Leadership Isn’t About Speed. It’s About Awareness.

A conversation with leadership coach Liz Doyle Harmer

High-growth companies love momentum. Speed, ambition, big goals, bigger expectations. However, as organizations scale, something subtle is often overlooked: how leaders are actually showing up day-to-day.

I recently sat down with leadership coach and facilitator Liz Doyle Harmer, founder and executive coach at Ello Leadership, for a candid conversation about what she’s seeing inside leadership teams, from early-stage founders to more mature executive groups. What stood out was not a new framework or silver bullet, but something far more powerful and often ignored: awareness.

Growth Breaks What Once Worked

One of the most important themes Liz shared is this simple truth:

What got you here will not get you there.

The leadership style, habits, and team dynamics that helped a company reach its current stage often start to break under the pressure of growth. Targets get bigger. Complexity increases. Uncertainty becomes the norm. And suddenly, leaders are operating in environments they’ve never navigated before.

This is where many leaders struggle, not because they lack intelligence or drive, but because leadership development has lagged behind business growth.

Two buckets every leader needs to pay attention to

Liz frames leadership growth in two core areas:

• How leaders lead themselves

• How teams relate and work together

Most organizations focus heavily on strategy, execution, and outcomes. Far fewer invest time in how leaders manage their internal state or how teams function beneath the surface.

And that’s where cracks begin to show.

Energy Management Isn’t “Soft.” It’s Foundational.

One of the most interesting parts of our discussion centered on energy management.

This isn’t about being relentlessly positive or “rah-rah.” It’s about recognizing whether you’re showing up in a reactive, contracted state or a creative, expanded state.

Under pressure, our nervous systems default to fight, flight, or freeze. Growth triggers uncertainty. Uncertainty triggers reactivity. And reactivity shows up everywhere: decision-making, communication, conflict, and morale.

Leaders often underestimate how much their energy sets the tone for the entire organization.

• If you’re reactive, your team feels it.

• If you’re distracted, your team mirrors it.

• If you’re constantly firefighting, innovation stalls.

The work is not to eliminate reactivity (that’s unrealistic), but to notice it and learn how to recover faster.

The Leaders Who Grow Are the Ones Who Get Curious

Liz shared that the most effective leaders are not the ones who have everything figured out. They’re the ones willing to ask a difficult question:

How am I contributing to what’s happening on my team right now?

This level of self-reflection can be uncomfortable, especially for technically strong leaders who’ve been rewarded for execution rather than emotional intelligence. But it’s also where real leadership growth begins.

A simple daily practice Liz recommends:

• What went well today?

• Where did I get stuck?

• What might I try differently tomorrow?

Two minutes. No overthinking. Just awareness.

Over time, patterns emerge. How leaders respond to conflict. Where energy drains. What triggers defensiveness? And once patterns are visible, they can be changed.

Attention Is the New Leadership Currency

Another major theme was attention management.

We’re operating in an environment overloaded with distraction: endless meetings, internal noise, external pressure, busy work that feels productive but isn’t tied to real outcomes.

Strong leaders are learning to ask:

• What actually matters right now?

• Where is our attention leaking?

• Are we confusing activity with progress?

This applies both individually and at the team level. Often, growth stalls not because teams lack talent, but because focus is fragmented.

Slowing Down Is How You Actually Move Faster

One of Liz’s most powerful insights was this:

You don’t slow down to fall behind. You slow down to course-correct.

Rushing forward without reflection often means moving quickly in the wrong direction. The leaders who pause, reflect, and recalibrate tend to reach their goals faster and with less organizational damage along the way.

This is especially true for founders, where personal patterns, communication styles, and stress responses are deeply embedded in the company’s culture.

Your DNA is in your business. And that’s changeable.

We also touched on a reality many leaders quietly wrestle with: who you are shows up in your company.

• How you handle conflict.

• How you respond to pressure.

• How you listen (or don’t).

The encouraging part is this: your leadership DNA is not fixed.

The version of you that built the company to this point does not have to be the same version that leads it into its next phase. Growth in the business requires growth in the leader.

Final Thought

Leadership development doesn’t always require massive programs or sweeping change. Often, it starts with awareness, reflection, and the willingness to look inward.

And in a world obsessed with speed, that might be the most strategic move a leader can make.

If you’re building something ambitious and feeling the strain that comes with growth, you’re not alone. The question is not whether challenges will show up, but whether you’re equipped to meet them.