How do you choose the right practice for each leader?
A leader leaves a session knowing what to work on. Then Monday arrives, the inbox is full, and the practice they meant to do becomes something they will do when things calm down. Things rarely calm down.
The problem is usually not motivation. It is that the practice was never designed to fit the week they actually have.
What makes a practice activity work?
Six tests. A good activity passes all of them.
1. It is tied to one behaviour. “Be a better communicator” cannot be practised. “Give an update before anyone has to chase you” can.
2. It happens in real work. The practice is a conversation, a meeting or a decision the leader already has, not a role-play set aside from the job. Leadership is what researchers call an open skill: there is no single right way to do it, and the situation shapes what good looks like. Blume and colleagues found the work environment mattered more for transfer in exactly these skills.
3. It is small enough for a busy week. Ten or fifteen minutes to read and plan, then the practice itself inside work that was happening anyway. If an activity needs an hour, it will wait for a quiet week.
4. It has a when and a where. “At Thursday’s project meeting, before we discuss the timeline, I will say which date is at risk and why.” Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s review of 94 studies found that planning when, where and how to act made a real difference to whether people followed through. Most of those studies were about health and study habits, so the size of the effect doesn’t transfer, but the mechanism does.
5. It is spread over days, not crammed into one. One attempt teaches very little. Trying something, seeing how it lands and trying again a few days later teaches a lot more. Spacing is one of the most reliable findings in learning research, and Lacerenza’s review of leadership training found spaced, practice-based programmes did better too.
6. It ends with what happened. Not “I did the activity” but “I raised the risk on Tuesday, she asked two questions, and we moved the date before the client heard.” That note is what makes the next conversation useful.
Does the order of activities matter?
Yes. Asking someone to do a new behaviour on day one, in a high-stakes moment, is a big ask. A better sequence moves from noticing, to rehearsing, to using.
Take one behaviour: giving updates and raising issues early when there are risks or delays. A sensible set of three might be:
- Notice. Look back over recent weeks for moments where something went wrong that someone saw coming but didn’t raise in time. What did the silence cost?
- Rehearse. Plan one early warning for something live now: what you’ll say, to whom and when.
- Use. Raise it, in the real conversation, while the other person still has choices.
Each step is small. Together they turn a good intention into a habit the other person can notice.
Should every leader get the same activities?
Not necessarily, and this is where programmes often go wrong. A group session can share a theme. The practice afterwards works best when it fits each person’s focus.
Two ways to handle it:
- A programme playlist that everyone follows, chosen to match what the session taught.
- An individual playlist for each leader’s own focus, from their Self-Assessment or Trust Map.
They can run side by side. What matters is that each leader is practising something that is relevant to them and to the people they work with.
Do you have to write all this yourself?
No, and you shouldn’t have to. Designing good practice activities for twenty behaviours, in a sensible order, takes a lot of time. The Trust Leader Hub has Behaviour Playlists of short activities already written, so your time goes on the programme around them.
What you still bring is judgement: which focus, which playlist, and what to discuss when leaders come back with what happened.
Where this fits
Getting the right things to practise is the second of four stages. Before it, leaders need to know what to practise. After it, they need the chance to practise in real work and a way to see what changed. See how the stages fit together, or check your own programme against them.