Every leader hits a wall from time to time. Perhaps you’re struggling to lead at scale, motivate your team, or persuade higher-ups to give you the resources you need. In such situations it can be tempting to focus on external blockers, such as organizational bureaucracy, employee attitudes, and managerial decision-making. However, in the two decades I’ve spent coaching hundreds of executives across multiple industries, I’ve found that the biggest limiting factors for most of them lie within: their own unproductive beliefs, which I call hidden blockers.

Why hidden? Because these blockers are so ingrained and habitual that most of us aren’t even aware that they exist. But they are there, quietly shaping every aspect of how we think, feel, and act. As the psychologist Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work on mindsets has shown, the sets of beliefs we hold about ourselves are key to our ability to learn, adapt, and grow and to our performance and results. Bottom line: Whether we’re aware of them or not, our beliefs affect our outcomes.

Though I’ve seen clients suffer from a wide variety of hidden blockers, an analysis of more than 300 leaders I’ve coached revealed the seven most common:

1. I need to be involved. The belief that you need to be part of every detail at every level, which leads to micromanagement, bottlenecked decisions, and less leverage from your team.

2. I need it done now. The belief that you need immediate results, no matter what, which creates false urgency, rushed execution, increased errors, and burnout.

3. I know I’m right. The belief that you—and only you—know the answers to the problems at hand, which shuts down collaboration, causes you to dismiss input, and leads to missed opportunities and reduced innovation.

4. I can’t make a mistake. The belief that your performance must be flawless, which encourages unhealthy perfectionism, indecision, and risk avoidance.

5. If I can do it, so can you. The belief that others’ performance must be like yours to be acceptable, which leads you to set unrealistic or unnecessary expectations, underestimate others’ skills, and limit development.

6. I can’t say no. The belief that you must always step up to the plate when asked, which results in overwork, blurred priorities, and poor boundary setting.

7. I don’t belong here. The belief that you don’t fit in where you are or at your level, which fuels debilitating impostor syndrome and self-sabotage and reduces your ability to communicate, visibility, and influence.

If you’re having trouble advancing in your career or having the impact you want at work, chances are, one of these beliefs is holding you back. The good news is that I’ve developed a three-step framework—rooted in established behavioral-change principles—that I’ve used successfully with leaders. Anyone can apply it to get unblocked and unstuck. Step one is to uncover the blocker: recognizing the problem and naming the belief that’s creating it. In step two, you unpack the belief, reflecting on where it came from, how it might have once served you, and how it is limiting you now. Step three is to unblock yourself by reframing the belief into something more productive and embedding that new perspective into behavioral changes and tangible action.

Let’s look at how two executives used this framework to become aware of and better understand the beliefs holding them back—and ultimately navigate their way past them to become more successful leaders. (All identifying details about them have been altered to protect their confidentiality.)

Uncover

Sometimes the signs of being blocked are unmistakable: stalled advancement, missed targets, or declining team morale or performance. At other times the clues are more subtle: a nagging sense that something feels off, an uncharacteristic negativity toward work, or a growing disconnect between your intentions and your impact. For some leaders being disappointed by lackluster outcomes or feedback that doesn’t square with their self-image is the first indicator that they’re blocked.

This is what happened with my client Kristin, a recently promoted SVP leading a division through the aftermath of an organizational shake-up. Kristin had gone out of her way to support her people, and a year in, her team was engaged and performing well. But feedback from her direct reports, peers, and boss revealed that while everyone appreciated her collaborative, empathetic approach and her strategic acumen, people found her indecisive. While she ultimately made good choices, her process was complicated and lengthy, and because she sometimes deferred decisions to others, she was creating confusion about accountability and slowing progress.

Kristin was taken aback by these criticisms—and at first felt resentful. She’d devoted a great deal of time to meeting with others to gather input, gain consensus, and foster a sense of trust and shared responsibility. But the organization clearly required more decisiveness from its division leader, and Kristin had to acknowledge that she was falling short. As she dug deeper into why she’d adopted her too-careful, overly consultative approach, she realized that the biggest driver was her fear of making the wrong choices. Her hidden blocker was I can’t make a mistake. This made sense. Having come through a period of corporate upheaval, she wanted to avoid inflicting additional damage on her team and herself. So she was putting off decisions until she’d gathered enough data and polled enough people to feel comfortable that she’d arrived at the right conclusion. This belief was preventing her from being the decisive, forward-moving leader that the organization needed her to be.

Another one of my clients, Philip, a brilliant technology executive who was admired and relied upon for his expertise, was stymied midcareer because of his impatient, insensitive demeanor, which had been cited many times in 360-degree reviews. His peers didn’t consider him a team player, and his boss was concerned about his ability to collaborate on deliverables critical to the company’s growth. Initially Philip defended his behavior, noting that he was merely pushing his colleagues to debate and develop solutions more quickly. But after watching his interactions with others in a recorded Zoom meeting—which included interruptions, dismissiveness, and condescension—he realized he wasn’t just ruining his work relationships; he was preventing himself and the team from achieving their goals. He finally admitted that he was blocked and that the belief powering his problematic behavior was I know I’m right.