My brother graduated college, moved into his first apartment, and decided to make pancakes. What came out of that pan was burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. A culinary disaster by any measure.
His response? “I will never make pancakes again. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all.”
And he didn’t. For years, he simply went without pancakes — unless someone else made them — rather than turn down the heat, try again, and figure it out.
I tell this story because it always gets a laugh. But I also tell it because every leader I have ever worked with has a version of it. Not about pancakes. About something that matters.
Limiting beliefs rarely announce themselves. In leaders especially, they tend to show up disguised as something that sounds perfectly reasonable:
“I’m just not a details person.”
“I don’t do well with conflict.”
“I’ve always been this way.”
Each of those statements sounds like self-awareness. And self-awareness is a virtue, right? Not when it becomes a ceiling.
Genuine self-awareness says: this is where I currently am. A limiting belief says: this is where I will always be. One creates a starting point. The other creates a permanent address.
Your brother doesn’t make pancakes. You don’t have difficult conversations. Your team doesn’t challenge you because “that’s just not our culture.” The griddle is still too high. Nobody has turned it down.
Here is a simple practice I use with the leaders I coach. It takes about ten minutes and it is uncomfortable in exactly the right way. Finish these three sentences — honestly, not aspirationally — then interrogate each answer with the framework below.
“I’m just not someone who…”
“I’ve never been good at…”
“That kind of thing works for other leaders, but not for me because…”
Write down whatever comes up. Don’t edit it. Don’t justify it. Then run each answer through these three questions:
What is fact? Not what you felt. Not what someone once told you. What is objectively, demonstrably true? My brother’s fact: I made bad pancakes once.
What is perception? This is where the limiting belief lives. A conclusion drawn from incomplete evidence — one failure promoted to a permanent truth. My brother’s perception: I will never be able to make good pancakes. One batch. One data point. Life sentence.
What is the alternative reality? The one that becomes available when you challenge the belief. Every skill improves with practice. Every meaningful leap in your leadership happens at the edge of discomfort — not inside the comfort of what you already do well. My brother’s alternative reality: Turn down the griddle. Try again. Get better.
Most of the ceilings in your leadership were installed by a single bad batch of pancakes. And the griddle has been too high ever since.
Just as overcoming a limiting belief requires honest self-examination before meaningful growth can follow, leadership development is a journey — full of missteps, recalibrations, and hard-won progress.
Now we have a means of determining exactly where you are on that journey. The Leadership Performance Index gives you a clear, honest snapshot of where you stand today — not as a judgment, but as a starting point.
One thing is required: complete honesty with yourself. Growth begins the moment you accurately identify the gap between where you are and where you are capable of being. Without that clarity, there is nothing to close. With it, everything becomes possible.
Take the Leadership Performance Index →It takes less than ten minutes.
What you do with the clarity it gives you is entirely up to you.
The Leadership Edge is written by Kevin Sturm, founder of Game On Coaching Corp. Kevin works with corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and athletic departments who are ready to stop leaving results on the field.
If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to receive it directly, subscribe at gameoncoachingcorp.com. To learn more about working with Kevin, visit gameoncoachingcorp.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
