Back in 2019, before the world did its best impression of a washing machine stuck on chaos cycle, I completed the Cambridge High Impact Leadership Course. It introduced me to countless ideas, but one particular concept detonated in my brain like discovering your favourite childhood sweet was made entirely of crushed beetles and marketing. That idea was the incomplete leader – the radical notion that great leadership has never been about being excellent at everything. In fact, the leaders who try to be “complete” end up resembling someone attempting to eat soup with a fork: technically possible, emotionally scarring for everyone involved.
For decades, the corporate world has worshipped the mythical “complete leader” – a flawless, omniscient, endlessly rounded figure who never sweats and always knows exactly what to do. Basically, a corporate unicorn with a decent PowerPoint game. But the truth of incomplete leadership is this: the only “complete leaders” are the ones who haven’t done the job long enough to realise how spectacularly incomplete they actually are. The rest of us? We’re beautifully, usefully, strategically unfinished.
The Myth, the Moment, and the Micro-Spaces That Shape Us
I learned this reality in the middle of a walking meeting with my boss at the time – and yes, I love a walking meeting; it’s therapy disguised as productivity. He was one of those rare executives who could wear 47 hats before breakfast and somehow make the ordeal look elegant. Meanwhile, I was in my “collect every hat like Pokémon” phase, wearing anything that even vaguely resembled responsibility.
When I asked him what course I should take to “fix” a skill I knew I was terrible at, he didn’t slow down. He just said, “Stop trying to be good at the things you’re crap at.” My soul briefly ascended like a stunned helium balloon.
I had spent years trying to improve things I neither enjoyed nor naturally possessed. It was like trying to teach a goldfish to knit. And yet many of us do exactly this – forcing ourselves into tasks that drain us and hollow us out and calling it “growth.”
The truth is this: when you spend too much time working against your wiring, you eventually fantasise about escaping to Ronnies Sex Shop, serving milkshakes to confused tourists and discussing the weather with a goat named Trevor.
Over time, through reinvention, I realised that uneven strengths aren’t flaws; they’re fingerprints. I thrive in systems, patterns, big-picture strategy and sensemaking. (I dived deeper into this idea – and why working in the wrong role feels like drag-racing a Citi Golf against a Bugatti.) Put me in organisational complexity and I’ll light up like a Christmas tree on energy drinks. Drop me into pixel-perfect detail work and I will consider faking my own death. This isn’t incompetence – it’s wiring. And wiring always wins.
Less Proving, More Choosing – The Heart of Strengths-Based Leadership
One of the biggest shifts of my career came down to four words: less proving, more choosing. Proving comes from insecurity – from old narratives, from inherited expectations, from the desperate belief that leadership equals being good at everything.
Choosing is different. Choosing is what real leadership self-awareness looks like. Choosing acknowledges where you shine, where you don’t, and who you need around you to make the system work. (You can read my piece on Self-Awareness here.)
Incomplete leadership isn’t a weakness model – it’s a resilience model. It says you don’t need to be good at everything. You need to be great at the right things. You need to let go of perfectionism. Let go of outdated expectations. Let go of the Swiss-Army-Knife fantasy when you are, in reality, a very specialised hammer with an excellent sense of humour.
Almost every burnt-out leader I’ve met wasn’t collapsing from workload; they were collapsing under the psychological weight of trying to be everything for everyone. Strengths-based leadership isn’t soft – it’s survival.
The Four Capabilities – And Why No One Is Built for All of Them
The Cambridge programme outlines four capabilities every leader must navigate – and if you want to dive deeper, the HBR article In Praise of the Incomplete Leader is an excellent additional resource:
- Sensemaking: walking into chaos, sniffing the air like a bloodhound with a business degree, and figuring out what’s actually happening beneath the noise.
- Relating: the messy art of trust, nuance, psychological safety, and navigating office politics without wanting to yeet yourself into a recycling bin. (My thoughts on Office Politics here)
- Visioning: painting a future so energising people actually want to walk toward it, not quietly Google “jobs with zero meetings.”
- Inventing: turning ideas into reality without accidentally creating a bureaucratic swamp monster.
Here’s the core truth of incomplete leadership, almost no leader is strong in all four, and pretending otherwise is how you end up whispering Excel formulas to yourself at 2 a.m.
Mapping my own strengths makes this vivid. Relating is my strongest gear – give me nuance, tension, people, politics, and I can read it, navigate it, and connect dots faster than most people find the unmute button on Zoom. Sensemaking and inventing come naturally too, it’s why I can walk into a messy organisation, see the underlying patterns, and build systems that actually work. Visioning sits just behind those – the clarity comes alive once people are in the room, once energy and purpose start flowing.
Drag me into pixel-perfect detail work, however, and I will immediately consider relocating to a small town, making brooms by hand, and living a peaceful Wi-Fi-free existence.
A perfect example was leading the development of The Future of Work Report with GetSmarter. I thrived orchestrating the complexity, stakeholders, timelines, and strategy – but reviewing 40 pages of tiny detail? No chance. I needed colleagues with sniper-level focus to bring it home.
This is why diversity isn’t optional – it’s structural. If you hire people just like you, you replicate your strengths and your weaknesses. It’s like forming a band where everyone insists on playing bass. Technically possible. Practically disastrous.
Incomplete leaders don’t hire mirrors. They hire complements.
That’s how incomplete leaders build complete teams.
The Real Heart of Incomplete Leadership
And that’s the point: leadership doesn’t require completeness. It requires clarity.
Clarity about your strengths.
Clarity about your limits.
Clarity about your wiring.
Clarity about the people who make you better.
Leadership stops being a performance the moment you stop pretending to be perfect. When you do, you unlock honesty, energy, and perspective – the things that make real strengths-based leadership possible.
Stop trying to be complete. Become an incomplete leader who builds complete teams – because that’s the rocket fuel that actually takes you forward.
And if this resonates and you want me to speak to your team about incomplete leadership – with humour, honesty, and absolutely no corporate jargon – get in touch.
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