Situational Awareness: The Leadership Skill That Builds Trust

An advisor walked into the room having built a great plan. He walked out having learned that great and right aren't always the same thing.

Sometimes we're deep in a conversation and something just feels off. We can sense it long before we can name it. That sensing is situational awareness.

Do we ignore the feeling and try to power through the people in front of us? Or do we acknowledge the disconnect and build power with them?

Presence gives us the pause, the moment needed to evaluate. Self awareness catches the signal of disconnect between what we expected and what we experience.

Situational awareness is what we do with that signal.

It's looking outward with the same honesty we've learned to use looking inward. It’s reading others’ energy, engagement, and unspoken need, instead of running the script we prepared in advance.

This is where empathy becomes practical. We're not abandoning our expertise, but making space for others to tell us what they need.

I worked with a financial planning advisor who walked into a meeting energized. He'd put meaningful work into the plan he was about to present.

But his fact finding hadn't gone as deep as it needed to. He'd gathered enough to build a solid plan, but the fit was lacking. 

Partway through the meeting, he noticed that his enthusiasm wasn't being matched. The clients were polite and even attentive, but they weren’t excited.

This advisor had a choice. He could push forward and hope the feeling passed, or he could slow down.

He did the latter. He opened up, and told them directly that he could see a gap between his enthusiasm and theirs. He owned it, admitting that he must have missed something.

That small act of honesty did more than any polished presentation. It gave his clients permission to say what they'd been holding back. They had a set of goals around using their wealth to support causes they cared about, not just their children and tax efficiency, and they didn’t see them being played out.

Because this advisor had done the deeper work of being genuinely skilled in his field, he adapted the plan on the spot to reflect what actually mattered.

He didn't win the business because he had the best technical plan in the room. He won it because he stayed loose enough to change the plan when he was told to do so.

This example is a clear window into how vulnerability and authenticity open doors, which is worth its own conversation another time.

But it also shows something else: nothing meaningful gets built when we're focused on being convincing rather than being open.

It gets built when we're willing to be vulnerable, to stay open rather than protect the ego attached to being right.

Reflection: Think of a recent conversation where something felt slightly off but you moved forward anyway. What might you have discovered if you'd paused to address the gap instead of pushing through it?