From Reactive to Proactive: 10 Leadership Principles That Transform How You Lead with Shon Isenhour

Are you fighting fires every day — or are you preventing them?

Sit with that question for a moment. Because the honest answer might reveal more about your leadership than any performance review ever could.

Most of us didn't set out to become firefighters. We started with a vision — a team to build, a culture to create, a difference to make. But somewhere along the way, the urgent started crowding out the important. The inbox filled up. The crises multiplied. And before long, we were spending our days running from one emergency to the next, wondering why we never seem to get ahead.

Here's what I've learned: reactive leadership isn't just exhausting — it's contagious. It spreads through an organization like a slow leak, draining energy, eroding culture, and keeping your best people stuck in survival mode instead of growth mode.

That's why the conversation I had with Shon Isenhour on The Learning to Lead Show — founder of Eruditio and one of the world's leading industrial reliability experts — caused me to stop and think. Shon has spent his career helping organizations transform from chaotic, reactive cultures into proactive, reliability-driven ones. And what he's learned on the plant floor applies directly to every leader, regardless of industry.

The same principles that transform a reactive maintenance organization into a proactive one will transform a reactive leader into a proactive one.

Let's dig in.

Who Is Shon Isenhour?

Shon grew up in a diesel mechanic shop — his father's shop, where, as he laughs, "child labor laws do not apply when they're your children." He earned an engineering degree from NC State, built a career in reliability and maintenance, and eventually founded Eruditio, a consulting and training firm dedicated to helping organizations build reliability cultures that actually stick.

But what struck me most in our conversation wasn't his technical expertise. It was his humility.

"I think my leadership journey is an eternal one. I don't think you ever really arrive. I feel like I learn something new every day from a leadership standpoint."

That posture — the learner's posture — is where every principle in this post begins.

10 Proactive Leadership Principles from Shon Isenhour

1. Leadership Is a Journey, Not a Destination

Here's a trap leaders fall into constantly: they reach a title — manager, director, VP — and somewhere in the back of their mind, they start to believe they've arrived. The learning slows down. The curiosity fades. They stop asking questions because they feel like they're supposed to have answers.

Shon refuses that trap. He'll tell you with complete sincerity that after decades of leadership experience, he still doesn't have it all figured out. And that's not false modesty — that's the mark of someone who understands that leadership is a practice, not a destination.

Think about the best leader you've ever worked for. I'd be willing to bet one of the things that made them exceptional was their willingness to keep growing. Their title didn't make them a leader — their daily commitment to becoming one did.

Reflection: Where are you on your leadership journey right now — not your career journey, your leadership journey? What are you reading? Who are you learning from? What are you working to get better at?

2. Influence Is the Currency of Real Change

Most of the people Shon trains don't have positional authority to force change. They're reliability engineers, planners, maintenance supervisors — people with tremendous expertise trying to shift a culture that didn't ask to be shifted.

Sound familiar? Because I'd argue that's most of us, most of the time. Real change — the deep, lasting kind — almost never comes from the top down alone.

Shon returns repeatedly to the ADKAR Model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement), developed by Jeff Hiatt at Prosci.

Here's the key insight: most leaders skip straight to Knowledge and Ability — the training programs and new process documents. But they've skipped the first two steps, which matter most:

• Awareness: Does the person understand what we're trying to do and why it matters?

• Desire: Do they actually want to move in that direction?

Without awareness and desire, knowledge lands on deaf ears. You can train people all day, but if they don't understand why — or they don't care — it won't stick.

Reflection: Think about a change you're currently driving. Have you built genuine awareness of the vision? Have you helped people discover their own desire to pursue it? Or have you been jumping to the "how" before establishing the "why"?

3. Communication Is Never a One-and-Done

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a leader say, "I told them about that," I'd be writing this from a beach somewhere.

Communication is the most discussed and least mastered skill in leadership. And Shon's explanation of why is both honest and illuminating: people need five to seven exposures to a significant message before they can fully receive and integrate it. Not because they're slow — but because of what Shon calls the inner voice.

Every time you communicate an important message and hit an emotional moment — when the listener starts wondering, "How does this affect my job? My role? My schedule?" — their inner voice gets louder than yours. And the moment that happens, they're no longer hearing you. They're hearing themselves.

The practical solution? Stop improvising your communication and start planning it. Build an intentional communication strategy the same way you'd build a project plan — with clear messaging, intentional timing, and varied delivery methods. Email, face-to-face, team meetings, and visual displays. Vary the medium and repeat the message.

The organizations that do this well don't just announce things — they architect understanding.

Reflection: Do you have a written communication plan for your most important current initiative? If not, pick one key message today. Map out the emotional checkpoints. Then plan how you'll deliver it — not once, but strategically and repeatedly.

4. Leaders Must Learn to Sell

I know. The word makes some of you cringe. But stay with me.

To understand why selling is a leadership skill, you need to understand the change curve — the valley that almost every significant organizational change goes through. You introduce something new, see a brief uptick, and then it hits: the dip.

When you're trying to do things both the old way and the new way, productivity drops and frustration rises. Eventually, if you push through, performance climbs to a new, higher level.

Here's the problem: the valley is precisely when organizational attention spans run out. Nine months in, senior leadership looks at the scoreboard and sees nothing but negative space. That's when the call comes: "We're moving on to the next initiative."

And that's where selling comes in. Not just at the beginning — but continuously through the valley. Capturing and sharing the small wins.

The first time a new process saves someone an hour. The first time a preventive measure works. These moments seem small in isolation.

But when a leader actively markets them — telling those stories up, across, and through the organization — they keep the flywheel spinning when the metrics haven't caught up yet.

This isn't spin. It's leadership. You're building the case for patience.

Reflection: What small wins are happening right now on your team that you haven't shared? Who needs to hear about them? Take five minutes today to write down three recent wins and figure out how and where you'll share them this week.

5. The Power of Storytelling

If selling keeps the organization engaged, storytelling is the vehicle that makes it possible. And yet, most leaders — especially in technical fields — dramatically underestimate it.

Shon puts it well: we know stories are how cultures have passed down wisdom for thousands of years. We know there's no more powerful vehicle for communicating. And yet we present data, send reports, and build decks full of bullet points — then wonder why nothing sticks.

Stories stick. That's just how the brain works.

But Shon is quick to point out that not all storytelling is equal.

Two specific mistakes can undermine even the most compelling story:

1. Telling stories with no connection to a point.

This is the visionary who captivates a room but leaves people wondering, "That was great — now what?" Stories that entertain without equipping actually erode credibility over time.

2. Failing to unpack the story for the audience.

You have to finish the narrative and then explicitly name the takeaway: "Here's what I want you to hear from that." Without that bridge, even a powerful story evaporates the moment people walk out of the room.

The best leadership storytelling combines emotional pull with practical clarity. It moves people — and then shows them where to go.

Reflection: Think of one story from your leadership experience that shaped who you are. Write it down. What's the point? What do you want someone to take away? If you can answer both questions clearly, you have a tool you can use with your team this week.

6. Meet People Where They Are

One of the most humbling things a leader can do is admit they got it wrong — not because of bad intentions, but because they didn't adjust their approach to where someone else actually was.

Shon shares openly about a period early in his consulting career when he was causing real damage in client organizations without realizing it. He had a preferred leadership style and defaulted to it regardless of where the people around him were.

When someone new joined a team, Shon kept operating in his zone instead of stepping back to meet that person at the beginning of their journey.

The fix came through Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership II: there is no single best leadership style. The right approach depends on the person's level of development and the specific task. What works for a seasoned team member doesn't work for someone just starting out.

The mistake — and the one I see leaders make constantly — is assuming that because the team is at a certain maturity level, every individual on the team is there too. When someone new steps into an established situation, the clock resets for them. They need you to go back to the beginning, even if everyone else is ready to sprint.

As Shon puts it: sometimes you throw a fire hose at someone who's ready for a sip of water. And that doesn't work.

Reflection: Think of someone on your team who may be struggling to engage. Are you leading them based on where they are — or where you are? What would it look like to meet them at their starting point this week?

7. Do the Pre-Work

Shon tells a story about a facility that was nearly headed toward shutdown. Against tough odds and a tight timeline, the team turned it around — and the operation ran successfully for nearly a decade more.

What made the difference? When Shon reflects on it, his answer surprises people.

It wasn't the tools. It wasn't the technology. It was the pre-work.

Before executing, the team invested in sharpening the ax. They mapped out their communication plan. They worked through situational leadership principles.

They identified risks and developed intentional strategies to build awareness and sustain momentum through the inevitable valley ahead. They did all the unglamorous preparation work that most leaders skip because they're in a hurry to see results.

Lincoln supposedly said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he'd spend the first four sharpening the ax. The leaders who consistently deliver are the ones who do the preparation work that others are too impatient — or too proud — to do.

Reflection: Think about your most important initiative right now. What preparation work are you skipping? What would it look like to invest in sharpening the ax before you start swinging?

8. Knowledge Without Execution Is Just Trivia

Here's a question worth sitting with: How much do you know that you're not doing?

Shon frames this one with his characteristic humor: "I know I need to go to the gym. I know I need to eat nuts and not a candy bar. I know a lot of things. But I'm not exactly Mr. World Fitness today."

We laugh because we recognize ourselves. Most of us have more knowledge than we're applying. We've read the books, attended the trainings, and nodded along to the podcasts. And yet the gap between knowing and doing remains stubbornly wide.

This is where leadership and communication skills matter more than most technical professionals want to admit. You can have perfect technical knowledge and still go back to your organization and produce zero change — because change requires more than competence. It requires the ability to bring people with you.

Communication, influence, storytelling, and emotional intelligence — these aren't soft skills. They're execution skills. Without them, knowledge just sits on a shelf collecting dust.

Reflection: Where do you have knowledge that hasn't become action yet? What's the real reason it hasn't moved from insight to execution — is it a skills gap, or a leadership gap?

9. Don't Chase Shiny Objects — Fix the Process First

If there's one universal temptation in organizational leadership, it might be this: the belief that the right tool will save us. The new software platform. The new technology initiative. The shiny object was imported from the conference.

Shon cites research from MIT that is genuinely sobering: technology implementations, in general, have a negative seven percent return on investment. Not because the technology is bad, but because it gets deployed on top of broken or undefined processes. Technology accelerates whatever is already happening. If that's dysfunction, technology makes you dysfunctional faster.

Contrast that with this: organizations that focus first on getting their processes right — mapping the current state, defining the target, clarifying accountability — see about a 27 percent return on investment without any new technology at all. And organizations that combine well-designed processes with enabling technology? Returns exceeding 75 percent.

Jim Collins said it in Good to Great twenty years ago: technology accelerates what's already working. It cannot create what isn't there.

Reflection: Is there a technology initiative you're pursuing that might be running ahead of your process clarity? What process work would need to happen first to ensure the investment pays off?

10. Be Smokey the Bear, Not Just the Firefighter

Here's the great irony Shon puts his finger on so perfectly: organizations full of leaders who preach proactivity to their teams while fighting fires themselves every single day.

Think about how most organizations recognize people. Who gets the visible rewards? Who gets the applause, the promotion story at the all-hands meeting? Almost always, it's the person who ran into the burning building and saved the day. The firefighter. The hero.

And the person who quietly, consistently, patiently prevented the fire from starting in the first place? They're sitting in the corner. Nobody wrote them up in the company newsletter. They didn't create a dramatic moment, so they're invisible.

But here's the truth: Smokey the Bear is doing more for the organization than the firefighter ever could. Because the fires that never start don't burn down the forest. The crises that never materialize don't derail the team.

Proactive leadership looks like doing the pre-work before launching an initiative. Building a communication plan before people get confused. Mapping risks before they materialize. Developing your people before you need them to perform at a higher level.

And it looks like recognizing the Smokey the Bears on your team — calling out the quiet work, celebrating the prevented problems, honoring the people who make hard things look easy because they were intentional enough to prepare.

Shon closes with a challenge I want to pass on to you directly:

"If we're gonna preach proactivity to our people, to our folks that are following us on this journey, then we've got to be proactive ourselves. It's not that I get it right every day — I find myself caught up in the day-to-day, firefighting, and responding. We need to step back and try to be more proactive, more intentional, more success-focused."

That's the invitation. Not perfection — but intention. The daily decision to step back from the reactive pull of the urgent and invest in the proactive work that actually moves things forward.

Bringing It All Together

What Shon Isenhour has learned over decades of helping organizations change applies just as powerfully to a leader in a corner office as to a reliability engineer on a plant floor.

You still have to build awareness and desire before you can transfer knowledge. You still have to communicate your message more times than feels necessary. You still have to sell the vision through the valley when results haven't shown up yet.

You still have to meet people where they are, do the pre-work, close the gap between what you know and what you do, resist the shiny objects, and model the proactive leadership you're asking your team to embrace.

Leadership is a journey. You never really arrive.

But every day you choose to be intentional — every time you do the pre-work instead of skipping it, every story you tell that connects people to a vision larger than today's crisis — you get a little further down the road. And the people following you get further too.

That's not a small thing. That's the whole thing.

Quick Reference: 10 Principles from Shon Isenhour

1. Leadership is a journey, not a destination. Keep learning every single day.

2. Influence is the currency of real change. Build awareness and desire before anything else.

3. Communication is never a one-and-done. Plan it intentionally, and say it more than you think you need to.

4. Leaders must learn to sell. Keep marketing the vision — especially through the valley.

5. Storytelling is one of leadership's most powerful tools. Tell stories with purpose and always unpack the takeaway.

6. Meet people where they are. Adjust your approach based on where they are, not where you are.

7. Do the pre-work. The invisible preparation is what makes the visible success possible.

8. Knowledge without execution is just trivia. Close the gap between what you know and what you do.

9. Don't chase shiny objects. Fix the process first, then let technology amplify what's working.

10. Be Smokey the Bear. Celebrate the leaders who prevent the fires, not just the ones who fight them.

This post is adapted from my book, Voices of Leadership, which features a conversation with Shon Isenhour, founder of Eruditio. Learn more about Shon's work at eruditio.com and explore his AI-powered reliability coaching tool at ReliabilityRobot.com.

Recommended Reading from Shon Isenhour:

• Leading Change — John Kotter

• Leading at a Higher Level — Ken Blanchard

• The ADKAR Model — Jeffrey Hiatt

• Good to Great — Jim Collins