The Influence Journal

Tag: personal-development

  • How Control Freak Leaders Kill Team Performance (And What to Do Instead)

    Micromanagement kills trust and drains performance. Discover how control-based leadership backfires—and what high-trust leaders do instead.

    (more…)

  • Why People Don’t Trust Their Leaders (Even When They Should)

    Many leaders think they’re trusted—until their team quietly checks out. Learn why trust breaks down and how to rebuild it with real leadership alignment.

    (more…)

  • What Is Emotional Safety at Work? (And Why Great Leaders Prioritize It)

    Learn what emotional safety at work really means, how it differs from psychological safety, and why it’s the missing key to building trust, resilience, and high-performing teams.

    (more…)

  • The Hidden Cost of Being the Fixer

    Why Overfunctioning Leaders Burn Out First

    Overfunctioning leaders take on too much, fix too often, and burn out fast. Learn how fixer behavior forms, its psychological roots, and practical steps leaders can take to stop overfunctioning and build sustainable, empowering leadership habits that foster team growth and personal well-being.

    (more…)

  • The Leader Who Talks Too Much: Why Over-Explaining Kills Trust

    The Hidden Cost of Saying Too Much

    Leadership requires communication.

    But too often, leaders mistake volume for value—assuming that more explanation, more clarification, and more words will build more trust.

    It rarely works that way.

    (more…)

  • Why I Started The Influence Journal (And What I Want to Change in Leadership)

    The Influence Journal explores leadership, trust, and identity. This post explains the gap in modern leadership thinking—and how we fix it.

    Scroll through LinkedIn or browse the leadership section of most blogs, and what you’ll find is content that feels surface-level. Tips and tricks. Clichés dressed up as insight. Motivational soundbites passed off as wisdom.

    But what’s missing is substance. Few pieces tackle the complexity of trust, power, fear, character, or identity—the deeper currents that shape how leaders actually lead. The result? Most leadership advice feels detached from the real work of leadership.

    (more…)

  • The Psychology of Trust: Why People Follow Some Leaders and Not Others in 2025

    Discover 7 research-backed strategies to build leadership trust in 2025. Learn how psychological safety, consistency, and empathy drive team performance.

    At the end, you’ll find a free toolkit with strategies and frameworks to help you lead with clarity, consistency, and trust.

    (more…)

  • The Psychology of Toxic Leadership: How Good Cultures Get Poisoned

    Toxic leadership quietly poisons even the best cultures.

    This in-depth analysis—rooted in research and real-world experience—unpacks the psychology behind destructive leadership, the organizational dynamics that enable it, and practical strategies for restoring trust, psychological safety, and healthy influence in today’s workplace.

    It started with a silence. The kind that settles over a once-vibrant team like fog rolling in—gradual, chilling, hard to name. A colleague stopped sharing in meetings. Another began taking calls with their camera off, voice flat, enthusiasm gone. Our leader, once hailed as a visionary, had shifted. Meetings became monologues. Dissent was punished with isolation. And still, on the surface, everything looked fine. We were hitting our numbers. The board applauded. But inside, something essential had fractured.

    (more…)

  • Why Psychological Safety Is the Secret Weapon of High-Performance Teams

    And why most leaders unknowingly destroy it.

    Discover why psychological safety is the top predictor of team performance—and how to build it without losing standards, speed, or trust.

    (more…)

  • Your Workplace Is Designed to Distract

    How Modern Offices Sabotage Deep Work and Productivity

    Modern offices are optimized for availability—not focus. Learn how distraction culture, meetings, and digital noise sabotage deep work and drain your team’s productivity.

    Despite all the language about “focus,” “strategy,” and “performance,” most office environments today—both physical and digital—are optimized for availability, not effectiveness. Whether you’re surrounded by the noise of an open office or buried under Slack messages, calendar pings, and meetings about meetings, the result is the same: distraction has become the default. Deep work has become a luxury.

    (more…)