Leadership Habits: Dropping the Bad, Picking Up the Good

November 1, 2025

Effective leadership hinges on evolving habits to meet modern challenges.

This HR Spotlight article compiles insights from business leaders and HR professionals on one leadership habit they intentionally dropped and one they adopted in recent years, along with the tangible outcomes.

From abandoning over-control to embracing empowerment, or shifting from reactive availability to strategic clarity, these leaders reveal how purposeful changes drive success.

Their approaches foster stronger teams, enhance efficiency, and build innovative cultures, providing practical lessons for leaders navigating today’s complex business landscape with intentionality, trust, and sustainable impact.

Read on!

Protecting Time Boosts – Leadership and Results

I have slowly had to reprogram myself from certain leadership habits.

One habit in particular that I dropped was making myself constantly available to our agents. Leaving my calendar wide open assuming they would make meetings with me, and then feeling deflated when no one scheduled time with me. It led to burnout, blurred boundaries and small resentment that started to fester. In turn, I replaced it with the habit of protecting my time and energy.

Now I set clear availability windows and require agents to get on my calendar via my assistant. This way I can prioritize deep, intentional conversations over constant accessibility.

The direct outcome ended up being a win-win for everyone. I was able to take control of my calendar with less frustration, protect my peace and it created a healthier dynamic with the agents and gave me the capacity to focus on vision, strategy, and scaling our brokerage.

Alanna D’Antonio Garcia
Co-Founder & CEO, Evoke Realty

Clarity and Trust Replace Over-Explaining

I consciously dropped the habit of over-explaining decisions to my team in an attempt to gain buy-in.

While transparency is key, I realised I was diluting clarity by over-justifying every move. In its place, I adopted a habit of framing decisions around clear business priorities and trusting my team to engage or challenge constructively if needed.

The outcome? Quicker alignment, less second-guessing, and a stronger culture of accountability. This shift allowed me to lead with more conviction, and my team responded by stepping up with greater ownership and initiative.

Aaron Kenny
Founder & HR Delivery Consultant, A1HR Consulting

Delegation Replaces – Micromanagement for Growth

One leadership practice I intentionally let go of was micromanaging my team.

I found it hindered innovation, dampened enthusiasm, and stopped my team members from reaching their true capabilities. Instead, I embraced delegating responsibilities with confidence and offering clear direction from the outset. This shift cultivated a sense of ownership and responsibility among the group.

The result was increased efficiency, better-quality results, and a more energized and committed team dynamic.

Corina Tham
Finance & Sales Director, Cheap Forex VPS

Trust Sprints Empower Team Brilliance

The habit I buried was treating my calendar like a Tetris game of back-to-back meetings, jamming every gap with “efficiency.”

In our early days, I’d review minor code commits between investor calls, mistaking motion for momentum. This created a culture of performative busyness where engineers stopped proposing wild ideas, fearing I’d micromanage execution.

Now, I practice “trust sprints”: quarterly experiments where I delegate one mission-critical project with zero oversight. Last quarter, I handed our team a blank check to rebuild our compliance engine, no approvals needed for 90 days. They returned with an AI architecture so elegant it reduced customer onboarding by 40%.

My team now sends Loom updates titled “Look what we built without asking!”, which are some of the proudest notifications I receive.

Sometimes leadership means removing yourself from the equation so brilliance can breathe.

Oleksii Kratko
Founder & CEO, Snov

Systematic Leadership Beats Fire-Fighting

Early on, I thought good leadership meant fast response times. Be available, be reactive, fix things in real-time. It nearly broke me. I was solving the same fires over and over because I wasn’t stepping back to notice why they kept happening.

Now, I log it. I watch for patterns. If it shows up more than once, it earns a place in the system. That shift is why DomiSource runs clean – and why I don’t get midnight calls anymore.

The direct outcome? Fewer “hero moments,” more sustainable execution. My team doesn’t need me in a panic. They need structure, and they get it.

Leadership is about being calm enough to build something that holds, with or without you.

Karen Watts
Founder, DomiSource

Time Blocking Improves Leadership Focus

The habit I let go of: Always being available. I used to think responsiveness showed strong leadership, but it created bottlenecks and drained both me and my team.

The habit I adopted: Weekly time blocks for deep thinking—no meetings, no distractions. It’s now the most productive part of my week and has helped me make clearer, faster decisions.

That one shift set a new tone for how my clients lead too—especially during high-pressure growth or turnaround moments. When leaders model focus, the rest of the organization follows.

Felicia Shakiba
CEO & Executive Coach, CPO PLAYBOOK

Energy-Calibrated Leadership Creates More Resonance

I dropped the habit of trying to control team energy.

Not only was it ineffective, but it was exhausting. I used to try to micromanage momentum, especially as a Facilitator for live certificate programs and workshops (“Welcome, everyone! Let’s stay energized!”).

Now I lean into deliberately shaping the sensory and emotional cues of a room instead of dominating the conversation. This means using lighting, sound, spatial cues (props, material placement , camera angle, are my hands in the shot?- yes that matters, gallery view vs speaker view, using the reaction buttons, interactive tools, etc.) and even pauses to change how people feel.

It’s not just what they hear. I don’t harp on “Be on camera!!!”.

One unexpected benefit was that participation shot up in my workshops and our cert programs. The shift from message-driven to energy-calibrated leadership created more resonance and less resistance. It’s high-leverage, low-cost and almost never taught.

Vanessa Anello
Certificate Program Strategist & Facilitator, Workforce Charm

Trust, Alignment Replace Central Problem-Solving

I dropped the habit of being the central problem-solver and instead adopted a leadership style rooted in trust and alignment.

I thrive in fast-paced, high-pressure environments, but I realized that real momentum comes when the team moves in sync, not just quickly.

We’ve built a culture of shared ownership by creating space for others to step up, contribute and lead within their roles. It’s not about individual decisions; it’s about shared clarity and collective direction.

That shift has empowered my teams to move confidently, make smart calls and keep each other accountable.

The result? More cohesion, faster execution and creativity that resonates because it’s built through collective purpose, not just individual drive.

Nate Chang
Chief Marketing Officer, Sequel Brands

Lead With “What Can I Help You With?”

When I started getting promoted into leadership roles of greater responsibility, I became uber focused on results.

In leadership meetings, it was regularly a conversation that started:
“Where are we on….”, “How are we doing…”? My meetings were always driven by questions around whatever project, or metric my department was chasing.

After a while, my messaging became stale and my team began to tune me out.

One day I was with a colleague and he was with a leader on a conference call. He started by saying – “How can I help you?”

I realized later he was focused on their needs, in order to get his objectives met.

It was a mic drop moment – stop being focused just on your goals – you can achieve more by helping your team as well.

Every conversation I have now, includes a standard question “What can I help YOU with?”