A leader I’ll call Sarah* was passionate about agility from the start. She believed in servant leadership, in creating space for her teams to self-organise, and in measuring success by outcomes, not just output.
Her teams had always responded well. They were motivated, collaborative, and even began finding innovative ways to reduce delivery risks. For a while, it felt like everything was on track.
But the pressure from senior management soon mounted. Governance meetings became more about optics than learning. Targets and deadlines were imposed from the top, often without context. Sarah found herself pulled into endless reporting cycles where the message was clear: control matters more than trust.
At first, she tried to protect her teams from the worst of it but over time, the pressure began to wear her down. She became more cautious, second-guessed her decisions and found herself enforcing processes she didn’t believe in, just to avoid awkward conversations.
She described it as “leading with the handbrake on.”
The Trap
Sarah had fallen into a couple of common leadership traps.
Firstly she started Drifting. This is where she made the odd small compromise of her values. She told herself it was to avoid unnecessary conflict and ensure initiatives weren’t killed off too quickly. This is completely normal.
She was also experiencing what I call the Distorting Trap — where systemic pressure makes leaders start doubting their own judgment. The very instincts that made her a strong agile leader — empowering others, trusting collaboration, leaning into uncertainty — were the same ones she was now questioning.
The Turning Point
When we spoke about the Calm REBEL Arc, the step that lit something in her was Examine. Instead of swallowing the system’s narrative whole, she began to look at it with clearer eyes.
Initially, Sarah assumed her senior leaders were driven by values directly opposed to her own — that they cared about control, not trust; deadlines, not learning. But when she slowed down and put herself in their shoes, she realised something important: they too were under pressure.
Their push for deadlines and optics wasn’t born of hostility toward agility. It was the result of their own drift from core values — their own distorted lens – and that this was driven by the pressure they felt.
She also reflected that she was acting less in line with her values than she assumed she was. She had started to view those interactions with “the control freaks” as she had begun to call them as adversarial “battles”.
Experiments in Empathy
From that insight, Sarah began a new set of experiments.
• In steering meetings, instead of framing leaders as adversaries, she assumed underlying positive intent. She asked questions that revealed where their anxieties were coming from, and acknowledged those pressures openly.
• She deliberately built rapport, emphasising shared goals: value for customers, reduced risk, sustainable delivery.
• She brought her team into governance updates, letting executives experience their capability firsthand.
These weren’t acts of open defiance. They were calm, values-led moves that allowed her to act more in line with her principles of connection and trust — while giving her seniors the space to trust others, too.
The Ripple
The change was slow but noticeable. Her executives began to see Sarah not as a challenger to be managed, but as an ally who could help them meet their own goals without sacrificing integrity. Her teams saw her modelling servant leadership again, even under pressure.
Within six months, the teams were more trusted, not less. And Sarah herself described it as “leading without the handbrake” once more.
Why This Matters
Sarah’s story is not unusual. Many agile leaders start with conviction, only to find their voice distorted by governance demands and optics-driven pressure. It can feel like the only options are to conform or to burn out.
Admittedly not always, but sometimes there is another way. By examining the system clearly — and empathising with the fact that everyone is under pressure — leaders can create steady, values-led experiments that satisfy governance needs while protecting agility.
The result often isn’t just personal recovery. When one leader assumes positive intent and models trust, it ripples upward and outward. Others remember what they stand for, too.
Start with Empathy
If you’ve ever felt your agile leadership being stifled, try starting from empathy. Both for yourself and others. Sometimes the quietest act of rebellion is to treat even your most demanding stakeholders as partners — and in doing so, free everyone to lead more authentically.
* Not her real name but story shared with permission
