In partnership with
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Dear Leader, For the past few months I have been writing to you about Leadership Drift: the quiet way capable leaders slide away from their best when the pressure never lets up. Naming it was the first step. The question that matters more is what to do about it. So from this November, Leaders Shelf has a new shape, built around one purpose: helping you move from drift back to equilibrium, the steady, clear place you lead best from. Every Wednesday you will get a moment you will recognise, what is really happening underneath it, and one 2-minute practice you can use the same week. If a practice helps, a 7-day version is waiting on the web. Short enough to read before your first meeting. Practical enough to use in it. This week begins with something I keep seeing in leadership teams this year: the urge to check everything. |
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Vikram runs a 300-person business unit. Since his team started drafting with AI, he reads every report twice. He rewrites the summaries. He asks to see "the original version" before anything goes to the board.
Nothing has gone wrong. That is the strange part. He calls it standards. His team has quietly adjusted: drafts now reach him earlier and less finished, because everyone knows he will rewrite them anyway.
Vikram is a composite of leaders I work with. If he sounds familiar, there is a 2-minute practice at the end of this email.
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LEADERSHIP DRIFT, IN ONE LINE
The gradual movement away from conscious, calibrated leadership under sustained pressure.
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Under uncertainty, control feels concrete and trust feels exposed. So capable leaders move closer to the work: one more review, one more update, one more read. From the inside it feels responsible. From the outside, it trains people to manage upward instead of leading outward. Slowly, the controlling leader ends up surrounded by people who appear to need control.
| The signal to watch: the urge to check, before you have a specific reason to. |
Control and Trust is one of the 12 tensions in the free Window of Equilibrium Index. See where you sit.
| 53% |
of leaders now find it harder to evaluate an employee's original work. AI didn't create the urge to check. It gave that urge a new reason. Source: monday.com AI Report 2026, a Nielsen survey of 1,701 directors and senior managers in seven countries, October 2026. |
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Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick. One of his four rules for working with AI: be the human in the loop. Not the human who checks every line, but the one who decides where human judgment actually matters. That is a Control and Trust decision. |
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SEE · 2 MIN
Ask Before You CheckWhen: the next time you reach to review, re-read or rewrite someone's work. 1. Pause before you open it. 2. Ask yourself: what am I actually worried about? 3. Write down one word:
capability · clarity · risk · reputation · habit
Do it for one day. If "habit" keeps coming up, the checking is soothing you, not protecting the work.
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The aim is not to stop caring about quality. It is to stay responsible without staying central.
Warmly,
Marut
P.S. Try the pause once this week, then hit reply with your word. I read every reply, and I'll share the patterns, anonymously, in a future edition.
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NEXT WEDNESDAY
The feedback you're planning to soften this month, and a 2-minute practice for saying it straight.
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| Leaders Shelf, by Marut Bhardwaj, author of Leadership Drift. |
| Know a leader who checks everything? Forward this to them. |
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