All big things come from small beginnings.
The seed of every habit is a tiny decision. But as you repeat that decision, it takes root and grows stronger until the habit becomes deeply entrenched in your life.
Some people actively seek leadership roles—they’re driven to take charge.
Others reluctantly find themselves in leadership out of necessity or circumstance, often feeling unprepared for the responsibility.
Regardless of how they arrive at leadership, one thing remains true: both types of leaders bring more than just skills to the table. They also bring their habits, good and bad.
Breaking bad habits does more than reduce the negativity in your life; it equips you to become a better leader.
Here’s how:
Breaking bad habits is about reshaping the mindset and behaviors that accompany those habits. By tackling these ingrained patterns, you unlock a deeper potential for growth.
Three bad habits you can break to become a better leader:
1. Avoidance
Avoidance is the enemy of progress.
Confronting complex tasks and having difficult conversations strengthens your leadership and builds trust. When your team sees you addressing challenges head-on, it teaches them how to make decisions, keeps you from becoming a bottleneck to productivity, and creates an environment of action and accountability.
By overcoming avoidance, you become a more credible and trusted leader.
2. Complaining
Complaining is passive and unproductive.
While it’s important to recognize when something’s not right, endlessly venting about problems without seeking solutions wears down your team and creates tension. Complaining positions you as a leader who succumbs to circumstances instead of stepping up with alternatives and helpful perspectives.
Complaints are distractions; solutions are leadership.
3. Gossiping
Gossiping erodes trust faster than almost anything else.
It’s easy to fall into the habit of talking about others behind their backs, but this only damages your credibility as a leader. When leaders participate in gossip, the team assumes they will eventually become the topic of conversation, too. This undermines the team dynamic of trust.
Gossiping may feel powerful, but in reality, it destroys relationships and team morale.
To break these (and all) habits, it's helpful to understand the trigger-response-reward cycle, a concept James Clear emphasizes.
The trigger is the situation or feeling that sets off a habit.
Feeling overwhelmed by a project.
The response is the action you take as a result.
You procrastinate by distracting yourself with unrelated work or scrolling through your phone.
The reward is the payoff you get, which keeps the habit going.
You feel temporary relief from avoiding the task, but the problem lingers, adding stress later.
OR you address the task head-on, and while it might feel uncomfortable initially, the payoff is a sense of accomplishment and reduced future stress.
Once you recognize the cycle, you can start making intentional changes. Over time, the new response will give you a better reward.
Focus on improving by making small, consistent changes that add up to lasting improvements in your leadership development and effectiveness.
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Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
“We change bit by bit, day by day, habit by habit.
We are continually undergoing microevolutions of the self.
Each habit is like a suggestion: ‘Hey, maybe this is who I am.’
No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up,
so does the evidence of your new identity.” James Clear
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