The HABE Factor
Years ago, I was facilitating a leadership workshop with a group of mid-level managers. An hour in, a participant leaned back and said something I have never forgotten.
"I don't think our people actually want to grow. They just want a paycheck."
The room got quiet. Some people nodded. Others looked at the floor.
I asked her one question: "How long have you believed that?"
She paused for a long moment. "Probably since someone said the same thing about me. Fifteen years ago."
There it was. Not a performance problem. Not a talent gap. A belief that had been installed years before she ever became a leader — and had been quietly running her management style ever since.
What Is the HABE Factor?
In my work across five continents — with Fortune 500 companies, athletic organizations, educational institutions, and community organizations — I've observed that the most powerful driver of leadership behavior isn't strategy, or skill, or even experience.
It's what I call the HABE Factor.
Habits. Attitudes. Beliefs. Expectations.
HABE is the operating system that runs beneath everything a leader does. It determines how they walk into a room, how they respond to conflict, how much they invest in the people around them, and — critically — how they see the potential of their team. Especially the members of their team who don't look, communicate, or move through the world the way the leader does.
Most leaders didn't consciously choose their HABE. It was installed by early experiences: the first manager who believed in them, or didn't. The messages about what kinds of people succeed in this industry, this company, this room. The accumulated feedback — explicit and implicit — about whose ideas count and whose don't.
HABE doesn't announce itself. It just quietly shapes every decision.
Frederick Douglass and the Leadership Imperative
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." — Frederick Douglass
I think about this quote constantly — not just in the context of youth development, where I've spent a significant part of my career, but in the context of every organization I walk into.
Every person on your team was shaped before they arrived. Early work experiences taught them whether effort is rewarded or penalized. Whether speaking up gets you promoted or overlooked. Whether the people in power see them as a high-potential asset or a diversity checkbox. Those experiences formed beliefs. Those beliefs became the habits and attitudes they carried into your organization.
You don't just inherit the skill gaps on your team. You inherit the HABE.
And here is the harder truth that most leadership development programs skip entirely: your HABE is also at work. The beliefs you hold about the people you lead — particularly the people who differ from you in background, communication style, lived experience, or identity — are shaping every interaction you have. Whether you know it or not.
What HABE Looks Like in Practice
When a leader holds the belief that certain employees "just don't want to grow," their HABE produces a specific set of behaviors: they give those employees fewer development opportunities. They interpret ambiguous actions negatively. They stop asking stretch-assignment questions. Over time, they create the exact disengagement they believed was already there. The belief becomes self-fulfilling.
I see this play out around belonging and inclusion in particular. Leaders who hold unconscious beliefs about who is "leadership material" build cultures — without intending to — where those beliefs become the ceiling for the people they lead.
This is why diversity, equity, and inclusion cannot be a separate conversation from culture transformation. They are the same conversation. HABE is where they meet.
Auditing Your HABEs
The good news: HABEs can be updated. But it requires honest examination, not just good intentions.
Here are four questions worth sitting with:
What do I genuinely believe about the growth potential of each person on my team? Where did those beliefs come from — real evidence, or early impressions?
What attitudes do I carry into difficult conversations? Do I go in expecting to understand, or expecting to win?
What habits have I developed that signal — without words — who matters most in the room?
What expectations have I set — consciously or not — about who succeeds in our culture? Who does that standard exclude?
Changing your HABE doesn't happen through a training. It happens through repeated, deliberate practice — choosing a different thought, a different behavior, a different response — until a new pattern is established.
Frederick Douglass was right. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults. But leaders who are willing to examine their HABE and do the work of rebuilding their own operating system? They have the power to build strong teams. And strong teams build strong organizations.
That is the work. And the hour is late.
WANT TO GO DEEPER?
The HABE Factor is explored throughout the book IDEAL: From Overcoming to Becoming and is a core module in the Potential Unleashed LevelUp Workshop. Contact us at potential-unleashed.com to bring this work to your organization, or to book Jahmad for your next keynote or leadership event.
Check out Jahmad talking about HABEs in this video below.