Formation Over Epiphanies
Why lasting change is slower than you think — and why that matters.
Early in my coaching career, I believed the best thing I could do for a leader was help them reach an "aha moment." That flash of insight where everything clicks. The kind of breakthrough you see in movies — dramatic, sudden, transformative.
After thirty years of walking alongside CEOs and founders, I've changed my mind. Epiphanies are overrated. They feel great in the moment, but they rarely stick. The leader who has a powerful realization on Tuesday is often back to their old patterns by Friday.
The Problem With Breakthroughs
The issue isn't that insights don't matter — they do. The problem is that we've confused understanding with change. Knowing what needs to shift is very different from actually shifting it. And the gap between those two things is where most leadership development falls apart.
Think about it this way: every CEO I've ever worked with already knows the two or three things they need to change. They know they need to delegate more, or have the hard conversation, or stop micromanaging their leadership team. The knowledge isn't the bottleneck. The formation is.
What Formation Looks Like
Formation is the slow, intentional work of weaving new patterns into how you lead and live. It's not glamorous. It doesn't make for a good keynote story. But it's the only thing that actually produces lasting change.
In my work, formation means returning to the same core priorities again and again — in different contexts, under different pressures, over the course of twelve months — until they're not just ideas you agree with but reflexes you operate from.
It means a CEO who struggles with trust doesn't just talk about delegation once — they practice it in real time, debrief what happened, adjust, and practice again. Over and over, until the new pattern becomes more natural than the old one.
Why Twelve Months Matters
People sometimes ask why my engagements are twelve months long. This is why. Not because change takes twelve months — change can happen in a conversation. But because formation takes repetition, accountability, and time. You need enough runway to face your patterns in multiple seasons, under varying levels of pressure, with someone who knows your story well enough to call out what they see.
The leaders who grow the most aren't the ones with the biggest breakthroughs. They're the ones who show up consistently, do the unglamorous work, and trust the process even when progress feels invisible. That's formation. And it's the only kind of change I've seen last.
