You leave a leadership event with a notebook full of ideas. You can already think of three things you want to do differently.
Then you get back to work. There are messages to answer, a problem that needs fixing and a meeting that started five minutes ago.
The idea may still matter. It just hasn’t found a place in your day yet.
So rather than asking yourself to become a different leader by Monday, choose one situation in which you could practise a different response. Here’s a seven-day plan you can adapt after a keynote. It’s a suggested exercise, not a guarantee of lasting behaviour change. The point is to give an idea a fair test in real work.
Before you leave choose a situation
Write down one moment you expect to encounter during the next week.
Perhaps a colleague will challenge your proposal. Someone will bring you a problem you’re tempted to solve for them. Another team may miss a deadline, and you’ll notice yourself reaching for a familiar explanation.
Make the situation specific enough that you’ll recognise it. “Be more open-minded” is hard to act on. “When someone disagrees with my plan, ask what they can see that I might be missing” gives you something to try.
Choose a situation where a small experiment is appropriate. Safety-critical decisions and urgent operational problems still need the required procedures and expertise.
Day one notice the story
In my work, I use Catch, Challenge, Change to help people examine their first interpretation and choose their response. Start with Catch.
Imagine someone hasn’t replied to your request. You notice yourself thinking, “They don’t care about this project.”
What do you actually know? Perhaps you sent a message yesterday and haven’t received a reply. That is different from knowing why they haven’t replied.
Write two short lines: “What happened?” and “What am I making it mean?”
You don’t have to pretend your interpretation is wrong. You’re making room to check it before you act on it.
Days two and three test a different response
Challenge the first explanation. What else could be true? What information would help you tell the difference?
In the hypothetical example, the person may be avoiding the task. They may also be waiting for information, unclear about the deadline or dealing with something you can’t see. Guessing a kinder story isn’t the same as finding out.
The Change step might be a direct question: “I’m waiting on the figures for Thursday. Is anything getting in the way, and can we agree when I’ll have them?”
That keeps the expectation clear without making an accusation you haven’t checked. You’re not abandoning accountability. You’re being more precise about the issue.
Afterwards, note what happened. Did you learn something useful? Did the question make the next step clearer? Did you still need to address a missed commitment?
Day four ask someone to challenge your thinking
Choose a colleague you trust and explain what you’re practising. You don’t need to make it a big announcement.
You might say, “I’m trying to check my assumptions before I respond. If you notice me jumping to a conclusion in our planning meeting, could you ask what evidence I’m using?”
Agree how to do that respectfully. Being called out in front of a room may not be the support either of you wants.
If you lead a team, you can model this yourself: “I’ve made an assumption there. Let me check it.” Then actually check it. The words mean little if the decision is already closed.
Days five and six try it where work already happens
Use an existing meeting or one-to-one rather than creating a new programme for a single idea.
Before a decision, try asking, “What are we treating as a fact that might be an assumption?” Give people time to answer. If you’re the senior person in the room, resist immediately explaining why your first view was right.
For a coaching conversation, you could ask someone to explain the options they’ve considered before offering your solution. The aim is not to withhold help. It is to understand their reasoning and decide what support is needed. There’s more on that in how to coach a team member without taking over.
Keep the experiment small enough that you can tell what you tried. Changing ten things at once makes the review harder.
Day seven review the attempt honestly
Ask yourself three questions: where did I use the idea, what happened, and what will I adjust?
“I remembered the question twice” is useful information. “I forgot when the conversation got tense” is useful too. Look at what would make the next attempt easier. You might put the question at the top of your meeting notes or agree a prompt with your colleague.
Don’t turn a week’s experience into a claim that the keynote improved organisational performance. A useful conversation, an agreed next step and a business outcome are different things. Longer-term changes need their own evidence and review.
If the idea helped, repeat it. If it didn’t, examine the situation and the way you applied it. And if the real problem is workload, authority or a broken process, don’t ask a mindset exercise to carry all of that.
Make room to practise
The Human Advantage can start a conversation about assumptions and leadership. The Leadership Mindset workshop gives teams space to work on a real challenge, practise coaching and choose an action to apply within seven days.
If you’re planning how to follow through after an event, get in touch. We can discuss whether a workshop fits what your team needs. For now, one real situation and one different response is a sensible place to begin.
