Leadership Problems in Growing Companies: When the Real Issue Isn’t Strategy
Sometimes the first sign that something is wrong inside a growing company is surprisingly small. A customer asks a question, and nobody is quite sure who should answer it. Someone wants to know when a product will be ready, but different departments have different answers. There's a problem, but no one knows who owns the call. One department knows something another department doesn't.
Everyone is working. Everyone is busy. But somehow, information isn't moving with them.
I've worked inside enough startups and growing companies to recognize what happens next.
We start looking for the process problem, and sometimes there is one, but most of the time the problem inside a growing company isn't strategy, process or even communication. It's what everyone has learned to compensate for.
When Communication Problems Aren't Really Communication Problems
I once worked inside a growing company where decisions could change in the middle of a project. The team would start moving in one direction. Then the direction would change. Everyone would pivot. Timelines would move because the work had changed.
Then there would be frustration that the original deadline hadn't been met.
Communication became reactive. People worked in separate departments toward separate priorities. Instead of operating as one company supporting one vision, everyone was trying to figure out what had changed and what they were supposed to do next.
So I became the floater.
I would do my job, then run to another department to find out what was happening there. I'd take that information somewhere else, get their update and keep going.
I was trying to connect the company.
Eventually, I was spending so much time making sure everyone else knew what was happening that it became harder to accomplish the work I was actually there to do.
At the time, I thought I was helping solve a communication problem. Looking back, I see something different. I had become part of the communication system, and no company should depend on one person running between departments to keep everyone connected.
You Can't Build a Process Around Inconsistent Leadership
I tried to fix it. I created a communication plan designed to help information move more consistently across the company, but instead of looking at the plan as a whole, pieces of it were implemented without the conversations necessary to understand how those pieces worked together.
When it didn't work, the plan became the problem.
That experience taught me something I've carried into every conversation I have about organizational growth since: A process cannot compensate indefinitely for leadership behavior that keeps undermining it.
You can create the SOP.
You can clarify responsibilities.
You can build the communication plan.
You can change the technology.
You can hire another person.
But if priorities constantly change, decisions aren't clearly communicated, advice isn't heard, or leaders repeatedly contradict the systems they've put in place, the team will eventually create its own ways of surviving the uncertainty, and those workarounds can look like organizational dysfunction.
The Team May Be Adapting to the Leader
This is where operations and Psychological Leadership™ intersect for me. Leaders often look at what isn't working and immediately look outward.
Why isn't the team communicating?
Why can't people take ownership?
Why is this project late?
Why does everyone need me for everything?
Those can be legitimate questions, but there's another question that doesn't get asked nearly enough: What am I doing that may be contributing to this?
Leadership isn't only about what you tell people to do. It's also about what people learn they need to do around you.
If priorities frequently change, people learn to hesitate before committing too deeply to the current one.
If decisions are repeatedly overridden, people become less confident making decisions independently.
If someone says she wants ownership but inserts herself into every important decision, the team learns that ownership has limits.
If mistakes trigger blame instead of curiosity, people learn to protect themselves before they communicate openly.
The leader may see these behaviors and think, What's wrong with my team? The team may simply be responding to the environment leadership created.
What Only Looks Like It's Working Because Someone Is Absorbing the Consequences?
This is the question I wish more leaders would ask, because growing companies are often held together by extraordinarily capable people. They're the employees who remember what wasn't documented.
They follow up.
They translate between departments.
They catch the missed details.
They calm down the customer.
They figure out who needs to know what.
They become the workaround.
I know because I've been that person, and eventually, it burned me out.
There was a point when I didn't want to be the person who could handle everything anymore. I wanted to run and hide and hope someone else would deal with it.
For a long time, experiences like that made me question myself. I wondered whether I wasn't talented enough. Whether I wasn't smart enough. Whether somehow I was the problem. I don't believe that anymore.
Experience taught me to trust what I know. It also taught me that being capable of carrying dysfunction doesn't make carrying it your responsibility.
Growth Requires Leaders to Look Inward, Too
There are absolutely employees who need more accountability.
There are teams that communicate poorly.
There are processes that need to be rebuilt.
Not every organizational problem is secretly a leadership problem, but when the same problem keeps coming back, even after you've tried to fix it, that's information.
This is where Psychological Leadership™ matters, because leaders bring their own patterns into work just like everyone else does.
Our relationship with:
Control.
Conflict.
Trust.
Responsibility.
Being right.
Being needed.
Receiving feedback.
Admitting we don't know something.
Those patterns don't disappear when someone becomes a CEO, founder, executive or manager. They gain influence, and sometimes the hardest leadership move isn't identifying what's wrong with everyone else. It's asking what your own behavior might be teaching them.
Recognize What Everyone Has Learned to Work Around
The first stage of The RISE Method™ is Recognize. Before you change something, you have to be willing to see it. If you're leading a growing company or team, look beyond the obvious problem.
Ask yourself:
What problem keeps returning after we've supposedly fixed it?
Who is quietly preventing that problem from becoming visible?
Where are people spending time connecting dots that should already be connected?
What do I say I want from my team that my behavior might be making harder?
And most importantly: What only looks like it's working because someone keeps absorbing the consequences?
If you're the person doing the absorbing, I want you to ask yourself something too: What would happen if you stopped?
Not because you should let everything fall apart, but because sometimes you can't see the system clearly until you recognize how much of it you're personally holding together.
Sometimes the Company Doesn't Need Another Strategy
I still believe deeply in operations, processes and structure. A growing company needs them, but I've also learned that you can't process your way out of every leadership problem.
Sometimes the system needs to change.
Sometimes the team needs to change.
Sometimes the leader needs to change.
And sometimes the capable woman who has been holding everything together needs to recognize that she was never supposed to become the infrastructure.
If that's you, you're not the only woman who has found herself there. You can rebuild trust in yourself. You can reconnect with the woman you know you're capable of being. And you can stop measuring your competence by how much dysfunction you're able to carry.
That's part of leadership too.
So I'm curious: What have you seen a company compensate for?
Or, if you're willing to turn the question inward: What might your team be compensating for because of you?
I'd genuinely like to hear your answer.
About Biana Lerman
Biana Lerman is the founder of Your Growth Leader and the creator of The RISE Method™ and Psychological Leadership™. Her work explores the intersection of identity, psychology, leadership and organizational growth.
Drawing from her experience working inside startups and growing companies across operations, marketing and leadership, Biana writes about the human patterns underneath the professional problems we spend so much time trying to solve.
Her core belief is simple: identity comes before leadership.
FAQ's
What are common leadership problems in growing companies?
Leadership problems often become more visible as a company scales. They can include inconsistent decision-making, unclear ownership, poor communication between departments, micromanagement, constantly changing priorities and overdependence on a few highly capable employees.
How can leadership behavior affect company culture?
Employees learn from what leaders repeatedly do, not only what they say. How leaders respond to disagreement, mistakes, feedback, uncertainty and independent decision-making can influence whether employees communicate openly, take ownership or learn to work around leadership.
How do you know whether you have a process problem or a leadership problem?
Look for repetition. If you've reasonably improved the process but the same problem keeps returning, examine the behaviors surrounding it. The process may be clear while leadership behavior continues to undermine it.
What is Psychological Leadership™?
Psychological Leadership™ examines the human patterns underneath how we lead, including our relationship with control, conflict, trust, responsibility, approval and identity. It asks leaders to understand not only what they do, but what may be driving how they lead.
What is The RISE Method™?
The RISE Method™ stands for Recognize, Interrupt, Self-Lead and Evolve. In this situation, Recognize comes first: seeing the organizational and personal patterns clearly enough to determine what actually needs to change.
Ready to Understand What’s Really Driving Your Leadership Patterns?
Sometimes the problem you're trying to solve at work isn't only about the work.
The way we lead is influenced by what we've learned about control, responsibility, conflict, trust, communication and being needed. Those patterns can shape how we make decisions, how our teams respond to us and even the systems we build around ourselves.
At Your Growth Leader, I explore the psychology underneath those patterns—not to blame leaders for everything that goes wrong, but to help us become more aware of what we're bringing into the environments we lead.
Because better leadership doesn't always begin with another strategy.
Sometimes it begins by recognizing yourself in the problem.
If something in this article made you stop and think about your own workplace, I'd love to hear about it. What have you found yourself compensating for, or what might your team be compensating for around you?
Your Next Step
Explore The RISE Method™: Learn how Recognize, Interrupt, Self-Lead and Evolve can help you understand the patterns influencing how you live and lead.
Read More Articles: Explore more about Psychological Leadership™, self-trust, workplace patterns, identity and the psychology behind how we lead.
Book a RISE Reflection Session: Sometimes you don't need someone to tell you what to do. You need the right space to understand what you're already seeing.
Book Biana to Speak: Explore speaking, workshops and conversations about Psychological Leadership™, women in leadership, identity and The RISE Method™. Your Growth Leader | Personal growth written for professional impact.
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