Every interaction matters: what kind of leadership shadow do you cast?
You may be familiar with the quote from Maya Angelou:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
We often think that leadership is about the big moments, the major projects, the strategic decisions, the defining milestones.
But the leadership shadow you cast is shaped in the small, everyday moments, the interactions that create a lasting impact on others.
It’s not just what gets delivered.
It’s what people experience.
Our teams take cues from what we say, how we show up, how we act, and what we prioritise.
More importantly, they take cues from what we consistently do, tolerate, and reward.
Consider a leader who says they value work-life balance but sends emails late at night.
Or a leader who talks about trust but does not create psychological safety within the team.
What kind of leadership shadow do they create?
And just as importantly—what do others learn from that?
Working in the corporate world for most of my career, I can still remember the leaders who had the greatest impact on me.
Not because of the big moments, but because of how they made me feel, and the behaviours they modelled every day.
One of my favourite TED Talks is by Drew Dudley, where he talks about “lollipop moments”.
The message is simple yet powerful: leadership is not about grand acts. It is about the small, everyday moments where we positively impact someone’s life. Often, we do not even realise it, but those moments can have a lasting effect.
Take a moment to think about your own “lollipop moment”.
Do you remember someone who said or did something that had a lasting impact on you or your career, something they were probably never even aware of?
The reality is, you are always leaving an impact, even when you are not aware of it.
That is your leadership shadow.
The question is not whether you have one…
but whether you are being intentional about the one you create.
You might ask yourself:
What would people say about me when I’m not in the room?
What behaviours do I consistently model?
Do my actions truly align with my values?
What kind of leadership shadow am I creating?
The challenge is that we often cannot see our own leadership shadow clearly.
In my coaching work, I create the space for leaders to step back, reflect, and become more intentional about how they show up, so their impact aligns with the leader they want to be.
If this resonates, you can explore how I work with leaders or book a free discovery call at
www.valora.ie