Climbing the Corporate Ladder Faster by Doing Less

Leiderschapscoach Amsterdam | David Buirs

Climbing the corporate ladder faster by doing less

David Buirs is a Leadership & Executive Coach based in Amsterdam, working with managers, directors and senior leaders. This article describes two routes up in an organisation: one that runs on fear and ego, and one that builds credit with the people around you. Readers learn which four habits quietly hollow out character, and which behaviour leads to promotion and influence over the long run.

There are two ways of climbing the corporate ladder faster. One costs you your character. The other builds it. Both take you up. One of them drops you somewhere you never wanted to be.

You probably know someone who got far by making life harder for everyone around them. And you have wondered how that happened.

The more uncomfortable question comes next. Could it happen to you?

How Character Quietly Drains Away

I see the same thing over and over. In my own career, and in the stories of the leaders I coach.

It starts with pressure. A brutal quarter. A reorg nobody saw coming. A colleague going for the same promotion.

And then something changes. So slowly that you only spot it in hindsight.

They cancel their 1-on-1s because there is a board deck that has to shine. Just this once. Then again. Emails from above get answered within ten minutes. Emails from their own team sit there for three days.

They get short with people who need something and have nothing to give back. They walk past reception without saying hello. Then a director walks in and the lights come on.

They start performing importance. In how they talk, in how long they wait before replying, in who gets their time.

I have seen manipulation and I have seen bullying. And what strikes me every time is that the person doing it is acting out of fear. Afraid of losing power. Reputation. Money. The things they somewhere along the way started putting above everything else.

People who end up here, sinking into corporate politics, slide into it slowly. It is never a conscious choice. It happens because it feels like survival.

The Two Routes Up

Most of us do this on autopilot. Your brain picks a target. Make senior. Get the promotion. Hit the number.

You hit it. Brief rush. And then the feeling is gone, and your head goes looking for the next one.

There are two routes up.

On the first route you run on fear and ego. You protect your status. You chase titles. You stack up money as proof that you are worth something.

The second route draws less attention and is worth far more. You build a good career and you do good things for the people around you while you do it. You grow. You learn. You leave people better than you found them.

Both can take you a long way. They just end up somewhere else.

Sit with the question of why you actually want that promotion. Go past the answer you usually give. Find the real one.

What People Regret at the End

Bronnie Ware spent years in palliative care. She sat beside people in their final weeks and wrote down what they told her.

One thing kept coming back. They wished they had found the courage to live a life that was truly their own. They wished they had let themselves be happier. They wished they had worked less. Her observations are here.

That second one sticks with me. Letting yourself be happier. As though the happiness had been lying there all along, with something always in front of it.

Usually that something was fear. Fear of being too little. Fear of losing what they had built. Fear of what other people would think.

Nobody in that bed said they wished they had made VP.

It Happens Piece by Piece

There is no day where you make a decision. There are dozens of moments where you let something go.

You stay quiet in a meeting while someone gets treated badly. You take the credit, because the opening was there. You push your 1-on-1s aside for a deck that makes you look good. You leave a request for help sitting because there is little in it for you.

And every time you promise yourself you will be different once you are one level up.

Then you get there. Same person, fuller calendar.

Four habits do most of the draining.

The first is taking credit that belongs to someone else. Short term you gain ground. Meanwhile you make enemies with long memories.

The second is being warm upwards and cool downwards. People see it. They always see it.

The third is holding information back to protect your position. It feels clever. It wrecks trust in a way that takes years to repair.

The fourth is the slowest. You stop asking people how they are doing. Curiosity costs time, and that time now goes to visibility.

What Actually Works

Ask for feedback. Often. From different people, at different levels. Tasha Eurich studied self-awareness and found that around 95 percent of us believe we are self-aware. In reality something like 10 to 15 percent meet the criteria. Your blind spots are probably no secret at all to the people around you.

Be specific with your manager about what success looks like in their eyes. Have a real conversation about it. Ask what needs to have happened by December for them to say you did well.

Be proactive. See problems coming and bring a proposal. Do it visibly, with your manager, rather than around them. Robert Greene once wrote that you should never outshine the person above you. There is more in that than you would like to admit.

Build credit with people who give you nothing right now. That is the investment with the longest return.

And guard your recovery. Four weeks of grinding turns anyone into a shorter, harder version of themselves. Character erodes fastest when you are spent.

The Trap in the Step Into Leadership

In a new leadership role you want to prove you deserve it. Work harder than everyone. Know everything. Be in every room.

But the step from expert to leader asks for something else. Do less yourself. Make more possible. Give fewer answers. Ask better questions.

Whoever works that out early grows faster than whoever spends years trying to stay the best operator. Hence the title. You get further by doing less and carrying more weight.

Higher up, the trap changes shape. There it becomes influence without formal power, decisions made on half the information, and the weight of a call that touches hundreds of people. For leaders at director level who want to keep climbing the corporate ladder faster in a way that is good for the people around them, executive coaching is where that work usually happens.

One Question to Take With You

Think of someone you genuinely admire. Someone who got far and stayed warm along the way. Someone you would call a good person without hesitating.

You probably have someone in mind already.

Ask yourself what makes that person different. I would bet it has very little to do with a job title.

That is the second route. Climbing the corporate ladder faster and being able to look yourself in the eye go together fine, as long as you choose deliberately. On autopilot they come apart.

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

How to Have Difficult Conversations as a Manager

David Buirs | Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

How to have difficult conversations as a manager in 6 steps

David Buirs is a leadership coach in Amsterdam. This article covers how to have a difficult conversation with an employee, in six concrete steps. You learn why you keep postponing the talk and how to handle it without your employee getting defensive.

You have a difficult conversation as a manager in six steps: prepare for your own part, name the behaviour concretely, check your assumption, allow a silence, agree on something specific, and follow up. The order helps. The real work sits before it, in how you look at the conversation before you walk into the room. I cover both below.

Why you have been postponing that talk for weeks

You know which conversation I mean. There is probably one that has been on your list for a couple of weeks now.

You postpone it because something feels at stake that is bigger than the conversation itself. Often you are protecting a story about yourself. "I am the one who keeps the mood good." Or the opposite: "I am direct, people know where they stand with me." That story feels like a strength. And it is one, until it starts making your decisions for you.

The moment you water a conversation down until almost nothing is left, or push it another week, you let the story win. That has consequences. For your team, and for the behaviour you actually want to change.

Leaving something unspoken is a choice too. Only one you pay for more dearly later.

The six steps

Models like Radical Candor and Nonviolent Communication already exist. They work. Yet many managers get stuck, because they know the technique but have no idea where to begin in the moment itself. These six steps give you that structure.

  1. Prepare for your own part. Before you work out what the other person is doing wrong, ask yourself one question: which story about myself am I protecting by avoiding this conversation? And: did I contribute something to this situation myself? A conversation where you put all the blame on the other person almost always stalls.
  2. Name the behaviour, not the person. Say what you concretely see. "The last three reports were late" lands differently from "you are unreliable." The first is about behaviour someone can change. The second is about who someone is, and every employee pushes back against that.
  3. Check your assumption out loud. You have an explanation in your head for the behaviour. It might be wrong. Ask about it. "I notice the deadlines are slipping. What is going on?" That way you make room for a story you do not know yet, and you avoid spending a whole conversation on the wrong cause.
  4. Allow a silence. After your opening you will want to fill the tension with words. Resist it. Stay quiet. The other person needs a moment to respond, and those few seconds of discomfort often produce the most honest part of the conversation.
  5. Agree on something concrete. A good conversation without a next step evaporates. Close with something measurable. What changes, from when, and how will you both see whether it is working. Vague optimism at the end feels nice, but changes nothing.
  6. Follow up. Come back to it briefly within a week or two. That shows the conversation was no one-off and that you mean it. And it gives you the chance to appreciate what did improve, which makes the next time easier.

Why the technique alone is not enough

You can learn these six steps by heart and still avoid the conversation. That happens because the brake rarely sits with the technique. The brake sits with how you see yourself. As long as you believe that being honest makes you less empathic, you keep postponing, however many step-by-step plans you know.

Real change happens when you start to see yourself as someone who can do both. Warm and clear. The feedback you keep delaying comes from the same care that makes you so likeable. You say something because you want this person to grow and not be caught off guard six months from now.

If you are more on the direct side, you already do the naming well. Your gain sits in the tone. You speak as if you are talking to someone whose best interest you have at heart.

In the business coaching for leaders I do, this is the pattern that comes back most often. The question is rarely "how do I say this." The question is "who do I want to be when I say it." For leaders at director level, executive coaching is a logical deepening of that same work.

Start small

Take that one conversation that keeps sitting on your list. Walk through the six steps once on paper. What do you concretely see, what is your assumption, what agreement do you want to make. And ask yourself that first question: which story about myself am I keeping alive by avoiding this conversation.

That preparation makes the conversation itself a good deal lighter. For a leader who wants to train these skills in a focused way, a 1-on-1 leadership program is a logical next step.

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

How to develop your team as a manager

Leiderschapscoach Amsterdam | David Buirs

This article details how to develop your team as a new manager by shifting from technical execution to people development. It uses mathematical ROI to prove the value of coaching and provides a framework for safe learning environments. The guide emphasizes personal leadership as the necessary foundation for long-term team engagement.

Continue reading

Leadership Consultancy Amsterdam

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

The Leadership Gap That Shows Up When You Start Growing

David Buirs is a leadership consultant and coach based in the Amsterdam region, working with managers, executives, and organizations in both Dutch and English. He offers one-on-one leadership coaching, in-company management training, and strategic advisory for HR and senior leadership teams. This article explores why leadership development gets deprioritized during periods of growth, what the data says about the cost of that choice, and what it looks like to close that gap in practice.

There is a specific moment most scale-ups can recognize.

It is not a crisis. It is quieter than that.

It is when someone says: "I do not know who to talk to about this anymore." Or when a decision that used to take 20 minutes now involves four meetings. Or when a manager comes to you because they do not know how to handle someone on their team, and you realize you do not quite know either.

The company grew. The structure did not keep up.

The people managing teams in the middle are doing their best with tools that were designed for a smaller, simpler organization.

From everyone-does-everything to actual departments

In the early days of a company, the flatness is an advantage. No one waits for permission. Information flows because everyone is in the same room. The founder knows everyone by name.

Thirty people in, that changes.

You need specialists. You need structure. You need managers who can actually manage, not just coordinate tasks or relay information up and down.

The problem is that most of those managers grew up in the culture where none of that was necessary. They were promoted because they were great at their work. Because they delivered. Because people liked working with them.

And suddenly they are responsible for performance reviews, conflict resolution, motivation, feedback conversations, and figuring out why someone is not performing. Without a handbook. Without real training. Often without much support from above.

That is not a personal failure. That is a structural gap. And it shows up in established organizations just as much as in scale-ups. Leadership development is rarely treated as a strategic priority until something breaks.

What Gallup found

Every year, Gallup publishes its State of the Global Workplace report. The 2025 edition made headlines in the HR and leadership world, and the findings are hard to ignore.

Global employee engagement fell to 21% in 2024. The main driver: managers are disengaging, and that disengagement cascades. Seventy percent of team engagement is directly tied to the manager. When managers struggle, their teams follow.

The cost came to $438 billion in lost productivity. Globally. In a single year.

Gallup also found that fewer than 44% of managers worldwide have received any formal management training. Among those who have, active disengagement rates drop by half.

The two clearest recommendations from the report: train your managers, and teach them to coach.

Managers who learn coaching skills see their own engagement rise by up to 22%. The engagement of their teams goes up by up to 18%. Those are not marginal improvements. That is a different kind of organization.

Safety, voice, and why it matters for growth

Here is something worth sitting with.

When people feel safe at work, they speak up. They flag things that are not working. They try approaches that might fail. They bring problems before they become crises.

When they do not feel safe, they go quiet. They do what is asked and nothing more. They save the real feedback for their next employer.

In a company where speed and innovation matter, that silence is expensive.

Psychological safety does not mean a comfortable, frictionless workplace. It means people trust that if they raise a concern, try something that does not work, or say something difficult, they will not be punished for it.

Building that trust is a manager skill. It shows up in how a manager responds when someone brings bad news. How they run a one-on-one. How they handle a disagreement in a team meeting.

These things can be learned. They just need to be taught.

How I work with organizations and leaders

I am a leadership consultant and coach based in the Amsterdam region. I work in both Dutch and English, with individual leaders and organizations across the Netherlands and internationally.

For leaders who want to develop more intentionally, I offer leadership coaching. One-on-one, focused on the real challenges you are facing. Whether you are new to the role and figuring out what it actually requires, or years in and ready to lead with more intention and less friction.

For organizations, I offer management training built around your actual context. A program designed from your specific challenges, with measurable outcomes. Not generic content dropped into a room.

And for HR directors and senior leadership teams, I work as a strategic sparring partner. Someone to think with about culture, manager development, and what is actually driving the patterns you are seeing in your organization.

If any of that sounds relevant, I am happy to talk. Plan a free introduction here. No pitch. No proposal. Just a clear conversation about where you are and what might help.

Management Team Development

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

The Fish Starts Rotting at the Head

David Buirs is a leadership coach and management trainer based in Amsterdam, specialising in management team development. This article explains why organisational problems often start at the top, not in middle management. It covers the power paradox (Keltner), psychological safety (Edmondson, Project Aristotle) and strategic misalignment as core challenges in management team development.

The fish starts rotting at the head.

It sounds harsh. But it is not an attack on leaders. It is an observation about systems.

When an organisation struggles with low engagement or a culture of politics and self-protection, the cause is rarely middle management. The cause sits one level higher.

And yet most development investments go to the managers. Not to the management team itself.

A collection of leaders is not a leadership team

Patrick Lencioni puts it plainly. Most management teams are not teams at all. They are groups of individuals who happen to attend the same meeting.

Everyone defends their own domain. Heads nod, decisions get "made", and an hour later everyone goes back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

That is not collaboration. That is coexistence.

And the irony? Those same people expect their managers to create psychological safety and move forward as one team.

You cannot give what you do not have.

The power paradox

Management team members reached their position because of what set them apart. They listened well. They built trust. They knew how to bring people along.

Dacher Keltner, psychologist at UC Berkeley, describes what often happens next. The experience of power changes behaviour in ways most people do not see coming. Leaders become less empathetic, less inclined to listen, more focused on their own priorities. Not through bad intentions, but through what power does to the brain.

The paradox: the qualities that brought you to the top are precisely the qualities that power slowly erodes.

What else goes wrong

Three things I see time and again.

No shared vision. Research by MIT Sloan across 124 organisations found that only 28% of executives responsible for executing strategy could name three of their organisation's strategic priorities. More than half of senior executives disagree with each other on what those priorities even are. Not bad people. But no shared compass either.

Reward structures that punish collaboration. When someone's performance is measured on their own department's results, there is no rational reason to proactively help colleagues. The system rewards islands.

No time for development. The agenda is always full. Development gets postponed until there is a crisis. But development that only happens in a crisis is not development. That is firefighting at a higher level.

Psychological safety starts at the top

Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, spent decades researching team performance. Her conclusion is consistent: psychological safety is the single most important factor in whether a team functions well. Not talent, not budget, not structure.

Google confirmed this through Project Aristotle, a large-scale internal study into what separates high-performing teams from the rest. Psychological safety came out on top. Above everything else.

But if the management team does not model this itself, it spreads downward. Middle managers sense what is happening above them. They mirror it, even when they are not aware of it.

Two levels of development

Management team development works on two levels. Both are necessary.

The first is individual. Every management team member brings their own blind spots and patterns that show up in collaboration. That requires individual attention. Leadership coaching does this work. It addresses the person doing the leading, not just the role they occupy.

The second is collective. Shared language, shared norms, shared behaviour. You do not learn that alone. You learn it together, in a well-designed programme aimed at the team as a whole. For organisations that want to work on this structurally, management training at the MT level is a logical next step.

In closing

The healthiest organisations I know have one thing in common. The management team functions as a real team. They hold each other accountable, say what they think, and consciously choose shared success over individual scorecards.

That does not happen by itself. But it can be developed.

If you want to explore what that could mean for your management team, let's have a free introductory conversation. No obligation.

Coaching for Directors

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

The higher you rise, the less you hear

David Buirs is a leadership coach based in Amsterdam who works with directors, executives and CEOs on personal leadership development. This article explains why senior leaders receive less feedback the higher they rise, how that affects the entire organisation, and what coaching for directors and executives concretely delivers. References include research by KornFerry/Hay Group and a study published in the Journal of Management Development.

You made it. You are a director now.

Years of hard work, strong results, and now you are at the top. The responsibility is bigger. The decisions are heavier. And the number of people who will tell you honestly what they think of your leadership: smaller than ever before.

That is a paradox most directors, executives and CEOs never say out loud. But almost all of them recognise it immediately.

A fish rots from the head

There is a saying I find uncomfortable. Because it is so precisely true.

"A fish starts rotting from the head."

When leadership at the top is not working well, that spreads through the entire organisation. Not overnight. But slowly, your behaviour, your tone, and your blind spots seep into the culture of everything beneath you.

In how people treat each other. In whether they dare to say what they actually think. In whether they take ownership or wait for you to decide.

That is a significant responsibility. And it asks something of you: the willingness to take yourself seriously as a leader. Not as a subject-matter expert. As the person who sets the tone for everything around you.

The higher you rise, the less feedback you receive

In 1969, Laurence Peter described a phenomenon now known as the Peter Principle. The idea is straightforward. People are promoted based on their performance in their current role. Until they reach a position where those earlier qualities are no longer sufficient.

Many directors became directors because they excelled as managers, as experts, as strategists. Not because they had already proven themselves at the very top of an organisation.

And at that level, honest feedback dries up.

Employees keep their real opinions to themselves. Peer directors are also competitors. The board wants results. And the question "am I actually doing this well?" becomes harder and harder to ask out loud.

That is not a sign of weakness. It is the structural reality of senior leadership.

But without a mirror, you do not grow. And if you as a director stop growing, the organisation stops growing with you.

The loneliness nobody talks about

One of the things I hear most from the directors I work with is how lonely it can be. Not socially. Professionally.

There is nobody you can call without a filter to say you are doubting yourself. Nobody who challenges you the way you needed to be challenged earlier in your career. Nobody to think out loud with about the question that has been on your mind for three weeks.

You carry enormous responsibility. For people, for results, for the direction of the organisation. And most evenings, you carry it alone.

Coaching for directors, executives and CEOs offers exactly that: a conversation with someone who speaks the language. Someone who knows what it feels like to work under high pressure, to navigate politics, and to sometimes simply not know what the right call is.

What the research shows

KornFerry and Hay Group conducted extensive research into the relationship between leadership and business results. Their conclusion: leadership determines 50 to 60 percent of organisational culture, and has a measurable influence of approximately 35 percent on business results.

That is not a soft finding. That is strategy.

And yet coaching for directors is still an afterthought in many organisations. Something for when things go wrong. Not something built in structurally, the way finance or marketing is.

A study published in the Journal of Management Development looked at the impact of leadership coaching on 75 middle and senior managers. The outcome was clear: coaching led to more individual attention for team members, more delegation, and less micromanagement.

Those are precisely the behavioural shifts that ripple through an entire organisation. From director to team member.

I know what it feels like

I spent five years leading a large international team as a director. I know the reality of senior leadership from the inside.

The moments when you doubt yourself but cannot call anyone. The decisions you are not sure about. The meetings where the atmosphere is off but you have not yet figured out how to turn it around.

That experience is not a side note in how I work. It is the foundation.

When we work together on executive coaching, I bring that with me. No theoretical models that read like a management book. An honest conversation about what is actually going on, and what you need to sharpen your leadership.

For organisations that want to work more broadly on leadership development across their management layers, management training is a complement that works deeper into the organisation.

When does coaching for directors make sense?

Not only when things are going wrong.

Coaching makes sense when you feel there is more you could get out of your role. When certain conversations keep getting harder. When your team is not taking the ownership you expect from them. When you notice you are spending more time solving problems than giving direction.

And sometimes it is simply this: you need someone you can be honest with.

That is allowed. That is smart.

Interested, or just curious whether there is a fit? Plan a free introductory call via this page. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about what is going on.

Addressing Recurring Performance Issues as a Manager.

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Why won’t he just do it?

David Buirs is a leadership coach in Amsterdam for new managers with 0 to 4 years of experience. This article explains how to address recurring performance issues by first examining your own role before drawing conclusions about the employee. It covers the Golem effect, the right questions to ask as a manager, and when a Performance Improvement Plan is a fair and honest step.

There is someone on your team who has not been delivering for a while.

You have talked about it. Maybe twice. Things improve briefly, then slide back. The same mistakes. The same patterns. The same conversation on repeat.

At some point, the thought arrives: why won’t he just do it?

That feeling is understandable. And it is also exactly the moment things can go wrong.

The Golem effect: how your frustration makes the problem worse

In psychology, the Pygmalion effect describes how high expectations improve performance. Researchers Rosenthal and Jacobson demonstrated this in 1968. Teachers who believed certain students were high-potential saw those students genuinely improve, with no objective difference between them and their peers.

The Golem effect is the opposite. Low expectations lead to lower performance. Not because the person lacks motivation. But because your attitude shapes their behavior.

You ask fewer questions. You explain less. You check in with a slight impatience. You give more critical feedback and less encouragement. Without realizing it, you are sending a signal: I no longer believe you can do this.

And the other person feels it. People are finely tuned to how others perceive them.

The result: the employee pulls back. Takes less initiative. Makes more mistakes. And you see that as confirmation that you were right all along.

Frustration reinforces itself. A performance problem grows while you believe you are addressing it.

The question most managers skip

Before you ask anything of the employee, there is a different question to answer first.

What role have I played in this?

That is not self-blame. It is the most practical question you can ask. Because if you have contributed to the problem and do not address that, nothing changes.

Work through it honestly:

Have I clearly explained what I expect? Not in broad strokes, but concretely. What does success look like? When is something good enough?

Has this person received the right training and resources to actually do this job? Or am I assuming they already know?

Have I given regular, constructive feedback? Or do I only speak up when something goes wrong?

Have I asked how they see their own work? Do they even know I consider this a problem?

Have I asked what they think the reason is? They might see something you do not.

This is not doubt. It is just good management. You cannot change anything in someone else while there are still variables on your side you have not examined.

Curiosity as a tool

The trap of frustration is that you start explaining. You already have a theory. He does not care enough. She is not motivated. He is not cut out for this.

Curiosity asks something different. What is going on for this person? What makes this difficult? What do they need that they currently do not have?

That conversation is uncomfortable to start, especially when frustration has been building for weeks. It feels like walking in the wrong direction.

But it is exactly the conversation that matters. Not to let someone off the hook. But to understand what is actually happening.

Sometimes something personal is going on. Sometimes there is ambiguity you have allowed to persist. Sometimes the person has felt like they are failing for months and does not know how to say it.

And sometimes you discover that the intention is there, but the skill is not. That is very different from unwillingness. And it calls for a completely different response.

When curiosity is not enough

Say you have done all of this. You have clarified expectations. You have offered training. You have had the conversations. You have asked what they need.

And nothing changes.

Then there is an honest question you have to ask: does this person meet the minimum standard for this role?

That is not an attack. It is a professional reality. Every role has a floor. Below that floor, the team does not function, colleagues carry extra weight, and results are missed.

If someone is consistently below that floor, and you have genuinely tried, there is a next step.

The Performance Improvement Plan: a last resort, not a first reaction

A Performance Improvement Plan, or PIP, is a formal process. You document in writing what the expectations are, what the current situation is, and which specific goals need to be reached within a set timeframe. Usually three to six months.

The plan also describes what support you will provide. And what happens if the goals are not met.

A PIP is not a punishment and it is not a goodbye. It is a clearly structured opportunity. With agreed milestones, support, and consequences.

But it only works if the process is honest. If the expectations are realistic. If the support you commit to is real. And if you are using it to give someone a genuine chance, not to build a paper trail for dismissal.

Use a PIP only after months of conversations, feedback, and concrete attempts to improve the situation. Not as a first response to a problem you have not yet fully understood.

Addressing recurring performance issues as a manager starts with yourself. Not because you are always at fault, but because you are the only variable you can directly change.

That takes honesty. And sometimes a conversation you have been putting off.

If you want to work on how you handle situations like this, you can read more about business coaching for leaders or explore what a structured leadership track for your organization could look like. Interested or curious? Let’s chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Why Don’t Our Managers Show Leadership?

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

Why Don’t Our Managers Show Leadership?

David Buirs is a leadership coach and trainer based in Amsterdam, specializing in managers with 0 to 4 years of experience. This article is written for HR managers and senior leaders who notice their managers are not leading effectively. It explains why this happens and what structural change actually looks like.

You see it every day. Managers who are present, but not really leading. Teams that bring every decision to you. Conflicts that never get resolved on the floor, but land on HR’s desk instead. Meetings without direction. People quietly disengaging, while nobody says a word.

It is tempting to think it is a motivation problem. That they simply do not want to lead. But that is almost never true.

Most managers genuinely want to lead. They just do not know how.

You promoted your best people

Most managers ended up in their role because they were exceptional at their job. The best developer became team lead. The top sales rep became sales manager. The sharpest analyst became department head.

That is a logical choice. And a costly one.

Being good at your craft has very little to do with being good at leading people. They are two fundamentally different skill sets. The first is about technical knowledge and personal output. The second is about people. About having conversations that feel uncomfortable. About setting direction without having all the answers. About building trust instead of doing everything yourself.

Most new managers never get properly taught that second skill set. They are thrown in at the deep end and expected to figure it out.

The forgetting curve beats the training

At some point, the organization sends them to a training. Two days at a conference hotel. A deck of slides. A handful of models with acronyms. And a satisfaction score that comfortably lands above an eight.

A week later, they work exactly the same as before.

This is not a lack of good intentions. It is neuroscience. The psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus showed in the nineteenth century that the brain forgets newly learned information rapidly without repetition. Within a week, most of it is gone. Within a month, almost nothing remains.

One-off trainings are not an investment in behavior change. They are an investment in the feeling that something is being done.

Knowledge is not the problem

Ask your managers what they should do when someone is underperforming. They can probably tell you. They know the steps. They know what a good conversation looks like.

But they do not have the conversation.

Because giving feedback is uncomfortable. Addressing a former colleague feels personal. The risk of damaging a working relationship outweighs the abstract knowledge that things would be better if they just said something.

Behavior change does not require more information. It requires practice. Repetition in a safe environment. Reflection on what worked and what did not. And guidance that lasts long enough for new habits to actually stick.

That is what most trainings are missing. Not the content. The architecture.

What actually works

Leadership develops over time, not in two days. That sounds obvious. But the implication is rarely taken seriously when designing a training program.

What works is a program that runs over several months. That connects to the manager’s day-to-day reality. That links theory to concrete situations on the floor. And that builds in space for reflection between sessions.

Not a program you roll out. A program you build around the specific challenges in your organization.

That is the core of my approach to in-company management training. Every program starts with one question: what needs to concretely change here? The design follows that question, not a standard catalogue.

The real question

Your managers are not showing leadership. Not because they do not want to. But because the organization promoted them without supporting the transition. And because the trainings that followed were too short to change anything that lasted.

That is fixable. But it requires looking further than a one-off intervention.

The question is not: how do we make sure our managers know what leadership is? The question is: how do we make sure they actually do it?

Curious whether a program like this fits what is happening in your organization? Let’s have an honest conversation about it. No sales pitch, just a good look at what is needed. Plan your free introduction here.

How to Have Hard Conversations as a Manager

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

How to Have Hard Conversations as a Manager

David Buirs is an ICF-certified leadership coach based in Amsterdam, specialising in managers with 0 to 4 years of experience. This article explains why new managers avoid difficult conversations and what actually helps them stop. It draws on CoActive coaching principles and over 10 years of practical leadership experience.

She described herself as “the caring type.” And she meant it.

Her team liked her. She was warm, approachable, the kind of manager people felt comfortable talking to.

But she had not had a real difficult conversation in almost two years.

Every time something needed to be said, she found a softer version. Or she waited. Or she told herself it was not that serious. Her team picked up on it. Some started pushing boundaries. Others quietly stopped coming to her for feedback, because they knew she would just be nice.

She was not avoiding those conversations because she was lazy. She was protecting a story about herself. “I am the empathetic one. That is who I am.”

The story you protect

Most managers have a version of this. It shows up in one of two ways.

You protect the “I am direct and clear” story. Which sometimes means avoiding warmth.

Or you protect the “I am the caring one” story. Which sometimes means avoiding honesty.

Both feel like a strength. And they are, up to a point. The problem is when the story starts making decisions for you.

You know that conversation needs to happen. But you also know it might make you look less empathetic. So you wait. Or you soften it until it says almost nothing.

Leaving something unsaid is also a choice. And it has consequences.

Why the frameworks do not do the work

There is no shortage of good models for how to have hard conversations as a manager.

Radical Candor. Non-Violent Communication. Psychological Safety. They are all built on the same idea: clarity and care are not opposites. You can be honest because you care about someone, not despite it.

Most managers who struggle with difficult conversations already know this. They have read the books. They have taken the training.

Knowing the model does not change much on its own. The real shift happens when you start seeing yourself as someone who can actually do both.

That is where most training stops short. It teaches the technique. It skips the identity part. For organisations that want to address this at scale, a leadership program built around real behaviour change tends to land very differently than a one-day workshop.

How to have hard conversations as a manager: start with who you are

The conversation does not start in the meeting room. It starts in how you see yourself.

If you are more on the empathetic side, that feedback you have been postponing is not a threat to who you are. It is an expression of it. You say something because you want this person to grow, to succeed, to not be blindsided six months from now.

If you are more on the direct side, naming a problem is something you already do well. The upgrade is in how you do it. You speak like you are talking to someone you genuinely want the best for.

In the leadership guidance I do with new managers, this is one of the most consistent patterns we work through together. Not “how do I say this.” But “who do I want to be when I say this.”

Once that shifts, the actual conversation tends to get much easier.

A practical place to start

Think of one conversation you have been putting off. There is probably one.

Before you plan what to say, ask yourself one question: what story about myself am I protecting by not having it?

That question alone tends to open something up.

Curious whether this is the right fit? Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

How to Build a Leadership Pipeline Internally (Before You Need One)

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

How to Build a Leadership Pipeline Internally (Before You Need One)

David Buirs is a leadership coach and management trainer based in Amsterdam. This article explains how to recognise and develop leadership potential within your team, why doing so also strengthens your own career as a manager, and which pitfalls to avoid. Written for managers with 0 to 4 years of leadership experience.

Two years of solid work. One question you weren't ready for. The promotion goes to someone else.

It happens more than people talk about.

And the strange part is, it had nothing to do with your performance. Your work was good. Your manager knew it. But when they asked who would take over your team, there was no one ready.

So the timing wasn't right. Maybe next time.

No one told you that building a leadership pipeline internally is also building your own career.

So here's what that can look like in practice.

What You're Actually Looking For

Start thinking about one or two people on your team who might have the instincts for it. And "it" here doesn't mean the best technical skills.

It means the human stuff.

Can they communicate when things get uncomfortable? Do they pull people together or pull away? Do others feel good after a conversation with them? Does the energy in the room go up a little when they're in it?

Connection. Teamwork. A positive influence on morale. The ability to motivate someone on a bad day.

That's what you're actually looking for when you want to develop leadership potential from within.

What Happens When You Start Investing in Them

When you start investing in those people, you'll see the results fairly quickly.

You have someone capable covering the team when you're on holiday. Someone you can genuinely delegate to when you're stretched. And people who feel developed tend to grow faster, stay longer, and enjoy their work more.

That last part is easy to underestimate.

This is exactly the kind of work I support managers with through management training. Helping teams develop from the inside out, rather than relying on external hires every time a leadership gap opens up.

One Thing Worth Keeping in Mind

If you're thinking about more than one candidate, be careful with how that lands in the team.

The moment people sense a competition, things get complicated. Building a leadership pipeline internally should feel like growth. Not a race.

The Bigger Picture

The technical side of leadership is changing fast. AI is taking on more of that work every year. What teams will need from their managers going forward is the part that can't be automated. Coaching. Real listening. Clear communication.

The managers who are already developing these qualities in their people — and in themselves — will be the ones who are ready when the next opportunity opens up.

If you're early in your leadership journey and want to work on this, leadership coaching is one way to get there with more clarity and less guesswork.

Unless you started your role only months ago, take a few minutes to think about this today.

When a senior role opens up, you'll have an answer ready this time.

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.