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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.203: Grounded Leadership, The Role of Coaching, and Building Trust, with Anil Erkan, using the player below, or click here.

Leadership often gets described as a job of making decisions, setting direction, or guiding teams toward goals. And that’s fair, but it also misses the part that actually makes leadership work: what this week’s guest refers to as ‘the inner world’ of the leader.

This week on Leading with Integrity, I spoke with Anil Erkan, a leadership coach with a background that spans internal audit, risk, senior leadership, and now coaching for founders, executives, and high-performing teams.

Anil brings a calm, thoughtful presence to leadership development. His work centres on grounding leaders in who they are, not who they think they’re supposed to be. If you’ve ever felt the pressure to perform a version of leadership that doesn’t feel natural, or you’ve wondered why some decisions feel heavier than others, you’ll find this conversation useful.

We spend time talking about self-awareness, trust, emotional regulation, and the shift leaders must make when their roles evolve. It’s an enlightening episode that stays focused on people, thinking, and the inner work that shapes outer results.

Many leaders start their career rooted in personal values. Over time, expectations grow, organisations change shape, and the demands on a leader’s identity become heavier. That’s when people begin drifting from their natural way of working. Leaders often carry unspoken beliefs about how they should behave or what a senior leader ‘ought’ to look like, and those beliefs can be further embedded (or even confused) by the prevailing culture of the organisation they work within; the ‘expectations’ placed upon us. That gap between expectation and truth is where stress begins to build.

Grounded leadership, as Anil describes it, is the process of returning to what’s real. It’s not about slogans or trying to project confidence. It’s about awareness, noticing your reactions, noticing your fears, noticing the moments where you feel off-centre. Leaders who understand their internal patterns make better decisions, create better climates & cultures, and build stronger relationships with the people around them. Those who don’t, often end up reacting instead of leading.

This isn’t abstract reflection, it’s practical. When you know your own thinking patterns, you can spot when they’re helping you and when they’re steering you away from good judgement. Instead of forcing yourself to fit a leadership model that doesn’t match your personality, you begin shaping leadership around your own strengths.

A theme that came up repeatedly is the difficulty of transitioning from early-career habits to senior-level leadership. Many leaders reach their first major roles because they were excellent at doing the thing; solving problems, delivering results, owning tasks, and pushing work forward with sheer effort. When you step into leadership & management, the habits and approaches that served you before, those same patterns, may work for a while, until… suddenly …they don’t.

Leadership at scale needs something different. It needs detachment from the work, but not distance from people. It needs clarity, but not control. It needs a leader who can step back long enough to see the bigger picture.

Leaders who continue trying to carry everything eventually burn out or become bottlenecks. Leaders who shift toward guiding, influencing, and enabling create space for their teams to grow.

Anil talks about this transition as a mindset shift rather than a skills gap. You don’t erase the working habits that got you promoted. You place them in a different context and instead of being the person who always solves the problem, you become the person who creates the environment for others to solve it; the job moves from doing to empowering.

Trust is one of those leadership words everyone uses but rarely examines. In this week’s discussion, trust is treated not as a concept but as a working tool. When trust is present, teams tell the truth, they’re open, and they raise concerns early. They share information without fear. They collaborate more freely.

When trust is weak, people protect themselves, they edit their honesty, they curate the information they share (not in a good way!), they try to say what leaders want to hear, instead of sharing insight. And they’ll be more likely to hide mistakes, issues, or challenges out of fear of the career (or other) consequences.

Building trust starts with leadership behaviour, not declarations. Leaders who show consistency, fairness, openness, and a genuine interest in their people are able to create teams that think better and work better. Leaders who hold everything close, hide uncertainty, or operate on a need-to-know basis as though they’re the military hero in a 3 hour war movie, create teams that avoid risk and keep quiet when it matters.

Another layer to trust is regulation: Leaders who manage their emotional state well create stability. Leaders who don’t, leave everyone guessing. Teams can handle difficulty, often better than you expect, but what they can’t handle is volatility. Grounded leaders create calm, steady environments that allow people to focus on their work instead of trying to divine their leader’s mood.

Leaders often treat decisions as if the job ends once a choice is made. But decision-making includes both the intended outcome and the possible consequences. Most leaders prepare for the best-case scenario and under-prepare their teams for the alternative/s. That’s when unproductive disappointment, confusion, and frustration can spread through a team.

A leader who understands both sides of a decision (and, crucially, communicates both sides) builds credibility. Teams don’t need perfect decisions, but they do need honest ones, they need clarity about why something matters, what might happen, and what the organisation will do next if things change.

This is where grounded leadership shows its value, because leaders who know their own tendencies are less likely to chase perfection. They don’t delay decisions waiting for the magical moment where everything feels safe, they understand risk, context, and action. And they support their teams through the results, either way.

Here are a few practical ideas from this week’s conversation that leaders can apply immediately:

Leaders spend a lot of time trying to adjust what other people do, say, or believe. But the biggest shifts in leadership start internally.

When you understand yourself, your strengths, your fears, and your patterns, you lead with more clarity and less strain.

You communicate more honestly.

You listen more deeply.

You build trust more naturally.

Anil’s insights this week bring a helpful reminder: leadership works best when it is grounded. Not dramatic, not complicated, not performative. Just grounded, authentic. This week’s episode invites leaders to slow down, breathe a little, and lead from a place that feels real.

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Thanks for reading again this week, I really enjoyed my chat with Anil, including a unique/first-time pick for the Leadership Heroes segment, to find out who he chose, you can give the full conversation a listen now at: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-203-grounded-leadership-the-role-of-coaching-and-building-trust-with-anil-erkan-leadership-podcasts

Or if you prefer video, then here’s the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/mQNQlRbRMZ8

See you again next week, when I’m talking about human behaviour, nature vs nurture, personality testing, understanding your internal wiring, and more with Pascal Mbo’a.

Until then: Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help new managers and first-time founders with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful businesses.

If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter as a leader, the Integrity Leaders community offers tools, conversations, and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you. Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉

Here’s the link: Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders or first-time founders.