I want to tell you about the pattern I finally recognized in my own leadership—one that was slowly eroding both my effectiveness and my sense of self.

I had figured out my leadership style with my direct team. We had clarity, trust, momentum. They were hitting their goals, growing in their roles, and I felt confident in how I was showing up for them. But the moment I stepped into meetings with peers or my own leadership, I found myself doing this mental calculation: "Okay, who am I about to talk to? What version of myself do they need to see right now?"

With one executive, I'd brace myself to match their aggressive, no-nonsense directness. With another, I'd soften my approach, anticipating they'd respond better to collaboration and deference. With peers, I'd adjust based on our history such as had I been "too much" last time? Should I pull back now?

The exhausting part wasn't just the constant recalibration. It was that it created an inconsistency in my leadership. I couldn't build authentic authority when I was shape-shifting depending on whose comfort I was managing.

And here's the kicker: even when I successfully delivered exactly what I thought they wanted, I'd get feedback that I was doing it wrong.

Match their directness? "You're too aggressive."

Be more collaborative? "You lack executive presence."

Find the middle ground? "You're inconsistent."

That's when I realized: this wasn't about finding the right leadership style. This was about a rigged game where the goalposts moved based on someone else's unexamined discomfort with your leadership.

Here's what we get wrong about the "overcompensation vs. over-accommodation" dynamic: We talk about it like leaders swing to one extreme or the other and stay there.

Like you're either an overcompensator (matching aggressive styles, being "one of the guys") or an over-accommodator (apologizing excessively, letting yourself get walked over).

But that's not how it actually works.

The real pattern is situational code-switching based on who has power over your career and credibility. You're not consistently one thing or the other—you're constantly adjusting based on whose expectations you're trying to meet in that moment.

And those expectations? They're almost always invisible until you violate them.

Some leaders expect you to match their aggressive style. Others expect you to be accommodating and deferential. Some want you to "lean in," others punish you when you do. You're responding to unspoken rules that change depending on the stakeholder, and you don't find out what they were until you've already broken them.

Here's where it gets truly maddening: even when you successfully read the room and deliver the behavior they expect, you often get criticized for it.

This is the feedback trap, and it reveals that the game is rigged.

They signal they want you to be more direct → you're direct → you're "too aggressive" or "not collaborative"

They tell you to be more collaborative → you accommodate → you "lack executive presence" or "need to be more decisive"

You try to find the middle ground → you're "inconsistent" or "unclear in your leadership style"

When you're getting wildly contradictory feedback from different stakeholders about the same behaviors—or worse, getting negative feedback for delivering exactly what was implicitly requested—the problem isn't your leadership style. The problem is that you're being asked to manage other people's unexamined discomfort with your authority.

Let me name what's underneath this exhausting pattern.

The Credibility Calculus

Every interaction, you're running a calculation: "What does this person need to see from me to take me seriously?" The math changes based on:

This isn't strategic adaptation—this is cognitive overload. You're expending mental energy managing perceptions that could be going toward actual leadership work. And you're doing it constantly, across multiple stakeholders, with different equations for each one.

The Emotional Labor

What you're actually doing is managing other people's comfort with your authority. You're making your leadership palatable. You're doing the invisible work of helping them adjust to the idea that you belong in this role.

This is emotional labor, and it compounds over time. It leads to burnout, resentment, and a slow erosion of authenticity. You start to lose touch with what your actual leadership style even is, because you've spent so long contorting to fit others' expectations.

Why the Feedback is Unreliable

Here's the critical insight: the feedback you're receiving often reflects their discomfort with your leadership, not your actual effectiveness.

How can you tell the difference? Ask yourself:

If you're getting pendulum feedback—damned if you do, damned if you don't—that's not useful data about your leadership. That's evidence that the environment isn't set up for you to succeed.

So how do you know when this is an organizational culture problem vs. an opportunity for growth?

Red flags this is systemic:

The questions to ask yourself:

When you receive feedback that you should adjust your leadership style, pause and ask:

"What would it actually take to change my leadership style based on this feedback?"

"What's the cost?" (To my authenticity, my energy, my effectiveness with my team, my sense of self)

"Am I being asked to grow and develop new capabilities, or am I being asked to contort myself to make someone else comfortable?"

"If I made this change, would it make me a better leader for the people who depend on me, or would it just make me more palatable to people uncomfortable with my authority?"

Growth vs. Contortion

There's a difference between developing range as a leader (learning to adapt your style strategically based on context while maintaining your core approach) and constantly shape-shifting to manage others' comfort (losing your center entirely).

Growth expands your capabilities. Contortion diminishes them.

Here's what I've learned works:

Stop code-switching for stakeholder comfort

Find your leadership style—the one that works with your team, the one that delivers results, the one that feels aligned with who you are. Then apply it consistently across all contexts.

Yes, you will get feedback. That's actually the point. Consistent feedback on a consistent approach gives you useful data. Contradictory feedback on constantly shifting approaches tells you nothing except that you're trying to please too many people.

Evaluate feedback through these criteria:

Not all feedback is created equal. Before you take action on feedback about your leadership style, ask:

When the environment isn't set up for your growth

Sometimes you'll do this evaluation and realize: the feedback is contradictory, focused on comfort rather than outcomes, and coming from people who aren't invested in your development. The environment isn't set up for you to succeed.

What do you do then?

You have options:

There's no single right answer. But there is a wrong answer: continuing to contort yourself trying to meet contradictory expectations while slowly losing your sense of who you are as a leader.

Here's what I want you to take away from this:

Your growth as a leader should happen by design—your design. Not through ping-ponging between contradictory feedback from people managing their own discomfort with your authority.

The conversation about what kind of leader you want to be starts with you. Not with your manager, not with your peers, not with the executive who gave you vague feedback about "presence."

An Audit Framework

Take some time this week to audit your own patterns:

You don't have to choose between overcompensation and over-accommodation. You can choose to lead as yourself, get clear data about whether that's valued in your environment, and make intentional decisions from there.

That's leadership by design.

Learning by Design is written by Courtney Sembler. Courtney currently helps companies build scalable customer education programs. After spending over a decade scaling HubSpot Academy globally, she now explores the systems, strategies, and realities of workplace learning, leadership, and customer experience—the kind that drives retention, adoption, and revenue by design, not by accident. Published twice weekly with monthly deep dives. Connect with her on LinkedIn and subscribe to Learning by Design.