We don’t start out trying to perform leadership, but the world rewards performance. The polished deck. The “urgent” Slack. The confident answer on thin data. It looks like leadership because it feels decisive. Then results wobble, trust gets weirdly quiet, and you notice people doing the minimum viable compliance. That’s the tell: performance creates motion; practice creates momentum.

The Performance Problem (And Why It’s So Sticky)

Performance is seductive because it’s fast and legible. You can signal clarity long before you earn it. The cost shows up later as rework, “ghost” decisions no one remembers making, and teams that run on your adrenaline instead of their own energy. Practicing leadership is slower upfront: it trades appearance for alignment, and shortcuts for systems.

How to Spot When You’re Performing, Not Practicing

• You speak first, most, and last: Meetings end on time, nothing truly decided.
• Everything is top priority: If you don’t choose trade-offs, the team chooses burnout.
• Apologies are vague: “Sorry for the confusion” is not the same as “My last-minute change cost you Saturday.”
• You delegate outcomes, then keep all the decisions: Ownership without authority is theater.
• Progress reports feel curated: When truths get edited for you, you’re getting the performance cut.

The Pivot: Five Small Moves That Change Everything

1. Start with the gap: Open projects by naming what’s unknown and how you’ll learn it. Leaders who model uncertainty create speed because reality surfaces sooner.
2. Decision receipts: Every decision gets a one-liner: Owner, by when, why now. Post in a living log. When priorities clash, the log—not personalities—breaks the tie.
3. Ask one more “why” than is comfortable: Not to interrogate, but to make the hidden constraint say its name. The right “why” saves two sprints.
4. Apology with repair: Use this script: “Here’s what I did; here’s the impact; here’s what I’m changing; here’s how you’ll know it stuck.” Trust grows in the delta between words and changed behavior.
5. Hold strings without tying knots: Set guardrails (budget, deadline, definition of good), then get out of the way. Review outcomes, not keystrokes.

What Practicing Looks Like in The Room

• Before: You open the meeting with an answer and a 20-slide narrative.
  After: You open with the question, the decision type (inform/share/decide), and the criteria. The group fills truth into the frame.
• Before: You run a weekly status tour where people perform busyness.
  After: You run a “constraints standup”: what’s blocking, what changed, what we’re stopping. Action items realign in minutes.
• Before: You power through objections.
  After: You list them on a visible board labeled “Assumptions That Could Bankrupt Us,” then assign owners to kill or prove each one. 

Tools You Can Steal (No Soul-Crushing Templates)

• One-page brief: Purpose (why now), Stakes (what breaks if we’re wrong), Definition of Good (3 bullets), First Two Steps (not ten), Owners & Dates.
• Red team hour: Before launch, invite people who disagree to critique with teeth. You learn faster when the stakes are still cheap.
• Dailies in the work: Review tickets/docs/prototypes where they live. Less meeting theater, more artifact-based reality.
• “Last 5%” checklist: Testing, comms, rollback plan, owner on call, one place to find all links. Excellence hides in the edges.

Common Traps (And Graceful Exits)

• Vulnerability theater: Sharing fears without plans makes the room carry your feelings. Exit: Share the risk and the mitigation.
• Feedback as performance: Public “I love feedback” speeches; private defensiveness. Exit: Ask for one behavior to do more/less of; close the loop in writing.
• Consensus trap: Waiting for everyone to be happy. Exit: Decide who decides, by when, using which criteria. Publish it; stick to it.

A 30-Day Practice Plan

Week 1: Instrument one recurring meeting (purpose, decision type, success criteria). Speak last once.
Week 2: Launch a decision log. Write receipts for three real decisions.
Week 3: Run one red-team hour on a meaningful deliverable. Thank dissent in the room.
Week 4: Issue one apology with repair. Publish the behavior change you’ll maintain for 14 days; ask two people to observe.

By day 30, you’ll notice less spin and more signal. People volunteer risks earlier. Status updates shrink because the work is visible. You’ll feel oddly calmer—not because the job got easier, but because the system now holds what your performance used to juggle.

Book Spotlight — Machiavelli Mouse: A Search for Hybrid Wisdom

For readers drawn to the shift from image to impact, this short forest parable follows a robe-wearing mouse who learns to trade control for trust, apologies for repair, and shortcuts for systems that endure under pressure. It’s story-first yet leaves readers with field-tested tools—balancing strength, mind, and heart—so their leadership works when the weather turns. Readers can purchase a copy, sample a free chapter, or join the launch list to go deeper.