The 13.8% Problem: Why High-Performing Leaders Stall During Organizational Transitions

Jan 12 / Kerstin Oleta, CEO and Founder of the Business Leadership Excellence Institute (BLEI)
When everything feels right, but the results aren't there, the gap isn't strategy—it's embodiment.

I recently reviewed assessment data with a healthcare executive navigating a significant organizational transition.

On paper, she had everything aligned:
Environment: 93% – Systems, workspace, infrastructure in place
Relationships: 83.8% – Strong networks, solid partnerships, functional teams
Emotional Alignment: 100% – Clarity of purpose, fulfillment in the work, confidence in her expertise
Financial Results: 13.8% – Revenue at a fraction of stated goals


The gap was staggering. And the explanation was immediate.

She was operating from a facilitative leadership presence in an environment that demanded command leadership authority. Her body language, her messaging, her entire communication framework was designed for collaboration and consensus-building—perfectly calibrated for incremental improvement, completely misaligned for the transformational mandate she'd been given.

This is the 13.8% problem: when your physical and verbal presence doesn't match the level of authority your role demands, results flatline—no matter how brilliant your strategy.


The Perfectionism Trap During Transitions

When organizations undergo mergers, restructuring, or major transformations, leaders often default to what feels safe: collaborative decision-making, consensus-building, and incremental change management. These are the tools that got them promoted. These are the approaches that feel right.
But transformation doesn't reward comfort. It rewards decisiveness.
The executive I worked with had an insidious form of perfectionism: she was perfectly executing the wrong leadership model.

She was:
  • Facilitating when she needed to architect
  • Seeking buy-in when she needed to command
  • Offering options when she needed to direct
  • Waiting for emotional validation when she needed to trust delayed results

Her body language telegraphed every uncertainty. Her messaging apologized for her authority. And her organization—caught in the liminal space of major transition—responded to that uncertainty with paralysis.ments or emails when using this LMS.

The Two Rooms: Where Are You Leading From?

In my Body Language Strategy framework, I teach leaders to recognize when they're operating from the wrong "room" for the situation at hand.

The Facilitative Leadership Room

Body Language:
  • Forward lean (connection-focused)
  • Softer posture, open gestures
  • Higher vocal placement
  • Reactive, responsive movement patterns
  • Frequent head nodding, validating micro-expressions
Messaging Patterns:
  • "Let's explore options..."
  • "What do you all think about...?"
  • "I'd like your input on..."
  • "We should consider..."
  • "Help me understand..."
When It Works:
Building teams, fostering innovation, developing talent, maintaining culture during stability.
When It Fails:
Crisis management, organizational restructuring, difficult decisions with no consensus, time-sensitive pivots.

The Command Leadership Room

Body Language:
  • Grounded, authoritative stance
  • Upright posture, open chest
  • Lower vocal resonance
  • Intentional, measured movement
  • Comfortable holding silence
  • Physical stillness between directives
Messaging Patterns:
  • "Here's what we're doing..."
  • "The decision is..."
  • "This is non-negotiable because..."
  • "I'm directing the team to..."
  • "The outcome we're driving is..."
When It Works:
Organizational transformation, mergers and acquisitions, crisis response, cutting through decision paralysis, and establishing new operating models.
When It Fails:
Building psychological safety, fostering creativity, developing emerging leaders, and situations requiring genuine collaboration.

The problem during major transitions: Most leaders stay in the Facilitative Room because it feels aligned with their values, even when their organization desperately needs Command Room authority.

The Body Language of Delayed Results

Here's what makes transformation leadership uniquely challenging: you must hold absolute certainty through months of ambiguity before results validate your decisions.
Facilitative leadership gives you immediate emotional feedback. People thank you. They feel heard. You see the impact of your empathy in real-time.

Command leadership during transformation requires you to:
  • Make unpopular decisions
  • Communicate them with unwavering certainty
  • Hold your position through resistance
  • Wait 6-18 months for measurable validation
  • Never let your body language betray doubt during that timeline

This is where perfectionism becomes paralysis. Leaders wait for more data, more consensus, more certainty before acting decisively—because decisive action feels reckless when you're conditioned to seek validation before moving forward.

But your organization reads hesitation as incompetence.

During transitions, teams are hypervigilant to leadership body language. They're scanning for:
  • Is this person certain about the direction?
  • Can I trust them to navigate us through uncertainty?
  • Do they have the authority to make this work?

If your body language signals doubt—fidgeting during difficult announcements, apologetic vocal patterns when stating decisions, breaking eye contact when delivering hard truths—your team interprets that as: "Even they don't believe this will work."

And paralysis spreads.

The Authority Paradox: Why This Feels Wrong Before It Works

Here's what I tell every executive navigating this shift: Command presence will feel like you're being unkind before it feels like you're being clear.

You've built a career on collaboration. You value people's input. You believe in psychological safety. None of that changes. What changes is your recognition that during high-stakes transitions, clarity is the kindest thing you can offer.

When an organization is in transition, ambiguity is violence. Uncertainty is cruelty. Waiting for consensus is abandonment.
Your team doesn't need another facilitator during transformation—they need an architect who knows where the building is going and has the authority to get it built.

This doesn't mean you stop listening. It means you stop apologizing for deciding.

The High-Performance Reality: Different Altitude, Different Leadership
The executive I worked with ultimately made the shift. She moved from 13.8% to 67% of her goals within six months—not because her strategy changed, but because her embodiment of that strategy finally matched the altitude she was operating at.

She stopped hedging. She started directing. She let go of needing immediate validation and learned to hold certainty through months of ambiguity.

Her team's response wasn't resentment—it was relief.

They'd been waiting for someone to take command of the chaos. They'd been scanning her body language for signals that she knew where they were going. When she finally provided that certainty—not through her words alone, but through her physical presence—the organization aligned around her direction.

Where Elite Organizations Go Wrong During Transitions
Most Fortune 500 companies invest heavily in change management training that teaches facilitative skills: stakeholder engagement, communication plans, and building buy-in.

These are necessary—but insufficient for actual transformation.
What's missing is the recognition that transformation requires leaders who can move fluidly between facilitative and command presence. 

The organizations that succeed through major transitions have leaders who:
  • Recognize when collaboration has become procrastination
  • Can communicate difficult decisions with zero apologetic body language
  • Hold absolute certainty through months of ambiguity before results validate their choices
  • Understand that clarity is kindness, even when it feels harsh

The organizations that stall have technically brilliant leaders who cannot embody the authority their role demands.

The Question You Need to Answer


If you're leading through a major transition—merger, restructuring, market pivot, organizational transformation—ask yourself:
"Am I operating from the leadership room this moment requires, or the one that makes me comfortable?"

Because the difference between 13.8% results and 67% results isn't your strategy.

It's whether your body language, your messaging, and your physical presence match the level of authority this transformation demands.

About the Author

Kerstin Oleta is CEO and Founder of the Business Leadership Excellence Institute (BLEI), specializing in Body Language Strategy for Fortune 500 companies and government organizations navigating transitions, mergers, and transformations. She serves as a Mission Partner with the National Security Collaboration Center (NSCC) and has worked with executive teams at Google, Amazon, and eBay Global. Her methodology helps leaders move from perfectionism and paralysis into decisive, effective action during high-stakes organizational change.

Ready to audit your leadership presence during transformation? Contact BLEI for executive assessment and Body Language Strategy training designed for elite organizations in transition. https://www.bleinstitute.com/about

This post is part of BLEI's High-Performance Leadership Series, exploring the intersection of physical presence, strategic communication, and organizational effectiveness during complex change management.