5 Fears That Make Good Leaders Go Full Moon

October 31, 2026

Read Time - 6 minutes

“Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.”

~Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

Happy Halloween.

It's a full day at our house. We have soccer games this morning, and tonight we're making the rounds with our two kids to trick-or-treat. My daughter is going as Tinker Bell, and my son is a werewolf (who has got to learn to stop howling at the dinner table). By bedtime, the pixie dust and fangs will be scattered across the floor, both kids will be knocked out by the sugar crash, and they'll be themselves again by morning.

My son, who's 8, has been getting into history lately, so he had a lot of questions about his costume: Where did werewolves come from? Are they real? Why do they only transform at night? I could fill this whole issue with his questions, and they sent me down a rabbit hole. As it turns out, werewolf stories go back at least 4,000 years, to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Herodotus and Ovid wrote their own versions too, and the 1941 Hollywood film The Wolf Man is what cemented the full moon and the tormented soul we know of today.

Across all those centuries, one detail of the story doesn't change: the wolf is never a stranger who wanders in from the woods. It's the shepherd, the ruler, the neighbor down the road, someone the village already knows. When the moon rises, the villagers meet a side of that person they've never seen.

Our campuses have their own lunar calendar. The moon rises during budget cuts, in the weeks before tenure votes, and through annual review season. It's often midway through the semester or near the end, when we're stretched thin. Those are the weeks when good leaders are stressed and most likely to become someone their teams don't recognize.

Stress makes us do funny things as leaders. On a typical workday, we can usually choose the approach a challenging situation needs. But under pressure, that choice gets harder. Lars Schwabe and Oliver Wolf found that stress shifts people away from deliberate, goal-focused choices and toward habit. We fall back on whatever we've practiced most, whether or not it's what the moment or the people around us need.

Every one of us has a go-to leadership style, a way of leading we reach for first. And those same leadership styles that can serve us well also have a shadow side. The shadow is what our style looks like when we use it too much or at the wrong time, and it starts working against the people around us. The shadow usually comes from our fears. When we're afraid of falling behind, of being wrong, or of letting people down, we stop choosing how to lead and fall back on habit. Stress makes the shadow more likely, because pressure turns those fears up. We don't always notice our shadow while it's happening, but the people closest to us often do.

I've noticed my own shadow side come out under stress, and you may have seen yours too. Usually, I lead with ideas and the big picture, and I'm intentional about the energy I put into relationships. Under stress, I've had a tendency to let a different side take over, one that finds comfort in getting things done: the doer. In those stretches, I've gotten impatient. I've focused on getting the job done and lost sight of the relationships and the process around it. I've skipped questions I should have asked and taken on work I should have handed to someone else. The people closest to me were the ones who felt my impatience and lost the work I should have given them. In those moments, the doer has been my werewolf more than once.

Leadership Takeaway

Thankfully, we have better options than a silver bullet, and they start with our own awareness.

I don't know anybody who turns into a werewolf on purpose. The good news is that the change is usually predictable. If we know our patterns, we know our werewolf. If we know our calendar, we know when the moon is coming. Once we can spot the shadow starting to surface, we can build new habits that soften its impact. For me, those habits have been asking more questions before I take action, developing the people around me so they can help when the work becomes too much, and building the kind of open communication where people will tell me when they see my doer side taking over. None of those came naturally, and I've had to work intentionally at all three.

Every leadership strength has a fear underneath it, and under enough pressure, that fear can wake the werewolf. Here are five of them. Which one sounds most like yours? You might also recognize someone you work with closely.

Five Fears

1. The fear of falling behind

This fear often sits with reliable leaders, the ones who finish their work and don't let anything fall through the cracks. A team that knows one person will always follow through can plan with confidence. (This one is mine. I wrote about the pull of finished tasks in The VP Who Vacuumed His Own Office.) Under pressure, the fear takes over, and we take work back from the people who should own it. The work gets finished, but the team stops growing.

Ask yourself: What did I do myself this week that someone else could have or should have done?

2. The fear of being wrong

Analytical thinkers know this fear well, and campuses are full of them. These leaders catch the flaw everyone else missed and save the team from expensive mistakes. Under pressure, the fear takes over, and we keep a decision open, researching, waiting, surveying, and debating, long after the team needs an answer. The team sees our caution as indecision.

Ask yourself: What decision am I delaying while I wait for information I may never get?

3. The fear of letting people down

Leaders who build trust easily often carry this fear. People bring them problems early because they know they'll be heard. Under pressure, the fear takes over, and we protect the relationship at the expense of the decision. Everyone stays friendly while the problem grows underneath.

Ask yourself: Is there a conversation I've been putting off for more than two weeks?

4. The fear of losing control

Leaders who build structure carry this fear. They create the clear processes and steady routines that let everyone else focus on their work. Under pressure, the fear takes over, and we hold tighter to the rules. The structure that once gave people confidence starts to feel like a wall of policies people have to work around.

Ask yourself: When did I last change a process because someone on my team showed me a better way?

5. The fear of losing purpose

Big-picture leaders tend to carry this fear. They see what the work could become and remind a tired team why it matters. Under pressure, the fear takes over, and we reach for a new idea instead of finishing the current one. The team gets tired of starting projects it never finishes.

Ask yourself: How many projects has my team started this year, and how many have we finished?

Try This Before Friday

Pick the fear closest to yours and write down the last time it woke your werewolf. Then share that fear with one person you trust, and give them permission to tell you, "I think it's happening again."

A good assessment is one of the best ways to build awareness of your own strengths and growth areas. Here are a few worth exploring:

• CliftonStrengths: I'm a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, and CliftonStrengths describes each theme as having a balcony and a basement, the healthy side and the side that shows up when we overuse it.

• Five Paths to Leadership: Academic Impressions' Five Paths to Leadership assessment compares your tendencies under normal and stressful conditions. When I took it, my score for action-driven leadership nearly doubled under stress, into the range the assessment flags as possible overuse, and my score for relationship-focused leadership dropped.

• Hogan Development Survey: The Hogan Development Survey measures the derailing tendencies that can emerge during periods of high stress at work.

• Birkman Method: The Birkman Method separates your usual behavior from your stress behavior, which is how you're likely to act when your needs go unmet.

Any of these can help you name your own werewolf before the moon rises.

The Bottom Line

Most werewolf stories end badly, but ours don't have to. One of the oldest versions, written by Marie de France in the 1100s, is about a nobleman named Bisclavret who became trapped in wolf form until a king took him in, treated him with dignity, and helped him become a man again.

What saved Bisclavret was someone who looked past the wolf and saw the person underneath. We can learn to look past the behavior the same way. Each of these fears comes from a need to feel safe. Some of us look for safety by taking control, and others look for it by stepping back. That need for safety is why none of us should face our werewolf alone. The people who work closest to us often see our shadow before we do. When we give them permission to name it, they help us change course before everyone else pays for it.

The same need for safety is why the people around us deserve our grace when they face their own werewolf. When a colleague starts acting out of character under pressure, we can recognize the fear underneath the behavior, respond with patience instead of judgment, and help them find their way back.

With a little help from each other, we can all be ourselves again by morning.