The Leadership Equation: Unlocking Performance by Reducing Interference

Leadership development traditionally focuses on adding: more skills, more knowledge, more techniques. Yet what if the most impactful approach isn't about adding, but removing?

What if the difference between good and exceptional leadership isn't what we lack, but what gets in our way?

The Leadership Equation offers a different perspective: Performance Equals Potential minus Interference (PE = PO - I). This deceptively simple formula suggests that most leaders already possess remarkable potential.

What limits their performance isn't a lack of capability, but the presence of interference—or as I often call it in my coaching practice, their "stuff".

The Power of Reduction

This approach transforms how we think about leadership development. Rather than constantly pushing for more performance through additional pressure or techniques, we create space for inherent excellence to emerge by identifying and reducing what's getting in the way.

This perspective speaks to what many senior leaders experience privately: carrying the quiet loneliness at the top whilst projecting confidence in public forums.

As one regional director confided to me: 'Everyone thinks I've got this sorted—but I'm not sure I do.'

The Leadership Equation offers a framework for addressing this gap between external perception and internal experience.

Interference in Action

Let's examine how the Leadership Equation can play out in actual leadership contexts. Consider a Regional Director I worked with recently. Despite his exceptional strategic thinking and technical expertise, his team was experiencing burnout, and key projects were falling behind.

Traditional leadership development might have focused on giving him new management techniques or stronger delegation skills. Instead, we explored what was interfering with his underlying leadership capabilities.

Through our work together, we discovered that his fear of being seen as incompetent was driving him to micromanage his team and take on excessive work himself. This interference was preventing his natural leadership abilities from emerging.

When he began to recognise and address this pattern, his performance improved dramatically—not through adding new skills, but by removing what was getting in the way.

Common Forms of Leadership Interference

In my coaching practice, I observe several patterns of interference that consistently limit leadership effectiveness:

Internal Narratives: The stories leaders tell themselves about their capabilities, worth, or what's expected of them. These narratives often operate unconsciously but profoundly shape behaviour and decision-making.

Fear-Based Decision Making: When leaders operate from fear—fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of conflict—this interference clouds strategic thinking and authentic communication.

Perfectionism and Control: The belief that everything must be perfect or that control must be maintained at all costs creates tension and prevents delegation and trust-building.

Imposter Syndrome: The persistent feeling of being a fraud despite evidence of competence creates anxiety and undermines confident leadership presence.

Past Experiences: Unresolved experiences from earlier roles or life contexts that continue to influence current leadership behaviour in unhelpful ways.

Identifying Your Interference

The first step in applying the Leadership Equation is developing awareness of your own interference patterns. This requires honest self-reflection and often benefits from external perspective.

Consider these questions:

• What patterns do you notice when you're under pressure?
• Where do you tend to overthink or overcompensate?
• What stories do you tell yourself about your leadership capabilities?
• When do you feel most and least authentic as a leader?

Physiological Awareness: Often, our bodies recognise interference before our minds do. Tension, shallow breathing, or a sense of constriction can signal that interference is present.

Stakeholder Feedback: Sometimes others can see our interference patterns more clearly than we can. 360-degree feedback or trusted advisor input can illuminate blind spots.

Reducing Interference Through Coaching

In my coaching practice, reducing interference is rarely about willpower or simply deciding to change. It requires a compassionate, systematic approach that honours why the interference developed in the first place.

Stage 1: Recognition - Building awareness of interference patterns without judgment.

Stage 2: Understanding - Exploring the origins and current function of the interference.

Stage 3: Choice - Creating space between stimulus and response to enable conscious choice.

Stage 4: Practice - Experimenting with new responses in low-stakes situations.

Stage 5: Integration - Embodying new patterns until they become natural.

This isn't always a straight line—people loop back, revisit earlier stages, or move fluidly between them. What matters is building awareness with compassion and creating space for agency to grow.

The Leadership Equation in Practice

When leaders begin working with the Leadership Equation, they often experience what I call "wet fish moments"—sudden realisations about patterns they hadn't previously recognised.

One executive described it this way: "It was like someone held up a mirror and I could suddenly see what everyone else had been seeing all along."

These moments of recognition create possibilities for choice that didn't exist before.

The goal isn't to eliminate all interference—some tension and challenge can enhance performance. Rather, it's about reducing the interference that serves no useful purpose and limits our natural capabilities.

Beyond Individual Application

Whilst the Leadership Equation is powerful for individual development, it has broader applications:

Team Dynamics: Teams often have collective interference patterns that limit their performance. These might include unspoken conflicts, competing priorities, or cultural norms that discourage innovation.

Organisational Culture: Organisations can create systemic interference through unclear expectations, competing metrics, or cultures that punish failure rather than encouraging learning.

Leadership Development Programmes: Traditional programmes often focus on adding skills rather than removing interference. The most effective development experiences create space for leaders to discover what's already there.

Living the Leadership Equation

The Leadership Equation isn't just a coaching tool—it's a way of approaching leadership development that honours the inherent wisdom and capability that exists within each leader.

When we stop trying to fix what's wrong and start removing what's getting in the way, we create conditions for excellence to emerge naturally.

This approach requires patience, self-compassion, and the willingness to look honestly at our patterns. But for leaders ready to move beyond constant striving toward sustainable effectiveness, the Leadership Equation offers a powerful alternative path.

The question isn't whether you have enough potential; the question is what's currently interfering with it, and how might you begin to create space for your natural leadership capabilities to flourish?

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Ready to explore what might be interfering with your leadership potential? The Leadership Equation provides a framework for sustainable performance improvement through conscious reduction rather than endless addition.