By Patrick McCreesh
In the show Ted Lasso, Coach Lasso famously asks a struggling player, “What’s the happiest animal on earth?” The answer: “A goldfish. It has a 10-second memory.” It’s a charming metaphor, reminding us to let go of mistakes. But for leaders, forgetting isn’t so simple. Many are stuck—not in past errors—but in the invisible grip of beliefs and ideas that quietly steer their decisions.
Muriel Wilkins’ The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back offers a candid roadmap through the internal obstacles that subtly undermine leadership. From perfectionism (“I can’t make a mistake”) to over-responsibility (“I need to be involved”), these blockers aren’t strategic flaws—they’re psychological reflexes. They arise from deep-seated beliefs, often masked by achievement or action and they can be hard to name. And yet, as Wilkins explains, identifying, unpacking, and reframing these blockers is the key to transformation.
But what if those beliefs are more than just cognitive habits? What if they are rooted in something even more primal?
As Victoria Grady and I offer in our book, Stuck, the missing piece of understanding is often an understanding of attachment. Drawing on decades of research and thousands of assessments, Stuck reveals that people—especially in times of change—form attachments to people, processes, places, and even objects as a way of maintaining psychological safety. These attachments are rooted in mental models and behaviors from past experiences and when these attachments are threatened or removed, individuals experience a form of loss. And loss, as we know from psychology and life, activates resistance.
Now, imagine the leader whose blocker is “I know I’m right.” As Wilkins describes, this belief can come from years of reinforcement and reward for being the smartest in the room. However, it might also be an attachment—to expertise, to identity, to control. The blocker isn’t just mental; it’s emotional. The leader is holding on not just to a belief, but to a sense of self that feels essential.
That’s why leaders don’t evolve simply by learning new tools. They evolve by releasing old identities. In Stuck, we describe how transitional objects—small symbolic practices or rituals—can help individuals let go of what was and reach for what’s next. In Wilkins’ terms, these objects can become anchors for new beliefs. “I can’t make a mistake” becomes “My focus is excellence, not avoiding failure” when the leader finds a new place to derive confidence and trust.
When organizational change and leadership transformations, it is not because people don’t understand what new behavior they need, but because they haven’t processed the why behind their resistance.
The path forward isn’t always found in strategies or structures—it’s in the stories we tell ourselves. Leaders need to either embrace our memory, emotion, and past learning to find a way to demonstrate new behaviors OR we need to let go of those very pieces holding us back.
