Things Leaders Do

How do you handle a conflict with a coworker who doesn't report to you? Go to them directly, before your boss, and make it the two of you against the problem instead of you against each other. Most leaders were never taught this one. There are shelves of books on managing your team and managing your boss, and almost nothing on the sideways conversation with a peer, where you have no authority and still have to work together on Mond...

Why do Gen X leaders keep clashing with younger employees? Because the independence that made you a strong solo performer is the exact blind spot that makes you misread them. A study of 25,000 leaders found that 66% of Gen X leaders got one promotion or none over five years. You are the people everyone leans on and nobody credits, and that same instinct to keep your head down and handle it yourself is quietly costing you your young...

Why do well-structured one-on-ones still feel empty? Usually because the leader is supplying both the structure and everything that goes inside it. This one is for any leader who runs consistent, organized one-on-ones and still walks out knowing nothing new. 

Colby Morris makes the contrarian case that your structure probably isn't the problem, and gives you a simple split for fixing what is: you own the container, your employe...

Why does a good team end up with broken processes and a quietly toxic culture? Usually because the leader stopped listening long before anything visibly broke. In this episode, Colby Morris introduces The Feedback Blackout, the three-stage slide by which honest information stops flowing up to a leader until the operation breaks and the leader blames the system instead of the silence. The broken process, it turns out, is the last th...

Why do leaders keep putting off the hardest decisions? Because "I'm thinking about it" is almost always a cover story for something else. Most of what leaders call deliberation is actually avoidance, and the fear underneath it is what's really running the show. Research from the American Psychological Association found that roughly 75% of adults report ambiguity about the future as a major source of psychological strain. Every deci...

How do you actually build psychological safety on your team if you're a Gen X leader? Not by being softer. By being deliberate in the five seconds that matter. The traits that made you a strong leader (resilience, "figure it out," low tolerance for excuses) are the same instincts quietly shutting your team down. A 2024 McKinsey survey found only 26% of employees believe they work in a psychologically safe environment. This is Part ...

How do you know if your top performers are about to quit? You watch for the five signals — and you fix the management pattern that's pushing them out. Gallup's Q4 2025 data found 51% of U.S. workers are either actively looking or watching for opportunities — the highest since 2015. Most leaders assume it's their underperformers in motion. It's not. It's their A-players. And by the time you get the resignation letter, th...

How does a Gen X leader manage up to a younger boss? Not by fighting the dynamic — by offering your experience as a gift instead of asserting it as a flag. CareerBuilder found that 53% of workers age 45 and up are reporting to a younger boss right now; 69% if you're over 55. This isn't a coming trend — it's the normal arrangement in the American workplace today. And most Gen X leaders are handling it in a way that's qui...

Research from Notre Dame says more than 80% of workers are holding back at least one tough conversation at work. So when leaders DO finally have those conversations, they're walking in with the wrong goal — trying to win them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "winning" the tough conversation is the move that actually loses you the team
• The 30-year-old Harvard research that gets the goal of these conversations right
• The Thre...

You don't have time for the people you're leading because you're spending hours on tasks that AI could handle in minutes. Leaders using AI save 40-60 minutes daily, yet only 26% of employees use AI weekly despite 91% of businesses adopting it. The AI Efficiency Framework (Colby Morris) recovers lost time through: Interactive Prompting (asking AI to ask clarifying questions before analysis), Context Building (using Projects/Spaces t...

AI anxiety, particularly FOBO (Fear of Becoming Obsolete), affects 75% of employees concerned AI will make jobs obsolete. Nearly 55,000 U.S. job cuts were directly attributed to AI in 2025. The Five Irreplaceable Skills Framework (Colby Morris) addresses this through: doubling down on human capabilities AI cannot replicate, becoming the translator who interprets AI output for specific contexts, owning your point of view, actually l...

Seventy-seven percent of CHROs lack confidence in their leadership bench strength. Meanwhile, 40% of middle managers are planning their exit.

Your leadership pipeline isn't empty because of a talent problem—it's empty because you're burning out your current leaders before they can develop.

In this episode, you'll discover:

→ Why the gig economy changed everything about middle manager retention (28% of knowledge workers are alrea...

Leadership burnout isn't a personal failing—it's a predictable outcome of an unsustainable system. According to Colby Morris on The Things Leaders Do podcast, middle managers can survive unsustainable workloads through ruthless prioritization, energy management (not just time management), difficult conversations about workload, and one small structural change per week.

Research-backed insights from this episode:

• 40% of lead...

Use a five-part framework to communicate decisions effectively: Start with why (explain the problem you're solving), explain what's changing and what's not, address obvious concerns upfront, tell people what happens next, and invite questions then actually answer them. Most decision communication fails because leaders announce decisions without providing context or addressing concerns.

70% of organizational change initiatives fail. ...

Use a "disagree and commit" approach instead of chasing consensus. Consensus means everyone agrees (impossible). Buy-in means everyone commits even when they don't fully agree (achievable). Stop trying to make everyone happy and start getting everyone committed to moving forward together.

You've been in the same meeting for six weeks. You're still trying to get everyone to agree. You keep tweaking the proposal. You keep accommodatin...

Use the GRIT framework to make wise decisions without perfect information: Gather the right information, Reflect on your values, Involve the right people, and Take action and own the outcome.

You've been staring at a decision for two weeks. You're waiting for perfect clarity. It's not coming. Most leaders either freeze or guess - neither works.

You'll learn:

• A simple 4-step framework for making confident decisions without all the ...

You're delegating all the time—assigning projects, distributing work, telling people what needs to get done. So why do they keep coming back to you with questions? Because you're delegating tasks, not authority. And there's a massive difference.

When you delegate tasks, you're saying "Do this thing exactly how I would do it." When you delegate authority, you're saying "This is yours. You own it. Make the calls."

In this episode...

Use this 4-question framework to determine which decisions require your authority: (1) Does this require information only I have? (2) Does this set precedent or carry significant risk? (3) Am I holding onto this for the right reasons? (4) Who is best positioned to make this call?

Most leaders spend their days buried in operational decisions while their teams wait to be told what to do. The problem isn't bad decision-making—it'...

How do you onboard new employees effectively? Don't leave it all to HR. While HR handles paperwork and compliance, leaders must own the relationship-building aspects of onboarding. Stay in contact before Day 1, ensure workspace and tools are ready, conduct weekly one-on-ones for the first 90 days, and teach culture through real stories instead of just handing someone a handbook.

Episode Description

Your HR department is great at ...