It’s time to turn traditional success thinking on its head. We’ve been taught to lead from the outside in. Set targets. Drive results. Measure performance. It’s logical. It’s structured. It’s familiar. But it’s also the wrong way round.
Because success – for you, your team, and your organisation – doesn’t start with what people do. It starts with how people think and feel.
The Illusion of ‘Outside-In’ Leadership
Most leadership models teach that the right systems, incentives, and skillsets will produce high performance.
If that were true, every well-trained, well-paid team would be thriving. They’re not because these models overlook one crucial variable: the inner world of the person doing the work.
When you ignore that, you end up managing behaviour instead of developing people.
The Success Cycle
Every result your team achieves (or doesn’t) follows a simple but powerful loop:
Thoughts → Feelings → Behaviours → Results → reinforce Thoughts.
This framework sits at the heart of cognitive behavioural theory and explains almost every pattern you see in the workplace.
- People’s thoughts (often unconscious) shape how they feel.
- Their feelings determine how they behave.
- Their behaviours produce results that either reinforce or challenge the original thought.
If you only try to change behaviour, you’re working at the surface. But when you change a thought or feeling, you change the entire system.
The Leader Who Had It All (But Still Felt Empty)
I once coached a divisional head who was, by every metric, ‘successful.’ Strong reputation. Impressive results. Bigger salary. And yet, each morning, she felt a quiet sense of dread. She couldn’t delegate effectively, couldn’t relax, and couldn’t stop checking every detail herself.
When we explored what was really going on, she realised the thought driving her behaviour was:
“If I’m not in control, everything will fall apart.”
That thought created anxiety → The anxiety fuelled overwork → The overwork produced results that reinforced the original belief.
Once she recognised the cycle, she didn’t need another time-management tool.
She needed a new thought. When she began to think, “If I trust others, we’ll grow stronger together,” her emotions shifted from fear to cautious confidence.
- Her behaviour changed: she delegated, supported, coached.
- And the results followed: her team thrived.
Same skills. Same systems. Different inner world. Completely different outcome.
Why Leaders Get It Backwards
Most people are taught that success works outside in: achieve more → feel better.
While that can create short-term results, it’s marginal compared to what happens when The Success Cycle runs inside out. When you start with your inner world – your thoughts, emotions, and mindset – the outer world naturally shifts.
That’s why the best leaders focus not just on what their people produce, but on who they’re becoming in the process. It’s also why, in my own work, I focus on the person within the professional.
Coaching Through The Cycle
Next time you’re in a coaching conversation, listen for the thought behind the behaviour.
Instead of asking: “Why did you do that?”
Try asking: “What were you thinking or feeling in that moment?”
That small shift moves the conversation from correction to self-awareness. Because once someone becomes aware of their thinking, they can choose to change it, and when they do, everything else follows.
The Takeaway
You can’t permanently change performance by managing what people do. You change performance by understanding what people think.
That’s the foundation of The Success Cycle and it’s the core principle behind The Confidence Breakthrough.
By challenging the mental shortcuts driving thoughts, you build resilience. By reframing feelings, you create courage. By shifting behaviours, you build confidence.
Of course, there’s something deeper driving all of this, but that’s a story for another time.
If you’re developing others and want to help your people achieve results that last – from the inside out:
• Get in touch to explore how The Confidence Breakthrough (Online, Virtual or Face-to-Face) can support your organisation, or
• DM me for a complimentary copy of The Confidence Breakthrough book.