The AI Leveraged Leader

09/30/2026

AI can make an organization faster. That makes the foundation underneath it even more important.

Karin Volo put it this way:

“I highly recommend this book as a must-read for leaders ready to stop being the bottleneck and build an organization that can truly think for itself.”

Before you accelerate with AI, strengthen what it will amplify.

Find Built to Think at builttothink.ai. With your purchase, you’ll also receive the free companion e-workbook when it releases in early October, helping you take the book’s frameworks from the page into your organization.

09/30/2026

Maybe you read this week's posts and thought, "I wish my leadership team wanted this." That's a fair thought. When the desire for a healthier, more adaptive company starts at the top, it does move faster.

But it does not have to start there.

Gandhi never held office, and Martin Luther King Jr. never held one either. Rosa Parks kept her seat on a bus, and a movement stood up with her. None of them waited for authority, and the world moved anyway. Influence never needed a title, and that is the whole point of Built to Think.

There are three keys to influence like that, and all of them can be learned.

Conviction comes first. Know the principles and know you stand with what is true.

Then own it and be it, rather than tell it. Start with yourself, practice the disciplines, and get better at them. People notice, and then they get curious.

Then be more coach-like. Ask good questions. Serve and support. People come back for more of that, and your influence grows one person at a time.

Read the book. Take the assessments. Get self-aware. Then model what you want to see.

https://builttothink.ai/

09/29/2026

The business grows. The team grows. But sometimes the thinking still stays concentrated at the top.

Mike Pour has seen that pattern across teams operating in six countries. His conclusion:
“This book gives owners a real way to change that.”

Let the thinking grow with the business.

Find Built to Think at builttothink.ai. Purchase the book and you’ll also receive the free companion e-workbook when it releases in early October, giving you practical tools to start applying the frameworks across your team.

09/28/2026

What would change if your team could handle more of the problems and decisions that keep coming back to you?

That’s one of the central questions behind Built to Think.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith saw the practical side of that shift:

“Built to Think offers a practical way to build teams that can solve problems, make sound decisions, and adapt with confidence.”

Build a team that can think, decide, and adapt with greater confidence.

Find Built to Think at builttothink.ai and receive the free companion e-workbook with your purchase when it releases in early October.

09/28/2026

If you are ready, you will be having this conversation with your top people in a few weeks. Then they will have it with theirs. That is how it spreads. Not a push from the top, but a pull from teams who see what one element does and want the next.

Here is what ready looks like from where I sit: growth without you in every decision, a workforce that cannot wait to get started, real pride of service to each other and to clients and partners, and a company you serve rather than direct, and share in the rewards of.

AI is part of this. It will either strengthen your culture or hollow it out, so it belongs in the conversation from day one.

The playbook is yours for the price of lunch. Have your whole team read it. Get the workbook. Start together, step by step.

And when you want to talk, the first conversation is on me. We look at whether you are ready, what might get in the way, and what a valuable first step would be. If the answer is not yet, that is fine. We both walk away clearer.

Are you ready?

https://builttothink.ai/

09/25/2026

There’s a difference between agreeing with a leadership philosophy and knowing how to put it into practice.

That’s why this reaction from Art Barter meant so much.

Move from leadership philosophy to something your organization can actually practice.

Find Built to Think at builttothink.ai. Purchase the book and you’ll also receive the free companion e-workbook when it releases in early October, designed to help you turn the frameworks into action with your team.

09/25/2026

You cannot hire for trust. You cannot ask for respect.

Every job posting says "we value trust and respect," and every Monday the walls go back up, because trust was treated as an input. It is an outcome.

Trust shows up when a team has agreements it can name, structures that hold those agreements, and the agency to act inside them. Give people that and something changes. Being open stops feeling like a risk, and caring for a colleague stops feeling like generosity. It becomes the normal state of the place.

We have agency and we give others theirs. We follow our agreements because the goals are shared, not because someone is watching.

This is the part of the book people tell me they read twice.

Are you ready for trust to be something your company produces, instead of something it keeps asking for?

Built to Think by Leanne Terrace shows leaders how to build teams that solve problems, make sound decisions, adapt fast, and stop waiting for permission.

09/24/2026

A leader solving the problem can produce a quick result.

A leader building the team’s ability to solve it creates something much more valuable.

That distinction is central to Built to Think, and Jim Huling captured it perfectly.

Build more capability into your team, one decision at a time.

Find Built to Think at builttothink.ai. Purchase the book and you’ll also receive the free companion e-workbook when it releases in early October, with practical tools to help you bring the ideas into your own organization.

09/24/2026

The leader does not hold the big stick. The leader holds up the conditions.

That is the first shift, and it is the hardest one, because it means you go first. Before your team learns the patterns, you learn them. Before they practice the disciplines, you practice them, out loud, where they can see you get it wrong and try again.

I watched a president do this last year. He stopped answering the question in the room and started asking who else needed to be in it. Then he sponsored the team that formed, made clear what they had the authority to decide on their own, and got out of the way.

What came back to him was different: milestones as they were hit, how the process was holding up, what the team had adjusted and why, and the first outcomes starting to show.

He never replaced anyone. He changed what the meetings were for.

That's leadership.

Built to Think lays out the conditions, one at a time. You will recognize most of them. What is new is the order, and the practice.

Are you ready to shift first?

builttothink.ai