Habits Beyond Management
- Linh Ngo
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Why Leadership Growth Begins Where Management Ends
Samuel Lam, Managing Partner, Third Opinion Partners & Linh Ngo, Consultant, Third Opinion Partners
Management is one of the most well-developed disciplines in modern organizations. It is supported by structures, processes, and systems designed to deliver consistency and control, from Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to performance dashboards and governance routines that bring order and accountability to complex work. Whether managing operations, products, or teams, management gives us the tools to plan, measure, and execute.
Yet, management consumes enormous energy. It requires layers of supervision, review mechanisms, and continual monitoring to ensure performance stays on track and in compliance. When everything depends on management effort, organizations become heavy and slow. The question is: What if much of this energy could be redirected?
The real shift happens when habits take over - when people consistently do the right things not because they are told to, but because it’s part of who they are. Habits create self-discipline, internal motivation, and automatic alignment with what matters most. Operating on good habits helps reduce the need for control and create self-sustaining momentum. A leader or team member who acts out of habit - reflecting, prioritizing, learning, and following through, needs far less managing and control.
That is why leadership development must go beyond building, maintaining and developing management systems and structures, and focusing on building good habits of leadership - ingrained ways of thinking and acting that elevate performance from compliance to commitment. It is no longer just about teaching processes or systems, it is about cultivating the inner disciplines that make great leadership self-directed and enduring.
From Systems to Self: The Power of Habits
Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People sparked a movement over four decades ago where it showed how personal effectiveness grows from habits that align behaviour with principles.
Building on this foundation, we can now speak of habits beyond management - the higher-order habits that shape how leaders think, focus, and relate. Saj-nicole Joni in her book ‘The Third Opinion’ expands the concept into three higher-order domains - Habit of Mind, Habit of Focus, and Habit of Relationship. These habits move leaders from managing systems to mastering self.
1. Habit of Mind – From Application to Exponential Thinking
Leaders often rely on “application thinking” – applying known solutions to known problems, and adopting best practices. But since today’s challenges are complex, we must move toward to “expert thinking” and ultimately “exponential thinking” - the ability to see patterns, experiment, and imagine beyond precedent. With the current technology advancement, artificial intelligence (AI) is very useful for leaders to leverage “application thinking” and “expert thinking” in gathering data, insights for making decision. However, to develop “exponential thinking” skill which requires expanding beyond adjacencies, AI can be helpful but cannot replace the leader’s independent thinking and judgement.
This habit of the mind demands reflection, curiosity, and intellectual humility. The leader’s mind becomes less about having the right answers and risking being obsolete, and more about asking the right questions and exploring possibilities. Successful leaders need to regularly spend time with thinking partners they trust, because “exponential thinking” is best done with others.
Beyond technical expertise, leaders today need thinking habits that reliably guide how they frame problems and make decisions. Three foundational modes: Strategic Thinking, Systems Thinking, and Design Thinking form the mental toolkit that enables leaders to navigate complexity with clarity. Strategic Thinking provides the long-arc perspective; Systems Thinking reveals interdependencies and second-order effects; and Design Thinking grounds decisions in empathy, experimentation, and iteration. When leaders deliberately cycle through these lenses, they avoid the trap of viewing issues too narrowly and instead develop a more complete, actionable understanding of the problems they face.
Building these thinking habits is central to what Welter and Egmon describe as the prepared mind of a leader - the deliberate cultivation of perspectives, patterns, and practices that help leaders pause and make sense of uncertainty. A prepared mind is not merely knowledgeable; it is conditioned to notice weak signals, question assumptions, and draw on multiple mental models before acting. According to Welter and Egmon’s work, leaders develop this preparedness through conscious routines: seeking diverse data, engaging in reflective pauses, testing interpretations, and learning from adjacent domains. With coaching and repeated application, these routines become habitual, enabling leaders to step into complex situations with calmness, clarity, curiosity, and confidence. A leader with a prepared mind doesn’t just respond to change, they are ready for it, lead change and leverage change.
2. Habit of Focus – The Power of the Hour
Focus is not about working harder, it’s about working on what truly matters. Peter Drucker’s timeless question “What is my contribution in this moment?” remains a powerful anchor.
Leaders with the Habit of Focus regularly pause, reflect, and prioritize the non-urgent but important, the few things that move the needle. It’s the “power of the hour” - setting time with yourself to think, not just do.
A critical habit for modern leaders is the discipline of focused thinking - the ability to channel their attention with discipline and intentionality. Jim Collins highlights this in ‘Good to Great' as the progression from disciplined people having disciplined thought to taking disciplined action. This is the capacity to stay anchored in clear reasoning and follow through consistently, even when volatility or noise threatens to pull leaders off course.
In Warren Bennis and Linkage Inc.’s study of over 350 companies involved with leadership development, one of the top 10 leadership competencies is Focused Drive - the capability of focusing on a goal and harnessing your energy in order to meet that goal – a balance between focus and drive. This reminds leaders that clarity of direction must be paired with the will to pursue it with energy, courage, and persistence. This dovetails seamlessly with Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s The One Thing, which urges leaders to identify the single priority that creates the greatest impact and to organize time, decisions, and resources around it. Together, these concepts offer a simple but demanding mandate: leaders achieve disproportionate results not by doing everything, but by doing the right things with unshakeable focus and disciplined execution.
3. Habit of Relationship – Building Your Third Opinion Board
Leadership does not happen alone. The most effective leaders cultivate Habit of Relationship by intentionally building circles of trust that challenge and expand their thinking. In her book, Saj-nicole Joni calls this your Third Opinion Board, a small circle of people who know you, like you, and have your best interests at heart. They bring different expertise, can “speak truth to power,” and help you see what you can’t. It is your responsibility to look for, cultivate, build and maintain this ‘personal board’ so you won’t have to be ‘lonely at the top’ when you advance in your career.
To establish and maintain your personal board, building trust with key relationships is critical. As described by Saj-nicole Joni, great leaders understand the value of trust and nurture three kinds of trust:
Personal trust – people who genuinely care about you and have a personal relationship with you
Expertise trust – those whose knowledge and expertise you may rely on.
Structured trust – those who hold certain structural positions that you need to depend on and leverage.
Habits Make Leadership Sustainable
When leaders develop these important habits, they also develop their character. Leadership becomes lighter and more self-sustaining and organizations shift from being management-heavy to being self-leading and efficient. You do not have to manage leaders who habitually think deeply, focus clearly, and connect authentically - they lead themselves and others naturally and wisely. Leaders who practice these powerful habits daily, will become ‘Multipliers’ – described by Liz Wisman in her book ‘Multipliers: How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter’ as leaders who use their own intelligence to maximise the intelligence and capability of others. These leaders are genius makers, harnessing collective intelligence, enabling people to think, decide and perform at their best.
In essence, habits are the invisible systems of leadership. They make performance sustainable, growth continuous, and leadership self-renewing. Management keeps the engine running; habits ensure it runs on its own. We shift from running systems to developing human capacity - the foundation of enduring and sustainable leadership. Without these habits, leaders will need to constantly do a series of review, refresh and reset. Therefore, if we strive for sustainable leadership, it is crucial for leaders to form and practice the key three habits of leadership: Habit of Mind, Habit of Focus and Habit of Relationship.
Bibliography and Recommended Readings:
‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, by Stephen R. Covey, 1989
‘The Third Opinion: How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results’, by Saj-nicole A. Joni, 2004
'The Prepared Mind of a Leader: Eight Skills Leaders Use to Innovate, Make Decisions, and Solve Problems’, by Bill Welter & Jean Egmon, 2005
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done’, by Peter F. Drucker, 2006
‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't’, by Jim Collines, 2001
‘Linkage Inc.’s Best Practices in Leadership Development Handbook’, by David Giber, Louis Carter, Marshall Goldsmith, and Warren G. Bennis (Foreword), 1999
'The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results’, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, 2012
‘The Third Opinion: How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results’, by Saj-nicole A. Joni, 2004
'Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter’, by Liz Wiseman, 2010.
About Authors
Samuel Lam is Managing Partner of Third Opinion Partners, a global leadership development and organisational development consulting firm. One of the leading practitioners in the field of leadership development in Asia, Sam has created some of the most highly regarded leadership development programs for both Singapore and global clients. He serves as executive coach and adviser to a number of notable CEOs, boards, and senior government officials in Singapore, Europe, and Asia. His major clients included GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, Prudential, AIA, Lenovo, Hasbro, Philips, Disney, CIMB Bank, and various branches of the Singapore Government. Sam’s expertise spans several areas of leadership development: executive coaching, executive selection, performance improvement of top teams, development of talent pipelines, and assessment of top talent. He co-authored Linkage Inc.’s Best Practices in Leadership Development Handbook (Second Edition, 2009) with Marshall Goldsmith and David Giber.
Linh Ngo is a Consultant and Program Manager at Third Opinion Partners. She has over 10 years of experience in strategic human resource management and talent development, both as a human resource practitioner and a consultant.” Her area of expertise lies in designing, developing, and executing customised leadership development programs and delivering leadership consulting projects. Some of her major clients include AIA, Deloitte, Hasbro, Lenovo, Maybank, Sime Darby, RHB Bank. As Linh forges ahead, she is in charge of advancing new programs and initiatives in empowering the next generation of leaders.
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