Are You Teaching Your Team to Think – Or to Think Like You?

Plus, Coming Up in August: Matching Personalities

Image from 16personalities.com

Coming Up Next Month: Matching Personalities

What happens when you and the people you work with share the same personality type? It can make things easier… or introduce a whole new set of challenges. In a new Matching Personalities series, we’ll be exploring the pros, the pitfalls, and one small shift that can help each same-type pairing work better. Instead of a focused challenge, we’re diving deep into all 16 personality types for this one!

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Want to Submit a Leadership Topic?

Have a specific leadership topic in mind that you’d love to see us cover? We’ve opened up commenting so that anyone can share their idea(s) in the comments. We can’t promise to pick yours, but we do promise to review and consider every single idea.

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Are You Teaching Your Team to Think – Or to Think Like You?

We’ve been talking a lot this month about your own thinking patterns as a leader – where they come from and how they influence your decisions. We’ve also explored how personality shapes thinking styles and how to help your team think more critically.

But there’s something we haven’t touched on yet.

When you’re helping others become better thinkers… are you actually guiding them toward clarity, or quietly steering them toward your way of thinking?

When asked, most leaders will say they value independent thought, but when someone’s conclusions don’t align with yours – or their logic feels unfamiliar – do you truly stay open and curious? Or do you subtly steer them back toward your comfort zone?

Even if you’ve stopped giving direct orders and started coaching instead, your influence is still there, it’s just harder to see. You may no longer be telling people what to do, but your questions, feedback, and even body language still shape how they think. And without realizing it, you might be teaching your team to think like you – to follow your logic, your assumptions, your mental shortcuts – instead of helping them develop their own independent ways of thinking.

This happens because of how easy it is to reward familiarity. When someone reasons like you, it feels easier to trust their judgment. It feels “right.” When someone takes a different approach, even if their thinking is sound, it might spark resistance – often disguised as concern, correction, or coaching.

You might think you’re sharpening their clarity, when you’re really just sanding down the parts that don’t match yours.

The result? Conformity disguised as development.

And the cost? A team full of people who appear to think critically – but have quietly learned to mirror your logic, anticipate your preferences, and avoid paths that deviate from your way of doing things.

That’s not what great leadership looks like.

The best leaders don’t just help people think better. They make space for people to think differently and encourage reasoning, even if it diverges from their own. The best leaders build thinkers, not followers.

Just some food for thought.

I’ll leave you with one final question to reflect on today: Think of a recent decision someone made that didn’t match your instinct. Did you explore it with curiosity – or try to bring it back into alignment?

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Be sure to follow along with the rest of our Mindset Audit series. Next, we’ll look at how to help Sentinel and Explorer team members audit and strengthen their own critical thinking muscles. Stay tuned!