Spring Clean Your Leadership: 5 Habits Worth Letting Go Of

Spring has a way of making us look at things differently. We open windows, clear out clutter, and ask ourselves the question we’ve been avoiding all winter: what’s still serving us, and what’s just taking up space?

It’s a question worth asking of your leadership, too.

Many of the habits and assumptions leaders carry into work each day were formed in a different context, earlier in their career, in a different organisation, or in a world that no longer quite exists. Some of those habits have aged well. Others haven’t.

Here are five leadership habits that might be worth a spring clean this year.

1. The habit of having the answer

There’s a version of leadership that equates confidence with certainty. The strong leader has the vision, makes the call, and moves forward. Doubt is weakness. Uncertainty is something to manage, not share.

In complex, fast-moving environments, this habit doesn’t just stop working it actively gets in the way. Teams that can’t challenge or question their leaders make worse decisions. Leaders who can’t say “I don’t know” can’t build the psychological safety that high performance requires.

The better habit: replace the performance of certainty with the practice of curiosity. Ask more questions. Say “I don’t know. what do you think?” and mean it.

2. The habit of feedback as an annual event

Most organisations still treat feedback as something that happens in a formal review, once or twice a year. The rest of the time, people are left to infer how they’re doing from the absence of criticism.

That’s not development. That’s management by assumption.

Regular, honest, specific feedback given in the flow of work, not in a meeting room six months after the fact, is one of the highest-leverage investments a leader can make. And yet it remains one of the most underdeveloped skills in most organisations.

The better habit: build feedback into the rhythm of your one-to-ones. Make it reciprocal. Make it normal.

3. The habit of measuring output over growth

Delivery matters. Results matter. We’re not suggesting otherwise.

But there’s a difference between a team that’s performing and a team that’s developing. One is meeting today’s targets. The other is building tomorrow’s capability. The best leaders hold both in view.

If every one-to-one you have is about what’s been delivered this week and never about where someone wants to be in two years, then you’re managing, not leading.

The better habit: make space in your conversations for growth, not just tasks.

4. The habit of leading through presence

For many leaders, particularly those who came up before hybrid working, influence was built through visibility. Being in the building, knowing what was happening, and being seen to be engaged.

That model doesn’t transfer to distributed teams. Influence now has to be built deliberately, through consistency, communication, and trust… not through proximity.

The better habit: ask yourself how you’re building connection and trust with people you rarely see in person. Then do that, intentionally.

5. The habit of treating development as someone else’s job

This one is perhaps the most common — and the most costly.

Leadership development gets outsourced to HR, or to a two-day programme, or to a coaching engagement that starts and ends without ever touching the day-to-day culture of the team. Meanwhile, the leader themselves stays exactly as they are.

Real development happens in real work. It happens when leaders are given the space to reflect, the support to experiment, and the honest feedback to course-correct. It’s a process, not an event.

The better habit: own your own development. Ask for feedback. Seek out challenge. Treat leadership as a practice, not a destination.

“Leadership isn’t something you arrive at. It’s something you keep working on.”

Spring cleaning your leadership doesn’t mean throwing everything out. It means being honest about what’s genuinely working, what’s a comfortable habit rather than an effective one, and what you might want to try differently.

The best leaders we work with are the ones who never stop asking that question.

If you’re thinking about how to invest in your leadership team this year, we’d love to talk.