I get asked fairly often what separates the leaders who transform through this work from the ones who stall out halfway through. It’s not intelligence — every leader I’ve worked with is sharp. It’s not effort either; almost everyone shows up willing to do the reading and the reps. The real differentiator is humility, and specifically, how quickly someone is willing to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong” in a room full of people who report to them.
That sounds simple. It isn’t. Most leaders have spent a career being rewarded for having the answer. Admitting you don’t is a genuine risk — or at least it feels like one, because that’s exactly what the Judge tells you it is.
The Ladder, Not the Trapdoor
Here’s the reframe I come back to constantly in the session room: humility isn’t a trapdoor that drops you through the floor the moment you admit a weakness. It’s a ladder. Every honest “I got that wrong” is a rung. You don’t fall when you say it — you climb, because your team finally has real information to work with instead of a performance.
I’ve sat across from founders who could recite their company’s core values from memory but couldn’t bring themselves to say “I don’t know” in a Level 10 Meeting. And I’ve sat across from newer leaders, less polished, less experienced, who outgrew them within a year — simply because they were willing to be corrected in public.
What This Looks Like in Practice
In the dojo, we treat every session the way a martial arts class treats the mat: you’re going to get thrown. Repeatedly. That’s not a sign you’re bad at this — it’s the entire mechanism by which you get better. The sensei isn’t there to make sure you never fall. The sensei is there to make sure you know how to get back up with a little more control each time.
Every leader I’ve watched truly transform got worse at defending themselves and better at learning something — in that order.
If there’s one thing I’d want every leader reading this to take from the session room, it’s that the climb doesn’t start with confidence. It starts with the willingness to say, out loud, that you don’t have it all figured out yet. That’s not weakness. That’s the first rung.