🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel
✉️ This post is part of The 5-Minute Mentor — my weekly leadership newsletter. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.
Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.
Activating Your Genius in 5,4,3,2,1… 🤩
🫶 A Dose of Inspiration
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
— Rumi
What if your next team initiative started there… in that field?
Not in the place of who’s right or who’s worried or who might rain on the parade. But in the open, honest space where every voice is worth hearing and everyone has genius to contribute.
An invitation to that field is a chance to dream together and tell each other the hard truths before it’s too late to act on it.
Now that is leadership.
📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.
🤓 A Dose of Learning
Two of my favorite voices in leadership just launched a podcast together, and if you’re not already listening to The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant, this week’s edition is a great reason to start.
Their second episode, “How This Podcast Could Fail,” does something really cool: it models the very practice it’s teaching. Before their collaboration gets too far along, they sit down and ask the hard questions about what could go wrong. And in doing so, they introduce (or reintroduce) a deceptively simple strategy called the premortem.
The concept comes from cognitive scientist Gary Klein, who first introduced it in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article. The idea is straightforward: instead of waiting until a project fails to analyze what went wrong, you do it before the work begins.
Brené frames it this way: “It’s 6 months from now, and this project has absolutely failed. What are the topics we’ll be talking about then that we should be addressing now?”
Adam’s entry point is equally compelling. He asks teams how many of them do a postmortem, an after-project analysis. Nearly every hand goes up. His response? That’s a great process, but a terrible time to do it. Why wait? Have that conversation up front and try to prevent those mistakes before they happen.
Here’s what makes this more than just good risk management: it’s an act of co-construction.
If you’ve been with The 5-Minute Mentor since last week, you’ll recognize the thread. And if you’re new… welcome! The IKEA effect taught us that people invest in what they help build. Asking “what would great look like when this is done?” invites your team into ownership from the start. The premortem takes that one step further… it invites your team to co-construct and proactively plan for the potential obstacles toward that vision.
And here’s what changes when you do:
- It invites your team to see around the corner together, before the corner becomes a crisis… and that’s a leadership skill worth building now, not after the fact.
- It allows the people on your team who tend to be cautious, skeptical, or quietly worried (your discerners) to finally have a structured, safe place to say what they’ve been thinking. Their concerns aren’t pessimism raining on the parade anymore. Their genius creates proactive value.
A note of gratitude: this week’s edition was sparked by a conversation with my good friend Michelle… proof that the best leadership learning, and flourishing, both happen within connection.
🎧 Listen to The Curiosity Shop, Episode 2: “How This Podcast Could Fail”
📖 Gary Klein’s original HBR article: “Performing a Project Premortem”
🌀 A Dose of Action
This week, try running a premortem before your next project, initiative, or important meeting. Here’s a simple way to do it:
1️⃣ Get the team in the room: (or on the call) This works best at the start of a project — before momentum builds and before people get too attached to the plan.
2️⃣ Set the scene: Tell your team, “It’s six months from now, and this project has absolutely failed. What are the topics we’ll be talking about around that failure that we should be addressing right now?”
3️⃣ Give everyone two minutes to write independently: Individual writing first, before open discussion, is key. It protects against groupthink and ensures your quieter thinkers can contribute.
4️⃣ Share with a partner: (optional but powerful) Depending on the size of your team and how well they know each other, a brief partner share before the full group discussion creates an additional layer of safety. Sometimes, what someone isn’t ready to say to the room, they’ll say to one person first.
5️⃣ Go around the room: Have each person share one concern at a time. Rotate until everything is on the table.
6️⃣ Look for patterns: Where do concerns cluster? Those are your highest-priority risks… and your most valuable conversations to have now.
One question to sit with this week: What’s one initiative already underway where it’s not too late to pause and ask: what could still go wrong, and who on my team already knows?
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
PS: She created a monster… 🧟♀️😂
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