Why High-Performing Leaders Stay Stuck and What Actually Changes It
VPs in professional services don't stay stuck because they lack knowledge. Laurie Fenske argues the real gap is identity, and explains what it actually takes to close it.
High-performing VPs don't stay stuck because they lack information. They stay stuck because their identity hasn't caught up with their role. Laurie Fenske, Master Certified Coach (MCC) and executive leadership coach with 25 years of financial services leadership experience, works with VPs in professional services who have read the books, attended the training, and still find themselves doing the work instead of leading the people. The gap, Laurie argues, is never about knowledge. It's about who the leader believes they are.
The Knowledge Trap
There is no shortage of leadership literature. A VP who has been told they need to delegate more, think more strategically, or stop being the single point of failure for every decision on their team has almost certainly already read something about it. They may have attended a company-sponsored program. They may have a mentor. They know, intellectually, what good leadership looks like at their level.
And they're still stuck.
This is what Laurie calls the knowledge trap: the assumption that understanding a problem is the same as solving it. For high-performers, this trap is particularly dangerous because their entire career has been built on learning and applying. Read the book, implement the framework, and get the result. That sequence worked at every prior level. At VP, it stops working, and the reason has nothing to do with the quality of the books.
The knowledge trap keeps leaders cycling through the same pattern: consume new information, feel briefly energized, return to old behavior. The pattern repeats because the behavior isn't driven by a lack of information. It's driven by identity.
The Real Reason: Identity, Not Information
When a leader is promoted to VP, their title changes immediately. Their identity changes slowly, if at all.
The VP, who was a high-performing Director, earned their promotion by being excellent at execution. They were the ones who knew the answer, solved the problem, and delivered the result. That pattern of being the one who executes is not just a habit. Over 10 to 20 years, it becomes core to how the leader understands themselves and their value.
Laurie's work centers on a specific identity disconnect she sees consistently in VPs in professional services: the leader's internal operating system is still running Director-level software. They review work their team should own. They answer questions their team should answer. They are in every meeting because they don't yet trust that things will go well without them. This isn't micromanagement for its own sake. It's a leader doing the only thing their identity tells them makes them valuable.
Until the identity shifts, the behavior doesn't. A delegation matrix is a tool. The GROW model is a framework. Behavioral assessments like McQuaig or EQ-i give leaders concrete data about their team dynamics. These are all useful. None of them work if the leader's internal answer to "who am I as a leader?" is still anchored in individual execution.
The shift that matters isn't tactical. It's the moment a leader stops deriving their value from doing and starts deriving it from the quality of the team they build and the decisions they enable.
What the Shift Actually Looks Like
The necessary identity shift doesn't happen through a single insight. It happens through a structured sequence of awareness, action, and reinforcement.
The first phase, built around a McQuaig behavioral assessment for the VP and up to four team members, surfaces concrete data about team dynamics that leaders often can't see from inside the system. A VP who has always assumed their team needs close oversight frequently discovers, through the assessment debrief, that their team is capable of far more autonomy than they've been given. That data doesn't just inform, it challenges the story the leader has been telling themselves about why they stay involved.
From there, Laurie works with leaders to identify the two or three decisions or delegation opportunities that are doing the most damage: the ones where the team is waiting, where the VP is the constraint, where a different choice would immediately change the dynamic. Leaders don't delegate everything at once. They start with one workstream and experience what it feels like when the team executes without them.
That experience is the turning point. Not the concept of delegation, the felt experience of stepping back and watching the team deliver. Past clients focusing on this area of growth report a measurable shift: they are protecting evenings for family, they are operating proactively rather than reactively, and their team is starting to make decisions without waiting for permission. And over time, the leader's identity has caught up with their title. They are no longer the single point of failure. They have reclaimed hours in their week because they are being trusted to lead - guide, not do.
Leadership Stage | Identity Anchor | Relationship with Team | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
Director (promoted for) | "I am the one who executes" | Hands-on, high involvement | Reactive |
Early VP (stuck) | "I am still the one who executes" | Single point of failure | Overwhelmed |
Developing VP | "My value is enabling others to execute" | Delegating, building trust | Transitioning |
Effective VP | "I lead by elevating my team" | Team executes autonomously | Strategic |
Why Leaders Can't Make This Shift Alone
The identity gap that keeps VPs stuck is invisible from the inside. This is not a flaw, it is a structural feature of the problem.
A leader who is running on a Director-level identity does not experience themselves as stuck in the wrong operating mode. They experience themselves as working hard, doing the right thing, and being let down by a team that can't seem to execute without them. The story makes internal sense. It is also wrong, and it cannot be corrected by the person telling it because they are living inside it.
This is why information doesn't move the needle. The VP can read about delegation and nod along. They can attend a leadership development program and find it intellectually interesting. Neither experience punctures the story, because neither creates the conditions for the leader to see themselves from the outside.
Coaching works differently. In Laurie's model, the combination of behavioral assessment data, structured coaching conversations, and a clear accountability framework creates what books and programs can't: a mirror. The leader begins to see the gap between who they are being and who they want to be, not as an abstract concept, but as a lived, felt reality they can act on.
The MCC credential Laurie Fenske holds (held by the top 5% of coaches credentialed by the International Coaching Federation) reflects a level of practice that goes beyond frameworks and tools. It reflects the capacity to help a leader see something they cannot see themselves, hold them in that discomfort without judgment, and guide them toward a different way of being. That is the work. It cannot be done alone, and it cannot be replicated by a book.
FAQ
Why do high-performing leaders struggle more with delegation than lower performers?
High performers are often promoted precisely because they can be relied on to execute at a high level. That track record becomes the foundation of their professional identity. Letting go of execution feels, at an identity level, like letting go of the thing that made them successful, which is why the resistance is stronger, not weaker, in leaders who have achieved the most.
How long does it typically take for the identity shift to happen?
The timing of results is different for every client. Typically, quick small changes are seen early on in the coaching engagement, with the leader able to road map their own growth and progression over their a timeframe that is meaningful for them.
What's the difference between leadership coaching and a leadership training program?
Leadership training programs deliver information to a group. Coaching works with a specific leader's specific patterns, identity, and context. Training can expand what a leader knows. Coaching changes how a leader operates because it works at the level of behavior and identity, not just knowledge.
Can a leader make this shift without behavioral assessments?
Assessments like McQuaig and EQ-i are not strictly required, but they significantly accelerate the process. They surface concrete, objective data about a leader's style and team dynamics that would otherwise take months of observation to name. For VPs in professional services who are results-oriented and skeptical of "soft" approaches, assessment data provides the grounding that makes the identity work credible and actionable.
What is the most common thing VPs say when they realize they've been the constraint?
Laurie hears a version of the same thing consistently: "I didn't realize my team was waiting for me to give them permission to do their jobs." That recognition, once it lands, is the beginning of everything else.
A VP in professional services who is working harder than ever and still hearing that they need to be "more strategic" is not failing for lack of effort. They are leading from the wrong identity, and that is a solvable problem. Laurie Fenske works with VPs ready to close that gap and become the decisive, strategic leaders their role demands. Visit Laurie's profile on Dream Coach Match to learn more.