Stop Watching People And Start Watching Work: Steal this Strategy Series

Observation stops feeling like a threat when we treat it as a tool for learning instead of a surprise evaluation. We share how leaders can use quick, low-stakes moments of watching the work to coach with precision, build psychological safety, and help people improve faster. • why “observation” triggers anxiety at work and how organizations create that reaction • a simple story that shows why staying to watch matters • how educators use observation to spot thinking, not just mistakes • why “do you understand?” fails and performance becomes visible in action • how to “watch the work” in real workflows and software struggles • modeling as leadership development through seeing an experienced leader think • psychological safety as the condition that makes observation useful • language shifts that change observation from judging to learning • making observation ordinary through small, frequent, low-stakes check-ins Look at your calendar. Find the next formal observation or performance review that you have scheduled. Keep it. You might need it. But then ask yourself, why am I waiting until then to see the work? What if before the formal observation you had three or four much smaller moments of observation? Not evaluation or scores or documentation, but just curiosity, just learning.