What’s Holding You Back from Being a Great Leader?

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When you hit a roadblock in your career, it's easy to blame external factors like the economy, the organization, or your boss. But leaders are just as often stymied by their own beliefs about how they need to show up and operate at work, shares executive coach Muriel Wilkins. Through decades of work counseling high-powered executives, she's uncovered the seven main ways that people limit their own success and has advice on how to overcome those mental blocks. Wilkins is author of the HBR article "The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back" and the book Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential.

Transcript

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0:13.1	Visit D-E-E-E-L.com slash HBR.
0:16.3	Thank you. I'm Alison Beard.
0:33.8	And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR Ideacast.
0:43.9	Thank you. And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR Ideacast. So, Adi, we've all worked with bosses or colleagues who are smart and successful and fine leaders,
0:50.4	but everyone else can see that there's something holding them back from really getting the best
0:55.5	other people or getting to the next level in their career. And they might get feedback on that,
1:01.3	but they're not really sure how to fix it or sometimes they don't even want to. Have you run into
1:06.0	people like that who struggle to change or had problems with it yourself? I'm sure I've had problems with it myself, but it's easier to talk about other people.
1:13.8	So I've worked for a lot of very smart, very talented people who did have something that would hold them back.
1:21.4	So maybe they were micromanagers, maybe they were perfectionists and just couldn't get stuff done quickly enough.
1:28.0	People who were protecting legacy and forgetting about innovation,
1:32.0	people who didn't really care about process.
1:34.4	So, yeah, I've worked with some very smart people who there was something blocking their ability to move forward.
1:41.1	Well, blocking is the right word.
1:42.5	That is what our guest today calls them, hidden blockers.
1:46.2	Muriel Wilkins is a longtime executive coach, host of the coaching real leaders podcast and a frequent
1:51.2	HBO contributor.
1:53.0	And in her decades of counseling senior leaders, she has found some common patterns in what
	...

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