You're managing tasks. But are you actually leading people?
- Nicole Smith
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
Dr. Shanesia Davis on why control is bankrupting your leadership and the five shifts that change everything.
You have the playbook. The process. The action plan. And still, something isn't landing the way you intend it to.
Your team is executing, but the connection isn't there. You're driving results, but the energy in the room tells a different story.
Blow Your Mind(set)'s podcast episode is for you. Dr. Shanesia Davis calls it the shift from "doing" to "being" and it is one of the most confronting, most necessary conversations in leadership development right now.
Why Your Need for Control Is Killing Your Connection:
5 Mind-Blowing Shifts for Modern Leaders
The High Cost of "Doing" Without "Being"
Leaders are given endless playbooks, processes, and action plans — yet many still feel an internal void. We focus obsessively on the "how-to" while ignoring the "who."
Your identity is not a soft luxury. It is the only asset that makes your leadership unique. When you follow a playbook without aligning it to your core self, you aren't leading — you are performing.
Authentic leadership requires you to stop learning for a moment and simply be in the greatness of what you've already acquired.
Connection vs. Control: The Relational Reframe
Dr. Shanesia Davis stated, "We assume the opposite of connection is disconnection. It isn't. The opposite of connection is control."
For many leaders, control is a conditioned reflex — rooted in perfectionism and a false sense of urgency. We use it to resolve discomfort or "fix" a team member, but in doing so, we center our own needs over the relationship.
"Control is expensive. It cost creativity, sustainability... Control is too expensive for us to cling so tight to just because we're familiar."
The real cost:
Creativity — stifled by the fear of making a mistake
Sustainability — rigid systems crack under the pressure of evolution
Retention — people don't stay where they are merely managed; they stay where they are seen
Abandoning the "Rightness" Trap
There is a visceral satisfaction in standing in your "rightness." But in leadership, the question is: do you want to be right, or do you want the shared vision?
Choosing rightness is a momentary ego victory that leaves the other person diminished. True collaboration requires trading your ego for the other person's affirmation. When you choose to be right, you sacrifice the win-win for a solitary, hollow win.
Personal Work with Public Consequences
Leadership is not a role you clock into. It is personal work with public consequences.
Unexamined emotions and unhealed traumas don't stay in the past — they leak.
When a leader loses composure, the entire organization feels the spray. Psychological safety shatters. The mission is compromised. And employees take that stress home to their own families.
Your internal healing is a prerequisite for your team's public success.
EQ Is a Practice, Not an Event
Emotional intelligence is not a destination — it is a neurological rewiring you maintain. You can lead brilliantly for 20 days and have Day 21 take you down. That isn't failure. That is data.
When you lose your composure, the goal isn't self-judgment. It's curiosity.
Ask: what was the trigger there? Then move immediately into repair.
Three ways to honor the process:
Shift from judgment to curiosity — treat your triggers as information, not indictments
Rewire through awareness — your ego is the first voice; choose the second voice of presence
Prioritize the repair — if your impact didn't match your intent, own it
The gap Dr. Davis is describing has a name.
That distance between your ego's first instinct and the leadership response your team actually needs — that's the Intent–Impact Gap™.
It lives in the moment you chose control over connection. In the meeting where you were technically right but lost the room. In the feedback conversation that landed harder than you meant it to.
Most leaders don't have a skills problem. They have a gap problem. And the gap doesn't close with another playbook — it closes with the kind of intentional practice Dr. Davis is pointing to in this episode.
If this episode is landing for you, I'd love to talk about what it looks like inside your leadership or your team's.
Share with a colleague, peer, and/or team member.
Nicole F. Smith
Creator of EQ Impact®
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