The Evaluation - 1: Do More Of

The Art of Doubling Down on What's Actually Working

There's a bias built into most evaluation processes — whether we're reviewing a business quarter or reflecting on a personal season — and it's this: we are far more drawn to what went wrong than to what went right.

It makes sense, neurologically. Our brains are wired to flag problems, to scan for threats, to spend disproportionate energy on the gap between where we are and where we want to be. It's a survival mechanism that served our ancestors beautifully. In the context of modern leadership and personal growth, it quietly undermines us — because it means we chronically under-examine, under-appreciate, and under-invest in the things that are actually working.

The first question in our four-part evaluation isn't about problems. It's about potential.

💡What should you be doing more of?

The Leadership Lens: Protecting What's Producing

Here's a pattern I've observed in leaders across industries and organization sizes: the things that are working are not carefully protected. They get taken for granted.

The team culture that took years to build gets eroded by one bad hiring decision made in a hurry. The strategic rhythm that finally created alignment gets abandoned when some emergent crisis demands immediate attention (don’t they all?).  The leadership practice — the weekly one-on-ones, the reflective thinking time, the investment in a key relationship — quietly gets crowded out by the urgent, until one day you look up and realize it's been months.

Busyness is not the enemy of effectiveness. Busyness without evaluation is.

When leaders pause to genuinely ask what is working? — not rhetorically, not in a team meeting designed to project confidence, but honestly and specifically — the answers are often both encouraging and instructive. There are things working. There are strategies gaining traction, relationships bearing fruit, practices creating results. The question is whether you're investing enough in them to let them scale, or whether you're simply extracting value from them while pouring energy elsewhere.

Doing more of what's working isn't complacency. It's strategic intelligence.

It also requires something leaders are often reluctant to do: say no to good things in order to say yes to the best things. Your capacity is finite. Your attention is finite.

Every yes is implicitly a no to something else.

The "more of" discipline forces you to get specific about what deserves your amplified investment — and what is quietly receiving more of your energy than the results justify.

The Personal Lens: Finding Your Wells

The same principle applies with equal force to personal life — and perhaps even more urgency.

Think about the activities, relationships, and practices in your life that consistently leave you more energized than when you began. The conversations that feel genuinely nourishing. The creative work that puts you in a state of flow. The physical practice that clears your head. The spiritual discipline that grounds you. The friendship where you leave feeling more fully yourself.

Most of us can identify these things when pressed. And most of us, if we're honest, are not investing in them nearly enough.

This is exactly where the Stress Diagnostic becomes illuminating. In the framework, you'll identify something called the Positive Active zone — the tasks, roles, and responsibilities in your life that you engage with regularly and feel positively about. These are your wells. The places where you're most alive, most effective, and most aligned with who you're designed to be.

The diagnostic will also reveal something that tends to surprise people: the Positive Inactive zone. These are the things that energize and fulfil you — but that you've stopped doing consistently, or perhaps never quite got around to starting. The exercise you keep meaning to resume. The creative practice you've sidelined since the season got busy. The relationship you've been meaning to invest in but keep deferring.

Both zones deserve your attention this month. Because here's the quiet truth that evaluation surfaces: most people don't fail because they're doing too many wrong things. They fail to flourish because they're not doing enough of the right ones.

💡If you haven't downloaded the Stress Diagnostic yet, do it now — it will give you a personalized map of exactly where your energizing zones are.

The Biblical Principle: A Management Strategy for the Mind

The Apostle Paul, writing from a prison cell to a church community he deeply loved, gave what I consider one of the most practically brilliant pieces of guidance in all of Scripture:

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)

It's tempting to read this as aspirational poetry. It is more – it is a management strategy.

Paul is not telling the Philippians to ignore reality or pretend problems don't exist. He's telling them — deliberately, practically — where to direct their attention. Because he understood something that modern neuroscience has spent decades confirming: what we rehearse, we reinforce. Where we consistently focus our minds, we move. The stories we tell ourselves about our lives become the tracks our lives run on.

For leaders, this is both a personal discipline and a cultural one. The narratives you reinforce in yourself and in your teams — about what's possible, about what's working, about where there is genuine cause for confidence — shape the environment in which performance either flourishes or stagnates.

When working as an HR executive in organizations, I regularly challenged management to spend more time taking care of the top performers, and they could find that time by reducing multiple “PIP” meetings, re-training, fixing errors, etc. – related to poor performers. Once you shorten the “tolerance timing” (how long is the rope?) - for poor performance, you will also spend more time making sure you do better hiring in the first place.

Paul doesn't stop at the mind. Writing to the Galatian church, he describes the fruit that emerges when a life is rooted in the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). And here's what strikes me about this list, read through an evaluation lens: these are not commandments. They are fruit. You don't manufacture fruit. You cultivate the conditions in which it grows.

So the "do more of" question becomes, in the deepest sense: What are the conditions in your life that are producing this kind of fruit — and are you protecting and nurturing those conditions, or are you allowing them to be crowded out?

Where is there genuine love in your relationships? More of that.

Where is there real peace — not the forced kind, but the settled, grounded kind? More of that.

Where are you experiencing the fruit of faithfulness, of things that are working because you've been genuinely consistent? More of that.

The fruit tells you where the roots are healthy. And healthy roots are always worth investing in.

This Week's Reflection

Before you move to the frantic business of identifying what to fix, spend some time this week with what's actually working. These questions are worth sitting with — in a journal, over a quiet coffee, or in a conversation with someone who knows you well:

1. Where in your life or leadership are you currently seeing the most fruit — genuine results, real impact, meaningful connection?

2. What activities, relationships, or practices consistently leave you more energized than depleted?

3. What are you doing sporadically — because life is full — that, if done consistently, would significantly change your outcomes?

4. Where is the fruit of the Spirit showing up in your life right now? What conditions produced it?

👉🏻Your Next Step

Download the Stress Diagnostic and work through the exercise with this question in mind: Where are my Positive Active and Positive Inactive zones? Those are your starting points.

Then make one concrete decision: choose one thing from your "what's working" list and make a specific commitment to do more of it — with a time, a frequency, and if possible, an accountability partner.

Evaluation isn't just about seeing clearly. It's about deciding clearly.

Next week: The harder conversation — what do you need to do less of? (Hint: Paul had something remarkably honest to say about this too.)