I was in the garage the other day when I spotted this hanging on the wall.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s been in the family for years.<\/p>\n
In fact, I remember my mum giving it to my dad sometime in the 1980s. You can probably hazard a guess as to why.<\/p>\n
It always makes me smile, but this week it also made me think.<\/p>\n
Within the space of a few days, I had two coaching conversations that were almost mirror images of each other.<\/p>\n
The first was with a leader who was reflecting on their constant busy-ness and realising that they hadn’t been holding regular 1:1s with their team. Not because they didn’t care. They genuinely wanted to do them.<\/p>\n
But something always seemed more important.<\/p>\n
The second conversation was with a leader from a completely different organisation who was frustrated because their own manager kept cancelling their 1:1s. Again and again.<\/p>\n
Each time there was a perfectly reasonable explanation; something urgent had come up, a crisis needed attention, a priority had shifted.<\/p>\n
And whilst neither leader meant any harm, the impact was exactly the same.<\/p>\n
Because intent and impact are not the same thing.<\/p>\n
Neither leader intended to send the message that people weren’t a priority.<\/p>\n
But teams don’t experience our intentions. They experience our actions.<\/p>\n
Let’s say that again for the people at the back: teams don’t experience our intentions, they experience our actions.<\/strong><\/p>\n Leadership comes with two jobs.<\/p>\n There’s the work itself and then there’s leading the people who do the work.<\/p>\n The problem is that the work usually shouts louder.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the person who seems to be coping quietly drops down the priority list because, well, they look fine.<\/p>\n But that’s an assumption.<\/p>\n You know they’re delivering but you don’t know how they’re doing.<\/p>\n When you repeatedly move a 1:1 because something more important comes up, you’re sending a message.<\/p>\n Whether you mean to or not, you’re telling that person where they sit in the pecking order of priorities.<\/p>\n The moment we become curious about the gap between our intention and our impact, everything starts to change.<\/p>\n Because that’s where growth lives.<\/p>\n Not in defending what we meant, but in understanding what actually landed.<\/p>\n Most leaders I work with have good intentions.<\/p>\n They absolutely intend to make time for their people.<\/p>\n They’ll do it when they get around to it.<\/p>\n So if that’s you, here you go. Your very own Round Tuit.<\/p>\n Because leadership isn’t what happens after you’ve finished the important work.<\/p>\n Leadership is the important work.<\/p>\n Rock on, I was in the garage the other day when I spotted this hanging on the wall. It’s been in the family for years. In fact, I remember my mum giving it to my dad sometime in the 1980s. You can probably hazard a guess as to why. It always makes me smile, but this week it also made me think. Within the space of a few days, I had two coaching conversations that were almost mirror images of each other. The first was with a leader who was reflecting on their constant busy-ness and realising that they hadn’t been holding regular 1:1s with their team. Not because they didn’t care. They genuinely wanted to do them. But something always seemed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetrainingrock.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Jo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"