What Teaching 300+ Managers Taught Me About Learning Leadership
Or: Why I Wrote a Book
For the last year, I’ve had a job most leadership writers dream about: teaching new managers directly, face-to-face, across 80 Amazon facilities throughout the United States and Canada.
Not writing articles they might read. Not publishing frameworks they might find. Actually standing in front of managers, watching them try to apply leadership concepts in real-time, seeing exactly where they struggle and where they succeed.
And here’s what that experience revealed: having good content isn’t enough. The order matters. The connections matter. The structure matters.
I learned this the hard way.
When More Content Creates More Confusion
Three months into my role as an Acceleration Academy Instructor, I was teaching a group of area managers in Oklahoma. During a break, one approached me with a question about handling a recurring safety issue on her floor.
As we talked, it was clear that she’d read multiple articles about accountability, performance management, and safety culture. She knew the individual concepts. But she was paralyzed because she didn’t know which framework to apply first, or how they connected to each other.
“Should I address this as a communication problem? A documentation issue? A training gap? All of the above?” she asked. “Everything I read says to do something different, and I don’t know where to start.”
That conversation haunted me.
She wasn’t failing because she lacked information. She was struggling because she had too much disconnected information with no clear structure for how to use it. She was trying to learn leadership the same way I had—grabbing random tools without understanding which problems they were designed to solve or in what order to apply them.
This is exactly what happens when you learn leadership from blog posts alone.
The Problem With Just-in-Time Learning
Don’t get me wrong—I’m proud of the 400+ articles I’ve published on Leadership Lessons. Each one addresses a real challenge operational managers face. Each one provides actionable frameworks. Dozens of managers have told me the content helped them.
But articles are “just-in-time” learning. You search for “how to give difficult feedback” when you need to have that conversation tomorrow. You read about “delegation strategies” when you’re drowning in work.
This approach has a critical limitation: you’re learning tactics without understanding the system they belong to.
It’s like learning carpentry by watching random YouTube videos about specific techniques. Sure, you’ll learn how to cut a miter joint, install a hinge, or sand properly. But without understanding how those skills build on each other—without knowing that you need to square your boards before cutting, or choose wood type before planning joinery—you’ll struggle to build anything coherent.
Over the last year, I’ve watched this pattern repeat across hundreds of managers. They know about feedback frameworks but can’t apply them because they haven’t developed self-awareness about their communication style first. They try to delegate but struggle because they skipped the foundation of decision-making principles. They attempt to build team culture before mastering basic communication in high-pressure environments.
The sequence matters. And when you’re learning from scattered articles—even good ones—you have to figure out that sequence on your own.
What Structure Makes Possible
Here’s what changed my approach: watching which managers succeeded fastest in the Acceleration Academy.
They weren’t the ones who read the most articles or watched the most TED talks. They were the ones who had systematic approaches to leadership development. They understood that self-management under pressure had to come before effective communication. That communication skills had to be solid before tackling complex delegation. That all three of those capabilities needed to develop simultaneously before you could successfully navigate a real crisis.
The managers who tried to learn everything at once, or who jumped to advanced concepts before mastering fundamentals, struggled consistently—regardless of their intelligence or work ethic. Without understanding how the things I taught were connected, each of them was just another tool in the toolbox—useful, but not transformative.
That’s when I knew I needed to write Leading From the Floor.
Why This Book Exists
I’ve spent years publishing Leadership Lessons content. But after teaching hundreds of managers directly, I understood what was missing: a deliberate learning path with explicit connections between concepts.
The book provides what scattered articles can’t—systematic leadership development designed specifically for operational environments. It starts with three core capabilities in Chapters 1-3 that everything else builds on: self-management under pressure, communication through chaos, and decision-making at operational speed. You don’t just learn these concepts—you understand why they matter and how they connect before moving forward.
The structure mirrors your actual development as a leader. Early chapters address challenges you face in your first weeks: understanding your leadership style, communicating clearly, making routine decisions. Later chapters tackle what you encounter after 6-12 months: developing others, managing crises, building lasting systems. By the time you reach advanced concepts like strategic vision or cross-functional leadership, you have the foundation to understand and apply them effectively.
Most importantly, connections are explicit throughout. When you learn about giving feedback, the book shows you exactly how that depends on communication skills and self-awareness you’ve already developed. When you tackle delegation, you understand how it builds on your decision-making framework. You’re not left to figure out the relationships on your own.
This is the book I wish I’d had when I took my first manager role. It’s the systematic guide that takes everything I’ve learned training hundreds of managers and puts it in the order they actually need to learn it—designed for production environments where leadership happens in real-time, under pressure, with immediate consequences visible to everyone.
Bringing Structure to Leadership Lessons
Writing Leading From the Floor clarified something else: if structure matters this much for a book, it matters for the blog too.
Over the coming weeks, Leadership Lessons is getting a makeover. I’m creating guided learning paths that present articles in logical, structured sequences—so you’ll know exactly which article to read first, and how each one builds on what came before. New articles will be shorter and more intentionally designed to connect with each other. I’ve already started this shift over the past few months, but it’s about to become much more visible and systematic.
Instead of encountering a random-seeming list of articles sorted by popularity or chronology, you’ll find clear pathways through the content: “Start here if you’re in your first 90 days,” “Follow this sequence to master feedback conversations,” “This path builds your decision-making capabilities.”
The individual articles remain valuable for just-in-time learning when you face a specific challenge. But now you’ll also have the option to follow structured learning journeys that build capabilities systematically—whether you’re reading the book or not.
Because the lesson I’ve learned teaching hundreds of managers applies to everything I create: great content deserves great structure.
The Structure You Need Is Here
Production floor leadership is hard enough without having to figure out which skills to develop first, or how different leadership concepts connect to each other.
You deserve a resource that respects your reality: the noise, the pace, the visibility, the pressure. You deserve a systematic approach that starts with foundations and builds toward mastery, with every step explicitly connected to what came before and what comes next.
Leading From the Floor is that resource.
The digital version releases this Friday, November 14th. The paperback releases Monday, November 17th. Both are available for preorder now.
I spent 12 years learning these lessons through trial and error. Then I spent another year teaching them to hundreds of managers and refining exactly how they need to be structured for maximum impact.
You don’t have to figure this out on your own anymore.
From Theory to Action
Assess your current approach: Are you learning leadership systematically or reactively? Write down the last 3 leadership concepts you learned—do you understand how they connect?
Identify your foundation gaps: Rate yourself honestly on the three core capabilities (self-management under pressure, communication through chaos, decision-making at operational speed). Which needs the most work?
Preorder Leading From the Floor: Get the systematic framework this week. Digital release Friday 11/14, paperback Monday 11/17.
Prepare to implement: Block 30 minutes to read Chapter 1 when your copy arrives. Start your leadership development with the right foundation.
Share this resource: Think of another new manager who’s trying to piece together leadership from random sources. Send them this article and help them skip the years of trial and error.
The structure you need to succeed as an operational leader is ready. Your systematic leadership development starts this Friday.