Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?
Welcome to another Toolkit Tuesday! Every week, our goal is to give you a practical leadership tool to put in your toolkit.
So There I Was . . .
…riding an elevator up to meet a new client team for the first time. Someone stepped in, noticed the floor I'd pressed and asked if I was headed to the same office. I said yes and introduced myself. We traded names with a smile and then did what everybody does in an elevator. We turned around and faced the doors.
A moment later, still facing forward, came the question. It wasn't sarcastic. It was friendly, almost easygoing. "So, you're going to be able to teach an old dog new tricks?"
I chuckled. I didn't have to ask who the old dog was. You could hear it in the voice and see it in the posture. As it turned out, this was one of the people who had been alongside the owner almost from the beginning. This was someone who is genuinely great at the work and has the track record to prove it.
I had a pretty good guess at what was underneath the question. Here comes the consultant with a new way to lead the younger generation. Probably a lot of hugging, some finger snapping and a quiet room where people go to process their feelings.
So I laughed and told the truth. "Actually, no. I'm not going to teach you anything new. I'm going to show you things you probably already know. You just haven't had the language for them yet, or a way to teach them to anyone else." Then the doors opened and we headed in.
The Challenge
There's a kind of leader I run into a lot. They're really good at what they do, and they have the reputation and results to back it up. Somewhere along the way, that success quietly turned into an argument. Why would I need to learn more about myself? I'm already successful. Why do I need to understand other people? This is a job. I come in, I do the work and I go home.
That leader isn't wrong about the work. They're wrong about what the work requires once other people depend on them. Being great at the job gets you in the room. It isn't enough to help everyone else in the room get great too.
Maybe that's you. Maybe it's someone you work next to. Either way, the success is real. It's just not the whole picture.
The Tool: The Core
When I said that veteran already knew this stuff but didn't have the language for it, this is the language I meant. We call it the Core. We walked through the full framework in an earlier Toolkit Tuesday, IQ Got Me in Trouble That Day, so here's the short version.
Just like the muscles at the center of your body, your leadership has a Core. Picture three circles that shrink or grow with the work you put in. Where they overlap is the Core.
PQ (Personality Intelligence) is how well you know yourself: how you're wired and how you react under pressure. It comes first, because when you can lead yourself, your EQ tends to grow with it.
EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is how well you read and connect with others. It answers one question: what is it like to be on the other side of you?
IQ (Skills Intelligence) isn't about how smart you are. It's your ability to do the work, which means your technical skill, your execution and your follow-through.
Now run the elevator conversation through it. PQ and EQ were the open questions. IQ was never in question, because years of results had settled that long ago. The real question hiding inside "old dog, new tricks" was whether the first two even matter when IQ is this strong. That's the trap. Strong skills can cover gaps in the other two areas for years, because the results keep coming, and nobody pushes back on the person who always delivers.
To be clear, this person wasn't holding the team back. This team is already doing incredible things, and a big part of that is because of people like this veteran. The Core isn't about fixing something broken. It's about what becomes possible when someone this good gets even better. We never put the Core on the board that day, but we spent the whole session in it.
That's what the Core gives a team: a way to talk about growth that doesn't feel like judgment. The leader goes first. "Here's where I'm growing, and here's where I see room for you" lands very differently than "you're not good with people." One invites growth. The other starts a defense.
Why This Matters Now
The most skilled and longest-tenured people on a team usually carry the most influence, whether they have the title or not. When they treat growth as something for people who aren't good yet, everyone notices.
The stakes rise with responsibility. The more people depend on you, the less your own skill carries the load. Your self-awareness and your impact on others start deciding how far the team goes.
The Result
When a leader with strong IQ starts building PQ and EQ, their experience becomes transferable. They stop being the person who just does the work well. They become the person who can explain why it works and teach it to someone else. Newer people on the team finally get access to years of hard-won knowledge that used to live in one person's head.
Ignore it and you get a rock star who stays a rock star, and years of knowledge that stay locked in one person's head.
Take Action
Move your Core 1% this week. Rate your PQ, EQ and IQ from 1 to 100. Then pick the lowest one and do one small thing to nudge it up a single point. For PQ, pay attention to how you react the next time pressure hits. For EQ, ask one teammate what it's like to be on the other side of you. For IQ, block one hour for the skill you've been putting off. One point is the goal. Just move it.
Strengthen your Core together. If the numbers surprise you, or you want to walk your team through the Core, let's grab time on the calendar and work through it together.
Closing the Loop
By the end of that first session, the whole team was in the room. The same veteran from the elevator was engaged and asking questions right along with everyone else. I can't point to the exact moment, but something had unlocked. The consultant with the hugging and finger snapping never showed up. What showed up instead was language for things they'd known for years.
No new tricks required. They just needed a name for the old ones and a way to hand them down.
So here's my question for you. What do you already know that you've never found the words to teach?
