The Leadership Paradox:
Why Your Best People
Won't Step Up
A Whitepaper by Simone de Haas
A fresh perspective on why leadership training fails - and what theatre knows that business schools don’t.
Does this sound familiar?
A problem sits in the middle of the conference room table.
Everyone sees it.
No one addresses it.
Your team is full of smart, capable people but when it matters most, they become bystanders.
They assume someone more senior will handle it.
They calculate that speaking up carries more risk than staying quiet.
You’ve invested in leadership development.
You’ve sent people to workshops.
You’ve built competency models.
And yet... the capable people still don’t lead.
What if the problem isn’t the people - it’s the system?
For over 30 years as a professional theatre director, I’ve watched transformation happen repeatedly in rehearsal rooms: Cautious actors become bold risk-takers.
Not because they suddenly gained confidence but because the conditions changed.
Theatre has spent more than a century perfecting the art of creating environments where people take creative risks in front of others, make bold choices, and learn from failures - without catastrophic consequences.
Organisations can do the same.
This Whitepaper Reveals:
🎭 Why the bystander effect and performance risk combine to create leadership paralysis.
🧩 How organisations inadvertently script who is “allowed” to lead - and how to rewrite those scripts.
🎓 What Viola Spolin, Stanislavsky, and Uta Hagen can teach us about creating conditions for emergence.
🎙 The concept of rehearsed receptivity - how to stay present and responsive when stakes are high.
🪞 Practical strategies for organisations, managers, and individuals to break the paralysis.
Inside the Whitepaper
Part One: The Leadership Paradox
Why organisations simultaneously need people to lead - and create conditions that make leadership feel dangerous.
Part Two: Three Lenses on Paralysis
The bystander effect, social dramaturgy, and how they combine to keep capable people silent.
Part Three: The Rehearsal Room Reveals What Business School Misses
Proven practices from theatre that create conditions where self-leadership emerges.
Part Four: From Insight to Action
Practical applications for organisations, managers, and individuals ready to change the script.
Who This Is For
✓ CEOs and senior leaders frustrated that capable people won’t step up.
✓ HR and L&D professionals questioning why leadership training isn’t working.
✓ General managers who want their teams to take more initiative.
✓ Individual contributors who see problems but hesitate to address them.
✓ Anyone tired of watching meetings where everyone waits for someone else to lead.
Download the Whitepaper
Get instant access to The Leadership Paradox: Why Your Best People Won’t Step Up - and discover what theatre knows that business schools don’t.
Simone de Haas is an award-winning theatre director and leadership strategist whose work bridges the worlds of stage and strategy through her Theatre of Leadership®. Through her signature frameworks: E³ Evolution; Iconic Brilliance®, and The Signature Presence Code™ - she helps leaders, founders, and organisations translate insight into impact and embodied influence.