Michael Bremer
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30-Day Leadership Loop: Plan-Practice-Reflect That Sticks
Typography hero image reading ONE HABIT. BETTER LEADERSHIP. with HABIT highlighted, over a warm blurred office background with sticky notes, illustrating a 30-day leadership habit loop using plan practice assess reflect.

A 30-Day Leadership Habit Loop That Sticks: Plan, Practice, Assess, Reflect

You can change the way you lead in 30 days, but not by “trying harder.” You do it by running a simple loop: Plan, Practice, Assess, Reflect. You pick one or two behaviors, try them in real situations, get clear feedback, and adjust. The goal is not to become perfect. The goal is to build a repeatable way to learn, so your leadership improves even when you are tired, rushed, or under pressure.

This loop works because it makes two things true at the same time: it becomes safe to name problems, and it becomes satisfying to see progress.

Step 1 (Week 1): Pick 1–2 leadership behaviors you will practice on purpose

If you try to change everything, you will change nothing. Start small. The book is direct about this: “don’t focus on too many, pick one or two at the start.”

Choose behaviors people can actually see. Here are examples the book uses when teams agree on “how we will work together”:

  • Start and stop meetings on time
  • Only one person talks at a time
  • Don’t solve problems in the meeting

If you want to aim your two behaviors at your own leadership, the book gives clear examples of “desirable behaviors” a team might ask their leader to practice:

  • Asking good questions
  • Listening without interrupting
  • Looking at the process before fixing a problem

If you’re unsure what to pick, start with the question the book recommends:

“What did you learn?”
Then ask yourself: What do I need to change to lead more effectively?

Step 2 (Week 1): Get real feedback fast with Keep, Stop, Start

This is the moment most leaders avoid, not because they don’t care, but because feedback can feel personal. Still, it is hard to change what you never face.

Use this simple set of prompts:

  • Keep: “What should I keep doing that is driving us toward effective and efficient fulfillment of our purpose?”
  • Stop: “What should I stop doing that is inhibiting our ability to effectively and efficiently fulfill our purpose?”
  • Start: “What should I start doing to increase our effectiveness and efficient fulfillment of our purpose?”

A true story you can borrow: Martha’s office window

Martha Johnson led a plant with 90 employees. The numbers were mostly fine, but the day felt “a tad hectic,” with too much firefighting. She wondered if she needed to change as a leader.

So she tried a simple move.

She asked her team Keep, Stop, Start. Then she handed out three 2×2 Post-its to each person. The feedback was anonymous, and she asked them to put the Post-its on her office window before going home. By morning she had 20 pieces of feedback.

Here are a few examples her team shared:

  • Keep: Trusting team members to do the work
  • Stop: People felt pressured to step up and say, “Yes! I’ll take responsibility for a new task.”
  • Stop: Martha was not always clear at the start of an assignment
  • Stop: People felt overwhelmed by “special projects”
  • Start: More coaching on how to proceed
  • Start: Clearer priorities
  • Start: Make sure people understood “why” the work mattered and how it affected others

That is what good reflection looks like. Not judgment. Not shame. Just truth you can work with.

Step 3 (Weeks 1–4): Score the behavior (1–7), then start with the minority view

Once you have the behavior, measure it. The book suggests a 1–7 scale where 1 is awful and 7 is fantastic, and it recommends making the scores visible so people can talk about them.

But the real magic is how you debrief.

The book’s rule is simple and bold:

“Why did the minority vote give the lowest score?”

Ask that first.

If you start with the majority, the minority often goes quiet. You lose the one view that might show you the thing everyone else missed.

This is also how you keep feedback safe. You are not arguing. You are studying the gap.

What Martha measured (and what changed)

Martha asked her team to score her every other week on two behaviors:

  • Asking a question instead of offering a solution
  • Mentoring/coaching team members to grow their capabilities

On the 7-point scale, she started at 4 on questions and 3 on coaching. By the end of the first month, she was getting 5s on questions from every team member (except one person who gave her a 6), and her coaching average moved to 4. Over time she was regularly getting 6s and 7s, and then she moved on to a new behavior.

That is the point. Measure until it becomes a real habit, then choose the next behavior.

Step 4 (Weeks 2–4): Use Cue, Routine, Reward, because old habits come back on their own

The book borrows a simple pattern for changing habits:

  1. Cue: the trigger that pushes your brain into auto mode
  2. Routine: the behavior you do
  3. Reward: what you get from it (often relief, speed, control)

Here is the line worth writing down:

“Unless you deliberately fight a habit, unless you find something new, the old pattern will unfold automatically.”

So don’t just promise yourself you’ll “do better.” Get specific.

Ask yourself:

  • What is the cue that sets me off?
  • What do I do next, without thinking?
  • What reward am I getting from it?
  • How does that behavior impact others?

Martha did exactly this. Her cue was new problems or opportunities. Her routine was to give a quick description in Friday meetings and ask someone to take it (or assign it). Her reward was honest: “I feel a little bit of relief at that moment.”

Then she changed the routine. In Friday meetings, they still named the task, but they also stopped to discuss:

  • Does the person have time?
  • Is this quick, or will it take longer?
  • When can they start?
  • Why is it important?

Same cue. New routine. Better result.

Step 5 (All 30 days): Make the loop visible with a simple accountability rhythm

If you want a change to stick, don’t keep it private. The book says it clearly: “If you plan to change, you should NOT do it in secret.”

It also recommends finding a small support group of leaders who want to improve, meeting weekly or every two weeks, to share plans, progress, and challenges. If you do it alone, you can, but it will take “tenacity and discipline.”

Plan, Practice, Assess, Reflect (your simple 30-day loop)

Plan

  • Choose your 1–2 behaviors.
  • Set a start date and time.
  • Decide who will help you with feedback (boss, peer, team, or one trusted person).

Practice

  • Do the behavior during real work.
  • Use questions more than answers. The book offers simple question stems that work in almost any setting:
    • “What is the problem you are trying to solve?”
    • “So tell me about what you are thinking?”
    • “Why do you think that happened?”

Assess

  • Use a simple visual that takes little time.
  • The book gives three rules for a good visual:
    1. Will it help people make better decisions in a timely way?
    2. Can you update it in less than 10 minutes (or less than 3 minutes per pass if you update it many times a day)?
    3. Can you see the key issues in less than 10 seconds?

Reflect

  • Debrief what you learned.
  • Start with: “Why did the minority vote give the lowest score?”
  • Decide what you will keep, stop, and start next.

One last note from the book that changes how this feels: “The goal here is not to see how high you can score.” The goal is to use the feedback to change your view of what is really happening, then practice what works.

Pick one behavior you want to be known for when things get tense, and run this loop for 30 days. What behavior will you practice first: asking better questions, listening without interrupting, or looking at the process before fixing the problem?