Teaching Your Team How You Think

The Leadership Test Kitchen is a newsletter where I share the ingredients behind leading and growing successful companies. Some editions feature practical frameworks from CEOs who’ve mastered challenges in strategy, culture, and growth. Others share lessons I’ve learned firsthand as a CEO, or insights I’ve gained from working with other executives.

Everyone has that one speaker who changes the way they lead.

For me, it was L. David Marquet, Former Nuclear Submarine Commander and Author of Turn the Ship Around. 

Years ago, I brought David in to speak with my extended leadership team because we were struggling with silos. What I got instead was a mirror held up to my own leadership.

I speak with four to five new leaders every week— about 200 per year. 

Alignment shows up in roughly two-thirds of those conversations, challenging leaders to get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. It lurks beneath organizational performance and strategic execution.

David’s talk that day, anchored in his book, introduced me to intent-based leadership. This approach helped him create the #1 performing sub in the U.S. fleet because it built trust and eliminated the uncertainty of what each team member was thinking. And like most leadership challenges, it starts at the top.

One phrase from his book became my mantra: “Think Out Loud.” It helped me improve my clarity across three areas:

1. Goals, Plans, and Expectations

2. Decision Making

3. Employee Empowerment

Goals, Plans, and Expectations

Before Marquet, my classic approach to clarifying goals, plans, and expectations was simply to provide more detail and structure. It did a great job of making me feel more credible and secure, but did nothing for my team other than make them more dependent on me. 

Here are three things I did to change it:

1. Change my narrative to “think out loud” on what I wanted to achieve and why. Provide a clear perspective on what success looks like. And stay out of the “how.”

2. Wherever possible, change my 1-on-1s to pods (3-on-1s, 4-on-1s, etc.) to “think outloud” together on what I am seeing, what stands in my way, and what I need help with. The pods allowed my leaders to see where their work intersected and, more importantly, to solve problems together.

3. Be clear and consistent on when I would intervene. “Changing hats” is the phrase that I would use. I let my team know when I need to change hats and why.

Decision Making 

Nothing breeds distrust and ambiguity more than inconsistent decision-making. Here’s what I’ve picked up for every issue and decision you make:

• Start every meeting, even the recurring ones, with “The purpose of this meeting is…” We live in a world of meetings…this gets everyone on the same page as to why they are at your meeting.

  
  

• Every issue requires at least 1 viable option. This helped my leaders “lead my thinking” versus me undercutting their empowerment. It also helped sharpen their problem-solving skills.

  
  

• Be clear on the decision-making model – when are you going to make the decision unilaterally, when are you going to consult, and when is it going to be consensus (if ever). This move instantly clarifies their role in the decision-making process.

  
  

• Be clear on your guiding principles – the values/basis of your decision. What is most important to you and why? Being clear on this topic short-circuits misunderstanding and builds trust after the meeting.

Employee Engagement

Leaders who try to “manage” or “control” work end up with flypaper suits. They walk the floors and employees throw their issues and challenges at them, and they stick like flies to flypaper. And boy, those suits get heavy at the end of the week. 

Marquet’s work focuses on building “leader-to-leader” systems instead of “leader-follower” systems. In leader-to-leader systems, you focus on curiosity and coaching versus dictating. 

Tactically, for me, it looked like:

• Consistency in my status meetings – What are we observing? What constraints are we facing? What is at least one change we need to make? Where do you need my energy?

• Encourage discussions over presentations – I hated being presented to. The way I got around it: send me materials ahead of time (I can read), tell me in advance what they want my engagement on, and timebox the amount of time someone can present.

• Choose not to go radioactive when getting bad news – Wherever possible, I tried to separate the bad news from coaching my leaders on what questions they need to figure out.

Above all, consistency matters in training your team on how you do your work and how they should interact. Consistent form equals more predictability, which creates trust.

A Culinary Note

My homemade paella

I enjoy cooking a big paella, and I rarely do it alone. It’s not a nuclear submarine, but in many ways, it’s an equally good test of intent-based leadership.

Paella looks simple from the outside, but it isn’t. Many moving parts, multiple hands involved, and very little margin for error. The thin pan and temperamental rice demand precise timing. Miss a cue, and the whole dish suffers.

In our small galley kitchen, everyone has to talk out loud. What they’re doing. What’s coming next. When their contribution is ready to go into the pan. That shared visibility keeps everything moving in sync.

Leadership works the same way. When leaders make their thinking visible, teams don’t need tighter control. They need clarity, timing, and trust.

Originally published on Linkedin.

Subscribe to Leadership Test Kitchen to be notified when new editions are released.