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 two or three behaviors that actually cost you, then practice them relentlessly. Not until you get them right — until you can't get them 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 report that named 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 Thursday.
Every one of those stops at knowing. What builds the daily habit of doing is smaller than any of them — one question, asked again, until it changes something.
Build your own feedback loop.
Most people never find out how they're actually coming across. This is how you build that feedback loop yourself — ask one question of them, ask one question of yourself, and repeat until something changes.
One piece of advice
Ask someone you work with
"If you could give me one piece of advice that would make me more effective, what would it be?"
"What have you seen that makes you say that?"
Advice alone isn't actionable — "be more decisive" tells you nothing about Monday. The second question turns their advice back into the thing they actually saw, which is the part you can work on.
How to run it
Don't schedule it. This is a hallway question, not a meeting. The moment it needs an invite, it stops happening.
Say nothing back but thank you. No explaining, no context, no "well, the reason I did that." Defending it once teaches them not to answer next time.
Ask five people, not one. One answer is an opinion. The same answer from three people is your reputation.
Ask again in ninety days. If the advice has changed, you have. If it hasn't, you haven't.
Where the real learning happens
Most people wait for an annual review to learn how they're doing. This builds your own feedback loop instead — 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 judge whether it worked.
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.
Not yet
Do this daily and weekly for six months before you go looking for what's next. Section 03 is the one or two percent — the kind of edge a professional athlete chases once the fundamentals are already automatic, one specific rep at a time. Chase it too early and it's just another idea you never actually run.
What a rep actually looks like
The loop will take most leaders a long way. Occasionally, though, one specific behavior won't move. A rep isolates that exact moment and drills a specific alternative until it's automatic — the same way an athlete trains one move, not the whole game.
A Rep for Delegation
- Cue
- You observe a mistake in progress on a task you have already delegated. Your instinct is to take it back and do it yourself.
- The Story I Tell Myself
- 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 capable or in control as I need to be.
- The Preference
- 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. I'll give them clear feedback and the opportunity to correct it themselves.
- The Rep
- Instead of taking the task back, have a brief, specific conversation with the person about what needs to be corrected and why. Be clear about the standard. Then step back and give them 24 hours to work on it before you reassess. Do not check in before the 24 hours are up.
- The Anchor
- "Don't be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you've been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?" — Marcus Aurelius, Book 7
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 loop 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.