The Paradox of Being Good at What You Do
by Mary Printz, M.Ed.
How the strengths behind your success can limit your growth.
You know that conversation you've been putting off? The one you've rehearsed in your head more times than you'd admit? You know when to set boundaries, when to delegate, and why trusting your judgment matters. In fact, you've probably given others some excellent advice on these very things.
So why is the advice we give so confidently to others, be so difficult to follow ourselves?
You've noticed how quickly you say yes when you mean no, assume responsibility for things that aren't yours to solve, or revisit decisions long after they've been made. To others, you appear confident and accomplished. Behind that confidence, you're questioning yourself more than others realize.
Here's the paradox: the very strengths that made us successful can limit our growth.
The more effective we've been at navigating the world in a certain way, the harder it is to recognize when that approach is no longer serving us. However, the more important question isn't what we need to do differently; it's why doing it feels so difficult.
The Gap Between Knowing and Changing
The International Coaching Federation's 2026 Global Consumer Awareness Study, conducted in partnership with PwC, reveals an interesting disconnect: 74% of consumers are aware of coaching, yet only 17% have experienced it. Among the leading barriers are cost and not recognizing a need for coaching.
It's worth considering what that second barrier means. After all, the need for development usually doesn't announce itself as a need for coaching. Instead, it shows up as the conversation we keep avoiding, the boundary we repeatedly abandon, or the responsibility we know we should release but somehow keep carrying.
We tend to interpret these difficulties as a need for more confidence, discipline, or another leadership strategy. That could be what's missing. However, when a pattern persists despite awareness, good intentions, and considerable effort, .could it be we are asking the wrong question?
What if the obstacle isn't a lack of knowledge, and instead an assumption we haven't questioned?
Leadership Strengths and Limitations: The Hidden Paradox
Most of our leadership patterns began as genuine strengths. Responsibility earned trust, high standards built credibility and anticipating problems made us valuable, while being agreeable helped us build and maintain relationships. These strategies worked, often exceptionally well, so it makes sense to keep relying on them.
Understanding our leadership strengths and limitations requires us to recognize when these familiar behaviours serve us well and when they begin to restrict our choices. The distinction isn't always obvious.
Responsibility shifts into a need to be indispensable. The pursuit of excellence gives way to a fear of making mistakes, while consideration for others makes it difficult to tolerate their disappointment. Somewhere along the way, what began as a choice hardens into an unwritten rule.
The rules we don't realize we're following are the hardest to question.
Psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey explore this tension through their Immunity to Change framework, which challenges the premise that difficulty changing is a matter of insufficient motivation. In fact, we can be genuinely committed to change while simultaneously committed to protecting ourselves from what we believe it could cost us.
Consider a leader who wants to delegate more effectively but holds an unexamined assumption that mistakes made by others will reflect poorly on their competence. Or someone who wants to establish healthier boundaries but believes disappointing others threatens the relationships they value.
In both cases, the desire to change is sincere. So is the competing commitment to remain safe, respected, or accepted.
What looks like resistance to change may actually be loyalty to a belief that served us well.
Therein lies the paradox: we can become so invested in the strategies that established our success that we fail to notice when those same strategies narrow our choices.
From More Knowledge to Greater Capacity
Leadership development most often focuses on expanding what we know and strengthening what we can do. Adult-development coaching adds another dimension by exploring how we make sense of our experiences, the assumptions shaping our decisions, and why familiar patterns can be so difficult to change, especially when our sense of competence, identity, or security feels challenged.
Rather than asking, "How can I get better at setting boundaries?" we ask, "What do I believe will happen if I disappoint someone?" This matters because changing a behaviour without examining the assumption sustaining it, can leave the underlying pattern still intact.
Research suggests coaching as a pathway to change. A 2023 meta-analysis of 20 randomized controlled studies found positive++ effects of executive coaching on behavioural outcomes, alongside benefits in areas including self-efficacy and resilience. These findings are encouraging, although they don't establish that every coaching approach produces the same results.
The developmental process involves making our assumptions visible, questioning their validity, and testing them through real experiences. We may discover that disappointing someone does not damage the relationship, that delegating responsibility does not diminish our credibility, or that discomfort during a difficult conversation is not evidence that it's gone wrong.
These surprisingly simple insights lead to profound implications. When we've spent years operating from assumptions we've not questioned, recognizing that they're not as true or necessary as we believed opens up possibilities we had never even considered.
Growth isn't about letting go of our strengths, it's about having the freedom to choose when and how we use them.
The Human Element
The 2026 ICF study also found that 80% of consumers prefer coaching to remain human-led, even as technology becomes integrated into the coaching experience.
It's an interesting finding at a time when AI can help us generate strategies, explore perspectives, organize our thinking, and even rehearse difficult conversations. Technology can certainly be useful, but there's a significant difference between knowing how to set a boundary and holding that boundary when someone is visibly disappointed.
A skilled developmental coach brings more than advice or encouragement. The coaching relationship provides space to examine contradictions, constructively challenge long-held assumptions, and experiment with new ways of responding. It's not about finding better answers, but rather being willing to question the beliefs that shaped our questions in the first place.
The fact is we can acquire more information without changing how we lead. Developing greater internal capacity asks more of us: the willingness to recognize our automatic responses, question what drives them, and discover that different choices are possible, especially when our old familiar ways of responding feel easier and more comfortable.
A Question Worth Sitting With
Think about a leadership behaviour you've been trying to change. It could be a boundary you struggle to maintain, a conversation you've postponed, or a responsibility you find difficult to let go.
Now consider this question:
What might I be protecting by continuing to do what I've always done?
It's a challenging question, and the answer lies beneath what we initially recognize. It invites us to examine the assumptions that another leadership strategy alone cannot address.
Developing as a leader involves more than acquiring new knowledge or skills. It requires us to question what we've long taken for granted, including the familiar explanation, "That's just who I am."
Who we are and how we've learned to respond are not the same thing. Our familiar responses are shaped by patterns we've developed, reinforced, and come to rely on. And what we've learned to do, we can learn to do differently.
After all, being good at what we do is an accomplishment. Having the freedom to do it differently is an even greater one.
Mary Printz, M.Ed., is an executive and adaptive-development coach working with leaders navigating complexity, responsibility, and change. Drawing on adult-development theory and Immunity to Change methodology, she helps leaders examine the assumptions shaping their decisions, challenge familiar patterns, and expand their capacity to lead with greater intention and choice.
Research References
International Coaching Federation (2026). Global Consumer Awareness Study.
Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2001). The Real Reason People Won't Change. Harvard Business Review.
Nicolau, A., et al. (2023). The Effects of Executive Coaching on Behaviors, Attitudes, and Personal Characteristics: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Control Trial Studies. Frontiers in Psychology.
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