Your Leadership Didn’t Start With a Title — It Started With a Pattern
You probably didn’t mean to become a leader. One day you just realized the team was looking to you for direction, approval, conflict resolution, payroll decisions, and probably the snack rotation. But the real kicker? You’ve been leading since way before the job title caught up.
In this week’s episode of the Culture Focused Practice Podcast, I dig into four of the most common leadership origin stories—those deeply rooted, early-learned patterns that quietly shape how we show up as leaders today.
Therapist Default: You’re the space-holder. The deep listener. The contextual explainer. The one who’s so focused on understanding that you forget to take up space. Sound familiar? This default often looks like over-accommodation, conflict avoidance, and mistaking neutrality for leadership.
The Over-Functioner: You were the fixer. The do-er. The one who made things happen when no one else would. And now? You might be carrying too much, stepping in too fast, and accidentally creating a team that relies on you instead of growing their own ownership.
The Good Kid: Pleasant. Likable. Quiet. Unproblematic. Except now, it’s hard to be direct. You crave harmony to a fault, and you worry that your opinions will make you “too much.” Feedback feels risky. Boundaries feel… rude.
The Lone Wolf: You’ve always done it on your own. Delegation feels like weakness. Collaboration feels like compromise. You’re soaring alone like the proverbial eagle (even though, yes, wolves are actually pack animals).
These origin stories aren’t flaws—they’re your starting point. But here’s the thing: they don’t have to be your future.
When early patterns go unchecked, they start showing up everywhere: vague feedback to spare feelings, keeping underperformers because of their potential, jumping in too fast, or avoiding hard conversations and just hoping people “get the hint.” It’s not leadership. It’s autopilot.
That’s why the second half of the episode focuses on how to lead with intention—auditing your habits, practicing radical ownership, building new defaults (with actual rituals if you want them), and repatterning how you lead without unraveling who you are.
About the Author
Dr. Tara Vossenkemper is a gently-candid consultant who’s been in the trenches of group practice ownership since 2017. With a hearty blend of depth, irreverence, and a solid dash of humor (or so she hopes), Tara helps practice owners navigate the can-be-messy process of hiring, culture-building, vision generating, people-y issues, and all the other things that keep you up at night. When she’s not consulting, she’s probably wrangling her animals or homeschooling her kids—because why not add more chaos to the mix?
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