Development · assessment · coaching
Less knowing,
more doing.
Knowledge is cheap. Behavior is everything. Success requires getting in more reps at doing the right things until they become habit. That's the game: Pick the one behavior that actually costs you, then practice it relentlessly. Not until you get it right — until you can't get it wrong.
Knowing isn't doing.
You have probably already done at least one of these. All three stop at knowing. None of them build the daily habit of doing.
The book with the secret sauce.
Five pillars. Ten habits. One framework, guaranteed to work for every leader who reads it — as though a weekly one-to-one costs a naturally organized person and a naturally spontaneous one the same amount. It doesn't. There is no secret sauce, and pretending otherwise is why the resolution lasted nine days.
The class that ended in applause.
Ninety minutes, a good facilitator, a room that nodded along together. The applause at the end was real. By Monday, everyone ran the same meeting the same way they always had.
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.
None of that means reading books about leadership, watching videos about leadership, taking courses, or taking assessments is bad — none of it is. It just can't substitute for an ongoing habit of seeking feedback, which is exactly how a good book goes unfinished and a good report ends up in a drawer. Build the habit first — then, whichever you use, you'll actually know what to do with it.
What follows are three exercises, run in order: name what's getting in your way, ask people who see you for the truth, and then run the fuller version once that's routine. Small and repeatable. That's the whole point.
Name what's getting in your way.
Most people wait for an annual review to learn how they're doing. Start noticing it yourself — pay attention daily, then convert the pattern into an intention weekly.
What happened today that I'm still thinking about — and what does it tell me about how I'm leading?
What theme keeps showing up in my journal this week — and what is it telling me?
What is the one thing I'll do differently next week — and when exactly will I do it?
Miss a day — just resume, don't reconstruct it. Nothing to write about — that's information too. Give it six weeks before you expect to see a pattern, three months before you move onto Exercise 02.
Ask for feedback. Then act on it.
Most people never find out how they're actually coming across. This is how you find out — name one specific behavior, ask a handful of people who actually see it happen, and close the loop when they tell you it's actually changed.
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 am I doing?" gets you nothing back. A specific, forward-looking ask gets you an actual answer — and tells the other person you can handle hearing it.
How to run it
Pick one behavior. Specific enough that people would recognize it if they saw it — or noticed it was missing.
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.
Close the loop. When you act on what someone told you, go back and tell them. 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.
Go deeper. Only after the habit holds.
Exercises one and two build the daily habit of noticing and asking. This is the fuller, more structured version of that same practice. Skip straight here, though, and it won't hold — the habit has to come first.
The following exercise is based on Albert Ellis' work with leaders. He found they were rarely short on intelligence, business acumen, or strategy — their breakdowns came from escalating a practical problem into a secondary emotional one. The mistake is rarely the real problem; what they decide it means about them is. Ellis built an entire model of therapy around that distinction, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), and the rep below runs his ABC model start to finish.
A Rep for Delegation
Built on Albert Ellis's ABC model, the foundation of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).
- 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?Before the conversation, take ten seconds to picture yourself running it calmly — measured, not defensive. Then have a brief, specific conversation with the person about what needs to be corrected and why. Be clear about the standard. Step back and give them 24 hours to work on it before you reassess. Do not check in before the 24 hours are up.
No new personality required. Just the same specific move, run the same way, until it holds up under pressure.
Who this is for
Two honest lists.
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 is not for you 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 is a different profession and I will say so and refer
This is what doing it looks like.
Most weeks, I'll post how the exercises actually went for me — what a colleague said, what showed up in the journal, what I changed because of it. Eventually, other people's versions too. Reading about it isn't the work. Watching someone else actually do it is the next best thing.
If you want more
Most of what's here is free — the method, the examples, the Substack. From time to time I take on a handful of clients who want the full version: an assessment, a written plan, and the ninety-day proof that it worked.