In 1997, Tiger Woods won the Masters by 12 strokes, the largest margin in the tournament's history at the time. Then he went to his coach and rebuilt his swing.
It looked like madness from the outside. He'd just played one of the greatest tournaments ever. But he could see what others couldn't: the swing that won that week wouldn't hold up for a decade.
That instinct to improve most deliberately the moment you're winning is what separates the great from the good. And it's almost entirely missing from how organizations develop their senior leaders.
Consider who gets coaching in most large companies. Early in their careers, high-potential leaders get development programs. Struggling leaders get performance coaching. The proven senior executive and the franchise player are usually the last to dip into the training budget for themselves. They're too successful to think they need it, and maybe too busy to go and find it.
Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande noticed this gap in his own field. Years into a successful career, he invited an older surgeon he respected to watch him operate. The observations were small and specific, things he'd never noticed himself. And they made him better. His point was simple: no matter how good you are, you can't fully see yourself perform.
At the senior level, it's inches. Nobody needs to learn the basics. The difference between good and exceptional is a handful of specific habits and behaviors, such as how you run a meeting, how you hand off a decision, and how quickly you share your opinion. Those are hard to see from inside the game.
One senior vice president I coached was already her company's highest-rated leader. The 360 interviews showed one pattern: her team waited for her to weigh in before committing to anything. We worked on a single change in how she ran her staff meeting. Within four months, her decision backlog was half what it had been, and she was promoted to run a division the following year.
After 35 years of coaching leaders, I'm convinced of this: the leaders who stay at the top aren't the ones with the most talent. They're the ones who keep getting coached when they no longer need to.
That's why we built the Catalyst Executive Leadership Development Program, a 4- to 5-month, one-on-one program for senior leaders who are already winning and ready to grow past good.