Ask most people what they should be doing differently, and they can tell you. Quickly, and with a fair bit of accuracy.
Ask them why they aren’t doing it, and things go a bit quieter.
That gap is the most interesting thing, and it is worth understanding, because almost nothing else you try will work until you do.
It starts with what you want, not what is wrong
The first conversation is usually longer than people expect, and it is almost entirely about where you are trying to get to. Not a five-year plan and not a job title, though there is nothing wrong with wanting that. Usually, it is something more like: what does good look like, and how would you know if you got there?
This sounds soft. It isn’t. Most people arrive with a goal that turns out, under questioning, to belong to somebody else. Getting to the version you actually want is the first real piece of work, and a lot changes once it’s clear.
And if you don’t know what you want yet, that’s not a reason to wait. Nobody arrives with it neatly worked out. What people do have is a very clear sense of what they don’t want, and that is more than enough to start with. You work backwards from there.
It’s never the general version of the problem
By the second or third conversation, we are usually not talking in general terms anymore. We are talking about THAT Thursday meeting, the person on your team you keep giving the benefit of the doubt to, or the email you have rewritten four times and not sent.
That is where the actual pattern lives. Everyone can describe their leadership style in the abstract, and most people describe it generously. What you did at your last team meeting is harder to argue with, and far more useful.
The part that does the work
And here is the thing that surprises most people. You almost always know what to do. You could advise a friend in your exact situation and do it well. Quite well.
The gap is between knowing it on a Sunday and doing it on a Wednesday afternoon when you are tired, under pressure, someone has just pushed the thing you find the hardest, and your patience has gone out the window.
That gap is where everything actually happens. We close it through repetition. Being asked the real questions until the answers arrive. Having somewhere to bring the attempt that didn’t go well and unpacking the learnings, with someone who has no stake in your excuses.
That is the mechanism. Sometimes an epiphany, but it is about practice. Practice, with a witness.
By month three, most people aren’t surfacing just problems anymore. They are bringing me decisions they have already made and want to think through properly. That shift is the thing I look for.
And let me be blunt about money
I know it’s unfashionable to talk about this in my line of work. I am going to anyway.
There is an idea that this kind of work sits apart from the practical stuff. That you deal with the inner life over here, and the numbers, the real stuff, over there.
I have never found that to be true.
Most people I sit with want something concrete. The step up and the pay rise. The number their team hasn’t hit and the business success. None of that is shallow. Wanting things isn’t a character flaw, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
But how you think, what you avoid, and the story running underneath about what you are worth will shape those numbers as much as any sales skill or spreadsheet know-how.
It is one conversation, not two. And it is best to have that conversation out loud.
Where this leaves you
If you have read this far, you probably have something you have been turning over for a while.
So, back to the question at the top. Why haven’t you done it yet?
Let me give you my take on one possible why. It is not because you don’t know how. Almost nobody is stuck for lack of knowing. It is that doing the change on your own asks you to be the person inside the pattern and the person watching it at the same time. That is a hard trick to pull off when you are already at capacity.
That is all a witness really is. Someone whose only job in the room is to notice. A coach can do that. So can a mentor, a boss worth having, or a friend who will tell you the truth. Find whichever one fits.
And if none of them fit right now, do the smaller thing. Write down the one you have been turning over. Not the plan, just the thing. Most people never do, and it is remarkable how much shifts once it exists in words rather than in the back of your head.
As always, if you invest in yourself, the rewards will be unfathomable.
Until next time.
