Great advise. I'd go so far as to suggest asking yourself "am I the problem" in pretty much any conflict or struggle. The answer may usually be no, but asking the question can help avoid a lot of cognitive traps we all tend to fall into.

Is there some checklist for those who find this a daunting question?

As someone who has difficulty asking this question to themselves:

- Is anything I'm seeing similar to a previous effort that I under-performed in?

- Do my own expectations of success make sense if I weren't me? (would a random stranger agree with my goal criteria)

- How different (currently) is the other person's expectations of success? In my current role does it make sense (for the project/customer) to try to change those?

These are good. I've going to be difficult to make an exhaustive checklist as each of us will only have identified certain problems

To a large extent it's about trying to see the issue from the other person's eyes, which has two parts: try to remove your context, and try to understand their context.

Your context: it's easy to assume that someone else has the same information and motivations that you do, and understand the underlying strategy. But actually as a leader it's your responsibility to make sure all these are in place, one the one hand recruiting someone with the necessary background and motivations, and on the other making sure that they understand the strategy behind what the team needs to deliver and that the team shares and builds it knowledge. So look at all the things you are assuming - in the context of the problem - that they know or understand or are motivated by, and check whether they might be missing and what information, strategy, and incentives you might have failed to convey.

You also need to look at your own behavior from the perspective of someone who doesn't have your context. If you saw someone acting as you are, without knowing why, what would you think?

Then there is their context. They may come from a different cultural/class background. They might have different personal priorities. They may be at a different life stage. They may have less/more savings. They may need to take less/more risk. They may need different things as part of their career (for example, one boss I had assumed that 'working with famous person X' was a huge thing for me. Nope - well, it's cool and all but its not going on my CV, as an engineer. Whereas for a designer it's totally going on their CV).

All these things play into what information a person will have, what they find motivating, what they find reasonable, what understanding they will have about you and what you are saying/how you are acting.

Yes I just left a startup (resigned) where most of the tech leadership had been fired and rotated at least once, always with lots of complaints from the CTO about how "terrible" they were. I took his word for it the first two, but afterwards it became clear "it's you dude...", and left soon after.

What this also seems to miss that most startups have a limited budget and thus a limited talent pool. While your existing team members might not be an "enthusiastic yes", to the superstar prospects the startup isn't either.

Maybe I've always worked for little napoleons but in my experience a manager never thinks they are the problem.

I’ve found there’s a way to ask this question without assigning blame:

Hmm… how am I creating this situation?

It’s a more multi-dimensional exploration.

Often, we repeat experiences because there’s something we aren’t willing to face - about ourselves or how we relate to life.

It’s quite freeing to seek that out.