What Leaders and Managers Can Learn from The Defining Decade
New and mid-level managers often treat their first years leading people as a placeholder — "I'm not really a leader yet, I'm just filling in until they hire someone more senior" — while quietly making decisions, forming habits, and building (or damaging) a reputation that will follow them for years. The Defining Decade's case for taking "in-between" stretches seriously applies directly here: the manager you are in these early years of leading is not a rough draft that gets discarded, it's the foundation the rest of your leadership career gets built on.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Question the "I'm not a real leader yet" story
Waiting to feel like a "real" leader before acting like one just delays the years when you'd actually be building that identity — the title lags the practice, not the other way around.
A newly promoted manager avoids giving direct feedback for months because he tells himself he'll "grow into" that part of the job later, and by the time a performance issue becomes serious, he has no track record of hard conversations to draw on and the team has learned to route around him.
This week, have one direct, specific conversation you've been postponing — a piece of feedback, a boundary, a decision — and treat it as leadership practice, not an exception to your usual style.
Build leadership capital through real decisions, not just courses
Reading about leadership or collecting certifications feels productive, but the capital that actually compounds comes from making real calls — on hiring, on conflict, on priorities — and being accountable for how they turn out.
A manager attends every leadership workshop her company offers but avoids the actually hard calls — an underperformer she should have addressed a year ago, a reorg she keeps deferring — so when a bigger role opens up, she has credentials but no track record anyone can point to.
Pick one decision you've been deferring to your own boss or to consensus, and own it outright this week, including telling people why you made the call.
Invest in your network and your closest relationships on purpose
The colleagues one step removed from your daily team — other departments, former managers, peers at other companies — are more likely to hand you your next opportunity than the people you see every day, and the people closest to you outside work still deserve deliberate time, not just what's left over.
A manager gets so absorbed in her team's day-to-day that she lets external relationships go quiet for a year, then finds herself with nowhere to turn when she's ready for a new challenge, while also realizing her closest friendships have thinned out from sheer neglect.
Reach out to one person outside your current team this week — not to ask for anything, just to reconnect — and separately, schedule real time with one person in your personal life you've been meaning to see.
Author your leadership story instead of drifting into a title
The kind of leader you become isn't handed to you by a promotion or an org chart — it's built through the calls you make and the ownership you take, chapter by chapter, and treating it that way now is what turns "someone who manages people" into "a leader," on your own terms.
Investing in your wider network can feel like a distraction from the urgent work of leading your current team well — the resolution isn't choosing one permanently, but protecting a small, consistent slice of time for outside relationships even during your busiest team seasons.
Name one thing, honestly
If you kept leading exactly the way you have this past month for the next five years, what kind of leader would you become — and is that the one you're trying to build?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Reach out to one person outside your current team this week — not to ask for anything, just to reconnect — and separately, schedule real time with one person in your personal life you've been meaning to see.