Why do leaders fall back into old habits – even when they know exactly what they need to change?
In Part 3 of Episode 10, I conclude my conversation with Executive and Leadership Coach David Monro-Jones by exploring what it actually takes to turn development into sustained behavioral change.
One of the challenges is simple: under pressure, good intentions often lose to established habits.
We discuss why leadership development needs to be manageable rather than ambitious for its own sake. Instead of trying to change everything at once, leaders may be far more effective focusing on one or two meaningful behaviors and building from there.
Drawing on BJ Fogg’s work on Tiny Habits, we explore how small changes can create momentum – particularly when development has to compete with the realities of an already demanding role.
And that raises another important question:
If your job already consumes 100% of your time, where does development fit?
Meaningful development often requires making space for new behaviors, which may also mean letting go of old ways of working.
David and I also discuss the difference between training and coaching. If someone does not know how to do something, the answer may be training. But what if they already have the skill and still aren’t using it?
The barrier may lie elsewhere – in confidence, fear, established habits, competing priorities, or the environment around them. And those barriers require a different approach.
We also explore the role of coaches and mentors in keeping development on track, particularly when the pressures of everyday work begin pulling leaders back toward familiar patterns.
Ultimately, leadership development has to work in the real world.
Because identifying what needs to change is only the beginning.
The real challenge is making that change realistic enough to practice, meaningful enough to sustain, and useful enough to improve how someone actually leads.
If you’re interested in leadership development, executive coaching, behavioral change, and what makes development work beyond the classroom, this conversation is for you.
