Fragility in Leadership: When Feedback Feels Personal and Performance Slows

What happens when leaders take feedback personally—right when growth is required most?

In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kyriazis and Drea Martin unpack fragility—a leadership contaminant that surfaces under pressure and limits a leader’s ability to absorb feedback, adapt, and move forward.

Unlike day-to-day behaviors, fragility emerges in high-stress environments. When challenged, leaders may begin to question their judgment, internalize feedback, or hesitate to act—slowing both decision-making and development.

Closely connected to fear of failure, fragility creates a compounding effect:
 the more pressure increases, the harder it becomes to separate feedback from personal identity.

The conversation explores how leaders can recognize fragility and support development—not through pressure or correction, but through awareness, coaching, and empowering dialogue that helps individuals regain confidence and forward momentum. 

You’ll learn:

•  Why fragility is a stress-triggered response—not a constant leadership trait
•  How it shows up as defensiveness, hesitation, and over-personalization of feedback
•  The connection between fragility and fear of failure under pressure
•  How coaching questions (not directives) help build confidence and ownership
•  When development requires deeper support beyond traditional leadership coaching. 

Fragility slows growth, but leaders who learn to separate feedback from identity move faster, decide better, and lead stronger.

Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Focus

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:00

Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kiriazas, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.

Drea Martin 0:07

And I'm Drea Martin, Chief Operating Officer of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:20

Today we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in, and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platforms solution. So let's dive in.

Defining Fragility As A Contaminant

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:34

So, Drea, here we are again today. And I thought today we would do another session on contaminants, if you will. Those things that when they spiral down are a negative trait, can be a negative trait. And the one I thought was interesting, which I don't always often hear this word, is the contaminant titled fragility. I think we had a session on fear of failure, and there was some of that concept in my mind when we were talking about it. But fragility is kind of a different word. So what do we mean by someone who's got fragility as a trait?

Drea Martin 1:07

Yeah, so how we define that is lacking durability and resilience. And that's why it came up in the fear of failure conversation. Because if somebody fears failure and you have a trusted mentor who's telling them we should take the risk anyway, if they are experiencing fragility as well, then they're less likely to take that feedback positively because they're likely to then question themselves, their own ability, why they made this judgment the way that they did, if somebody else is pushing for a different direction compared to they, if they don't trigger fragility, they're maybe more likely to be able to take that insight and not take it personally. So that's a big piece with fragility. And this is one where again, with a contaminant, it comes up in high stress situations, things are changing rapidly. So not a day-to-day aspect that you would experience with the person, but rather something that when things change drastically, they might not show that resilience that you would expect of them, especially given the fact that their normal everyday warmth might be really strong.

Coaching Questions That Build Durability

Cynthia Kyriazis 2:06

Okay. Fragility, when I coach and when I consult, it's it's not a word that is used, but it certainly can be a word that comes to mind when dealing with an individual who seems to have the types of traits that you're talking about around this particular trait. They generally wish to do something, they're not quite sure if they can quote unquote handle it. They're not sure of their ability to actually see what needs to be done and then incorporate that in in moving forward with this thing that they're stuck on. There's a lot of questioning that I do about what, you know, what are you fearing or what are you what are you have most concerns about in this particular arena? Has it been going on for a while? What is like the worst thing that could happen? Right. And then talking through that scenario, because frequently that type of scenario or that type of feedback has something to do with either no sense of what really has happened or an individual bad experience that they can pinpoint. And that experience could have been last week and it could have been three years ago. So it's kind of helping me as the coach understand and what this fragility is about and have it giving them enough space and room to voice it to be able to explain this is why and this is how it came about. And then we just is just kind of just unraveling it and just asking questions and going back and forth with it until they say, Well, oh guess, I I guess I could try it, which is the most I want. I don't want to say I'm gonna try and be successful, or I'm gonna try it and I'll probably fail. That's not you know where I'm going. Let's just get to a point where we've agreed on the discussion. Now, what is the one little step we can take forward so that this does not become a contaminant consistency for the team? Of course, the leader is thinking that, the supervisor is thinking that, the manager is thinking that. But it is also a growth element for that individual to recognize it, own it, and then move forward with it so that they can kind of put it to bed, if you will, like any kind of habit, which these kinds of things they are habits. They're habits that developed because something negative happened and they just kept coming up and up and up and up, whether it's fear of failure or fragility or any of the one, what we have six contaminants. It's any one of those happened somewhere along the line for a reason in that person's mind, and it unfortunately stuck and has a mic repetitive treadmill.

Drea Martin 4:29

So that's a good product. Very cool. That's interesting. Do you find typically that that awareness? So asking these questions, digging into the experience that maybe was part of the root of this, or thinking through worst-case scenarios that help them understand that maybe they're more durable than they expect, or that their fears are maybe larger than the actual reality of what could happen or what would happen. Is that typically sufficient to really help them with this? What happens if they're really stuck in this notion of just when things go poorly, I take it all personally, or it's a reflection of my inability, or kind of that concept there?

Coaching Versus Therapy At Work

Cynthia Kyriazis 5:03

Well, okay, so this is an interesting question because let's define coaching and therapy. Yeah, so totally because during COVID, when when managers were really being put under the gun to make sure people were being productive and so on and so forth, I did have a couple managers say, I was hired to be a manager, not a coach, and not a therapist. And my response is nobody expects you to be a therapist. They have credentials that take a person down a road that is far more involved and intricate. But a coach, depending on how you wish to define it, a coach is someone who asks a lot of questions to help that individual kind of uncover and have a discussion about what is uncovered. It's not intended to fix somebody long term, it's not intended, you know, intended to be anything deep other than to say, okay, you you seem to be concerned with this or even frightened by it. Great. Tell me what kinds of things happen with that. And then giving some options back and forth about have you considered? Have you ever thought about doing this? Have you ever tried that? Just to give some options to give them to think a little differently. So I don't know if that makes sense, but there are two definite lines between therapy and coaching. You know, coaching is to encourage and uncover some things. Therapy is some very long-term deep-seated. And I have had a couple clients who, even at the end of however much coaching we did together, were still quite, I will say, stuck, stuck where they got stuck before they ever met me. When that, when I have this sense of they really want to do something, but they're really not sure where to go. And this discussion did not help it move forward very much, then I will suggest therapy and I will give the names and phone numbers of a couple that I think would work for them. But I explain why and I explain the difference.

Drea Martin 6:44

So yeah, a very diligent difference. And I appreciate you stating that because I think that's a tough one with this piece in particular, fragility, just because that lack of durability can be something that is, as you said, it's likely rooted in some other experiences. Those aren't always work-related. And it means that sometimes that that potential insecurity in itself is something that requires more than just what kind of a more professional environment can do in terms of support and moving forward. So an important difference there.

Empowerment Language That Actually Helps

Cynthia Kyriazis 7:13

And the other thing too is I think the tendency in many cases when you're supervising someone is, well, why don't you do this and why don't you do that? Why don't you do A? Why don't you do B? Why don't you do C? That won't help in someone who's at the stage I was discussing. It's more like, have you ever thought about? Because then they feel in control of the answer of that, because they'll say, Well, you know, no, I never have. Or yeah, I tried it once, but it didn't work. Well, tell me what caused it not to work and what you could do differently differently next time. And then it puts their hat on their own head, so to speak.

unknown 7:43

Right.

Cynthia Kyriazis 7:44

Think about it a little bit and in the process share more information with the coach, but gives them a little room, a little room to breathe. I like that. That's my two cents for today. Yes, and an important note. Well, you know, I really feel like there are more managers and supervisors out there that feel the way the one that the couple that said to me, I want to be a supervisor, I want to get things done. I don't want to be a therapist. I don't want to be a coach. Okay, we don't expect you to be a therapist, you're not qualified to do that. But being a coach was part of supervising and developing people. Right. It is.

Drea Martin 8:19

So thanks for asking. Yeah, no, definitely. I like that. I think my biggest takeaway from what you said is this notion of how can you put the power back in their hands. So giving them the questions that enabled them to do the thinking to say, maybe this is something I should have explored, or maybe this, there's something here that they could do instead of saying, Why didn't you do this? or oh, how terrible. Approaching it with a how can you empower that person to recognize that they are capable of making those changes. And maybe that's the best way to work with a particularly fragile person.

Cynthia Kyriazis 8:50

And you said it in a much more concise and lovely way than I did. I want to go down the long story lane. Don't you worry.

Drea Martin 8:57

We needed your story first. So that's what we're here for. Good pair.

Cynthia Kyriazis 9:00

Okay, all

Fragility Data Thresholds And Percentiles

Cynthia Kyriazis 9:01

right. Well, thanks for that. That was an interesting, an interesting thing because the whole time I was talking about it, I kept seeing fear of failure kind of pop up. So those two must kind of bounce off one another. Is that true or accurate?

Drea Martin 9:12

Yes, there is definitely areas there where if you trigger both, all the nuances of that relationship come up. Otherwise, sometimes you can see, I mean, so everyone has levels of all of these. And they don't start to really trigger until you get even the earliest ones, like the the soonest triggering is about 70%, which means it's that percentile. So more than 70% of our population is when it starts to become a problem for a lot of these. And all the risk zones are slightly different based on the characteristics and the data set. But it's interesting to think about everyone has some fragility, everyone has some fear of failure. But it's how high is that percentage, how high is that percentile? And when it gets to that top quartile of the entire population, that's when it becomes either the issue itself or an issue in tandem with others. Um, when multiple are triggered.

Cynthia Kyriazis 10:01

Interesting. Okay, that was interesting that part about percentages. All right. Well, yet again, thank you, Miss Ms. Uh Drea, for all the information and all the knowledge that you share around traits. And I will see you, I guess, next time. Yeah, thank you, Cynthia.

Where To Listen And Connect

Cynthia Kyriazis 10:17

Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at www.plab.com. Or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.

Drea Martin 10:34

We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.