The situation

A director on a superintendent's cabinet had accumulated significant informal influence—Grip without Claim. When passed over for a promotion, she became combative. The superintendent saw a personality problem.

The diagnosis

I saw drift: her conception was "this authority is mine." Leadership's conception was "we loaned it, and it's negotiable." Same position. Misaligned stories. Collision.

But I also saw two possible fears: she was protecting position (reactive), or she was protecting a conception of herself as the rightful leader (empire-building). Same behavior. Different engines. Different futures.

The prediction

I told the superintendent: replatform her and watch. If it's reactive, she calms within weeks. If it's empire-building, she escalates.

What happened

Three weeks later, she calmed. The prediction held. This is methodology, not intuition.

What I observed

I watched one meeting live. That's the method.

A superintendent asks her cabinet for input. In the half-second before she finishes her question, she glances at one director—a micro-movement, barely perceptible.

The diagnosis

I named it: "You're signaling whose opinion matters most before anyone speaks. That 0.5-second glance creates an invisible hierarchy. Other voices will self-censor."

What happened

She had no idea. She changed her behavior that day. Within weeks, cabinet members who'd been silent for months were contributing ideas they'd previously held back.

The situation

A mid-sized public agency. The Deputy Director reports to the Executive Director. In coaching conversations, the Deputy is sharp—he can name exactly what's broken. But nothing moves.

What I observed

Watch the Deputy in meetings. He articulates problems with precision. He builds compelling cases for change. Then: "I'll need to check with the Executive Director on that." "That's really his call." "I can't bring outside observers to that meeting without his approval."

The pattern: he pulls his punches. He can diagnose but won't decide.

The diagnosis

The Deputy has Claim without Grip. He holds the title. He runs the meetings. But actual decision-making authority sits with the Executive Director. The Deputy has learned—correctly—that his authority is contingent. Acting without approval has consequences. So he prepares, recommends, and waits.

This isn't a confidence problem. It's a structural position. His behavior is rational given the architecture he's in.

The root fear

Fear of overstepping. The Deputy has watched what happens when people at his level act without cover. The deference isn't weakness—it's protection.

The prediction

Until the Executive Director explicitly delegates decision-making authority—says it aloud, in front of the team, removes himself from the approval chain in specific domains—the Deputy will continue pulling punches.

What happened

The Executive Director named domains where the Deputy decides. "You own curriculum and instruction. I'll support your calls. Don't check with me—decide." The Deputy started deciding.

The situation

A school district. The Assistant Superintendent has diagnosed his principals as "managers, not instructional leaders." They handle operations well—schedules, budgets, building issues. But in instructional spaces, they defer to coaches. They're present but passive.

His plan: summer professional development. Train the principals in instructional leadership. Build the capacity they're missing.

What I observed

The Assistant Superintendent's diagnosis is confident. He's certain about what principals lack. He's already designing the intervention.

But no one has asked the principals how they see themselves.

The diagnosis

The Assistant Superintendent holds a conception of his principals: they're managers who need development. This may not match principals' self-conception. Some may see themselves as instructional leaders who are blocked by structure—too many operational demands, no authority to push back on district initiatives, coaches who were installed without their input.

This is drift. Two parties holding incompatible stories about the same role. Neither knows they're misaligned. Collision is coming.

The root fear

The Assistant Superintendent fears that surfacing principals' self-conception will slow down his agenda. Underneath: fear that the problem might be structural (he'd have to change systems) rather than developmental (he just has to train people).

The prediction

If the Assistant Superintendent rolls out PD without surfacing how principals understand their own role, he'll get compliance and quiet resistance. By fall, the pattern reasserts.

What happened

Before designing PD, he surfaced the conception gap. Sat with principals and asked: "How do you see your role in instruction? What gets in the way of leading it?" Then designed intervention that addressed the actual gap. The PD landed differently.

The situation

A public agency. The Director has two senior managers reporting to her. They've operated independently for years. She trusts their expertise. She doesn't micromanage.

Now there's a problem. One manager's team is drifting from the priority. The other's progress monitoring isn't surfacing the equity data it should. The Director needs to provide direction—not just delegation, but actual guidance and accountability.

She can't do it.

What I observed

In coaching conversations, the Director is precise. She can articulate exactly what her managers need to do differently. She knows the gaps.

But when I ask what she's said to them directly: "We've discussed it." "They're aware." "I've mentioned it in our one-on-ones."

She hasn't said the direct thing. She hints. She asks questions hoping they'll arrive at the answer themselves. She avoids the conversation that would actually shift behavior.

The diagnosis

The Director is protecting the relationship. Her managers are capable professionals. They've operated independently for years. For her to now say "You're not doing this right, here's what I need" feels like betrayal of the implicit contract: I trust you, you deliver.

So she stays indirect. And her managers—who aren't mind readers—interpret her indirection as approval. The drift continues.

The root fear

Fear of damaging the relationship she's built. Fear of being seen as the boss who micromanages after years of trusting. The indirection isn't weakness—it's protection.

What they chose

When I named this—that her inability to coach down was rooted in fear of relationship damage—she recognized it.

The intervention she reached for: hire an executive coach to work on her leadership and direct communication.

Why it won't work

The executive coach treats the Director as the unit of change. But her behavior is structurally rational. A coach might help her build language for difficult conversations. But coaching won't change whether her managers receive directness as leadership or as betrayal.

She chose the coach instead of renegotiating the contract explicitly. The structure, as of this writing, persists.

The situation

A government agency. Four division heads sit on the Deputy Director's leadership team. Each owns a domain: program delivery, compliance, community engagement, and operations. Each is capable. Each believes their domain is critical.

The agency can't prioritize.

What I observed

In a leadership team meeting, watch what happens when a decision requires trade-offs. The Deputy Director floats a priority. Division heads nod. Then each explains how their current work already addresses it. No one says: "This means my area matters less this year."

The Deputy Director accepts the explanations. The meeting ends. Everyone returns to their domains unchanged.

The diagnosis

Each division head has Shadow Grip in their domain. They've accumulated influence over years. To deprioritize one domain—to say "Program delivery matters more than compliance this year"—threatens someone's position.

So the Deputy Director doesn't prioritize. Everything is additive. Every division head stays protected. No one yields.

The system is locked. Not by malice—by interlocking fears.

The root fear

For division heads: fear of diminished importance. If my domain is deprioritized, what does that say about my value?

For the Deputy Director: fear of the conflict that comes from naming a winner and a loser. Fear of damaging relationships with capable people he needs.

The prediction

Until someone explicitly deprioritizes a domain and absorbs the cost, the system cannot focus. No division head will volunteer. Only the Deputy Director has the positional authority to make the call.

What's happening

I showed him the lock. He saw it. The question became: was he willing to do the thing, or did he just want to understand the thing?

He's preparing for the conversation. The lock hasn't broken yet. But he's no longer pretending a workshop or a strategy session will break it for him. He knows it's his move.

The situation

A state agency responsible for child development. The Deputy Director has been in his role for several years, building program delivery systems from the ground up—performance standards, regional coordination structures, quality monitoring, an agency-wide leadership team. The infrastructure exists.

But the system only moves where he's directly involved.

What I observed

Three priority regional offices. Three different conditions. At Region A, momentum is strong—because the Deputy Director is embedded there weekly. At Region B, things move because the regional manager has strong relational capital. At Region C, the work is fragile.

The pattern: progress tracks to the Deputy Director's presence. Where he touches, things shift. Where he doesn't, they stall or drift.

The diagnosis

The Deputy Director has both Claim and Grip—that's not the problem. The problem is that the system hasn't distributed capacity. He built infrastructure, but he's still the engine that runs it.

The deeper issue: he sees himself as the system. His identity is fused with being the person who drives program quality in this agency. He's not protecting a position—he's protecting a self-conception.

The root fear

Fear of irrelevance. If the system runs without him, what is he? There's also fear of drift. He's watched what happens when leaders step back and systems lose coherence. Staying central feels like vigilance, not control.

The prediction

If the Deputy Director doesn't shift from being program quality to building the capacity for program quality, the system stays leader-dependent. When he eventually leaves, the infrastructure will hollow out.

What shifted

The first move was reframing what legacy means. "I am program quality in this agency" is not a legacy—it's a dependency. "I built the infrastructure that sustains quality after I'm gone"—that's a legacy.

He began to see his role differently. Not as the person who drives program delivery, but as the person who builds the conditions for others to drive it. He's building for his eventual absence.