Understanding What Drives You as a Leader

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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.204: Understanding Your Internal Wiring: The Hidden Key to Leadership and Relationships?, with Pascal Mbo'a, using the player below, or click here.

Self-Leadership And Knowing Your Patterns

Leadership conversations often focus on skills, behaviours, and outcomes. What gets less attention is the internal wiring that sits underneath all of that; the patterns, instincts, and reactions that quietly shape how we think, communicate, and relate to others. This week on Leading with Integrity, I was joined by Pascal Mbo’a, a coach and facilitator whose work centres on helping people understand their internal systems and how those systems affect leadership and relationships.

Our conversation explored what happens when leaders slow down long enough to examine how they’re wired. Not in a clinical sense, but in a deeply practical way. We spoke about awareness, emotional patterns, communication breakdowns, trust, and the unseen dynamics that show up at work and at home. If you’ve ever wondered why certain situations trigger you, why some conversations feel harder than they should, or why the same leadership challenges keep repeating, this episode offers a useful lens.

Your Internal Wiring Is Already Leading You

Whether leaders acknowledge it or not, they are being led by something internal. Beliefs, assumptions, emotional responses, and past experiences influence how decisions are made and how people are treated. Pascal’s work focuses on helping leaders notice these internal drivers, not to judge them, but to understand them.

Many leadership challenges are not really about strategy or competence, they’re about reactions. Where one leader snaps under pressure, another avoids conflict. Where one scales their oversight to the context, another habitually overcontrols. These patterns don’t come out of nowhere: They’re learned responses, often formed long before taking on that leadership role.

Awareness changes that, when leaders recognise what’s happening internally, they gain choice, they can pause instead of reacting. They can ask questions instead of assuming, and they can begin to respond in ways that align with their values rather than their instincts.

Why Relationships Reveal Leadership Patterns So Quickly

Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens in the relationships, interactions, the day-to-day. Teams, peers, stakeholders, and clients all experience a leader’s internal wiring through their behaviour and communication. Pascal talks about relationships as mirrors, because they reflect what’s going on beneath the surface.

When trust breaks down, it’s rarely because of one event, it’s usually the accumulation of small signals; tone, defensiveness, withdrawal, control, silence, etc. Leaders often focus on what they’ve said (or what they meant by what they said), while the reality is, others experience how it felt. That gap is where misunderstandings grow.

Understanding internal wiring can help leaders bridge this gap. When you understand your own emotional triggers and habitual responses, they become more predictable and you can use this knowledge to moderate your reactions, be more intentional in your leadership behaviours. That creates safety for the team, which in turn allows them to speak honestly, raise issues earlier, and engage more fully.

Self-Awareness as a Leadership Skill, Not a Personality Trait

Self-awareness is often described as something you either have or don’t. In reality, it’s a skill that can be developed (just like leadership or any other skill). Pascal frames this work not as ‘self-improvement’, but ‘self-knowledge’. Leaders don’t need to become different people, they need to become more aware of the people they already are.

This kind of awareness shows up in simple but powerful ways, leaders start noticing when they feel defensive, they recognise when they’re avoiding a conversation, they become aware of the stories they tell themselves about others’ intentions. Over time, these moments of awareness create space for better choices.

Self-aware leaders are not perfect. They still make mistakes, but the difference is they recover faster. They reflect, repair relationships, take responsibility for their impact rather than defending their intent.

The Role of Coaching in Making the Invisible Visible

A recurring theme in this episode is the value of coaching as a way to surface what leaders can’t see on their own. Internal wiring is hard to observe from the inside, patterns feel normal because they’re familiar. Coaching provides an external perspective that helps leaders notice what’s been invisible.

Pascal describes coaching as a space where leaders can slow down their thinking. Instead of rushing to solutions, they explore what’s really happening. That exploration often reveals why certain challenges persist despite effort and competence. Leaders begin to see how their internal responses shape the systems around them.

Coaching is not about ‘fixing’ leaders (or people!), it’s about helping them see more clearly.

Trust Grows When Leaders Know Themselves

Trust is built through consistency and transparency. Leaders who understand their wiring are more consistent because they’re less reactive, and can communicate more clearly because they understand what they’re feeling and why. Teams trust leaders who feel grounded, predictable, and self-aware.

When leaders lack that grounding, trust becomes fragile; people can sense when a leader’s mood drives their decisions. They notice when feedback changes depending on stress levels, and over time, people adapt by withholding information or playing it safe. Performance suffers, not because people don’t care but because the environment feels uncertain.

What Leaders Can Take Into Their Week

This conversation offers several practical reflections leaders can apply immediately:

1. Notice your reactions before you justify them: Pause long enough to understand what you’re feeling.

2. Pay attention to repeated patterns: If the same issue keeps showing up, look inward before outward.

3. Reflect on how others experience you: Intent matters, but impact shapes relationships.

4. Create space to think, not just act: Clarity often appears when speed slows down.

5. Use support wisely: Coaching and reflection are tools for strong leaders, not struggling ones.

Taking Your Next Self-Aware Steps…

Leadership becomes more effective when leaders understand what’s driving them. Not in theory, but in practice.

Pascal’s work highlights a truth that many leaders sense but rarely explore: the way you lead others is shaped by how well you understand yourself.

This episode is an invitation to look beneath behaviour and outcomes, and to explore the internal systems that influence both. When leaders take that step, relationships improve, trust deepens, leadership becomes less exhausting and more intentional.

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Thanks for reading, give the full conversation with Pascal a listen now at: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-204-understanding-your-internal-wiring-the-hidden-key-to-leadership-and-relationships-with-pascal-mbo-a

Or if you prefer video, then here’s the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/vcHyY7ZxkVY

Join me again next week, for the Leading with Integrity Christmas Extravaganza - daily episodes for Christmas week; more on that in next week’s edition of the newsletter.

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.