The leadership you leave on the table

Author: Tessie Catsambas

There is an old lesson I have kept relearning over the years, and an insight about leadership that came later.

The old lesson was simple: you make your luck by preparing.

The leadership insight was this: leadership is not a role you are given. It is a way of thinking about the role you already have.

Years ago, we were delivering a management development program for a Europe-based auto manufacturing company in several countries. The managers and their bosses liked it, and the client gave us repeat business.

Confident in our success, I flew over to meet with the director of learning. I hoped to grow the account by proposing an external assessment of their whole learning program: to measure impact, identify what was working, and surface opportunities for improvement.

He looked genuinely puzzled.

“Why would I want that?”

I explained more but he remained puzzled:

“The managers and their bosses like it. Sales are good. I already know what I need to know.”

I tried another angle – would he want to report the program’s impact to senior management?

He sounded alarmed:

“Unless you know something I don’t, the budget is secure.”

I felt my face turn red. I had come unprepared and brought him an answer to a question he was not asking. I had crossed the Atlantic to relearn that enthusiasm is not a substitute for preparation.

I was embarrassed, and with good reason.

But as the embarrassment faded, I became puzzled.

That director was sitting in one of the most strategically interesting seats in the company. His role gave him direct visibility into capability, culture, and the development of future leaders.

He could have been asking:

• How does this program affect retention?

• What does it say about our employer brand?

• What are managers showing us through their engagement with learning that leadership isn't hearing anywhere else?

Maybe the learning manager already understood all of that, and I had simply not convinced him that I was the person to help him explore it. That is entirely possible.

But what I saw that day was a missed opportunity to exercise leadership through a function that was important for the organization.

The program was working well, but a function can be successful and still underused. The market changes, organizations evolve, and new challenges often appear before we know how to name them. Leadership requires thinking ahead: staying ready, alert, and curious about what your function can help the organization anticipate.

The difference between administering a function and leading through it is the difference between keeping things running and helping the organization grow because of what your role allows you to see.

The issue is not that every functional manager must think like the CEO all the time. The issue is that leadership requires more than maintaining the function. The best functional leaders are not just custodians of activity. They are translators. They connect what they see in their part of the organization to what the whole enterprise needs.

At the EnCompass Appreciative Growth Studio, this is one of the questions we help organizations explore: how do people lead from the roles they already occupy, especially when they are responsible for functions that shape culture, capability, and future readiness?

Because leadership is not only exercised from the top. It is exercised whenever someone sees what their role makes visible — and uses that insight for the good of the whole.

Oh, and the next time I fly across the Atlantic, I will arrive better prepared and with better questions.