What are you putting off?

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 more important.

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.

Each time there was a perfectly reasonable explanation; something urgent had come up, a crisis needed attention, a priority had shifted.

And whilst neither leader meant any harm, the impact was exactly the same.

Because intent and impact are not the same thing.

Neither leader intended to send the message that people weren’t a priority.

But teams don’t experience our intentions. They experience our actions.

Let’s say that again for the people at the back: teams don’t experience our intentions, they experience our actions.

Leadership comes with two jobs.

There’s the work itself and then there’s leading the people who do the work.

The problem is that the work usually shouts louder.

Meanwhile, the person who seems to be coping quietly drops down the priority list because, well, they look fine.

But that’s an assumption.

You know they’re delivering but you don’t know how they’re doing.

When you repeatedly move a 1:1 because something more important comes up, you’re sending a message.

Whether you mean to or not, you’re telling that person where they sit in the pecking order of priorities.

The moment we become curious about the gap between our intention and our impact, everything starts to change.

Because that’s where growth lives.

Not in defending what we meant, but in understanding what actually landed.

Most leaders I work with have good intentions.

They absolutely intend to make time for their people.

They’ll do it when they get around to it.

So if that’s you, here you go. Your very own Round Tuit.

Because leadership isn’t what happens after you’ve finished the important work.

Leadership is the important work.

Rock on,

Jo