Step 1: Develop Awareness of Your Effectiveness as a Leader

Being a successful leader begins with paying attention to what you're doing, that is, being consistently aware of what's working and not working in your thoughts and actions as a leader.

Self‐awareness is not just a crucial component of the leadership logic chain. It is fundamental to leadership intelligence. And you'll discover in Chapter 4, “Get to Know Your Real Self,” paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and behavior is vital. For now, try to spot triggers for unproductive behavior, such as times of the day or certain kinds of people. One leader we know became irritable like clockwork every day around 3:00 p.m. If her team met around that time, they could count on her being sarcastic and unreceptive to their ideas. Her employees coped by making jokes about “the three o'clock monster.” It wasn't until a brave colleague approached her about her mid‐afternoon drop in civility that she learned to avoid scheduling meetings at that time and to take a 10‐minute break for some deep breathing and a healthy snack.

Noticing patterns is another form of self‐awareness and one of the most powerful ways to gather information about your leadership effectiveness. Patterns are thoughts, feelings, or actions that you repeat over and over, as if on “autopilot,” in response to certain situations. Some patterns may work well for you as a leader; for example, when interviewing job candidates, you always make a point of sharing your values and asking about theirs. Including a discussion of mutual values during each selection process gives you essential information about whether a prospective employee is a good fit for you and your team. When your values and those of a promising candidate are aligned, you also get a jump start on emotional bonding with a likely new team member.

When you're aware of successful patterns, you can expand their use to other situations where they may have even more impact. For example, you could use awareness of the benefits of discussing values with job candidates to expand this practice to others, thus enhancing your influence with peers, clients, family members, and friends.

Other patterns don't work so well. None of us is perfect. We all get trapped in unproductive patterns at some point in our lives. Certain patterns may once have been positive, helping you accomplish important goals earlier in your life or leadership roles. But as you grew and developed, they became negative or limiting.

Negative patterns often persist precisely because they served as success strategies in the past. We were rewarded for following those patterns and, in the absence of self‐awareness, continued them out of habit, even when they no longer produced successful results. That was the case with Randy, CEO of a large financial services business. Randy was a superstar who rose quickly in his career thanks to his smart and strong work ethic. But Randy was somewhat of a “Lone Ranger,” conscientious to a fault, expecting far more of himself than others. Eventually, the very conscientiousness that had propelled him to the top took its toll on him. As Chuck coached Randy, he opened up about how overwhelmed he had felt with all that was going on in his firm. “I just feel like I have 15 balls in the air all the time, and I can't let any of them drop,” he explained. “I don't know how much longer I can go at this pace. Maybe I'll hang in there for another five years, then retire because I'll be all out of gas by then.”

Chuck sensed that Randy was about to burn out. So, Chuck suggested, “What if you shared some of those responsibilities with your executive team?”

“But these are my responsibilities,” Randy countered. “I can't just offload my job on them.”

Chuck was empathetic. “I can appreciate where you're coming from,” he said. “You don't want to overwhelm your team. But have you ever thought about who might want your job someday? Empowering them to do some of what you do now could be a great development opportunity. Sharing your CEO responsibilities might also inspire them to create development opportunities for their own teams.”

Randy sat quietly for a few moments. Then he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and replied, “It never occurred to me that I might be denying them growth opportunities, that they might want to step up and demonstrate that they could handle more.” Randy saw that he didn't need to stay stuck in a negative pattern. He could improve his own life and, at the same time, create opportunities for others on his team. Randy immediately started talking about what projects he could share and with whom. Then Chuck asked, “Okay, let's say you've done that. What would you do with your new free time?”

“I've always wanted to learn how to fly,” Randy said with a big grin. True to form, Randy didn't waste any time. He enrolled in flying lessons, and within a year earned his pilot's license, got his instrument rating, and bought his own plane. Empowering others allowed Randy to renew his energy for life outside of work while providing leadership development opportunities for his executive team. Win‐win.

Randy's story is just one example of the need to recognize patterns that become less effective as you mature and your team or organization grows. When you're a leader, everything around you is constantly changing. That's why self‐awareness is so central to your success. Some behavior patterns that helped you when you led a team of five people don't work when you're leading an organization of 500. Patterns you relied on when leading a group of experienced professionals may not cut it when leading a group of rookies. When what you've been doing no longer seems to be working, consider how and why your previously successful behaviors aren't working for you anymore.

Identifying negative patterns was also key to helping Anna, another of Chuck's clients, enhance her leadership intelligence at work and home. By all accounts, Anna was the picture of success: plenty of money, a beautiful home, and a thriving business with clients who loved her. But in her heart, Anna was miserable. Every day she felt stressed and overwhelmed. Anna was the sole breadwinner of her family—an unemployed husband and adult children living at home with her. Anna worked nonstop every day, never taking time for lunch or even a quick break. She stayed late at the office most nights, finishing work her employees should have done. When she finally got home around 8:00 p.m., exhausted and hungry, she gulped down whatever high‐calorie convenience foods were on hand, then fell into bed. Before she knew it, Anna had packed on an extra 100 pounds.

With Chuck's help, Anna identified a crucial pattern: her failure to care for herself and her tendency to put everyone else's needs before hers. Most people will occasionally prioritize others’ needs and think nothing of it. In fact, most overachievers have learned that to succeed, they need to help others periodically as a kind of “quid pro quo” to get their own needs met. Anna took that principle to the extreme and never got her needs met. She consistently put her own needs last.

During one of Chuck's coaching conversations with Anna discussing her lack of self‐care, he asked her where she learned that her responsibility was to care for everyone else and not take care of herself. Without any hesitation, Anna shared that she was raised by a single mom. When Anna was seven years old, her mom was diagnosed with cancer. From then until her mom died when Anna was 11 years old, Anna was responsible for taking care of her mom. Most children at that age can count on parents who care for them and do their best to meet their kids' needs. Anna didn't have that luxury. With no other family to help, Anna had to attend to her mother's needs if they were both to survive. But now Anna was 55 years old and still caught in the same pattern. What had helped Anna and her mother when Anna was a child wasn't helping her now. Anna took care of her clients, her employees, and her family. Instead of working through others, she took on everything others didn't do. Sacrificing herself for everyone else was wrecking her health and happiness. When Anna expressed frustration that her kids were not functioning independently, Chuck's coaching helped her realize how she had contributed to their “failure to launch.” Anna's well‐intentioned but misguided pattern wasn't just detrimental to her family's growth and happiness. It also robbed her employees of the responsibilities and accountability that would allow them to develop professionally.

Knowing the origin of patterns that no longer serve you can help you begin to make new choices once circumstances have changed. To illustrate, Rick Bower had been the U.S. snowboarding team coach since 2006. His coaching approach had been stellar for the eight years that preceded the 2014 Winter Olympic Sochi games. But some of Rick's coaching patterns were not a match for the challenges of the disastrous Sochi games. Rick saw that there had been a fundamental breakdown in communication between the coaches and athletes. According to Rick, “People were siloed and isolated. Because we weren't talking, athletes didn't adjust their runs to the current conditions and were rigid in their approach to the competition.” As the 2018 Olympic Games approached, Rick decided to change his approach. He chose to be less autocratic and more collaborative with his team. He made suggestions and sought input from the team and other coaches about what they thought would be most helpful, then incorporated their ideas into a new training routine. Rick encouraged his athletes to spend more time together as a team. In addition to their usual solo training runs, they now spent time watching their teammates perform. They did their conditioning workouts as a group. They also started attending video reviews together and often ate dinner as a team. Rick's new team‐centered approach to coaching fostered better communication, camaraderie, and commitment. Working as a team also paid off in individuals’ performance since the new regimen offered continuous opportunities to learn from other athletes.

Step 2: Decide to Adopt New Behaviors

In step 2, we focus on decisions to adopt new ways of acting that counter unproductive patterns. That's because removing obstacles to effective leadership is much more challenging than continuing successful practices. Implementing the leadership logic chain includes making conscious choices to continue or expand behaviors that contribute to your leadership effectiveness.

Also, it's essential to think of the term “behavior” in a broad sense. Your behavior consists not only of actions others can see, such as speaking kindly to a follower, but of your private thoughts, such as “I'd like to spend more time coaching my new employee.” Psychologists often refer to thinking as “cognitive behavior.”

With that in mind, let's explore ways of changing patterned behavior to enhance your leadership effectiveness. These three practices can help you transform an unproductive pattern:

• Envision your ideal day or optimal situation.
• Define what you would do differently to have an ideal day or situation.
• Identify incremental steps you could take that would contribute to an ideal day or optimal situation.

In Anna's case, once she recognized not only her nonproductive caretaking pattern but where it originated, she was faced with a choice—continue that pattern or begin to take better care of herself. When Chuck asked Anna to envision her ideal day and the actions she could take to make that ideal day a reality, Anna decided to start very gradually by focusing on a day in which she would make time for strategies to achieve a healthier weight. For instance, part of her ideal day would include taking time for a nutritious lunch. Although there were many more elements to Anna's vision of her ideal day, her decision to focus on small steps made it more likely she could eventually achieve her goals for change. Anna's plan to make modest changes that would gradually move her in the direction of her ideal day is consistent with performance improvement expert James Clear's advice:

So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, traveling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make some earth‐shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.²

Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent isn't notable (and sometimes it isn't even noticeable). But it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run.

In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. (In other words, it won't impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound, and you suddenly find a big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don't.

Step 3: Demonstrating New Behaviors

Our colleague Ray Kelly tells this riddle: Five frogs are sitting on a log. One decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? Five. That's because deciding to do something and actually doing it are not the same. Once you've figured out what new behaviors will contribute the most to becoming a more effective leader, it's time to put those decisions into practice.

Chuck's client Anna followed through on the behavioral changes she had decided would improve her life and work. She started bringing healthy snacks to work and made a point of drinking more water throughout the day. Over the following year, she took regular walks and started using the office stairs instead of the elevator. Gradually, Anna began to feel better, had more energy, and lost weight.

Now that Anna was on track with changes supporting her physical health, she recycled back to step 2 (Decide to adopt new behaviors) to envision elements of her ideal day related to work practices. For example, much of Anna's business success had resulted from long hours devoted to client work. One cause of Anna's overwork was allowing her assistant to overschedule her day. That meant Anna was burdened by far more daily appointments and meetings than was reasonable over the long term. For years, Anna had simply accepted the schedule that her assistant arranged, leading to extreme stress and fatigue. Fortunately, Anna managed to keep her clients happy, but it was only a matter of time before her work overload would result in mistakes that could affect clients and damage her brand. So, Anna took the next step of meeting with her assistant to clarify what Anna's schedule would ideally be like day to day. Anna needed to scale back her appointments to give her time to think more strategically about how to sustain and grow her business. She needed time to manage the practice—not just her firm's clients. That meant that Anna would have to hold her employees accountable for their respective client responsibilities rather than routinely picking up the slack for her employees when they dropped the ball.

Thinking back to Rick Bower's coaching challenges at the 2014 Winter Olympics, Rick realized that he needed to change his coaching patterns. By the time the next Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, arrived, Rick was a different coach. Not only was Rick more positive, but he had also prepared his team for all possible conditions and made sure his athletes hadn't over‐trained. Rick was hyper‐prepared mentally and physically for all possible scenarios. That included ensuring the team had extra batteries and clothing and insisting that he and his team showed up early for practice and competition events. This pattern shift enabled him to focus on his athletes and their performance. Rick's self‐management allowed him to focus on what he could influence—his athletes. The result? The Pyeongchang Games were far different from Sochi. The U.S. Men's and Women's snowboard teams dominated easily, winning four gold medals, the only team to win multiple golds in snowboarding, and seven medals overall. Never before had a team taken home so much hardware at an Olympic game. Four years later, Rick demonstrated the same level of preparedness and open communication during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, where he was coaching Chloe Kim, a 2018 Olympic gold medal winner. Chloe had had a rough practice ahead of the final event. She and Rick knew they needed to make some adjustments to her final run. So, he sought input from fellow coach JJ Thomas. The spirit of collaboration and teamwork that Rick and JJ shared undoubtedly contributed to Chloe's second gold medal in women's snowboard halfpipe.

As you start to practice new behavior, keep these three ideas in mind:

Changing your behavior is not an easy task. That means accepting that you won't always have an ideal day or get the results you ideally want in certain situations. But you're more likely to be successful if you take an incremental approach. As author James Clear points out:

… breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.³

Also, if you remain committed to acting in ways that support your current purpose, values, and goals, we're confident you'll have more good days than bad. And you'll achieve better results as a leader than ever.

Expect to make mistakes. If you aspire to be a more effective leader, you're likely a high performer who hates making mistakes. You may expect to consistently perform at your best. That's unrealistic. It may even lead you to stay in your comfort zone and avoid taking the risks needed to learn and grow. One of the most successful pattern changes you can make as a leader is experimenting with doing things differently and accepting that your initial attempts to change your routines won't always succeed. The good news is that when you don't succeed, you can use what you learned from a mistake to be more effective going forward. That's precisely the type of experience Don MacPherson had when he was president of the human capital measurement company Modern Survey. As Don recalls:

I had an employee who was not performing up to expectations, even though she had all the capabilities and tools to be a stellar sales representative for our company. I spent a lot of time coaching her and was frustrated when her performance didn't improve. When I reflected on my efforts to help her, I realized that all my coaching was focused on what she wasn't doing right. Since that wasn't working, I decided to change my approach. I started meeting with her at the end of each week to discuss what she was doing well. Right away, her attitude improved. I could almost see her floating out of my office, optimistic and feeling like she was capable of anything. She started crushing her sales goals, and within a year became our top sales rep.

Communicate why you're engaging in new behavior. Whether you're engaging in new behavior as an individual leader or spearheading organizational changes, one of your most powerful tools is the ability to acknowledge any mistakes you may have made; to explain to followers why you are shifting direction, and to communicate how these changes will benefit them as individuals or as a team. For example, because of the coronavirus pandemic, think2perform, where Doug and Chuck are part of the leadership team, changed its business delivery system from one that primarily offered in‐person consulting and training, supplemented by a few online products, to a heavily digital delivery system. At the time of this writing, the constraints against in‐person delivery imposed by the pandemic were easing. But, like many firms, think2perform made a strategic decision never to revert to its pre‐pandemic delivery system. Digital offerings would become a permanent and major component of the firm's delivery system. This might have made some team members worry that the company was trying to replace them with online product offerings. However, as CEO Doug pointed out at the time,

We want to avoid having our consultants think we don't care about them, and that we're shifting away from consulting to a product business, which is not our intent. We need to explain this quite artfully. We need our people to know that we care a lot about them and are prepared to invest in helping them succeed in a permanent digital environment. It's not going to be an easy thing. But if we communicate carefully and repeatedly, we can pull it off.

Step 4: Give Those You Influence a Chance to Change Their Behavior in Response

Once you've established new ways of leading and communicated with followers your desire to make any needed changes, it's time to encourage them to follow your example. Share your journey with them. Encourage them to be self‐reflective and determine how they can improve their own behavior. Your new behavior will affect how others act, but it will rarely result in an instant change on the part of your followers. This step is often the most challenging for leaders to adopt for several reasons. First, it may take some time for those you hope to influence to trust that you're committed to the behavioral changes you promise. Followers may understandably assume that your changes are only temporary, much like the New Year's resolutions to lose weight that fall by the wayside after just a few weeks. Followers may hesitate to get on board with your changes for fear that your “new and improved” leadership approach won't last.

Second, remember that you have had much more time to prepare for your change than your followers have. Be patient. Give your people time to accept and adapt to the changes you are making in your leadership behavior.

Finally, when you communicate about change, it's helpful to repeat your intentions often—announcing a change in your leadership approach once is far from enough. Many leaders over‐rely on a single email announcing a change, only to be disappointed that followers did not respond to the message as they'd hoped. When communicating about your planned change, once is not enough. “I sent an email” to announce a change in a leader's behavior is far from influential. You will likely need to use multiple forms of communication for many months to reinforce your message of change. To further help followers understand and support any change, make sure you consistently communicate answers to these questions:

• Where are we going?
• What's in it for me to go there with you?
• What's expected of me?
• What can I expect from you?
• If I need support or help, where do I go, and whom do I talk with?

…

As leaders, we're influencing people constantly, whether we intend to or not. We need to ensure that our actions are consistent with our intentions. The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously stated, “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.” The examples in this chapter, including the experiences of Rick Bower and Anna, clearly demonstrate that managing our behavior—doing what we intend to do—begins with self‐awareness. It's almost counterintuitive that to build a great relationship with or influence others, the person I must pay the most attention to is me. But what is the ultimate purpose of that focus on myself? And how will I know I'm managing myself well? To answer that question, I need a benchmark, and that benchmark is my ideal self. In the next chapter, “Aim to Be Your Ideal Self,” you'll have a chance to discover who you want to be ideally and how living in alignment with that ideal will benefit you and those you hope to lead.