Everything a leader teaches, they teach through one of seven behaviors.
Here are all seven, as questions you can answer about your own team.
What gets prioritized within your team?
What characteristics do leaders model?
What actions get rewarded?
What behaviors do you hold people accountable for?
What behaviors get ignored, or that leaders don't do anything about?
Who or what is protected from having to meet the guidelines or the values you've written down?
What actions or behaviors get celebrated?
Leadership answers these first, individually, from memory. This is the syllabus they think they wrote.
Each question has a standard behind it. REWARD is not "do we reward the right things." It is: pull the last four promotions and say what each of those people actually did. We set that standard for all seven together.
Four of these come from Schein's research on how culture gets embedded. Three are mine, added from practice.
You can't audit a curriculum by asking the teachers.
Leaders don't know what they're teaching. This is not a criticism of leaders. Behavior is invisible to the person doing it, so a leadership self-assessment gives you the syllabus they meant to write.
So ask the class. Same seven behaviors, different questions, and one rule: every answer has to be something you observed.
Put the two copies side by side. The mismatches are the finding, and each one traces back to a single behavior.
Quality comes before the date.
Every review starts with the date.
Leaders ask for help when they are stuck.
Leaders ask for help in front of the team.
We promote people who grow other people.
The last two promotions closed big deals alone.
We address disrespect quickly.
One senior person is an exception everyone works around.
No score comes out of this. The gaps are the finding, and each one traces back to a single behavior you can change.
Candor
The person who raised the risk was moved off the project.
Say it privately, or say nothing.
Customer first
The dashboard on the wall tracks bookings only.
Customers matter after the number lands.
One team
The launch celebration named three people out of forty.
Visibility is the reward, and it is rationed.
- Step 01Leaders answer
Seven behaviors, the teacher's copy, written down before anyone talks.
- Step 02The room answers
Same seven behaviors, the student's copy. What people saw, not how they feel.
- Step 03Compare
Two copies side by side. Agreement is worth knowing. Mismatch is the finding.
- Step 04Name the drift
Each gap traces back to one behavior, which makes it small enough to act on.
- Step 05Protect and correct
Decide what to keep deliberately and what changes before the next quarter.
Then run it again next quarter, so you have a before and an after rather than a memory of a good day.