Dear Leadership Sage,
Someone on my team keeps bringing up ideas framed as what "we" need — but something about it feels more personal than that. Like the idea matters more to them than it does to anyone else in the room.
I don't want to call that out directly. And I don't want to keep accommodating something that might just be one person's preference dressed up as a group need.
How do I figure out which one it is — without making it weird?
— Something Feels Off
Dear Feels Off,
What you're describing is one of the genuinely hard spots in leadership — not because you're missing a skill, but because your instincts are pulling in two directions at once and both of them come from caring about your team.
The thing worth knowing is that the idea itself is rarely the real issue.
I was facilitating a senior leadership team recently.
One of the members — newer to the group, maybe a year in — kept bringing things up in a way that felt like his ideas, not the team's. "We need to do this." "Here's what has to happen." "People are saying..."
The rest of the group was respectful. Nobody pushed back. But nobody was being convinced either. There was a kind of polite waiting — like the room was just letting it pass.
At one point, right after he pushed for another change, I asked him, "What's important about that to you?"
He paused. His hands dropped and he leaned back in his chair. The striving went out of his voice.
He said something like, I don't want this company to become like every other company out there. I joined because it's trying to be something different. I don't want to lose that.
The words hung in the air for a moment.
It got very quiet. I saw that everyone was turned toward him. People were sitting with what he'd just said.
When the conversation slowly started up again, the whole team was focused, together — talking about what actually mattered to them.
Because it turned out, most of them cared about exactly the same thing. They just hadn't heard it said that way yet.
He wasn't advocating for a process change. He was trying to protect something he loved.
The question got him there. And once he was there, the room could actually meet him.
When someone keeps framing their ideas as "we need this" — and it isn't quite landing with the rest of the group — it's worth finding out what's underneath before deciding what to do with it.
Most of the time the person doesn't realize they're doing it. They genuinely think they're speaking for everyone. They just haven't connected yet to what's actually driving it for them.
"What's important about that to you?" isn't a way of calling that out. It's a way of helping them get there — and once they do, the rest of the room usually can too.
Sometimes the answer changes everything. Sometimes it just helps you make a better call. Either way, you know more than you did.
If this resonates, think about the last time someone on your team pushed hard for something that felt like it mattered more to them than to anyone else. What might have been underneath it?
Most leaders in this spot keep wondering if they're the only one who noticed. They're not. If you want a thought partner who's seen this before, let's talk.
