One of my clients recently had to make a difficult hiring decision while interviewing a talented candidate from another team. As every senior leader knows, the politics of what can be perceived as poaching top talent can get prickly fast. She thought carefully about her values and let them guide how she approached these interviews.
Then she found out someone was unhappy with her approach. As a self-admitted people pleaser, this bothered her. She brought it to me, rehashed the situation, and asked, “What advice do you have for me? How should I have handled this differently?”
As an executive coach, I don’t give advice. So I asked her a different question:
What are you willing to be criticized for?
The higher you rise in leadership, the more ambiguity and competing goals you face. Colleagues and bosses have opinions on the right thing for your career. People are eager to weigh in on the best decision you should make, and it is tempting to go along with popular opinion and whatever seems to make everyone happy.
Many executives hold real fears about upsetting both their senior leadership and direct reports. A 2024 paper in Administrative Sciences identified fear of negative employee evaluation as a core fear shaping leadership behavior. Many of my executive coaching clients share anxieties around an employee posting about them on LinkedIn, gossiping about them in the office chat, or an employee getting so upset they decide to quit.
Thankfully, the data doesn’t support this fear. A 2025 LiveCareer survey found that while 58% of employees witness workplace gossip weekly, senior leadership is the least involved group (appearing in just 6% of gossip conversations, compared to 53% for mid-level employees). However, the fears are real, and it’s no wonder so many leaders are defaulting to the safest, blandest version of themselves. But staying quiet has its own cost. A recent Harvard Business Review piece makes the case that leaders who confuse being “nice” with being effective avoid the hard conversations and decisions that organizations actually need from them. And researchers studying the psychology of online shaming note that the fear of being cancelled pushes people toward safer, blander work – which kills the very innovation and conviction that strong leadership requires.
If you want to lead with your values and by what you stand for instead of settling into a blander version of you, here are five places to start.
THE COST OF AVOIDING CRITICISM
People pleasing tendencies do not just exhaust leaders, they also weaken the organizations around them. A 2025 review found that workplace people pleasers are frequently rewarded with praise for their availability and their willingness to avoid conflict, but they are rarely elevated to leadership roles. This is because leadership requires tough conversations, strategic confrontation, and a strong sense of self. The same research notes that when group harmony consistently comes ahead of questioning inefficiencies, innovation suffers and employees self-censor.
To notice the cost of your own avoidance, track the decisions or conversations you are postponing for fear of criticism for a week. For each one, write down who you are trying to protect from discomfort and what it is costing you and the business.
IDENTIFY THE LEADERS YOU ADMIRE
What we admire in others gives us clues to what we value in ourselves. A 2026 paper in The Journal of Values-Based Leadership describes values-based leadership as behavior rooted in ethical and moral foundations, and points to values as the compass leaders use when rules, regulations, and popular opinion fall short.
When faced with a difficult decision or situation, name three to five leaders you admire, then list three to five adjectives that describe each of them. Often, you will uncover the leadership qualities you already stand for. Imagine how they would make sound decisions or hold hard conversations in the face of criticism.
NAME YOUR NON-NEGOTIABLES
Vague values and boundaries are hard to defend under pressure because they don’t provide clear standards of what you will or will not tolerate. So the more specific you can be about defining who you are as a leader and what you will or will not tolerate gives you clarity on your next right actions even when well-meaning advice tugs you in the opposite direction.
As ESCP Business School professor Florian Lüdeke-Freund put it in a recent piece on values-based leadership, the hardest part of leading with values is not declaring them, but sticking to them when the stakes are high. For this very reason, you cannot be lukewarm or quiet about your values; otherwise you will inevitably abandon them when you’re in a tough situation.
List three to five actions or policies you will not bargain on (i.e. requiring meeting agendas, project due dates, requirements for client events, etc.), and then ask yourself how you are communicating them. If your team cannot predict what you will do in a hard moment, your non-negotiables are still living inside your head.
CLARIFY YOUR LEADERSHIP MISSION
Knowing what you will be criticized for is easier when you know what you are trying to build. Research from Leadership Worth Following identifies purposeful leadership as one of the central themes shaping 2026, with organizations increasingly asking leaders to align their decisions with a clear mission rather than simply managing from quarter to quarter.
When I published my book, where I shared policies I believe corporate America should put in place for women, I knew readers would have thoughts. And when I wrote about personal topics like infertility and IVF for HuffPost, I knew the comment section would not always be kind (which it wasn’t). But there were ideas I believed in so strongly that I was willing to endure the pushback. Naming my purpose and mission in sharing these stories made it easier to hit publish.
Ask yourself three questions. What have I been called to do? What change do I want to make possible on teams or in organizations? Who am I called to serve? Write the answers in one or two sentences. That is your mission.
Try this fill-in-the-blank. In my pursuit of ______________, I am willing to be criticized for ______________.
Mine reads: In my pursuit of advancing women to the rooms where decisions are made, I am willing to be criticized for being too progressive or unreasonable in my corporate policy recommendations for women.
As it tends to happen at work, the opinions were varied on whether my client took the right approach as hiring situations aren’t always black and white. However, she learned to ask a more important question, and that made the next hard decision easier to make.