308. From Good Intentions to Real Impact in Leadership with Mick Spiers

Think you had a busy month but didn’t move the needle? We unpack why progress often feels invisible and how to make it tangible by changing small behaviors that create big ripples. This solo cast stitches together January’s standout insights on culture, pressure, change, influence, and feedback—then turns them into simple moves you can apply within 24 hours.

We start with a hard truth from Bill Benjamin: your culture is revealed under pressure. When stress spikes, untrained emotional intelligence drops, shortcuts sneak in, and safety evaporates. We walk through practical ways to slow your cadence, protect standards, and keep access to reality. From there, Hugh Thomas reframes change as identity work, not a project plan. People grieve loss—of familiarity, status, and confidence—so leaders must acknowledge loss before asking for alignment. Expect clear prompts you can use to surface the real obstacles and rebuild commitment through honesty rather than false certainty.

Next, Salvatore Manzi brings a candid reminder: good intent does not equal good impact. Influence lives in how you’re received. We break down presence, pacing, and listening as the levers that lower threat and help your message land. Then we move into the Lead Better series on YouTube, where we de-risk feedback with brain-based insights and practical tools. You’ll learn the micro yes to gain permission, the calibrate reality step to align perceptions, the SPI model to deliver clarity without judgment, and the close-the-loop move to lock agreements. Structure beats good intentions when trust is on the line.

We close by turning reflection into action: give one real piece of feedback you’ve been avoiding, run one alignment conversation about “what good looks like,” or remove one piece of interference holding your team back. Leaders who win the year don’t do more; they do what matters, more consistently. If these ideas hit home, subscribe, share with a leader who’s ready to level up, and leave a quick review telling us which action you’ll take today.

Chapters

• 0:27 Why Progress Feels Invisible
• 0:49 January Theme And Promise
• 1:33 Culture Built Through Micro Moments
• 2:38 Bill Benjamin: Pressure And EI
• 3:28 Safety, Standards, And Reality
• 4:07 Hugh Thomas: Change And Identity
• 5:20 Acknowledge Loss Before Alignment
• 6:10 Salvatore Manzi: Intent Vs Impact
• 7:24 Influence Is How You’re Received
• 8:05 Lead Better: Why Feedback Feels Risky
• 9:13 Tools For Trust-Safe Feedback
• 10:19 Structure Beats Good Intentions
• 11:57 Personal Reflection: Intention To Impact
• 13:36 24-Hour Leadership Challenge
• 15:15 Win The Year With Consistency
• 16:25 What’s Coming In February
• 17:22 Gratitude And Core Beliefs

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever had a month where you did a lot, but you didn't feel like you moved? That's usually not because she didn't grow, it's because she didn't notice you grew. So today we're going to do a January review that doesn't just recap episodes, it helps you walk away different. Hi, I'm Mick Spiers, and welcome back to the Leadership Project in episode 308. This is our January solo cast where we pull the best lessons from the month, connect the dots, and turn insights into action. No motivational fluff, just real leadership for real people in the real world. And at the end, I'm going to give you one simple challenge you can complete in the next 24 hours. Because insight without action is just entertainment. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Leadership Project in this January recap. If I had to summarize January in one sentence, it would be this. Leadership isn't what you intend, it's what people experience. And that shows up everywhere. It shows up in how we give feedback, how we run meetings, how we handle tension, how we respond under pressure, and how we treat people when time is tight and stakes are high. January reminded me of something that I think we all forget sometimes. You don't build culture with posters, you build culture with moments. Micro moments. Your tone, your timing, where your attention goes, what you praise, what you ignore, what you tolerate. So as we go through these January highlights, listen for one thing. What's the smallest behavior change that would create the biggest ripple for you? Okay, let's get into it. Let's start with Bill Benjamin and Culture Under Pressure. One of the biggest themes this month came from Bill Benjamin, and it was basically this. Your culture isn't defined when things are easy. It's revealed when people are under pressure. Bill kept coming back to the real driver of behavior at work, and that's emotion. Especially when stress is high. And here's what really matters for leaders. When pressure goes up, emotional intelligence goes down unless it's trained. That's when old habits, tone, impatience, and shortcuts sneak in. When you start reacting instead of responding. If people don't feel safe, they don't speak up. And when people don't speak up, leaders lose access to reality. And finally, this line really stuck with me. The standard you tolerate becomes the standard your team accepts. Not the standard you say, it's the standard you walk past. So the call to action from the episode with Bill Benjamin is this ask yourself, what behavior have I been tolerating that's quietly teaching my team what's acceptable? All right, let's move on to Huw Thomas and about change and its relationship to identity, not process. Huw's message was confronting, but in the best way. Most change fails because leaders manage the plan and ignore the loss. Huw reminded us that people don't just lose tasks or reporting lines. They lose familiarity, confidence, status, they lose their identity, and sometimes they lose trust. So resistance isn't usually defiance, it's often grief without language. And the key takeaways here is that change requires acknowledgement before alignment. People don't need certainty, they need honesty. You can't rush meetings. It has to be built conversation by conversation. So the key takeaway here is that change is hard. But change is hard because people fear loss. And the loss that they feel is their loss of identity. And the hard truth here is that we fear loss at a much greater extent than we appreciate gain. So if you go into a change effort only talking about the positives of what the person will gain, and meanwhile, their mind is stuck on a fear of loss, you're going to get resistance. So the call to action here is to ask one person on your team, what part of this change feels hardest for you? You don't have to jump to a solution. Initially just hear it, hear it out. Try to get to the real objection and what's really on their mind. And then you've got a path forward for successful change. Alright, then we moved to Salvatore Manzi, where his message was influence is delivery, not your intentions. Salvatore and his work tied directly into everything else this month. His core message was simple and uncomfortable. That good intent does not equal good impact. You can care deeply and still come across as dismissive. You can mean well and still create fear or resistance. Because influence lives in how you show up, how you listen, how you pace the conversation, and how you respond when challenged. So the key takeaways here is influence isn't about being right, it's about being received. And that listening is how you lower the threat and your presence is more persuasive than your actual words. The key takeaway here is your leadership isn't about what you intend, it's about how you're received, how you're perceived. So it doesn't matter if you had good intentions. It's also on you to make sure that your message is being received in the way that you intended. It's not up to the recipient to interpret what you intend. It's up to you to check in and make sure that what you intend landed the way that you thought it would. So after your next conversation, ask yourself this. What did that person feel? Not just what they heard, what did they feel? And did it match what I intended? Now I want to bring this all together through what we call the Lead Better series. This is our new video series on YouTube, which is bringing practical application of everything that we talk about here on the Leadership Project. The Lead Better video series started this month around the psychology and practice of feedback and why your brain hates giving feedback. The big insight was that feedback feels hard because your brain thinks it's dangerous. When you're about to give feedback, your brain scans for social threat, for status threat, for rejection risk. Your brain is trying to keep you safe. And when it senses threat, it doesn't optimize for clarity or care. It optimizes for self-protection. And this is why so many of us hold back. We soften the message too much, or maybe even avoid it completely. Or we blurt it out badly when we're frustrated. So if you've always struggled with giving feedback, I strongly encourage you to look out for this video on YouTube, why your brain hates giving feedback on the Leadership Project channel. And it will help you reframe. And the reframe is really important. Reframing that feedback is a gift. That withholding feedback is actually selfish. It comes from that self-protection. Avoidance protects you, but it costs the relationship. And the most important question in the video is I introduced something called the mirror test. And that is, if you were the one that was on the receiving end of this much needed feedback, wouldn't you want to know? And if that allows you to step into action, then do that. The second video in the series is then how to give feedback without damaging the trust. So how do we actually do this well? Well, we move from courage to competences. Once we've got the courage to have the conversation, we need the right tools. So I introduced key tools such as the micro yes, asking permission before you enter the conversation. It changes the whole situation from one where the other person might become defensive to one where they become receptive. To calibrate reality, to check and see their own self-awareness before you get into the feedback. And then how to deliver the feedback using the model situation behavior impact, the SPI model. Removing judgment and adding clarity. And the most important one, one that so many leaders with good intentions miss, is closing the loop. That's making sure at the end of the conversation that you both leave with the same understanding of what was just said and what action the person is going to take. Now, all of these tools work together because good intentions don't create clarity, structure does. Because when feedback is vague, people fill the gaps themselves. They fill the void. And they usually assume the worst. So January's message on feedback was clear. Courage opens the door, and you do need to step forward with that courage. You need to get past your fear of feedback. And then structure keeps the relationship intact. Now let's make this personal for a while. I'm going to share you my own January leadership reflections. January is where leaders often say, this year I want to lead with intention. And I support that, by the way. Super important. But here's the part we often miss. Intention without reflection doesn't guarantee impact. So this January, I've been asking myself not just what was my intention, but also did my actions align with that intention? And did the impact land the way I hoped it would? Because leadership isn't just about what you aim for, it's about whether people experienced what you meant. So yes, lead with intention. But then check the impact. Ask for feedback and adjust in real time. That's what mature leadership looks like. So the questions I'm sitting with are these. When I wanted to create clarity, did I actually reduce confusion or create confusion? When I wanted to be supportive, did I feel available or did I feel rushed? Was I present? And when I wanted to build trust, did my behavior reinforce it or erode it? Because growth doesn't come from perfect intentions, it comes from honest reflections. Okay, here's your challenge. Here's how we pull it all together. In the next 24 hours, I want you to do one of these things. Number one, give one piece of real feedback you've been holding back. Not harsh, not vague, clear, respectful, and anchored in care. If you've been avoiding feedback, this is your homework. Step into the breach. Number two, have one alignment conversation. Pick one person and ask, are we clear on what good looks like? What does good look like to you? Test it. What do you need from me to succeed? And what might I be missing? And the third one, remove one piece of noise. As we often speak about on the show with the famous quote from Timothy Galway, performance is equal to potential minus interference. And our job as leaders is to build people's potential, but there's an even bigger return on investment when we can remove sources of interference. So what's one piece of noise for your team that you can remove? Just one. To bring that all together and think about January and kicking off your year, leaders who win the year don't just do more, they do what matters and they do it more consistently. If you enjoyed this January review, make sure you subscribe and share it with a leader who wants to lift their game this year. And throughout the year, we're going to bring you more and more impactful thought leaders in their area and craft of leadership and psychology to help you stop, reflect, and think about what it means to be a leader and to be a better leader and to inspire you into the actions that it takes. In February, that's going to include Tracy Clark, who's going to talk about how we can move from being a bottleneck to a catalyst and to unlock our full leadership potential. Melinda McCormack is going to join us and share her Pulse Framework, a five-step framework to break disconnection and allow empathy to be your edge. And Rebecca Hinds, the author of Your Best Meeting Ever, is going to show us how to reset our meeting culture to make our meetings more effective and impactful. So until next time, get out there, take the actions, and lead better. You've been listening to the Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode. And to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here we believe leadership is a practice, not a position. That people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. That the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.