While earning my bachelor's degree in organizational behavior and leadership, one course included a team coaching project. Each team member coached another member, and at the end of the project, every team presented what happened and, more importantly, what they had learned.

Most of the presentations were thoughtful and engaging. One was very different.

Instead of reflecting on what the experience had taught them, the team members spent much of their presentation throwing each other under the bus and explaining what one another had done wrong. Responsibilities had been missed, expectations hadn't been met, and the project clearly had not gone as planned.

What struck me was that the failed project wasn't actually the greatest missed opportunity. The missed opportunity was failing to learn from it.

As students of leadership and organizational behavior, there was so much we could have examined: communication, expectations, accountability, team dynamics, conflict, and what each person might do differently next time. Yet no one in the room said anything, including me.

And that bothered me.

For several days afterward, I kept thinking about my own silence. I realized that if I wanted to become the kind of leader I believed in, I couldn't reserve leadership for comfortable moments. Leaders sometimes have to say the difficult thing, ask the question no one else is asking, and step forward when it's easier to remain silent.

About a week later, I reached out to the team members. Two agreed to meet with me. My goal wasn't to criticize their presentation or tell them what they should have done. I wanted to help them reflect on the experience differently so they could carry something useful from it into their next team, project, and leadership opportunity.

Those conversations went well, but the greater lesson was mine.

I began to understand that good leadership requires clarity about your purpose, intentionality about how you respond, and the ability to leverage the resources, experiences, and opportunities available to create a better outcome.

Those insights eventually helped shape three pillars of my SIMPLE Leadership Method™: Purposefulness, Intentionality, and Leverage.

More importantly, the experience taught me something I still believe today: leadership is not simply knowing what good leadership looks like. It is choosing to practice it when the moment asks something of you.

Sometimes the wisest leadership decision is simply deciding not to remain silent.

I came to this work from an unexpected place: I was probably one of the most miserable employees on the planet.

That may sound surprising because I also had a successful history of leading and developing staff and volunteers, creating strategic and succession plans, and designing employee development initiatives for organizations across the country.

But I dreaded Mondays and lived for the weekends. Going to work felt like torture. I worked in environments where poor leadership, a lack of integrity, and unhealthy workplace dynamics had created a culture I found increasingly difficult to tolerate. Eventually, I allowed what was happening around me to change how I showed up. I withdrew. I closed my office door. I tried to insulate myself from the toxicity instead of deciding how I wanted to respond to it.

Then, during my coach training, an instructor asked me a simple question:

“Why are you allowing anyone to keep you from being you?”

It was an aha moment.

The question forced me to look beyond what other people were doing and examine my own choices. It also sparked a much bigger curiosity: Why does poor leadership persist? What causes otherwise capable people to lead in ways that diminish others? What does it take to create organizations where people can do meaningful work, contribute their best, and thrive?

Later, while earning my master’s degree and studying organizations and leadership, I began looking at those experiences differently. I even learned to thank some of my former bosses not because the experiences were good, but because they gave me an extraordinary front-row seat and a collection of real-world leadership lessons. Those experiences became the foundation for graduate-school papers, articles I wrote as a leadership columnist for *Docket* magazine, and eventually much of the work I teach and speak about today.

Over time, my focus grew beyond correcting poor leadership. I became interested in what helps people live and lead with intention: think clearly, act from their values, make wiser decisions under pressure, and create environments where people and performance can thrive together.

That journey ultimately shaped the work I do today with leaders and organizations and the frameworks I developed, including the SIMPLE Leadership Method™ and the WISE Framework™.

What began with one question about why I was allowing someone else’s leadership to determine who I became has grown into a body of work centered on a question I now help others answer:

Who do you intend to be, and how will you make sure the way you live and lead reflects it?