Moving from consuming leadership content to practising it

Executive overview

Many leaders absorb books and podcasts without changing their behaviour. The gap is structural: there is no mechanism to force action, reflection, or accountability.

Steve Schroeder, a pharmacy district manager, describes how a combination of self-assessment, deliberate practice, and peer accountability closed that gap. He shifted from directing teams to coaching them — and from resisting organisational change to leading it.

The move from theory to practice requires a system that forces action, not just exposure.

Breaking out of a career plateau

• Reached the ceiling of a high-performing district with no obvious next step
• Turned to books and podcasts but found passive consumption wasn't translating to change
• Joining a structured cohort provided timelines and accountability that self-directed learning lacked
• A role restructuring arrived simultaneously — forcing reinvention rather than allowing drift

What a strengths assessment revealed

• Highlighted a natural ability to anticipate problems six to eight months ahead — something he had always dismissed as obvious
• Surfaced stress as a hidden daily constant, not a situational reaction
• Led directly to two new habits: morning gratitude and intention-setting; regular deep reflective thinking
• Key insight: natural strengths often feel unremarkable to the person who has them

Shifting from directing to coaching

• Adopted the seven questions from The Coaching Habit (Michael Bungay Stanier) as a core practice
• Wrote the questions down and reviewed them before each store visit
• First month: consistently reverted to directing after one or two questions; reflection afterwards made the pattern visible
• The discipline of pre-planning questions prevented him from defaulting to solutions during conversations
• Teams generate their own answers → higher buy-in, more durable change
• Marker of progress: catching himself mid-direction and pivoting to a question instead

Accountability and underperformance

• Insight from Bungay Stanier: letting a poor fit linger harms both the individual and the team
• Changed approach: name the expectation clearly, follow up, then name the consequence explicitly
• Not holding someone accountable reads as kindness but denies them the information they need to improve or exit
• Coaching questions surface the problem; a direct closing statement sets the line

Leading through industry disruption

• Pharmacy reimbursement shifting from fee-for-service to fee-for-value; Amazon entering the market
• Initial instinct: resist the pace of staff reductions as too fast
• Leading Change (John Kotter) reframed this: incremental change tends to die; abrupt change is often necessary
• Changed his message to stores: explained the why, named the stakes, asked for buy-in rather than compliance
• Repeated the new mission — connecting health, nutrition, and wellness at a personal level — until it embedded
• District achieved its best-ever metric scores during the transition

Lessons from a new team member

• A newly created operations technician role brought a consistently positive presence into store visits
• Her practice: open with what the pharmacy is doing well before naming areas for improvement
• He began incorporating this — leading with positives shifts the reception of critical feedback