Think of the leader who most gets under your skin. Not the incompetent one: the one whose whole manner irritates you in a way you can't quite justify. The relentless self-promoter. The steamroller. The one who never seems to doubt themselves.
Now ask a harder question: what if that irritation is information?
Jung called it the shadow: the traits we disown because they don't fit the identity we've built. Disowned traits don't leave. They go underground, and one of the most reliable places they resurface is in our outsized reactions to other people. We don't get triggered by qualities that mean nothing to us. We get triggered by the ones we've spent years suppressing.
The leader who prides themselves on humility and can't stand the self-promoter has usually buried their own ambition somewhere they can't see it. The consensus-builder who's allergic to the steamroller often carries a suppressed need for control that leaks out in subtler ways: the agenda that's technically open but already decided, the input that's gathered and then quietly ignored.
This is why I don't treat irritation as noise in coaching. It's data. The work I do with leaders goes looking for exactly these patterns: the traits you've exiled, the stories you've been performing without realizing it, and what it costs you to keep all of that offstage.
The practical move is simple to describe and uncomfortable to do. The next time a leader provokes that disproportionate reaction in you, don't start with what's wrong with them. Start with what your reaction is protecting in you. Name the trait. Then ask where a healthier version of it might actually belong in your own leadership.
The goal is not to become the person who irritates you. The goal is to stop paying the tax of pretending you have nothing in common with them.