The Leader-Development Flywheel

Turning Leader Experience into Growth

How do leaders actually grow?

When you look back on the seasons when you developed the most as a leader, what jumps out at you? 

Did you learn to lead in a classroom? By reading a book? Those things matter—they can spark insight, accelerate a breakthrough, or give language to what you’re experiencing. But chances are, your most meaningful growth came through actually leading—especially when the stakes were high, the pressure was real, and you were stretched, struggling, or even failing your way forward.

In other words: experience is essential. 

But it isn’t enough. As my friend Randy Rathke says, “Don’t become a mere experience collector—be an experience user. Examine them from every angle, and use them to inform future experiences.”

If you simply bounce from one challenging experience to the next—or one crisis to the next—without ever stepping back, you will unintentionally cap your growth. Experience alone doesn’t guarantee development. Reflection reveals the lessons; preparation puts them to work. Skip either one, and you stay stuck—never learning or applying what your experiences are trying to teach you.

The Three Things Leaders Do to Grow

Leaders grow when they do three things consistently:

Prepare. Lead. Make Meaning.

1. Preparation (before)

Set the conditions for excellence in your next experience by deliberately preparing and using previous learning to prime your growth. Synthesize insights, anticipate the new context, and enter the experience higher up on your learning curve.

How to prepare well:

• Know yourself and your team—be clear on your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies
• Review your previous lessons learned, AARs, and notes with intention
• Visualize the upcoming experience and describe what success will look like
• Observe others doing what you are preparing to do
• Talk with mentors and peers who recently faced similar challenges (e.g., peer assist) 
• Build the knowledge and skills you will need: take courses, read books, listen to podcasts, etc.
• Rehearse, train, and practice critical tasks and decisions
• Conduct site visits and engage your team in before-action-reviews (BARs)

Imagine your leader growth as a curve over time. Entering the next experience higher on that curve increases your effectiveness from the start and expands your capacity to learn more during—and after—the experience.

2. Experience (during)

Experience is the engine of the flywheel—but not all experiences are created equal. Seek out a variety of new, challenging experiences that propel growth:

• Experiences that stretch you and push you outside your comfort zone 
• Experiences with high-stakes, real responsibility, and real consequences 
• Experiences that expose you to adversity, ambiguity, or complexity
• Experiences that round you out and develop new facets of leadership
• Experiences that align with your longer-term goals and your organization’s direction—deliberately building your capacity for the future

The right experiences don’t just test you—they shape you and your team.

3. Meaning (after)

Growth deepens when you pause to process the experience and make sense of what happened. Meaning-making is the bridge between experience and preparation.

How to make meaning well:

• Conduct AARs and seek candid feedback
• Review outcomes, decisions, and unintended consequences
• Engage in focused self-reflection (journaling, structured prompts, solitude)
• Talk with peers, mentors, or trusted advisors
• Use polling, surveys, and assessments to understand perspectives
• Shift your context intentionally through rest, exercise, or time in nature
• Visualize how you’ll apply your learning in future contexts

A note on rest: Neuroscience shows that the brain continues learning while you sleep. Insight often crystallizes after you step away—when your brain integrates experience, emotion, and meaning. Many “aha moments” are impossible without this time and rest.

Leader development isn’t a one-time event. It’s a deliberate, lifelong cycle of preparation, action, and meaning-making—each loop powering the flywheel and expanding your capacity to lead effectively.

Experience alone doesn’t create growth. Growth comes from a series of experiences paired with meaning-making and intentional preparation—together transforming leader effectiveness over time.

That’s the flywheel—and when you turn it intentionally, everything accelerates. Help others turn the flywheel and you create shared momentum—growth becomes contagious.

Put the Flywheel into Practice: Accelerate Your Teammates’ Growth

One of the most powerful practices to accelerate growth for the people you lead is developmental counseling—one-on-one conversations done regularly, monthly or at least quarterly. Over time, these conversations become the core of your developmental system.

Each session can follow a simple rhythm of looking back and looking forward. 

• Look Back: reflection, sense-making, and feedback about recent experiences
• Look Forward: preparation and intentionality for upcoming challenges

This steady cadence of reflection and “preflection” keeps growth continuous and purposeful.

Leader Dev Flywheel Counseling Prompts

LOOK BACK: Help Them Make Meaning of a Recent Experience

Ask the person to walk you through recent leadership experiences and choose one to focus on. Then use prompts like:

1. What went well for you/the team? What did not go so well?
2. In what aspects of the experience did you personally feel strong and effective?
3. Who or what contributed most to your success—or to the team’s?
4. What are you learning about yourself (and others)?
5. What aspects of your character were strengthened or weakened in this experience?
6. On a scale of 1-5, how prepared do you feel to do something like this again?
7. What else could you do to catalyze learning and get the most from this experience?

Together, these conversations create the rhythm of the Leader Development Flywheel—learning from the past to prepare for the future.

LOOK FORWARD: Help Them Prepare for What’s Next

Have the person identify an upcoming leadership experience to focus on. Then use prompts like:

1. What does success or excellence look like? (Visualize and describe it.)
2. What will be the hardest part of achieving that?
3. What knowledge, skills, mindset, or relationships are required to be effective?
4. What lessons from past experiences will you intentionally apply? (Deliberately synthesize what you’ve learned to apply in the new context.)
5. On a scale of 1–5, how prepared are you (and your team) for this?
6. What could you or the team do to better prepare?
7. Who could you learn from or get support from—and how might you engage them?
8. How will you stay intentional about learning during and after the experience?

Two Steps to Take It to the Next Level

1. Broaden the Focus:

Beyond preparing for the next event, consider what range of experiences will best support the person’s long-term goals and professional growth. 

2. Cascade the Process:

Ask the person you are counseling, “How are you developing the people you lead?” Help connect the dots between what you are modeling and what they are doing to grow their next-level leaders. You are not just growing one leader—you are growing someone who will grow others. That’s how generational impact begins.

[I want to thank Nate Allen for reminding me how important it is to ask the people we lead to explain how they are deliberately developing the people they lead.]

Conclusion

In the end, we grow as leaders not just by facing hard things, but by learning from them. Experience is the raw material; reflection and preparation turn it into a compounding flow of actionable wisdom. Turn the Flywheel with intention—for yourself and with your team—and rise together to meet the challenges ahead.

Live your mission. Lead well.

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