road facilities now have more ownership, which has directly enhanced customer convenience, like coordinating our free local move-ins with Surv! or helping clients find movers for packing and loading. It allows them to genuinely embody the “friendly staff” and “helpful on-site staff” our customers praise, making their experience truly stress-free.

Hannah Snow, Director of Operations, Middletown Self Storage

Therapy helped me identify a persistent people-pleasing pattern that kept me seeking validation and avoiding necessary trade-offs. By clarifying my values and adjusting daily routines, I learned to separate what truly mattered from what felt risky because of old habits, which made holding boundaries easier. That shift moved my responses from defensive reactivity to centered clarity, so conversations became more honest and less emotionally charged. As a result, trust and role alignment improved across the team and a steadier, values-driven culture took root.

Tony Jeton Selimi, Life Strategist and Business Coach Specialised in Human Behaviour, Author, TJS Cognition Ltd

I used to run on a “disaster mindset”: assume every LOI, buyer convo, or diligence request was a trap, and project that suspicion onto my team. Therapy helped me see it as anxiety masquerading as “high standards,” and it was making people feel like they were always one mistake away from blame.

The change was shifting from mind-reading to explicit constraints. Instead of “this feels off,” I’d say: here are the 3 LOI gotchas we’re stress-testing (purchase price composition, working capital adjustments, earnouts) and here’s what “good” looks like–then I’d let the team run that checklist.

Culture impact was immediate: less fear, more ownership, better tempo. We could be firm negotiators (“bad cop” for founders) without turning internal comms into paranoia, and the process got more structured–especially when we’re pushing timing so founders aren’t negotiating with only 3-6 months of runway.

It also made my feedback cleaner: critique the document, not the person. In sell-side M&A for B2B SaaS ($2-25m ARR), that’s the difference between a team that hides bad news and one that surfaces risks early–before the buyer uses them to retrade.

Einar Vollset, Managing Partner, Discretion Capital

As owner of Quad County Roofing, scaling from field work to 1000+ projects with a 5-star Google rating via in-house crews only, I’ve confronted leadership flaws head-on through therapy.

My toxic pattern was double-checking every deck inspection and underlayment detail myself, born from early frustrations with unreliable contractors promising more than they delivered.

Therapy revealed it eroded trust in my skilled team and slowed our storm damage responses, so I changed by implementing crew-led final walkthroughs with photo documentation for insurance claims.

This empowered in-house specialists, like during emergency tarping after wind damage, where they owned assessments without my overrides–projects sped up, errors dropped, and team pride grew, fostering a culture of accountability and faster client satisfaction.

Erik Smith, Owner, Quad County Roofing

As CEO of Lifebit with 15 years building genomics tools like Nextflow and leading federated platforms amid precision medicine’s rapid shifts, I’ve navigated intense tech-driven growth.

Therapy revealed my toxic pattern: aggressively prioritizing technical perfection in data harmonization and AI workflows, dismissing team members’ learning curves as they grappled with skills gaps in bioinformatics and HPC.

I shifted by championing “digital champions” and targeted upskilling, like forming cross-functional teams for our Trusted Research Environment rollout, blending clinical experts with tech adopters.

This fostered psychological safety, accelerating adoption of federated analytics–our teams now collaborate seamlessly across silos, boosting research outputs without burnout and embedding equity in our culture from day one.

Maria Chatzou Dunford, CEO & Founder, Lifebit

As CEO of Netsurit for nearly 30 years, scaling from South Africa to the US with a people-first ethos and the Dreams Program, I’ve led cultural transformations that earned us Wellbeing and International Business Culture Awards.

One toxic pattern therapy uncovered was fixating on operational security and growth metrics–like constant ransomware fears mirrored in client stories–while sidelining employees’ personal dreams, fostering quiet burnout.

Therapy shifted me to champion the Dreams Program explicitly, helping staff set and chase personal goals amid expansions.

This broke the cycle, strengthening our family-like culture; acquisitions like Vital I/O and iTeam integrated seamlessly, with staff retention soaring and teams pulling together on challenges, as our PMO audits confirm.

Orrin Klopper, CEO, Netsurit

As founder of Webyansh, I’ve led Webflow redesigns for 20+ startups in SaaS and B2B, like Hopstack and Project Serotonin, where blending client visions with innovation was key.

Therapy revealed my toxic pattern of rigidly enforcing branding guides–like color palettes and typography in Hopstack–rejecting any creative deviations to avoid risks, which killed team morale and idea flow.

I shifted by inviting team input early, balancing guidelines with fresh ideas.

This sparked a more collaborative culture; for Asia Deal Hub, it produced a scalable design system with custom elements like intuitive deal filters, boosting project efficiency and team ownership as echoed in client testimonials praising our ideation flexibility.

Divyansh Agarwal, Founder, Webyansh

Coming from a military and high-stakes security background, I fell into a “Mission-Only” mindset where I treated my team as technical components rather than people. Therapy helped me identify that my professional detachment was a defense mechanism that stifled the collaborative environment necessary for a high-growth tech company.

I replaced this rigidity with a focus on building “trusted teams” through open communication and intentional empathy. This shift allowed my technicians to take real ownership of our mobile surveillance systems, leading to more innovative deployments of our solar-powered trailers on complex job sites.

Breaking this pattern transformed our culture from one of silent compliance to proactive “operational intelligence.” My team now feels empowered to apply their hands-on security know-how to solve client problems autonomously, ensuring our systems perform at their peak in real-world environments.

Chris Edens, Owner, Mobile Vision Technologies

As founder of Seek & Find Financial, I’ve led hands-on with entrepreneurs through market swings like the 5.75% S&P drop in March 2025, making me attuned to leadership pitfalls in high-stakes advising.

Therapy revealed my toxic pattern: dictating client tax strategies myself during volatility, overriding team input because I equated control with protecting wealth.

I changed by delegating initial plans via Altruist–team builds drafts tied to client values, I refine only on request, like empowering them on the April tariff bull/bear analysis.

This freed bandwidth, fostered team expertise in real-life growth strategies, and shifted culture to collaborative confidence–clients sense the stability, staying longer-term.

Daniel Delaney, Owner, Seek & Find Financial

As head football coach at Perry Hall High School and franchise owner at ProMD Health Bel Air, my team-first mindset sometimes hid a toxic pattern of suppressing feedback to maintain a “strong leader” facade.

Therapy revealed I was unintentionally shutting down grievances during high-pressure moments, like game prep or patient surges, contradicting our “One Team” core value of airing issues openly.

Breaking it by actively soliciting input–like from PAs Amanda and Lauren on treatment plans–fostered trust, leading to innovative patient encounters, such as pairing Keravive with PRP for better hair outcomes.

Our culture shifted to true collaboration, with staff like Paige and Natalie owning experiences more confidently, boosting satisfaction in every interaction.

Ryan Pittillo, Owner, ProMD Health Bel Air

As President of Grounded Solutions with 20+ years leading electrical and excavation teams, I’ve applied my expertise in spotting system red flags–like buzzing panels or tripped breakers–to my own leadership.

Therapy revealed my toxic pattern of ignoring early team stress signals, much like overlooking warmth near service boxes, pushing crews through overload instead of proactive assessments.

I shifted to structured “inspections”–regular load calculations on workloads and thermal scans for burnout–championing our core value of Freedom.

This broke overload cycles in Patriot Excavating, reducing errors like rushed trenching, boosting safety standards, and fostering a culture where self-discipline thrives without resentment.

Clay Hamilton, President, Grounded Solutions

Coming from an audio engineering background, my toxic pattern was “The Perfectionist Mix,” where I obsessed over the aesthetics and production quality of every campaign. Therapy helped me realize I was using creative polish as a shield against the vulnerability of potentially failing on hard commercial data.

I had to shift my leadership to treat marketing purely as a commercial function that supports sales and measurable outcomes. This meant letting go of the “soundboard” and trusting our fractional growth systems to prioritize client numbers and capacity over my personal desire for artistic perfection.

This change moved our agency culture from a bottlenecked creative studio to a results-driven growth partner. By removing my ego from the “aesthetics,” the team now focuses on building connected, scalable systems that earn trust through performance rather than hype.

Jose Escalera, CEO, The Idea Farm by VM Digital

I’ve built and exited multiple companies, worked alongside people like Marcus Lemonis and Daymond John, and led teams through high-pressure brand launches. That kind of pace creates blind spots fast.

The pattern therapy surfaced for me was story-hijacking. Whenever a team member brought a problem, I’d immediately jump in with my own parallel experience instead of actually hearing them out. I thought I was being relatable. What I was actually doing was making every conversation about me and signaling that their perspective didn’t matter enough to sit with.

Working on Visibly Toxic was where I saw the real cost of this. Creative direction needs room to breathe. When I kept redirecting conversations back to “here’s what worked at Flex Watches,” I was unconsciously shrinking the creative oxygen in the room. Once I caught myself doing it and stopped, the team’s brand voice ideas got sharper and bolder–that’s actually when the identity alignment really clicked.

The shift was simple but uncomfortable: I started asking one more question before responding. It sounds small. But it changed whether people felt heard or managed, and that difference shows up directly in the quality of work a team brings you.

Trav Lubinsky, Founder, Trav Brand

As the CEO of a marketing/communications firm that’s grown from boutique web design into a full-service agency, and as an expert witness who has to be surgically precise about language and intent, therapy helped me spot a toxic pattern: I’d “lawyer the room” and over-correct people’s wording in real time. It wasn’t yelling or micromanaging tasks–it was turning every meeting into a message audit, which quietly taught the team that being “safe” mattered more than being bold.

The shift was practicing restraint: I separated “ideation” from “evaluation,” and stopped using my authority as the final edit in the first five minutes. In workshops and internal planning, I’d capture the raw thinking first, then we’d apply marketing psychology and behavioral framing after, when the brain is actually ready for structure.

One concrete example: when we were deep in digital reputation work (the kind of SEO/SEM nuance I’ve testified about), I used to jump in and rewrite the team’s client-facing language mid-draft to avoid risk. After changing the pattern, I gave a strategist ownership of the narrative framework and only reviewed it at a defined checkpoint; the output was stronger because it had a single voice–and the team learned how to think, not just comply.

Breaking that pattern changed culture fast: people stopped performing “correctness” and started offering sharper hypotheses, cleaner debate, and better client counsel. Confidence went up, politics went down, and our communication got more human–which, ironically, is the whole point of marketing psychology.

Steve Taormino, CEO, Stephen Taormino

Running a 3rd-generation family business means carrying a lot of inherited identity. That weight quietly turned into a toxic pattern for me: I couldn’t delegate anything that touched the company’s reputation, which basically meant I couldn’t delegate anything.

Therapy helped me see that I was confusing control with care. My grandfather built this, my family’s name is on the door — so I held on too tight. When we were expanding into volumetric load scanning, a genuinely new technology, I kept pulling decisions back to myself instead of trusting the team we’d built around it. It slowed everything down at exactly the wrong moment.

The shift came when I started treating delegation as a signal of confidence rather than a surrender of standards. I had to explicitly tell people “I trust your judgment on this” and then actually stay out of it — even when it was uncomfortable.

The culture change was real. People started owning outcomes instead of just executing tasks. That distinction matters more than most leaders admit.

Matt Walz, President, Walz Scale & Scanner

As president of Safe Harbors Travel Group, with decades leading global travel management, I’ve built a hands-on culture of trust through policy alignment and duty of care.

Therapy revealed my toxic pattern: enforcing rigid, one-size-fits-all travel policies that ignored our company’s relaxed culture and employee values, fostering resentment and non-compliance like routine budget overruns.

I shifted by updating policies to match our culture–clarifying consequences tied to transparency, integrating duty of care, and allowing sharing economy options like Uber with safety guidelines.

This broke disengagement; teams embraced policies, cutting high turnover in travel roles, boosting accountability, and creating a proactive culture where travelers feel supported, not policed.

Jay Ellenby, President, Safe Harbors

Over 40 years running gyms, I learned a hard lesson: I was addicted to being the “fixer.” Every time a staff member brought me a problem, I’d jump in with the solution before they finished the sentence. It felt like good leadership. It wasn’t.

What I eventually recognized was that this pattern quietly told my team they weren’t capable. It stunted their growth and created a culture where people waited for Pleasant to decide instead of developing their own judgment. When we rolled out Medallia for real-time member feedback, I had to stop myself from immediately dictating the response strategy and instead ask my team: “What do you think this member is telling us?”

That shift was uncomfortable at first. But it changed everything. Staff started owning the feedback loop, taking personal accountability for member satisfaction outcomes rather than just executing my instructions. The culture moved from “do what Pleasant says” to “we know what our members need and we act on it.”

The practical lesson: if you’re always the answer in the room, you’re actually the ceiling. Start asking questions instead of providing solutions, and watch your team grow past what you could have built alone.

Pleasant Lewis, Owner, Fitness CF

As a clinical psychologist who also runs a practice, I’ve had a front-row seat to my own dysfunction. The toxic pattern I had to confront was over-functioning for my team – stepping in to solve problems before people had a real chance to struggle with them. It felt like support. It was actually control dressed up as care.

Therapy helped me see this was a schema playing out in a leadership context – specifically, a deep-seated belief that if I didn’t intervene, things would fall apart. Sound familiar? It’s the same pattern I see in clients who exhaust themselves managing everyone around them to avoid feeling helpless.

The shift came when I deliberately created structured supervision spaces where my psychologists had to sit with uncertainty before I offered input. Uncomfortable at first, but it fundamentally changed the culture at MVS – people started owning their clinical reasoning rather than deferring to mine. The quality of thinking in the room went up noticeably.

The hardest part was tolerating the discomfort of not rescuing. That’s the work. Real leadership development and therapy overlap more than most people admit – both require you to notice the gap between your intentions and your actual impact.

Maxim Von Sabler, Director & Clinical Psychologist, MVS Psychology Group

As President of EnformHR with an MHRM and SHRM-SCP, I’ve guided countless leaders through workplace transitions and built cultures via training on empathy and communication.

Therapy revealed my toxic pattern: during changes like restructurings, I’d undershare updates, staying buried in decisions while leaving teams in a vacuum–fueling gossip and cynicism.

I broke it by oversharing honestly in regular meetings, setting a positive narrative of opportunity while delivering bad news directly, as in one client audit where we addressed compliance shifts head-on.

This built trust instantly–rumors vanished, morale rose with employees feeling informed and empowered, mirroring the engaged cultures we foster through DiSC and feedback training.

Cristina Amyot, President, EnformHR

I spent a decade at Northrop Grumman operating in high-stakes defense environments where being right — and being seen as right — was currency. When I left to build Technology Aloha, I dragged that identity into a completely different context, and therapy helped me see the damage it was doing: I was leading from ego disguised as expertise.

The pattern was this — I’d over-explain my rationale to my team, not to inform them, but to pre-empt being questioned. It looked like thoroughness. It was actually insecurity wearing a Six Sigma belt.

When I caught myself doing it with a nonprofit client project, I realized I was drowning their input with my frameworks instead of building strategy with them. Once I stopped performing competence and started creating space, the work got sharper. Clients started owning their brand stories instead of just approving mine.

The cultural shift was that my team stopped filtering their ideas through “will Jillyn find a reason to complicate this” and started bringing rawer, better thinking. Turns out, psychological safety and defense contracting instincts don’t mix — and recognizing that was worth more than any methodology I ever got certified in.

Jillyn Dillon, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Technology Aloha

I’m double board certified in anesthesiology/interventional pain management and also practice cosmetic surgery; when you’re doing minimally invasive procedures all day, “control” can become your default leadership style. Therapy helped me see a toxic pattern: I was rescuing–jumping in too fast to fix staff problems and patient complaints myself because I could handle it quickly.

A real example at Midwest Pain and Wellness: if a patient was frustrated about a plan or expectations, I’d take over the conversation, rewrite the plan on the spot, and bypass the team. It looked like service, but it quietly told everyone, “Don’t build the muscle; the doctor will save it.”

Breaking it meant letting my team run the first pass and only stepping in for true clinical complexity or safety issues. We built simple rules: who owns what, when escalation is appropriate, and how to communicate “opioid-free, multi-modal” plans consistently without me being the closer every time.

The impact was immediate: fewer eggshell interactions, more accountability, and staff started bringing me solutions instead of problems. Culture shifted from “avoid making a mistake” to “own the process and ask for help early,” which is what you want in any clinic that’s trying to deliver outcomes-focused care.

Dr. Yaw Donkoh, Medical Director, Midwest Pain & Wellness

As the Co-Founder of NutriFlex, managing Act 36 registered supplements since 2014 required such extreme regulatory precision that I developed a “scientific gatekeeper” complex. Therapy helped me realize I was hoarding technical knowledge about Ascophyllum nodosum because I feared anyone else would compromise our manufacturing integrity or iodine safety standards.

When I stopped being the sole bottleneck for evidence-based content, I empowered my team to own the educational mission of DentaMax independently. This allowed our specialists to engage directly with veterinary professionals about systemic plaque reduction pathways and biofilm disruption without my constant oversight.

This shift from rigid control to shared technical authority transformed our Cape Town facility culture into one of proactive transparency. By trusting the team with the complex systemic dental science behind our formulations, we scaled our educational outreach far more effectively than when I was the only “expert” in the room.

Sharon Milani, Co-Founder and Director, DentaMax

Seventeen years in corporate at Cisco, then building Alpha Coast from scratch — I’ve had to face myself as a leader more than once, and the pattern therapy surfaced for me was rescue mode: swooping in the moment a team member hit friction instead of letting them work through it.

It felt like support. It was actually control. I was unconsciously signaling that I didn’t trust my people to figure things out, which meant they stopped trying to — they just waited for me to show up with the answer.

The shift was simple but uncomfortable: I had to sit on my hands. When a client situation got messy, instead of jumping on a call myself, I let my account managers own the resolution and only debriefed after. Sandy Spencer’s turnaround, for example, wasn’t because I coached her through every sales call — it was because our team built the process and then got out of her way so she could develop real confidence in it.

The culture change was immediate. People stopped escalating everything and started solving. That’s the only reason we can run a done-for-you system at scale — because the team learned to trust themselves, not just me.

Kent Vanho, CEO, Alpha Coast

Transitioning from BUD/S Class 89 to running USMilitary.com taught me that the “tough-as-nails” grit I wrote about in Dare To Live Greatly looks different in a boardroom than it does in the surf zone. Therapy helped me identify a toxic pattern of projecting a “no-excuses” SEAL mentality onto my civilian team, which suppressed their ability to voice when they were overwhelmed.

I previously viewed any admission of struggle with complex tasks, like navigating non-presumptive toxic exposure claims, as a lack of perseverance. Breaking this pattern allowed my staff to finally speak up when they needed expert medical opinions or additional resources to help our veterans.

This shift transformed our company culture from a group of silent, stressed individuals into a cohesive unit that shares the burden of the mission. By trading stoicism for open communication, we became much more effective at tackling “formidable challenges” like substance abuse claims and VA benefit hurdles.

Larry Fowler, President, USMilitary.com

One toxic pattern I had was treating “aggressive advocacy” like it had to show up internally too–sharp tone, zero patience, and assuming people should already know what I know. After years as a Chief Prosecutor and a Houston judge, I was used to fast, adversarial rooms, and I accidentally ran parts of my firm like cross-examination instead of coaching.

Therapy helped me see that intensity isn’t the same as leadership, and that my default was “pressure = performance.” I changed one thing first: I stopped correcting people in the moment and started doing short, scheduled debriefs where my job was to ask questions, not deliver a verdict.

Example: when reviewing DWI stops and field sobriety issues, I used to jump straight to “the officer scored it wrong” and bulldoze the prep. Now I have the team walk me through the report line-by-line and explain what they’d challenge (like myths around arm use for balance or heel-to-toe), then I add my prosecutor/judge perspective last.

Breaking that pattern made the culture more calm and more precise–people brought me problems earlier, not later, because they weren’t bracing for impact. The work got better because the team learned to think like the other side without feeling like they were on trial inside our own office.

Herman Martinez, Founder, The Martinez Law Firm

Building Reprieve House forced me to confront something uncomfortable: I was unconsciously equating suffering with seriousness. If I wasn’t visibly stressed, I felt like I wasn’t working hard enough–and that energy radiated outward to my team.

Therapy helped me see that I was modeling crisis as the baseline. My staff started mirroring it, treating every admission inquiry or operational hiccup like a five-alarm fire. That’s a dangerous culture to build inside a detox facility, where calm is literally part of the clinical product we’re delivering to guests.

The shift came when I started separating urgency from importance in my own behavior. When I stopped performing stress, something changed–my team started problem-solving instead of panic-escalating. They trusted their own judgment more because I stopped signaling that every decision required my anxiety to validate it.

The real irony is that the whole premise of Reprieve House is helping high-functioning professionals recognize that the intensity they’ve normalized is actually hurting them. I was living the exact pattern my clients come to us to break.

Jonathan Freed, Owner & CEO, Reprieve House