How Practice Changes Each of Us: Reflections from the HLG Coaches
Photo Credit: Xingchen Yan via Unsplash
Practice as a Leadership Development Strategy
At Henley Leadership Group, we believe that leadership development isn't something that happens in a single workshop or a finished course. It takes shape gradually, through sustained practice, through the willingness to return to something again and again until it begins to settle into the body and shift how you move through the world.
This month, our writing group gathered around a question that sits at the heart of our third leadership theme for 2026, Integrating Practice: what happens when something you have been practicing finally shows up without effort, and what changed to make it feel natural?
As we wrote, we explored what helps us stay with a practice long enough for it to become part of us. Sometimes it is trust in the process. Maybe inspiration. Or enough repetition that the body knows what to do before the mind has time to panic. Sometimes it is permission to stop performing and start learning. Sometimes it is the moment when what once felt awkward becomes part of us with ease and grace.
Discoveries, insights and self-awareness are the first part of the journey. Personal transformation deepens when self-reflection moves from insight into action.
The reflections below are from seven of our Seattle-based coaches and facilitators. Each one arrived at a different answer.
Sometimes practice helps us let go of perfection
Growing up, I was always a “star” student. I wanted to get good grades, perform well, follow the rules, fall in line, never mess up. I’d listen and observe and only really speak up when I thought I had something profound to say.
This carried into my early career. I never wanted to be looked at like I didn’t have it all together. It was exhausting. I’d fight nerves and anxiety every day, worried that my manager, who I very much looked up to, wouldn’t think I was smart enough or contributing enough.
Then there was a switch. My manager sat me down one day, noticing my constant push for perfection. She saw it weighing on me and encouraged me to mess up, to send something out with a mistake and see what happened. Terrifying. But I did it. Typos in an email to our 20,000-subscriber base. Nothing happened.
That one small shift opened up so much for me. The ability to mess up and show up authentically, to stop covering and shaming myself for not getting everything right.
A few months ago, we really mucked up the first Friday webinar. I had forgotten to send a reminder email that we were rescheduling for another day. People sat in the waiting room wondering where we were, which ten years ago would have sent me into an absolute tailspin. One silly email with memes from the office and light humor later, and we were back on track.
The response to that email was staggering. It was up there with the most responses I’ve ever gotten to a marketing email because people saw I am human.
From one small coaching conversation with my manager ten years ago to a misstep just a few months ago, I can see the shift. Choosing to show up authentically in small moments every day has changed the depth and breadth of my work. — Sam Crawley, Director of Marketing, Henley Leadership Group
Not everything worth practicing should become effortless
Without effort, now this is the part that is sticky for me . . .
Things that matter require intention, and intention is effort.
Being conscious in the work is effort.
I don’t want to be effortless.
I want to be intentional, brave, curious and peaceful
as I walk, talk, sing, dance, rage, engage.
Serve, support, not help.
Encourage, love, laugh, cook, clean,
relish in the blue sky.
Pray daily for the lives and safety of others.
Believe, hope and just breathe. — La Tasha, Coach & Facilitator, Henley Leadership Group
Sometimes practice becomes part of how we gather and our culture
When we started this company 24 years ago, we valued being present and knowing who and how people were showing up for meetings. Dede Henley, our founder, introduced the idea of check-ins, drawing upon common practices in meditation and visualizations.
During a check-in, one person speaks and there’s no crosstalk. We just listen with curiosity and interest. The value of creating this quiet space for each person to settle in and get present to what was going on within and around them was so clear, we stuck with it.
Why this practice has become so natural and second nature is simply because of the rewards and benefits it provided. Human beings like to be rewarded for our efforts in stretching outside our comfort zone and creating new practices, and those practices that become second nature have always been rewarded or we wouldn’t stick with them. We see the value. — Carol Zizzo, CEO, Henley Leadership Group
Sometimes practice takes courage
In sharing groups, I go last. Almost always, it feels comfortable, natural, right and safe.
Sometimes in sharing groups, I watch the clock closely and realize if I play this right, I won’t have to share at all.
So I choose to wade into the sharing sooner than before, willing to be uncomfortable and risking ever so slightly saying a thing poorly or wrongly in order to be more vulnerable and visible and present.
I have no interest in becoming the one who goes first, but I am interested in connecting quickly, deeply and thoughtfully. — Jon Mullican, Coach & Facilitator, Henley Leadership Group
Sometimes we need to slow down to learn
For years, in my Pilates practice, I’d try and try, session after session, to get from prone to sitting and stretching over my legs simply with the strength of my abs and my breath.
Then one day, my teacher said, “Slow down. Let’s go step by step first.”
I practiced just this first half of the exercise a few more times, and then my instructor said, “Now, are you ready? Want to try the whole thing?”
I thought, oh God, this is going to look like crap. But I also wanted to try, so shyly, I said, “Yes, let’s go for it.”
She said, “Stay present. Stay connected to each motion as you breathe and roll up.”
What changed was not more force. It was attention. It was learning that the thing I was trying to master was not one big thing, but a sequence, a relationship, a rhythm. Once I stopped trying to conquer it and began to notice it, it became possible. — Penny Koch-Patterson, Director of Coaching Programs, Henley Leadership Group
Sometimes the body knows before the mind does
Learning to drive a manual shift on my mom’s 2000 Honda Civic.
After six months of herky-jerky stop-and-start lessons, I had given up and resigned to the fate that I would never learn.
A week later, I had to drive myself to play practice, and a fellow student needed a ride home. We made it to her house, no issue. The muscle memory had kicked in after months of practice.
As I was sitting in that intersection that I had been stranded at only a week before, I took a breath and restarted the car. I took a deep exhale, and when the clutch shifted into first, I was able to accelerate. I got home, no issue. But if I had panicked or let my worry get into the driver’s seat, it would’ve been a different outcome. — Wendy Eisemann, Program Operations Coordinator, Henley Leadership Group
Sometimes consistency arrives suddenly
When I was 14, I joined a swim team. It literally saved my life. Up until that time, I had not been drawn to any particular sport, and I held painful memories of being the last person chosen for kickball at recess.
When I entered the water, I was transformed. I was on a team, but my individual performance was the focus. This shift from trying to find my place in the group to being responsible for my own development freed me to explore what was possible in every stroke. I thrived!
We practiced every day after school. Some of the happiest times in my middle years. Our coach pushed us, and he was kind and encouraging. We competed regionally, winning some and losing others but I never felt shamed for being the weak link or made to feel as if I wasn’t measuring up. When we won, we were acknowledged individually for our contributions and celebrated as a team for our wins.
What I learned over thousands of hours in the pool, honing my strokes and flip turns, was that there were moments of triumph and moments of frustration, but the consistency just wasn’t there, until one day it was.— Melanie Cossette, Coach, Henley Leadership Group
What Practice Builds Over Time
Taken together, these stories suggest that putting ideas into practice is not just about mastering a technique. It is about learning a different way of being, one that unfolds slowly, through repetition, reflection, and the kind of attention that only comes when you decide to stay with something long enough to let it change you.
Sometimes practice means letting go of perfection. Sometimes it means finding the courage to go first, or the patience to slow down, or the trust that the body is learning even when the mind has given up. What becomes natural, in the end, is rarely just the skill. It is the self-awareness to recognize the insight, and the willingness to live inside it long enough that it becomes part of who you are.
This is what we mean when we say that practice is the curriculum. It's the organizing principle behind the leadership development work we do at Henley Leadership Group, both in our executive coaching programs and across our leadership development offerings in Seattle and beyond.
From Insight to Action: Reflection Questions for Leaders
Is there an insight or personal reflection that keeps coming back to you?
What would you love to learn or get better at, even if it still feels awkward, difficult or scary?
Are you practicing something right now, intentionally or not?
What helps you stay with a practice long enough for it to feel more natural: inspiration, trust, structure, accountability, courage?
What is one step you could take this week to put that insight into practice?