“When things settle down, I’ll focus on my development.”

I’ve heard that sentence in many coaching sessions. I’ve said it myself. It has cousins, too: “Once this project wraps, I’ll get back to coaching.” “After the promotion, I’ll invest in myself.” Each one sounds reasonable on its own. String a few together and you get a year in which nothing changed.

In Coachability: The Leadership Superpower, I call this the Magic Moment Mirage. It’s the belief that a better time to grow is coming, when development will be easier, more comfortable, or more convenient. The calendar will open up, or a new boss will arrive who finally makes room for it.

That time rarely shows up. Things never settle down. You just get used to a new level of noise.

What the mirage protects

The easy explanation is busyness, and busyness is real. But I don’t think it’s the whole story. Getting better usually means looking worse first. That involves asking what you could improve, trying something you aren’t good at yet, and letting those who report to you see you as a work in progress. “Later” spares you all of that, and it sounds responsible.

So the mirage is hard to spot from the inside, because it feels like good judgment. Here are the versions I see most often:

  • Deferral dressed as discipline. “I’ll revisit this after the strategy cycle.”
  • Outsourced timing. “I’m waiting for HR to launch the new leadership program.”
  • Feedback avoidance. “I already know what people think. I’ll deal with it later.”
  • Hopeful waiting. “Once I get a new boss, things will be different.”
  • Checklist development. “I finished that leadership module last year, so I’m good for a while.”

If you coach or run programs, you’ve seen it from the other side

Coaches know the mirage as the session that gets rescheduled three times and then quietly drops off the calendar. L&D teams see it when a high-potential leader asks to defer a cohort “until things calm down,” or when a manager finishes the Courageous Conversations course but still hasn’t had the needed conversation.

Organizations fall for it too. I’ve watched talent teams put a development effort on hold until the last reorg settles or the new CHRO gets oriented. Meanwhile, the leaders who needed support now either stall or figure it out alone, and some of what they figure out is the wrong lesson.

One practical shift for coaches: when a client says “there’s no time right now,” treat it as material for the session instead of a scheduling problem. It often tells you more about what they’re avoiding than about their calendar.

And one for L&D: when a leader asks to defer a program, don’t let the deferral be free. Ask them to name one behavior they’ll practice in the meantime and who will watch for it. You’ll find out fast whether the delay is really about timing.

Melissa’s hour

Melissa took a senior operations role at a regional hospital system that had just added six clinics in a year, and within weeks her calendar was running her. Back-to-back meetings, fire drills, an inbox that refilled faster than she could clear it. “I know I need to work on my strategic thinking and leadership presence,” she told me at our 90-day check-in. “But there’s just no time right now.”

I asked if we could look at her calendar together. A pattern showed up quickly. She was still holding on to work her team was ready to own: routine reports, meetings where her presence changed nothing, small decisions people kept bringing her because she kept making them.

She tried an experiment. She handed off two recurring responsibilities, stepped out of one standing meeting that wasn’t producing anything, and used the hour she got back each week for reflection and our coaching conversations. “At first it felt risky to step back,” she said. “But once I had the space, I felt more thoughtful and effective in the time I did spend working.”

Three months later, she had made encouraging progress on her strategic goals, and her team had grown into the work she gave them.

Notice where Melissa’s hour came from. She got it by giving away work she had been holding on to. Her calendar really was full, but much of it held things she wasn’t ready to let go of. Most leaders in the mirage have a similar hour, usually filled with work someone on their team could own.

Four ways to make the moment instead of waiting for it

1. Ask for coaching this week

Coachability starts with curiosity, and you don’t need a formal process to be curious. Feedback looks back at what already happened. A coaching ask looks ahead, which makes it easier for people to answer and easier for you to use. After a meeting or a presentation, ask one person one question: “What’s one thing I could do differently next time?” or “What might I be missing?” A large meta-analysis of feedback-seeking research found that seeking input is linked to better job performance.1 The link is modest, which fits what I see: one question won’t transform anyone, but a habit of asking compounds.

2. Find the hour you’re holding

Melissa’s move works for almost anyone. Go through next week’s calendar and mark every meeting, report, or decision someone on your team could own. Hand off one of them. Then protect the hour it frees for development, and decide in advance what you’ll do with it. Your team member gets a stretch assignment out of the deal, which makes the trade easier than it looks.

3. Tell someone, and be specific about the behavior

Brian, another leader I coached, had a habit he kept promising to fix someday. He was overwhelmed, and his commitments were slipping through the cracks. Real progress started when he told his team the specific thing he’d do differently: end every meeting by reading back who owns what by when, his own commitments included. He asked them to call him on it. It felt risky. Instead of judging him, his team became his supporters.

A wrinkle in the research explains why Brian’s approach worked. Public commitment tends to strengthen follow-through on hard goals,2 but researchers have also found that announcing an identity-level intention (“I’m going to be a leader who follows through”) can create a premature sense of accomplishment and reduce effort.3 Brian avoided that trap by naming a behavior his team could watch for. When you go public, do the same: pick something people can see, and ask them to check you on it.

4. Treat the busy stretch as the development moment

The chaos leaders want to wait out is often where leadership gets built. When researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership studied how successful executives developed, hardships and tough assignments came up again and again as the experiences that taught them the most.4 The catch is that experience doesn’t guarantee the lesson.

Pick the messiest thing on your plate this quarter and name the leadership skill it’s testing. Then block 15 minutes on Friday to ask what you learned and where you’ll use it next. That habit has evidence behind it too. A meta-analysis of 61 studies found that after-action reviews, the practice of stepping back to ask what happened, why, and what to do differently, reliably improved performance.5 The reviews worked best when they were tied to a specific learning goal, which is why naming the skill matters.

Three Ideas to Remember

  • “Later” is a decision. It often protects you from discomfort more than it protects your schedule.
  • The time for development is usually already on your calendar, tied up in work you haven’t handed off.
  • Coachable leaders start their own learning moments, often with nothing more than one question after a meeting.

Two Questions for Reflection

  • Finish this sentence: “I’ll work on my development once ___.” Is that moment actually coming, and what does waiting spare you from?
  • What would you have to let go of to find one hour a week?

One Small Step

In the next 24 hours, do one of these:

  • Ask someone, “What’s one thing I could do better as a leader?”
  • Tell a colleague the specific behavior you’re working on and ask them to check in next month.
  • Block 15 minutes this Friday and put “What did I learn, and where will I use it next?” in the invite.

If you coach or lead development programs, try this with the next person who tells you there’s no time: ask them to finish the sentence “I’ll work on this once ___.” Then wait for the answer.

Notes

1. Frederik Anseel, Adam S. Beatty, Winny Shen, Filip Lievens and Paul R. Sackett. “How Are We Doing After 30 Years? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Antecedents and Outcomes of Feedback-Seeking Behavior.” Journal of Management, vol. 41, no. 1, 2015, pp. 318–348.

2. John R. Hollenbeck, Charles R. Williams and Howard J. Klein. “An Empirical Examination of the Antecedents of Commitment to Difficult Goals.” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 74, no. 1, 1989, pp. 18–23.

3. Peter M. Gollwitzer, Paschal Sheeran, Verena Michalski and Andrea E. Seifert. “When Intentions Go Public: Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap?” Psychological Science, vol. 20, no. 5, 2009, pp. 612–618.

4. Morgan W. McCall Jr., Michael M. Lombardo and Ann M. Morrison. The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job. Lexington Books, 1988.

5. Nathanael L. Keiser and Winfred Arthur Jr. “A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of the After-Action Review (or Debrief) and Factors That Influence Its Effectiveness.” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 106, no. 7, 2021, pp. 1007–1032.

© Kevin D. Wilde, 2026