What separates good leaders from those who consistently drive results?
Not grand strategies or charismatic speeches, but the leadership habits they practise every day.
Across organisations, it’s often the most effective leadership habits that make the difference, shaping culture, improving decision-making, and driving performance over time. To explore this, we asked experienced leaders and advisors one simple question:
What’s one leadership habit you’ve seen consistently deliver results in your clients?
Their responses reveal three distinct but equally powerful leadership habits that drive results, from reflective practice and embodied presence to creating informal spaces where the truth can surface early.
Together, they show how leadership impact isn’t built in big moments, but through small, intentional habits that quietly compound, strengthening trust, clarity, and performance over time.
Charles McLachlan
Founder, FuturePerfect
A habit of reflective practice is the most powerful leadership habit, in my experience.
Whether this is personal reflection, 1-2-1 reflection, or team reflection, the three questions to kick off reflection are:
– What went well?
– What could be done better?
– What do we want to do more of?
Not rocket science, but creates a culture of openness, humility and forward momentum for continuous improvement.
The power of simplicity!
Thom Dennis
CEO, Serenity in Leadership
The Leadership Habit: Embodied Presence
After three decades working with leaders, from the military to Fortune 500 executives, I’ve witnessed countless leadership frameworks come and go. But one practice consistently transforms both leaders and their organisations: cultivating embodied presence.
The Habit and Why It Matters
Embodied presence isn’t just “being there”, it’s bringing your complete attention, awareness, and physical grounding to each interaction. It’s the difference between attending a meeting while mentally drafting emails versus being fully engaged with the humans in front of you.
Modern neuroscience reveals why this matters: when leaders maintain genuine presence, their nervous systems help regulate those around them. This creates shared physiological states that enable collaboration, creativity, and clear thinking. Without this presence, even brilliant strategies fail because people remain in subtle threat states that limit their cognitive capacity.
How It Shows Up in Real Situations
A CEO client discovered his breath became shallow whenever discussing budget challenges, unconsciously signaling anxiety to his team even while his words projected confidence. Once aware, he learned to regulate his breathing before financial discussions. Result: his team stopped catastrophizing and started problem-solving.
Another example: A tech executive habitually checked her phone during one-on-ones, believing she was multitasking efficiently. When she committed to putting devices away and maintaining eye contact for just the first five minutes of each conversation, her team’s engagement scores jumped 30% within three months. More importantly, they started bringing her problems early rather than hiding them until crisis point.
What Makes It Stick
Presence becomes sustainable through simple, repeatable practices rather than grand gestures:
– Starting meetings with 30 seconds of silence to allow actual arrival
– Taking three conscious breaths before difficult conversations
– Walking meetings for complex decisions (movement changes how we process)
– Regular “state checks” – noticing your physical tension and breathing patterns
The key is making these practices structural rather than depending on individual discipline. One client now begins every leadership team meeting with what they call “landing time” – 60 seconds where everyone simply arrives. It felt awkward initially; now they can’t imagine starting without it.
Results I’ve Seen
When leaders develop embodied presence:
– Communication shifts from transactional to transformational
– “Undiscussables” surface naturally because people feel safe
– Decision-making improves (the body often knows before the mind)
– Meeting effectiveness increases while meeting time decreases
– Retention improves, particularly among high performers who crave authentic connection
How I Help Clients Build This Habit
We start small: one meeting, one practice. I often introduce somatic awareness exercises from my military background, where maintaining presence under pressure can be life-or-death. We identify their specific “presence disruptors” (that shallow breathing, the fidgeting, the mental rehearsing) and develop personal cues for returning to presence.
Most importantly, we frame this not as another performance metric but as recovery of a natural capacity—one that modern organisational life has trained out of us but never truly destroyed.
Steven Windmill
Chair: Everest Assets Group
COFFEE & DOUGHNUTS
The leadership habit: creating a regular “coffee & doughnuts” truth-telling session
The one habit I’ve seen consistently transform results is deceptively simple: leaders who schedule a recurring, informal “coffee & doughnuts” session where hierarchy is deliberately parked at the door.
I’ve used this for years in £B-scale programmes and now help clients adopt their own version. It’s always the same core idea: no slide decks, no titles, no blame – just coffee (or tea) and something to eat, with one rule:
> “If it affects delivery, you can say it in this room.”
Why it matters:
Most boards and execs are last in the information chain. By the time an issue appears on a RAG report, it’s already metastasised. These informal sessions pull reality forward. People will admit what’s really broken – conflicting priorities, exhausted middle managers, quietly failing processes – long before it surfaces via formal governance.
How it shows up with clients:
In one defence programme and later in a healthcare transformation, these sessions revealed that the true blocker wasn’t “resistance to change” but operational overload and fear of speaking up. Once voiced, we could re-prioritise, re-sequence, and resource properly. Delivery risk dropped, and timelines stabilised.
What makes it stick:
It only works if the leader models three behaviours: listening more than speaking, rewarding bad news brought early, and never punishing candour expressed in the room. I coach clients to commit to a fixed cadence (weekly or fortnightly), keep the invite list fluid, and open each session with a simple prompt: “What’s keeping you awake about this programme?”
Results I’ve seen:
- Faster surfacing of critical risks
- Stronger cross-functional trust
- Higher retention in key teams during heavy change
- Fewer “nasty surprises” at board level
It’s a small ritual – a pot of coffee and some doughnuts – but in practice it builds the one asset every transformation needs: a culture where the truth travels quickly.
What these responses have in common is not a specific technique, but a mindset. Effective leadership isn’t about control or constant intervention. It’s about creating the conditions where people can think clearly, speak honestly, and improve continuously.
Whether it’s making space for reflection, showing up with full presence, or inviting unfiltered truth over coffee, these habits work because they build trust. And trust is what allows problems to surface early, decisions to improve, and teams to move forward with confidence.
Leadership results rarely come from one big moment. They’re built through small, consistent habits, practised daily, that quietly compound over time.
Related Posts
