Most leaders like to think they are making conscious decisions throughout the day. They choose how to communicate, how to respond to pressure, how to manage conflict and how to guide their teams.
But what if many of those responses are not really choices at all?
What if they are habits?
In Strengthening Minds. Empowering Leaders., Glenn Brûlé explores how repeated behaviors can quietly become the default settings behind the way people lead. His argument is simple but important: when pressure rises, leaders often return to the patterns they have practiced most, not necessarily the behaviors they intended to use.
That can show up in subtle ways.
A leader may intend to listen openly but interrupt when stressed. Someone who wants to delegate may suddenly start micromanaging when uncertainty increases. Another leader may value difficult conversations but repeatedly avoid them because avoidance has become more familiar than confrontation.
Over time, those responses can become automatic.
Brûlé connects this pattern to the brain’s preference for efficiency. Rather than treating every situation as completely new, the brain uses previous experience, learned patterns and established habits to help determine what happens next. That process can be useful, but it can also mean yesterday’s behavior keeps influencing today’s leadership.
This is one reason leadership change can feel so frustrating.
Knowing what you should do does not automatically make that behavior your default response. You may leave a workshop determined to become more patient, more curious or more collaborative, but when deadlines tighten and pressure increases, older patterns can quickly return.
Strengthening Minds. Empowering Leaders. encourages readers to interrupt that cycle through awareness and reflection.
One of the book’s practical ideas is that leaders need to become more curious about their own reactions. Instead of immediately accepting the first interpretation of a situation, Brûlé encourages asking questions that create space between assumption and action. One example he highlights is: “What else could be true?” That kind of pause can interrupt automatic thinking and open the door to a more intentional response.
The book expands this idea through the Leadership Prediction Loop®, which shows how experience shapes prediction, prediction influences interpretation, interpretation affects behavior and behavior creates outcomes that can reinforce the original pattern. Reflection becomes the point where the cycle can be interrupted and a different response can begin.
This does not mean leaders need to overhaul everything at once.
Brûlé’s approach emphasizes steady, deliberate change. Pay attention to one pattern. Reflect on it. Practice a different response. Repeat it until the new behavior becomes more available when pressure returns.
That is where leadership development becomes personal.
Your habits are not just small routines. They help shape how other people experience your leadership every day.
So the real question may not be whether you have leadership habits.
It may be whether those habits are taking you toward the leader you want to become or quietly keeping you where you have always been.
Discover Strengthening Minds. Empowering Leaders. by Glenn Brûlé and explore how awareness, neuroscience, reflection and practice can help you lead more intentionally.
Get the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HK4YBJHR
