The Sovereign Leader (Part 1): The Hidden Cost of Leading by Expectation
- Cory McGowan
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
This is Part 1 of a six-part series inspired by my work with a senior executive in a global finance organization. Over six months, he made six bold internal moves — the kind of shifts that only happen when a leader is willing to look honestly at themselves.
When we first started working together, he rarely came to our sessions with a clear topic.
More than once he opened with the same question:
“What do you think I should focus on today?”
If I’m honest, this frustrated me.
This was a senior executive responsible for major decisions in a global finance organization — thoughtful, intelligent, respected. And yet something about the dynamic felt off. Coaching only really works when the leader is willing to step fully into the space. In those early sessions, I wasn’t sure he saw it that way yet.
At times I wondered whether he was engaging deeply or simply performing the role of a “coachable leader.” That tension challenged me. It required me to slow down and meet him where he actually was instead of where I thought he should be. I had to let go of my expectation that he would immediately grab the steering wheel and instead pay attention to what was unfolding beneath the surface.
Over time, something began to shift. Not dramatically or all at once, but in small ways that were easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them. I sensed it before he ever named it out loud.
In our final session, he said something that stopped me.
He reflected that he used to find safety in meeting others’ expectations, but that leading by what he called his “North Star” now gave him a profound sense of ownership.
What caught me off guard was not the language itself, but what it revealed. This wasn’t a minor improvement in leadership technique. What he was describing was something deeper: a movement toward sovereignty.
For most of his career, his success had been built on an ability many executives develop — the capacity to read the room. He understood stakeholders, anticipated reactions, and delivered outcomes that aligned with what others expected. In complex organizations this skill is extremely valuable, and it often becomes one of the reasons leaders rise.
But there is a hidden cost to building your leadership primarily around expectation.
The cost doesn’t appear as immediate failure. Instead, it shows up more quietly. You become highly competent while gradually losing a sense of freedom. Your resilience starts depending on approval. Your clarity begins depending on consensus. Your energy becomes tied to whether you managed to get things “right.”
Over time the line between alignment and compliance becomes blurry. Leaders begin calling compliance collaboration, or describing it as cultural awareness or stakeholder management. Sometimes those descriptions are accurate. But beneath them there can also be something more difficult to acknowledge.
Fear.
Fear of standing alone with a decision. Fear of disappointing people whose opinions matter. Fear of being wrong without the protection of collective agreement.
Living and working in Asia for many years, I’ve experienced something similar in my own way.
I spent a decade in Tokyo doing work that was meaningful and valuable. It was the kind of work that looked right from the outside: educational, impactful, and professionally successful. During those years I learned a tremendous amount about leadership in this region — about nuance, hierarchy, and the subtle skill of reading the atmosphere in a room.
I adapted well to that environment. Perhaps too well.
Somewhere along the way I realized that I had armored myself. I had become so skilled at fitting, smoothing, and anticipating that parts of my own voice had quietly receded into the background. The work was effective, but it didn’t always feel like me.
It wasn’t until I moved to the mountains of Minakami that I could see this clearly.
The mountains didn’t magically change who I was. What they gave me was distance — enough space to notice how much of my leadership had quietly become about fitting in.
Not everyone needs to move to the mountains to experience that realization. But anyone who has spent years leading within complex cultural systems understands the pressure to align, to adjust, and to avoid disrupting the balance of the environment around them.
Adaptation is an essential leadership strength.
But there is a point where adaptation quietly turns into self-abandonment.
When this client began making decisions anchored in his own internal compass — his values, his convictions, his sense of what was truly right — the change was noticeable. He wasn’t rebelling against the organization or dismissing the perspectives of others. If anything, he became calmer and more grounded in conversation.
The difference was that he was choosing.
And that shift changes the entire experience of leadership. When decisions come from ownership rather than expectation, leaders develop a different kind of steadiness. Pressure doesn’t disappear, but it stops dictating the terms of every decision. There is more resilience when choices are questioned and more clarity about why those choices were made.
A certain kind of freedom begins to emerge — not freedom from responsibility, but freedom within it.
This is one of the reasons that when leaders join me in the mountains for retreat work, we don’t begin by discussing strategy. The first step is clearing expectations: the inherited scripts, assumptions, and invisible “shoulds” that leaders carry with them. Before you build a fire, you clear the ground where it will burn.
The shift this executive described in our final conversation was deceptively simple. It was the move from leading by expectation to leading by an internal North Star.
But simple shifts are often the most difficult ones to make.
So I’ll leave you with a question that emerged from that conversation.
Where in your leadership are you responding to expectation and calling it strategy?
And what might it be costing you to stay there?
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