What is it Like to be Led by You?
Summary: Do you know what it’s like to be led by you? Good intentions do not always translate into positive leadership impact. Ciarán Casey joins The Leadership Habit Podcast to explore why leadership is relational, how leaders can become more aware of the experience they create, and the six elements that help leaders get back “in tune.”
Most leaders have good intentions. They want their teams to feel trusted, supported, empowered, and valued.
But good intentions do not always create a good experience.
You might give someone more autonomy because you trust them, only for them to walk away feeling abandoned. You might step in to help because you want to make their job easier, while they interpret your help as a sign that you do not trust them. You might send an email late at night simply to clear your inbox, while your team assumes they are expected to be available after hours.
That gap between what a leader intends and what others actually experience is at the heart of this episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast.
Host Jenn DeWall sits down with leadership practitioner, coach, and author Ciarán Casey to explore why leadership impact matters more than good intentions and how leaders can become more conscious of what it is actually like to be led by them.
Meet Ciarán Casey, Leadership Coach and Author
Ciarán Casey is a leadership practitioner and coach with more than three decades of senior leadership experience across sectors and international environments. His work focuses on organizational transformation, culture, high-performing teams, and complex human dynamics.
More recently, Ciarán has focused on leadership development, working with individuals, leadership teams, senior civil servants, and executive teams to strengthen trust and collaboration.
His book, Leadership in Tune, grew out of a question he kept encountering throughout his career: Why do some highly capable, intelligent, confident leaders struggle to connect with the people around them, while others seem to create environments where people naturally flourish?
For Ciarán, part of the answer lies in the difference between leadership intent and leadership impact.
Your Intentions Are Only Half the Story
Leaders rarely set out to frustrate, disengage, or demotivate their teams. The problem is that employees cannot experience a leader’s intentions. They experience their behaviors and interactions.
“The intention isn’t the problem. What we need to focus on is the experience.”
That distinction can be uncomfortable, especially when we know our intentions were good. But it also gives leaders a more useful way to evaluate their effectiveness.
Instead of asking, “What was I trying to do?” effective leaders can ask, “How might that have been experienced?”
That shift matters because leadership behaviors carry more weight than we may realize.
Ciarán points out that leaders are constantly being observed. A delayed response can be interpreted as a lack of interest. Silence can make people wonder if something is wrong. A rushed conversation can leave someone feeling like their time or contribution does not matter.
As he puts it, a leader’s impact is amplified.
Becoming more aware of that leadership impact is not about overanalyzing every interaction. It is about recognizing that the meaning we intend to communicate and the meaning someone receives are not always the same.
Leadership Does Not Happen in Isolation
One of the central ideas in Ciarán’s work is that leadership is relational.
We often think of leadership as something an individual possesses. We describe someone as confident, charismatic, decisive, or a strong communicator and conclude that those characteristics make them a good leader.
Ciarán challenges that idea.
He argues that leadership emerges in the space between people. A leader can offer direction, guidance, or support, but leadership only takes shape when another person is willing to engage with and follow that direction.
“Leadership is a relational practice that doesn’t reside within an individual, but emerges between people.”
That changes the way we think about leadership development.
Instead of focusing exclusively on the leader’s characteristics, we can pay more attention to the quality of their interactions. Are people willing to speak openly? Do they feel trusted? Do they feel heard? Does the leader create the conditions for people to contribute?
Those everyday interactions are where leadership impact becomes real.
The Six Strings of Leadership
In Leadership in Tune, Ciarán introduces his Conscious Relational Impact Model, built around six elements of leadership.
As a guitarist, he compares these elements to the guitar’s six strings. A guitar does not need every string to be completely wrong to sound off. One string that is out of tune can change the sound of the entire instrument.
Leadership can work the same way.
The six strings are organized across three stages:
The Connected Self: Authenticity and Emotional Intelligence
Effective leadership starts with understanding yourself. That means knowing your values and how they influence your behavior while also having the emotional intelligence to understand and regulate the impact you have on others.
Authenticity without emotional intelligence can become an excuse to behave however you feel in the moment. Emotional intelligence without authenticity can feel performative.
The Bridge: Presence and Trust
From there, leaders have to create the conditions for connection.
Ciarán describes presence and trust as the two spans of a bridge between people. Trust determines whether it feels safe to cross. Presence determines what it feels like to cross.
One of the simplest ways leaders can strengthen that bridge is by giving people their undivided attention.
Phones, emails, meetings, and competing priorities make genuine presence difficult. But when a leader is distracted during a conversation, that distraction can communicate something they never intended: You are not important enough for my full attention.
Shared Impact: Co-Creation and Influence
Once leaders have built that connection, they can create shared impact through co-creation and influence.
Ciarán describes co-creation as one of the most underused leadership skills. Leaders do not need to have every idea, solve every problem, or provide every answer themselves.
Instead, they can involve capable people in designing solutions, processes, products, and outcomes.
Influence also changes depending on the situation. Sometimes leaders need to be direct. Other times, they can draw ideas and creativity from the people around them.
The key is that shared impact becomes much easier when trust and connection already exist.
Which Leadership String Is Out of Tune?
The goal of Ciarán’s model is not leadership perfection.
A leader may be authentic and emotionally intelligent but struggle to be fully present. Another may care deeply about their team but fail to build trust. Someone else may build strong relationships but rarely give others enough opportunity to co-create solutions.
When something is not landing the way you intended, Ciarán’s six strings offer a framework for asking why.
“We’re not going for perfection here. We’re just going for improvement.”
That can start with small moments of reflection.
Think about a recent conversation that did not go as planned. A piece of feedback someone did not respond to well. Or, a meeting where the energy suddenly changed. Maybe a team member who has started pulling back.
Rather than immediately focusing on what is wrong with the other person, consider the interaction itself.
What might they have experienced? Which leadership string may have been out of tune? What could you adjust the next time?
What Is It Like to Be Led by You?
Toward the end of the conversation, Ciarán offers a question that captures the central idea of the episode:
“What’s it like to be on the receiving end of me?”
It is a very different question from “Am I a good leader?”
Being a strong leader is an evaluation we can make about ourselves. Understanding how people feel and what it is like to be led by us requires considering someone else’s experience.
That is where leadership impacts lives.
You will not always get it right. Your intentions and someone else’s experience will not always align. But becoming curious about that gap can help you build stronger relationships, strengthen trust, and create an environment where people are more willing to contribute their best over the long term.
Listen to the full episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast to hear Jenn and Ciarán explore the Conscious Relational Impact Model, the six strings of leadership, and how you can become more intentional about the experience you create for the people you lead.
Where to Find More From Ciarán Casey
Want to learn more from Ciarán Casey?
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