"Last issue, I talked about the 5 Shadows of Leaders — deep, unconscious beliefs, such as "It all depends on me," that cause harm to the leader and harm to other people.

One reader replied, "The diagnosis is challenging, but the 'cure' is hardly addressed." Wrote another, "What kind of things can a person like me do to get out of this mindset?"

I realized only then that I had failed to write a prescription for the disease. Let me continue the conversation, then, by talking about How to Treat a Case of the Shadows.

There are two ways to get out of the "it all depends on me" mindset, or other ones like it:

1. The Easy-Now-Hard-Later approach.

In this approach, you keep going, doing too much. You don't have time to really deal with the internal early-warning system that something's wrong. You get progressively more angry and frustrated ("Why does everyone else move so slow? Why can't anyone else do it right?"). What finally stops you in your tracks is something major: an illness, a job ...