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Most engineers don’t struggle in leadership because they lack confidence. They struggle because they over-rely on logic. And that over-reliance quietly sabotages their effectiveness. You built your career on being correct. In engineering, correct equals stable. Incorrect? Fix it. Inputs drive outputs. Variables get adjusted. Failure?

has a root cause. That model works. It’s clean, it’s reliable, it rewards precision. But leadership doesn’t reward correctness the same way. In leadership, correct does not equal movement. Correct does not equal buy-in. Correct does not equal trust. And when engineers feel that disconnect, they don’t adapt, they escalate. More explanation, more data, more airtight reasoning. That’s where the sabotage begins. Because in human systems, over-explaining feels like over-controlling. Over-controlling erodes autonomy, and eroded autonomy erodes trust. Now, you’re technically right and relationally ineffective, and that’s confusing.

Because on paper, everything looks fine. Deadlines are being met. No one is openly fighting you. You’re not getting complaints. So you assume it’s working. But something feels heavier. You’re more involved than you should be. You’re reviewing more than you should. You’re explaining more than you should. You can’t quite figure out why the team isn’t stepping up the way you expect.

That weight? That’s the cost of over-relying on logic. And I did this for years. I thought being airtight was leadership.

I thought if I removed every variable, anticipated every objection, and made the logic unassailable, alignment would follow. It didn’t. And it doesn’t. Let me make this concrete. You walk into a meeting with a solution. You’ve mapped the risks. You’ve stress tested the numbers. You’ve anticipated objections. You’ve explained it clearly. No one argues.

no one pushes back. You leave thinking it landed. A week later, nothing has moved. Why? Because clarity is not the same thing as alignment. And alignment is not the same thing as ownership.

If you’ve ever thought, don’t understand why they don’t see this. That’s not a clarity problem. That’s an identity collision. You’re optimizing for correctness. They’re reacting to meaning. Different physics. Most engineers never consciously update the model. Human systems are probabilistic, meaning sensitive, identity.

People are constantly asking themselves, does this threaten my competence? Does this reduce my autonomy? Does this increase my risk? Does this change how I’m perceived? Logic does not answer those questions, meaning does. You cannot brute force alignment with logic. You influence it.

and influence requires emotional math, not mechanical math. That doesn’t mean becoming charismatic. It doesn’t mean abandoning rigor. Logic is necessary. It’s just not sufficient. That’s the pivot. Now here’s where it gets more dangerous as you advance. Early in your career,

your value is based on correctness. Mid-career, your value shifts to decision-making. By senior level, your value is alignment. If you’re still optimizing primarily for correctness at a senior level, you will feel constant friction. You’ll start thinking, my team just isn’t strong enough. People don’t think clearly. Stakeholders are too emotional.

But often what’s happening is this. You’ve made it psychologically expensive to disagree with you. Not intentionally, but when someone is always right, always airtight, always prepared, always 10 steps ahead, people stop challenging. They nod, they comply, they quietly disengage. Compliance is not commitment.

Silence is not alignment. Commitment sounds different. Commitment pushes back. Commitment asks hard questions.

commitment challenges assumptions. Compliance just executes. And if you’ve trained a team to comply instead of challenge, you will slowly become the bottleneck. Not because they’re weak, because they don’t feel safe disagreeing. That’s the compounding cost of over relying on logic. Leadership starts to feel exhausting.

Not because the work is harder, because you’re carrying cognitive load that should be distributed. So instead of asking, is this airtight? Ask, is this actionable? Instead of, did I explain this clearly? Ask, do they feel ownership?

Instead of, why are they resisting? Ask, what threat are they perceiving? If leadership feels heavier than engineering, it’s because you’re still trying to close human systems like circuits. And people aren’t circuits. They don’t behave deterministically. They don’t behave deterministically. They behave narratively.

They respond to meaning, risk, identity, and trust. If you don’t adjust the model, leadership will keep feeling harder than it should. Not because you’re incapable, because you’re overusing your strongest skill in the wrong domain. That’s sabotage, and it’s self-inflicted. You built a career on tightening models, eliminating variables,

optimizing systems. That discipline isn’t the problem. But if you carry that exact operating model into leadership without adjusting it, you will keep feeling friction. You’ll keep wondering why you explained it clearly and they didn’t move. Why you made the logical case and they resisted. Why you made the fair decision and someone still felt slighted.

That friction isn’t proof you’re bad at leadership. It’s proof the physics have changed. So here’s the question I’ll leave you with. Where in your leadership are you doubling down on logic because it’s familiar? Where are you tightening the model when what’s actually required is influence?

Where are you mistaking silence for alignment? And if you stopped trying to win the argument for a moment, what might open up?

If this lands a little uncomfortably, good. Because in the next episode, we’re going to break down what influence actually requires. Not personality advice, not corporate theater mechanics. What actually creates alignment in rooms where everyone thinks they’re right.

Because if logic isn’t sufficient, the obvious next question is, then what is? And that’s where we’re going next.