Leadership is often reduced to a familiar collection of habits: waking before sunrise, exercising, and arriving at work before everyone else. The implication is that successful leaders are naturally disciplined people who organize every part of their lives with almost mechanical precision.

I do not believe that. I believe leaders are made, not born, and discipline is developed through circumstances and practice.

I have seen this within our Ukrainian team since the full-scale war began. Under conditions none of them chose, people have stepped forward, taken responsibility, and demonstrated leadership qualities they may not have known they possessed. Research conducted before and during the pandemic similarly found that transformational leadership became particularly effective during crisis, when complexity and uncertainty increased.

We cannot choose every crisis we will face. But we can choose practices that prepare us to meet uncertainty with greater composure. Successful CEOs I know do not have to wait for adversity to discover what they are capable of.

During the pandemic, life felt like being stuck on a highway, unable to see beyond the next car’s taillights. There was no way of knowing what was coming.

That was when I found running, or perhaps running found me. It began with long walks around the neighborhood after my children went to bed. I would listen to a book or podcast and look for some stability at a time when very little felt stable.

One of those books was James Clear’s Atomic Habits , which explores how small improvements compound over time .

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