Development · assessment · coaching
Less knowing,
more doing.
Knowledge is cheap. Behavior is everything. Pick the one behavior that actually costs you, and get in the reps until it's habit. Not until you get it right — until you can't get it wrong.
Knowing isn't doing.
You've probably tried at least one of these. All three stop at knowing.
The book with the secret sauce.
Five pillars. Ten habits. One framework for every leader — as if a weekly one-to-one costs an organized person and a spontaneous one the same. It doesn't, which is why the resolution lasted nine days.
The class that ended in applause.
Ninety minutes, a good facilitator, a room that nodded along. The applause was real. By Monday, everyone ran the same meeting the same way.
The assessment that described you accurately.
It was well-built and it was right about you. You nodded. It stung a little. Then it went in a drawer, because a description of who you are is not an instruction for what to do on Monday.
Every one of those told you something. None of them built anything. What builds the daily habit of doing is smaller than all three combined — a routine, run daily, not a report read once.
Books, videos, courses, assessments — none of them are the problem. They just can't replace an ongoing habit of seeking and acting on feedback. Build the habit first; everything else works better after that.
Below are three exercises. Start with the first — it's the easiest way in — then use whichever of the other two fits what you're dealing with.
Name what's getting in your way. Then act on it.
You can't act on what you can't put your finger on. Notice it daily, then turn the patterns into a monthly intention statement.
Buy a physical journal and a dedicated pen that is nice to write with. Writing by hand slows you down just enough to actually think.
Every day
- Stage 1Morning · 5 min
Set your intent for the day
Decide what you most want to get done today and how you want to show up. Commit fully — and accept up front that some of it is outside your control.
- Stage 2All day
Notice in the moment
Watch how you read situations and make calls, especially when a strong emotion kicks in. When a thought starts running the show, pause and tell yourself:
"This is just a thought, and not at all the thing it claims to represent."
Adapted from Epictetus. - Stage 3Evening · 5 min
End-of-day review
- Start
- Where did I miss a chance to lead the way I want to?
- Stop
- What did I do that worked against the leader I'm trying to be?
- Continue
- What did I do well that's worth repeating?
What theme keeps showing up in my journal this week — and what is it telling me?
Turn the patterns from your weekly reviews into one intention statement:
Be "Who + What" so that "Why".
Example
Be a leader who lets people finish their own work so that my team grows faster than I can carry it.
Miss a day? Resume — don't reconstruct it. Nothing to write? That's information too. Expect a pattern after six weeks, and the new behavior to feel automatic after three months.
Ask for feedback. Then act on it.
Most people never find out how they come across to others. Here's how to find out, and keep checking until it changes.
Ask about one behavior, not "how am I doing"
Ask someone who actually sees it happen
"I'm working on being more concise when I present to senior leaders — I tend to over-explain. Would you watch for that in Thursday's meeting and give me your honest read afterward?"
It names the behavior, sets them up in advance, and asks for the truth.
How to run it
Pick one behavior. Specific enough that people would notice it — or notice it missing. Start with a theme from Exercise 01, or something you already suspect.
Ask three to five people, not one. People who actually have line of sight on that behavior — not people who like you.
Name it, then ask forward. Tell them what you're watching for before it happens, not after — it's easier to observe than to remember.
Tell them what you changed. It's the only reason they'll keep being honest with you.
One conversation won't change much. Neither will one week of writing. The gap between how you see yourself and how others describe you when you're not in the room only closes with repetition.
Break the reaction down. Then act on it.
Some reactions happen faster than you can think — frustration, defensiveness, the urge to jump in. This exercise slows the moment down and replaces the reaction with one specific move.
The following exercise is based on Albert Ellis's work with leaders. He found they were rarely short on intelligence, business acumen, or strategy — they broke down by turning a practical problem into an emotional one. The rep below runs his ABC model, the core of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).
A Rep for Delegation
Built on Albert Ellis's ABC model.
- A · Activating Event
- What exact situation just occurred?You observe a mistake in progress on a task you have already delegated. Your instinct is to take it back and do it yourself.
- B · Beliefs
- What rigid "must" or demand am I running?Why isn't this person taking this as seriously as I do? If this doesn't get done right it reflects on me — and that means I'm not as competent as I need to be.
- C · Consequences
- What unproductive emotion or behavior is this driving?A flash of frustration, and the urge to step in and take the work back right now.
- D · Disputing
- Where is the evidence that this must not happen?Where is it written that delegated work has to go right the first time? A mistake getting corrected is not a verdict on how I lead — it's just a mistake getting corrected.
- E · Effective Thinking
- What is the rational, uncoupled truth?I hope they take this as seriously as I do, but if they don't, it's not the end of the world. My job is to develop people, not to do their work for them — and their mistake doesn't decide whether I'm good at mine.
- F · Feeling & Rep
- What physical, constructive move will I execute right now?Take ten seconds to picture yourself handling it calmly. Then have a brief, specific conversation about what needs correcting and why, and be clear about the standard. Give them 24 hours to fix it — and don't check in before then.
No new personality required. Just the same specific move, run the same way, until it holds up under pressure.
Who this is for
This works if you:
- Have tried to change a habit before and watched it not stick
- Care about how you come across to people, not just what you meant to do
- Are willing to practice something small and specific, on purpose, even when it's inconvenient
- Would rather find out whether it worked than feel good about having tried
This doesn't work if you:
- Want a label more than a behavior to change
- Are looking for a diagnosis of someone else, not yourself
- Want a program to roll out to a team or an organization
- Need clinical support — that's a different profession, and I'll refer you
This is what doing it looks like.
Most weeks, I'll post how the exercises went for me — what a colleague said, what showed up in my journal, what I changed. Eventually, other people's too. Reading about it isn't the work; watching someone do it is the next best thing.
If you want more
Most of this is free. Occasionally I take on a client who wants the full version: one problem at work, worked for ninety days, with numbers at both ends.