303. Look How Far You’ve Come: A Leader’s Year-End Reset for 2026 with Mick Spiers

Forget the “new year, new you” slogans. We trade hype for honesty and design a year that actually fits your values and energy. We start by reframing 2025 with a pride audit: the tough moments you handled with more grace, the people you helped, and the places you chose integrity over convenience. That grounding matters because leaders often spot gaps faster than growth, and without pride, we keep chasing the next milestone without ever arriving.

From there, we run a clean truth audit—no shame, just ownership. What did you call important but never scheduled? Which habits drained your best energy? We unpack the long game and why consistency beats intensity. Drawing on Atomic Habits, we shift from outcome obsession to identity and systems: the real flex is the small habit you don’t break. We explore the math of compounding and the mindset that keeps you steady when motivation fades.

We also bring in a powerful lens on courage from Emmy-winning broadcaster and author Anne-Marie Anderson. Audacity isn’t recklessness; it’s aligned, season-aware boldness. You’ll define one brave Q1 swing, then make it practical with the Three Wins Weekly framework—one win for work, one for health, one for relationships—and protect them with time blocks that match your natural rhythms. Add Michael Bungay Stanier’s minimum viable start to break inertia, and layer Brendan Burchard’s daily intentionality so you show up how your team needs: curious, inspiring, or decisive. We close with a tight 2026 plan: choose a compass word, pick three outcomes, build weekly systems and accountability, and lock in that audacious move.

Ready to stop living by default and start living by design? Subscribe, share this with a colleague who needs a reset, and tell us your 2026 theme and your one bold swing. Let’s build a year you’re proud to live—one block, one habit, one courageous step at a time.

Chapters

• 0:27 Rethinking Your Year’s Story
• 0:48 A Different End-Of-Year Reset
• 1:40 Part One: Pride In Progress
• 2:56 Part Two: The Truth Audit
• 4:08 Part Three: Play The Long Game
• 5:14 Habits Over Goals With Atomic Habits
• 6:20 Part Four: Cultivating Audacity
• 7:54 Part Five: Focus And Time Blocking
• 10:24 Part Six: How To Begin, For Real
• 11:57 Part Seven: High Performance Intentionality
• 13:32 Part Eight: Learn For Impact
• 15:00 Part Nine: Your 2026 Reset Plan
• 16:42 Closing Reflections And Calls To Action

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever looked back on a year and thought, I don't feel like I move much? And then you pause and you realize, hang on, I'm not where I was or even who I was 12 months ago. What if the real story of your year isn't what you didn't achieve, but what you became today's episode is an end of year solid cast, and it's going to be different. No Hype, no guilt, no New Year, New Year nonsense, just a powerful year audit that helps you look back on 2025 with pride. Look how far I've come, and be honest about what didn't happen without beating yourself up, and reset with an intentional plan for 2026 that's built on habits, focus and compounding action. So wherever you are right now, walking, driving, in the gym, if you can take a breath and let's do something leaders don't do often enough, stop and reflect. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project Podcast. Today is going to be an end of year solo cast where we look at what we've achieved in 2025 and we set an intention for 2026 so let's start with Part One. Look how far you've come. I want you to start here, because most people skip it. Leaders are amazing at seeing gaps, but terrible at recognizing growth. So let's begin with pride. Let's ask yourself these questions. What went well in 2025 What did you handle this year that would have crushed you five years ago? What is stronger in you now? Confidence, patience, courage, discipline, calm. Who did you help this year, and what impact did you have on their life? And what did you create this year, even if it's imperfect, and finally, a big one for leaders, where did you show up with integrity when it would have been easier not to So take a moment, because this matters. We're often told to be humble and not to big note ourselves, but it's important from time to time to reflect and be proud of how far we've come. If you can't feel pride in progress, you'll chase the next milestones forever and never actually arrive anywhere. Now, Part Two is the truth order, no excuses, no shame, but we need to get honest without beating ourselves up. Honest, not I failed honest, just clear eyed, honest. So the questions here, what did you say was important, but your calendar didn't reflect it? What goals did you carry all year but never truly committed to them? What did you avoid because it required a hard conversation, a brave decision or an uncomfortable effort, what habit, pattern or distraction quietly stole your best energy? And here's the big one, if you're brutally honest, what was the real reason? Not the story you told yourself in your head, not the justification. What was the real reason that you avoided it? Because here's the truth, you don't reset a year with motivation. You reset a year with ownership, taking accountability for what this was that you skipped, avoided or didn't achieve. Okay, now on to Part Three, the long game. There's a quote that comes up a lot at this time of year, and it's worth sitting with, comes from Bill Gates. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. And you can break this down into smaller increments. People overestimate what they can achieve in one day, one week or one month, but they often underestimate what they can achieve in a year, five years or 10 years. So this is the leadership trap. We want fast results, so we set unrealistic, short term expectations, and then we get frustrated, we might even quit, and then we call it, I was just too busy, but the long game, the long game rewards a different person. The long game rewards consistency over intensity, systems over motivation, daily habits over heroic sprints, and it works with compounding over quick wins. Which brings me to one of my best frameworks out there. It's this is one of my favorites, which is the work of James clear and atomic habits. Your results are not a reflection of your goals, but. They're a reflection of your systems and a reflection of your habits. So in 2026 don't ask, What do I want to achieve? Ask, what kind of person achieves that, and what do they do daily? Because the real flex isn't a big goal. The real Flex is a small habit that you don't break, and that small habit compounds over time. Here's a little stat for you, for the mathematics people out there, if you are 1% better every day at something a compounding habit, what does it add up to after a year? 30,700% not 365%,30,700% so a daily small habit, compounding over time is more powerful than any heroic sprint. Part Four, let's talk about cultivating Audacity. And our recent conversation with Anne Marie Anderson, it was one of my favorite conversations this year. Anne Marie Anderson is a three time Emmy award winning sports broadcaster, but she's also the author of cultivating Audacity. And here's the key idea I want you to take into 2026 audacity isn't recklessness, it's courageous action that makes sense for your season of life. And she says something that every leader needs to hear. If you want a bigger life, a bigger career, a bigger impact, you have to be willing to take bigger swings, not chaotic swings, not ego swings, aligned swings. So here's your audacity prompt for 2026 what bold move Did you delay in 2025 What did you avoid? What courageous conversation Have you been rehearsing instead of having, and where have you been playing small to stay comfortable when you're built for more. And the leadership version of this is where is your team playing safe because you've unintentionally punished mistakes. Because leaders don't just set direction. They set the emotional climate. You set the tone. And if you're audacious, your team will be emboldened to take courageous swings. Part Five is about focus and time blocking. This is how we make it real. This is where we get practical. Most people don't fail because they don't care. They fail because they don't protect what they care about your calendar is either a weapon or a wound that's going to hold you back. So here's a simple 2026, reset the three wins weekly framework. Every week, pick three wins, one win for your work or your delivery, one win for your health or your energy, and one win for your relationships or your home life. If your week doesn't include those three things in some form, you're not leading your life. You're reacting to it, and this is where the time blocking principle comes in. If it matters, it gets a block, not a wish, not a when I have time, a block, a time block. And yes, urgent things will show up. But in 2026 is the year that you will stop letting the urgent steal the important so if it matters to you, put it into your calendar. What's in your calendar gets done. Make time blocks for it. Get to know yourself. There are some like Anne, Marie Anderson, who say time blocks for her can be as little as 15 minutes. For me, it works more in 60 to 90 minute blocks, but I've learned that about myself. I need that 60 to 90 minute block to do anything meaningful and to move the needle. So get to know yourself. Are you more of a morning person or an afternoon or an evening person, and then schedule what matters to you in these time blocks, if you're a morning person who works best in 60 to 90 minute blocks like I am. That's where you schedule what's most important to you. And then you'll start seeing changes and coming back to our habit building. You then need to do it every day. Every day, consistency matters. And if you fall off one day and you'd miss a day, you don't just give up. You get back on the horse, and you go the next day. It's resilience that then pushes with that consistency. And over the course of the year, if you have more good days than bad days, you're going to see changes. Part Six, I'm going to lean on the work of Mike. Bongay Stanier in his work, how to begin. Michael Bungay Stanley, or MBs, as we like to call him, has this deceptively simple idea. You don't need a perfect plan. You need a real start. You need to build inertia. So here's your begin. Questions, what is the smallest possible version of the thing that still counts? If it's fitness, what's the minimum session you'll do, even on a bad week, if it's writing your first book, what's the minimum number of words? If it's leadership, what's the minimum care habit that you'll do for your team weekly, make it so small that you can't talk yourself out of it and then protect it like it's your job, because it is your job, and from here, we can start compounding. We all know this adage, like anyone that's tried running or whatever, if you take the effort to put your gym gear on, put your running shoes on, and you get out that door and you tell yourself, I'm just going to run for five minutes. You know you're not going to stop after five minutes. You keep going, but you got to break the inertia. So if it's important to you develop, what is the bare minimum start that you can make something that doesn't require a whole heap of commitment, and then that breaks the inertia, and before you know it, you're off and running. Part Seven is for you to look at high performance and intentionality. This is something I've learned from Brendan Burchard. One of the simplest performance truths is this, your future is built by what you repeatedly do when no one is watching and when you don't feel like it. Once again, we come back to these habits and these commitments and that we intentionally show up. So for 2026 you're going to raise your standards gently, not violently, but you're going to build rhythms that you can sustain, not burst that you can't, and you're going to create an environment where you may make success easier. Now, what does this look like? What does this look like? This intentionality? What it means is at the start of every day or even the night before that, you look at your calendar and you look at everything that you're wanting to achieve there. Look at every diary entry. You make sure it's the right things. So the time blocking comes back in here, and you set an intention for how you're going to show up for each of those meetings. What does your team need? What do you need? How do you want to make people feel? And you're going to take intentional actions on how you're going to show up. It could be that in this meeting, I need to show up curious. In the next meeting, it might be that I need to be inspirational. In another meeting, I might need to be visionary and directional. So you're setting an intention for each meeting based on what is needed. Part Eight, the learning point, and this is non negotiable for leaders. All lifelong leaders are lifelong learners. So in 2026 you need at least one learning based project, not passive consumption, not I listen to a podcast once, although if you listen to ours, I'm greatly appreciative a real learning project that changes how you think and lead. So your options could be choose a course with assignments and application, or it could be a book that comes along with an implementation plan. Because it's not reading that changes the world. It's the action you take because of the reading. It might be a mentoring relationship, reaching out to someone that you've always wanted to have as a mentor, and having that courageous conversation with them and putting it into action. Or it might be a capability project at work, I'm going to become excellent at skill x, and then I'm going to teach my team how to do it. Might be AI. You might be falling behind on AI, and this is the year that you're going to lean into it. And here's the key tie it to impact what will be better for my team, my customers, or my family because I learned this, you're not learning for learning's sake. You're learning for impact. Part Nine is our 2026 Reset Plan, simple, intentional and doable. Let's land with a tight plan. Choose your 2026 theme might be one word or one compass. Might be a mantra that you tell yourself. Could be consistency, courage, focus, health, presence, mastery, something that you remind yourself of on a daily and weekly basis. Then pick three outcomes, not 12, not 23 pick three outcomes that are going you're going to focus on. If you try to do 36 things at once, you're going to fail. If you try to do three, there's a good chance you're going to succeed, and you're going to focus and you put in the energy that makes it true. Step three, you build systems for each outcome, define the weekly habit, the time block, the minimum standard and the accountability trigger, who or what is going to keep you honest as you go through this. And step four, you're going to pick one audacious swing. This comes from the work with Anne Marie Anderson. What's one brave move you'll make in quarter one of next year, even if you feel doubt, lock it in, date it and block it. One audacious swing, something that you've been putting off, that it's time to stop avoiding, and it's time to lean in a conversation you've been avoiding, something that's meaningful to you, and somehow you haven't made progress on it, and take that one audacious swing. So as we close out 2025 I want to leave you with this. You don't need to be perfect to be proud. You just need to be honest and intentional. So look back and say it out loud, if you can look how far I've come, and then look forward and commit to this in 2026 I will stop living by default and start living by design. If this episode helped, share it with a colleague or a friend who needs a reset, not a lecture, and I'd love to hear from you, what's your 2026 theme? What are you going to set and what's the one audacious step you're going to take? What habit Are you going to build and stick to and send it through and email or through to the team, and I'd love to hear how it works out for you. So thank you so much for being part of The Leadership Project. This year, it's been amazing. We've had our own look how far we've come. Moments. This year, we've gone through 300 episodes with some of the most amazing thought leaders in the field of leadership and psychology, and we really look forward to joining you next year as we continue to learn together and lead together. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife, Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them around here. We believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued and that they matter, that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app, and if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage and care.