There's a particular kind of leader I've encountered more times than I can count. They're smart. Experienced. Successful by any measure. And they're stuck.

Not stuck because they lack knowledge (they have plenty of that!). Stuck because the knowledge they have is getting in their way.

In my work with senior leaders at large organizations, I've come to believe that the hardest leadership skill isn't learning. It's unlearning. It's the willingness to examine the beliefs, habits, and approaches that built your career and ask, honestly, which ones are no longer serving you or the people you lead.

Adam Grant, whose work I've used in leadership programs I teach at Michigan Ross, puts it simply: 'It takes curiosity to learn. It takes courage to unlearn.' Both are necessary, but the second one is harder.

What We're Actually Talking About

Unlearning isn't about forgetting. It's about holding what you know more lightly — being willing to examine your assumptions before you act on them.

For leaders, the most consequential things to unlearn are rarely technical. They're relational and behavioral: The belief that being decisive means having the answer before the meeting starts; that showing uncertainty undermines authority; that the way you've always built a team is still the best way; that the silence in the room means agreement.

I've sat with leadership teams where the most sophisticated strategic thinking in the room was undermined by assumptions nobody had examined in years. Not because anyone was unintelligent, but because unexamined intelligence can be its own obstacle.

The Moment Unlearning Becomes Necessary

Usually, something forces it. A role change. A team that isn't responding the way previous teams did. A culture initiative that isn't landing. Feedback that keeps showing up, even after you've addressed what you thought it was about.

These are disruption signals. They're uncomfortable because they suggest that what got you here may not get you there — a phrase I use often, because it's simply true for most senior leaders navigating genuine culture change.

The leaders I've seen navigate these moments most successfully share one characteristic: They get curious before they get defensive. When the evidence suggests something isn't working, they ask 'what am I not seeing?' before they ask 'how do I fix this?'

Three Practices for Unlearning

If you're in a leadership role and suspect that some of your assumptions need examining, here's where I'd start:

  1. Audit your most confident beliefs. Pick two or three things you're most certain about as a leader — about your team, your culture, what motivates people, what 'good' looks like. Then ask: What evidence would change my mind about this? If you can't answer that question, you're not holding the belief; it's holding you.
  1. Invite the disagreement you're not currently getting. The people around you know things about your leadership that you don't. They're often not sharing because the cost feels too high. One direct question — 'What do I do that makes your job harder?' — asked genuinely and received without defensiveness, can surface more useful information than a year of 360 feedback.
  1. Create space for deliberate reflection. Unlearning doesn't happen in the middle of execution. It requires stepping back. The leaders I've worked with who do this most effectively have some version of a reflective practice — journaling, a trusted thinking partner, a regular review of what's working and what isn't. It doesn't need to be elaborate. It needs to be consistent.

The cultures that adapt, grow, and sustain engagement over time are led by people who keep asking the question: What do I need to let go of to become who this organization now needs me to be?

That question takes courage. But it's the most important one you can ask.

What's one belief about leadership or culture that you've held for a long time — and that might be worth examining?

‍