When Leaders Protect the Gap: Four Tactics of Faux Leadership
Faux leadership has been on my mind more and more; over the last year, I have deepened my reflection and focused on my observations in different spaces to help individuals and organizations diagnose faux leadership early enough to not create the long-term damage for the leader, team, and organization.
Quick reminder:
Faux Leadership™ behaviors imitate or mimic leadership but lack depth of expertise, competence, and connection; these choices and behaviors result in shallow, surface leadership that may look impressive but eventually erodes trust and performance.
However, faux leadership doesn't always look like bad leadership. Sometimes it looks polished. Confident. Busy. Strategic.
It might sound fluent in the language of leadership (trust, accountability, empowerment, culture, psychological safety) while something underneath isn't quite right.
Because faux leadership isn't necessarily about a lack of intelligence, good intentions, or even experience.
Faux Leadership is about performing leadership rather than practicing it.
And when the demands of leadership begin to exceed someone's willingness or ability to meet them, that performance often becomes more visible. I've noticed four tactics that can show up: avoidance, distraction, posturing, and (over)delegation.
Importantly, none of these behaviors is inherently wrong. Leaders need to decide what not to address. They redirect attention. They project confidence in uncertain situations. And, of course, they delegate.
The question is what the behavior is accomplishing: Is it serving the work? Or protecting the leader?
1. Avoidance: Don't deal with it.
Leadership regularly puts us in situations we'd rather not enter. The employee who needs candid feedback. The conflict that isn't going away. The decision that will disappoint people. The strategy that clearly isn't working. The high performer whose behavior is damaging the team.
Avoidance lets us postpone the discomfort.
Sometimes we rename it.
I'm giving them some space.
I don't want to micromanage.
Let's see how this plays out.
It's probably not worth making a big deal about.
And sometimes waiting is exactly the right leadership decision. But faux leadership uses waiting as protection.
The conversation doesn't get easier. The conflict doesn't disappear. Instead, other people begin carrying the consequences of the leader's unwillingness to act.
Eventually, not making a leadership decision becomes a leadership decision.
2. Distraction: Focus everyone somewhere else.
When one area of leadership isn't going particularly well, it can be remarkably tempting to create energy somewhere else. This might look like:
A new initiative.
A new "transformation" (that often transforms nothing)
A reorganization.
Another priority.
A new meeting.
A new metric.
A shiny new leadership program.
Activity can create the appearance of progress while leaving the harder problem untouched. Activity is particularly powerful because distraction often feels productive. Everyone is doing something. Calendars are full. Deliverables are being produced. Leaders can point to movement. But movement and progress aren't synonymous.
Sometimes the most important question a leader can ask isn't :What else should we be doing? It's: What are we doing so we don't have to deal with what actually needs our attention?
3. Posturing: Don't let them see the gap.
Every leader has competence gaps. We don't understand some technical things deeply enough. We're still developing strategic and operational capabilities. In leadership situations, we don't yet know how to navigate skillfully.
Having a competence gap isn't faux leadership. Pretending the gap doesn't exist can be.
Posturing happens when preserving the appearance of competence becomes more important than developing competence. It can look like:
Excessive certainty.
Jargon.
Dominating the conversation.
Speaking in ways to purposely make others not understand.
Dismissing expertise.
Refusing to reconsider a decision.
Acting as though asking for help would somehow diminish our authority.
Posturing often shifts the focus back to where there may NOT be a competence gap; it showcases expertise, but the expertise doesn't fit the context and only creates distance and confusion.
And posturing creates a particularly damaging cycle.
People quickly learn whether it is safe to tell a leader they may be wrong.
When it isn't, they stop. Experts become quieter. Questions disappear. Bad news gets softened. Assumptions go unchallenged.
Eventually, the leader's performance of knowing prevents them from actually learning and knowing.
The competence gap that could have been addressed is now protected from the information necessary to address it.
4. (Over)delegation: Get someone else to do it.
Delegation is essential leadership practice.
Over-delegation is different. It happens when leaders transfer work, decisions, or responsibility that appropriately belong to their role, not because someone else should own them, but because the leader doesn't want to.
Sometimes that means pushing leadership work downward.
Someone else delivers the difficult message.
Someone else handles the conflict. It's the leader who hires someone else to fire the bully they haven't been able to.
Someone else makes the unpopular call, while the leader either delegates up or down the decision they need to own.
Someone without the leader's authority ends up carrying the emotional burden of leadership.
It can also mean continually hiring around our own competence gaps.
There's nothing wrong with bringing in expertise. Leaders shouldn't know everything, and consultants can provide valuable expertise, perspective, capacity, and challenge.
But we cannot outsource everything.
A consultant can facilitate a strategy process. Leaders still have to make strategic choices.
A consultant can diagnose a cultural problem. Leaders still have to respond to what the diagnosis reveals.
A consultant can design a change approach. Leaders still have to lead the change.
Expertise can be borrowed. Leadership responsibility cannot. Delegation transfers work. It does not transfer responsibility for leading.
What are these tactics protecting?
As I observe, reflect, and think, that's the question I keep coming back to.
Avoidance protects us from confronting.
Distraction protects us from scrutiny.
Posturing protects our image.
Over-delegation protects us from responsibility.
Underneath all four may be something we don't particularly want to examine: a competence gap, fear of conflict, uncertainty, insecurity, unwillingness to disappoint people, concern about our image, or simply an area of leadership we haven't yet learned to practice well.
That's why I think the antidote to faux leadership is leadership as craft.
A craft orientation doesn't require perfection. Quite the opposite.
Approaching something as a craft means acknowledging there will always be more to learn. Craft requires us to look closely at our workmanship. To notice where we're skilled and where we're not. To seek feedback. To learn from people with greater expertise. To practice deliberately. To examine the consequences of what we do. Then refine our practice and try again.
A leader practicing the craft can say:
I don't know.
I handled that poorly.
You understand this better than I do.
I need to have the conversation I've been avoiding.
I need help.
I need to get better at this.
Those statements don't diminish leadership. They create the possibility of becoming better at it. Because the problem was never having a gap. The problem is becoming more committed to protecting the appearance of leadership than practicing the craft of it.
Perhaps that's the question worth asking ourselves:
When leadership exposes something in me that isn't yet where it needs to be, do I protect it or do I work on it?
Faux leadership protects the gap. Craft works the gap.
© 2026 Dr. Sara Reed. All rights reserved.
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