INSIGHTS FOR GROWTH

The 80% handoff, the room it opened, and how long it had been since his job asked him to think.

Most leaders work their lowest score and wonder why nothing else moves. The problem was never one gauge — it’s the seam between two of them.

She had the best team in the division, and she protected it — a dozen good reasons why now was never the right time for her people to move on. But keeping your best people close doesn’t read as loyalty from above. It reads as a leader who can’t develop anyone past herself.

If you haven’t defined what you’re known for, someone else already has — by default.

He was the one everyone went to when they were stuck — fast, sharp, always right. And every answer he gave taught his team the same quiet lesson: don’t bother thinking, mine’s faster. He’d built a waiting room and called it help.

“Not quite ready for the next level” usually has a name. Trait 18 of the 50: gravitas.

The chapter minis wrapped last week, so this week opens a new series: the Influence Framework — seven interconnected dimensions of influence, one per week. This week is Dimension 1, Self-Management: the influence work that happens before you ever walk into the room. The full framework is in The Right Altitude — available now at therightaltitudebook.com.

Leaders build monsters without meaning to. The Monster Audit names 4 habits consuming your time, then kills one this week.

One of the people who read The Right Altitude early is Blessing Nnachi — a consulting delivery leader at Google Cloud. I coached her for eight months during a pivotal transition. She wrote something about the book that I keep coming back to: “Don has the ability to gently and persistently dismantle the mindsets that limit our potential.” Gently and persistently. That’s the whole job. Not fixing people. Not telling them what to do. Helping them see what they can’t see on their

Every leader hits the same wall. The moment when the thing that got them promoted stops working. Twelve chapters. Forty-eight tools. Built from 6,000+ hours of coaching. The book is live today.

“The skills that got you here are not the skills that will keep you here.” That’s page one. Twelve chapters. Forty-eight tools. Built from 6,000+ hours of coaching conversations with more than 1,000 leaders.

750 leaders, 7 years: your old skills won't work at the next level. Identity lag drives the discomfort. Stop being the expert. Start building teams.

Most people expect growth to feel like becoming someone different. It doesn’t. The leaders I’ve worked with who’ve done the most real work don’t describe themselves as transformed. They describe themselves as clearer. Less reactive. Less driven by patterns they couldn’t see before. The same person — just with fewer blind spots.

Presence isn't a trait you're born with. It's a practice built through small moments: the breath before you respond, the question instead of the rebuttal.

After a high-stakes meeting, ask yourself: if the people in that room had to describe how I showed up in three words, what would those words be? Write them down. Then ask someone who was in the room. The gap between your words and theirs is where presence work happens.

Are you the thermometer or the thermostat? A thermometer responds to the room’s temperature. A thermostat sets it. The leaders with the strongest executive presence are thermostats — they walk into high-stakes meetings having already decided what temperature the room will be.

He was the person who could fix anything. The firefighter. The fixer. Everyone depended on him. And he could not figure out why he kept getting passed over for VP. The answer was hiding in plain sight.

When someone gets promoted, their professional identity doesn’t update overnight. It takes six to eighteen months. You’re not faking it — your internal map is just outdated.

New muscles are sore before they’re strong. That discomfort isn’t a warning sign. It’s what growth actually feels like.

A VP with twenty years of experience and a brilliant track record sat across from me, convinced it was only a matter of time before someone figured out she didn’t belong. Her 360 feedback told a completely different story.