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   Monday, August 24, 2026 at 2:09 PM
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   Wednesday, September 9, 2026 at 1:16 PM
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   Friday, September 11, 2026 at 12:35 PM

Fri 9/11 — By the time they reach me, they have tried four things

By the time an accomplished leader reaches me, they have usually tried four things. Leadership training, which taught them a model they already knew. Performance coaching, which worked on the behavior and left the reason for it alone. Books and podcasts, which explained the pattern accurately without changing it. And some version of confidence advice, which asks a capable person to feel differently by deciding to. None of that is bad work, and I have recommended most of it. But it produces a consistent result in this particular group. A good month, a return to the original pattern, and a leader who now privately concludes the problem must be them. It is not them. Every one of those approaches is built for a skills gap, and this is not a skills gap. These leaders are not missing knowledge. They are highly capable people running adaptations that were intelligent responses to environments that demanded them, and are now quietly expensive at the altitude they lead at. You cannot train your way out of an adaptation. You have to name it, understand what it was protecting, and rebuild what sits underneath it. That is the whole reason I built the RECLAIM Leadership Framework® across four decades in healthcare and federal leadership, rather than adding one more program to the list above. What is the leadership advice you have taken seriously, applied properly, and still watched fail to hold?