I have done well.
Did any of it matter?
This one usually shows up later, and it does not show up as a problem. You have hit the marks. The career is fine, the numbers are fine, the outside of your life looks the way you once hoped it would. And there is a quiet question underneath it that the achievements never quite answer.
Who is one person you
will impact today?
Not this year. Not once things settle down. Today. That is the whole exercise, and the reason it is worded that way is that significance is not a project you launch later, it is something that either happens in an ordinary week or does not happen at all. Four questions on your phone, and the last one asks for a name.
The Team Playbook
If you lead people, this is the most direct version of leaving them better. A ready session with no preparation, in a workplace version and a sports version.
Both Versions →The Discussion Guide
Ten sessions of thirty to forty five minutes. Work through it with a team, a group of friends, or your family. The conversations are the point rather than the reading.
Download PDF →Why Does Success Feel Empty?
Either you have been keeping score on achievement alone, or you are running on empty and nothing lands right now. Those need opposite responses, and adding a bigger goal on top of the second one makes it worse.
Answer It →What is actually
going on here.
Success is what you achieve. Significance is who is better because of you. They are not opposites and you do not have to choose between them, but they are not the same thing, and achieving a great deal of one does not quietly produce the other. Most people find that out later than they would like.
Success fades. Impact lives on through the people you lift up.
Try this. Think of the person who had the biggest impact on your life. You probably had them in mind before you finished reading that sentence. Now think about what they actually did. Almost nobody names a grand gesture. It is usually that they took you seriously before you had done anything to earn it, or told you the truth when it would have been easier not to, or simply kept showing up.
Two things follow from that, and they are both useful. The bar is much lower than you think, and they probably have no idea they did it. Which means the thing you are looking for is not a legacy project. It is available on a Tuesday, in a normal conversation, with somebody who is already in your life.
Presence is where most of it lives, and presence is not the same as availability. You can be in the room for two hours and give none of them. The people closest to you are not usually short of your time. They are short of your attention, and they can tell the difference even when nobody says anything about it.
There is one question worth carrying into your week. Before an interaction, ask what great would look like for this person, and then do that. It sounds almost too simple to bother with. It changes how a meeting goes, how a conversation with your kid goes, and how somebody remembers you, and it costs you nothing but the two seconds of thinking first.
You also do not need a title, permission, or a certain amount of success before any of this is available to you. Leadership starts with how you lead yourself, and leaving people better starts the moment you decide it is something you do rather than something you will get to.
Depending on who
you are thinking about.
These are not a series. Pick the one closest to what is on your mind.
What to Do When Your Managers Are Running on Empty
For when the people you lead are the ones running out, and you are trying to work out what actually helps.
Read it →How to Leave People Better Than You Found Them
Start here if you want the practical version, because most of it is smaller and more ordinary than people expect.
Read it →The Real Measure of Success Is Not What You Achieve
For when you have hit the marks and something about it has not landed the way you assumed it would.
Read it →Being Present Is Not the Same as Being Available
For when you are around constantly and still get the sense that you are missing something.
Read it →How to Lead Before You Get the Title
For when you are waiting for the role, the seniority, or the permission before you start acting like it matters.
Read it →You Do Not Get to Make Those Moments Up
For when there is a specific person you keep meaning to give more of your time to.
Read it →The Conversation You Keep Putting Off
For when leaving someone better would mean saying the honest thing rather than the comfortable one.
Read it →How to Get Honest Feedback and Actually Hear It
For when you want to be the person who sharpens others, which starts with letting somebody do it for you.
Read it →How to Find Your Purpose
For when the quiet question underneath the achievements has turned into what all of this is actually for.
Read it →How to Become a Better Person
For when leaving people better starts with an honest look at the person they are getting from you right now.
Read it →How to Be a Good Mentor
For when someone is looking to you the way you once looked to someone, and you want to do it well.
Read it →How to Be More Present With Your Family
For when you are at the table and the games and still not fully there.
Read it →Working Parent Guilt
For when you feel like you are shortchanging the people at work and the people at home at the same time.
Read it →How to Identify Leadership Potential in Employees
For when you lead people and want to be the one who saw something in somebody before anyone else did.
Read it →Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill
For when you are building a team and want to give people the chance someone once gave you.
Read it →How to Make a Difference in Someone’s Life
For when you want to matter to somebody and suspect it takes far less than a grand gesture.
Read it →How to Be a Better Listener
For when you are in the conversation but already composing your answer, and the other person can tell.
Read it →How to Encourage Someone Who Doubts Themselves
For when you can see it in someone they cannot see in themselves, and want to say it in a way that lands.
Read it →How to Find a Mentor (Even If You Do Not Know Anyone)
For when you want someone to do for you what you hope to do for others one day, and do not know where to start.
Read it →How to Be More Grateful (and Thank People So It Actually Lands)
For when you are grateful for the people who shaped you and have never actually told them.
Read it →How to Set Boundaries With Family and Friends
For when you keep saying yes to the people you love and resenting it later.
Read it →How to Find Your Core Values (With a List of Examples)
For when you want to decide what you stand for before the next hard decision decides it for you.
Read it →How to Apologize and Actually Own a Mistake
For when you have said sorry in a way that made it worse, or avoided saying it at all.
Read it →How to Create a Personal Vision for Your Life
For when you are moving fast and not sure you are moving toward anything in particular.
Read it →How to Leave a Legacy
For when you have started asking what will remain after the titles and the trophies.
Read it →How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
For when you want people to walk away from a conversation with you feeling heard.
Read it →How to Motivate People Without Relying on Your Title
For when you want people to care about the work, not just comply with it.
Read it →How to Help a Friend Who Just Lost Their Job
For anyone who wants to be there for someone after a layoff and is not sure what to say.
Read it →Leave People Better
Success is what you achieve. Significance is who is better because of you.
- Who has had the greatest impact on my life, and what did they do that made a difference?
- How have I been showing up for others, and where could I be more present or encouraging?
- What does leaving people better look like in my daily life?
- Who is one person I will intentionally impact today?
Success is what you achieve. Significance is who is better because of you.
Print it
and work it.
Free to download, free to copy, free to run with a team or a family.
The Team Playbook
A ready session for the people you lead. No preparation required, in a workplace version and a sports version.
Both Versions →The Discussion Guide
Ten sessions, one per concept, with questions and a group challenge each week. Also runs as five paired sessions.
Download PDF →The Printable Playbook
All ten concepts with room to write. Concept ten is the one for this, and it ends by asking for a name.
Download PDF →Quote Cards
Eleven cards worth printing, posting, or handing to somebody who needs one this week.
Download PDF →These overlap
more than you think.
Time and Busyness
When you want to be more present and cannot find the hours, or cannot say where the ones you have are going.
The Comfort Ceiling
When achieving more has stopped being interesting and you are not sure what the next thing is supposed to be.
Self-Doubt
When the reason you hold back from people is a quiet sense that your input would not be worth much anyway.
Resilience
When what you have been through has left you wanting it to count for someone other than you.
Run this with your people.
Four ready-to-run formats built on the same ten concepts. Every one is free, every one comes with the words to say and the questions to ask, and you do not need Chris in the room to use any of them.
When I’ve got something worth sending.
Just a story or an idea I picked up that I think will help you.
Sometimes that’s twice in a month. Sometimes it’s not for a while.