The ability to instill change in your team members is one of the most important skills for any people leader. It’s critical for newly promoted managers as well as long-tenured CEOs. When I say change, I am talking about adopting new mindsets, learning new behaviors, and acquiring new skills. Examples include seeking out discomfort in service of personal growth, becoming a lifelong learner, developing a greater sense of ownership, and adapting your communication based on others’ preferred communication styles.

While change can be hard, it is possible if you approach it the right way. Below are four steps to help you create behavior change within your teams.

“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.” – Ajahn Chah

I came across this quote recently while using the Calm app to meditate. In that moment, letting go was aimed at reducing stress, anxiety, and getting a full night’s sleep. The quote reminded me of a dream I had a few years back and of a partially written blog post about how letting go could be a superpower that not only gives you peace and calm, but also greater focus, productivity, and sense of purpose.

As individuals, we can use questions to challenge assumptions we have about ourselves and tackle self-limiting beliefs. In The Savage Leader, I shared the story of how serial entrepreneur Michel Kripalani used a “How might that work…?” question as the jumping off point to start a mobile app company around the Dr. Seuss series of books. Doing so helped him beat back his self-limiting belief of his readiness to start a company and basing it on a child’s classic.

I used a similar question as the genesis to launch my first company, Nexus Surf, a surf travel company based in the South of Brazil.

Helping leaders create a sense of purpose is one of the most meaningful parts of my executive coaching work. Most people assume that purpose is created in a flash of light, through a singular experience. The reality is that we create purpose through intention, reflection, and action. For me, creating purpose was a long and winding road that unfolded over many years. I wanted to share my story as well as what I’ve learned to fast-track the path to creating purpose so that you can build more purpose into your life and career.

I talk a lot about growth in The Savage Leader. I also talk about barriers that get in the way of our growth. A recent personal story taught me yet another common impediment to our growth—our own egos. The following story taught me how ego can trespass in our pass to growth, but also the importance of stepping past it in search of lifelong growth and development.

While I had long been aware of authenticity as a leadership principle, I don’t think I truly embraced it personally until I started writing my book, The Savage Leader. For much of my professional career, I had focused on showing the world the “Smart Darren”, which meant the “Accenture Darren” and “Berkeley Haas MBA Darren.” Not the “real Darren”, whatever that meant.

One of the questions I have been asked since publishing The Savage Leader is some variation of, “How did you come up with the title?”, “What does it mean to be a Savage Leader?”, or “Did you really mean to use the word ‘Savage’?”

Today’s post is the first in a series that I am calling “The Savage Leader Journal.” The journal is a collection of my early morning/late at night/middle of the night musings, thoughts, insights, and stories that will act as a sand box to incubate, test, and refine new ideas and insights that will go into future books, courses, and tools to help each of us on our way to become a Savage Leader.