THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 01 OF 7
Before You Begin
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What guides your leadership when the answer isn’t obvious?
A title defines your responsibilities. A Leadership Platform clarifies what guides you as you carry them out.
The 5Q Method helps you examine who you are, why you are here, where you are going, who is going with you, and what evidence supports your answers. Together, those answers form a Leadership Platform that guides your personal and professional decisions.
For you: a clearer basis for choosing.
Greater clarity helps you assess opportunities, set boundaries, choose relationships, and decide where to invest your energy. You can ask whether your choices reflect who you are and serve the future you intend to build.
For your employees: less guesswork.
People should not have to guess what their leader is about. A platform you communicate and demonstrate helps them understand what matters to you, what you expect, and what they can count on you to uphold. It also gives them a basis for holding you accountable.
For your employer: commitment with personal meaning.
Understanding how your work connects to your purpose gives you reasons to lead that reach beyond compensation. Your employer benefits when you connect that personal commitment to the organization’s mission and take ownership of the responsibilities entrusted to you.
Give yourself room to think honestly.
Over the next several modules, guided reflections will help you articulate why and how you lead with greater clarity. There are no right or wrong answers. The value comes from how honestly your answers reflect you. Your answers may evolve as you find better language, gain experience, or change your leadership ambitions.
Trust the process. Do your best to express what can be difficult to put into words. Write what is true today, including tensions you have yet to resolve. Your coach can help you examine those tensions and sharpen your language.
Your choices give the platform credibility.
Anyone can write compelling aspirations. Q5 serves as your personal Impact Report, asking whether your actions demonstrate who you say you are and whether your professed values matter in your decisions.
Even completing your first draft can help you lead with greater conviction and consistency. Others may experience that clarity as greater gravitas and executive presence. Your actions will give those words weight.
Allow 45–60 minutes when your evidence is ready. Draft your own answers before reading the examples, then bring your work to coaching.
Your Leadership Platform is never finished. It advances in clarity.
Your course workspace
Complete seven lessons and submit four statements, five to seven evidence entries from the past six months, one Leadership Platform paragraph, and one coaching question or tension. The 30-day experiment is optional after coaching.
Drafts save in this browser when storage is available. Download My Action Plan includes your current answers, even in a partial draft. Download before closing or changing devices, and share the PDF with your coach. This course does not submit responses automatically. Revise here and download again as needed.
Ready for your first draft.
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THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 02 OF 7
Who Am I?
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Your title tells people what you are responsible for. Who are you when the title comes off?
Consider
- What are your undeniable strengths? What do others consistently rely on you to do well?
- What work do you enjoy doing?
- What energizes you, and what drains you?
- Where do you get in your own way?
Your first draft: Brand Identity Statement
If helpful: “People rely on me to ____. I enjoy ____. I’m energized by ____ and drained by ____. Under pressure, I tend to ____, and I’m learning to ____.”
Would people who know you recognize this description? Write what is true today, including where you fall short. Refine it with your coach.
Name strengths people rely on, work you enjoy, what energizes or drains you, and one honest limitation in two to four sentences.
THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 03 OF 7
Why Am I Here?
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You know what the organization needs you to deliver. What contribution are you here to make, even when this assignment ends?
Consider
- What contribution are you uniquely positioned to make?
- Which problems, opportunities, or needs keep drawing your attention?
- What would you champion without your title? Who benefits from your best work?
Your first draft: Personal Mission Statement
Try: “I am here to help ____ by contributing ____ so that ____.”
Your role’s mandate is what this organization asks you to deliver. Your mission can travel across roles. Restoring delivery may be today’s mandate; developing sound decision-makers may be your enduring contribution. Where do they connect or conflict?
What contribution are you here to make, even when this assignment ends?
THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 04 OF 7
Where Am I Going?
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You can keep achieving and still drift from the future you want. What are you building?
Consider
- What should be different because of your leadership?
- Which values will that future amplify?
- If your key goals were achieved, what would exist that does not exist today?
Your first draft: Personal Vision Statement
Try: “I am building a future in which ____. People will experience ____. My goal of ____ supports that future by ____.”
A promotion gives you reach. What will you build with it? Test a current opportunity against your vision. Does it move you toward that future, or keep you busy collecting achievements? Bring the tension to coaching.
Name one current goal and how it serves that future.
THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 05 OF 7
Who’s Going With Me?
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Who are your kind of people? Describe the qualities that make someone worth learning from, investing in, or walking beside.
Some may be ahead of you and offer mentorship. Some may be behind you and benefit from your guidance. Others may walk alongside you as peers and accountability partners. The common thread is shared values, mindset, character, and standards.
Consider
- What values and standards do your people live by?
- How do they approach growth, responsibility, and setbacks?
- How do they challenge you and respond when you challenge them?
- What can they expect from you in return?
Your first draft: Culture Fit Statement
Try: “My kind of people ____. We share ____. We challenge and support one another by ____. They can count on me to ____.”
Describe the qualities that make them your people. Shared values leave room for different backgrounds, personalities, and opinions. Name what earns their place in your circle and what you offer in return.
Describe your kind of people: shared values, standards, mutual challenge, and what they can count on you to contribute.
THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 06 OF 7
How Can Anyone Tell?
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Anyone can write a compelling account of who they aspire to be. What does your record show?
Think of Q5 as your personal Impact Report. Look for evidence that your identity, purpose, direction, and choice of people show up in how you live and lead. Do your professed values shape your choices?
Examine the record
- Where did you invest time, money, attention, or influence?
- What did you protect or prioritize when competing demands forced a choice?
- When did honoring your values cost you something?
- Where do your actions contradict what you profess?
Your first draft: Leadership Evidence List
Record five to seven specific examples from the past six months. Include what happened, when, and the supporting source: a calendar, decision log, resource allocation, commitment, or documented result. Protect confidential details.
“I develop people” is an interpretation. “In June, I transferred routine customer-exception approval to two managers; the decision log records their cases” gives you something to examine.
Include evidence of alignment and contradiction. Record facts first and keep interpretation separate. Results can have several contributors. Bring the record to coaching and examine whether your actions substantiate Q1–Q4.
Record five to seven examples from the past six months: what happened, when, and the supporting source. Include alignment and contradiction; keep interpretation separate.
THE 5Q METHOD · LESSON 07 OF 7
Constructing Your Leadership Platform
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You have examined the five questions. Now connect your answers.
Connect all five answers in one paragraph: who you are, your contribution, the future you are building, who belongs on the journey, and supporting evidence. Use your own language and include a relevant limitation or tension.
Choose your approach
Write it yourself: Connect your answers, remove repetition, and read aloud. Does it sound like you? Does the evidence support your claims?
Use generative AI: Remove confidential or identifying details from your answers, then use this prompt:
Using only my five answers below, draft one Leadership Platform paragraph in my voice. Connect identity, mission, vision, culture fit, and evidence. Preserve limitations and tensions. Do not invent accomplishments, motives, or certainty. List gaps separately.
Check the draft: Verify every claim and example. Revise wording that sounds polished but untrue.
Write an honest first draft. Leave unresolved questions for coaching.
How your coach helps you advance the draft
Bring your coach an honest account of how you lead. The gaps give you work to do together:
- Find your own language. Say what you believe. Question language chosen to sound like a successful executive.
- Examine alignment and tension. Connect identity, mission, vision, and relationships; explore competing commitments.
- Test claims against evidence. Examine support, contradictions, and feedback from people who experience your leadership.
- Surface blind spots. Notice assumptions, protective habits, limitations, and missing perspectives.
- Turn clarity into choices. Name what you will practice, change, protect, or stop. Let your next decisions test the draft.
Your Leadership Platform is never finished. It advances in clarity. Revisit it with your coach after meaningful decisions, new feedback, or a change in role. Each draft should become more precise, honest, and useful.
Final check
Bring your four statements, evidence list, Leadership Platform paragraph, and one focused question to coaching.
Your next decision gives these words weight. Choose deliberately. Examine the result. Keep advancing in clarity.
After drafting, review the optional examples and conversation guide. Use the optional 30-day experiment after coaching.
Put one real decision beside your draft. What does it ask you to choose, confront, or stop tolerating? Note what was easy, hard, or missing, then record one focused question for coaching.
Optional examples and follow-up. Read after drafting.
Optional Examples: Read After You Draft
Maya is an invented teaching case. The Kobe Bryant and Dolly Parton first-person statements are retrospective teaching interpretations, not quotations or statements they authored or endorsed. Their career records illustrate coherence; your evidence assignment covers the past six months.
A fictional executive example: Maya Thompson
Maya is a fictional VP of Customer Operations. All dates, figures, and evidence below are invented. Ordinary decisions can reveal a platform as clearly as public achievements.
Maya’s first draft
I am a calm, dependable leader who develops people and gets results. I help my team succeed and improve customer experience. I want an organization where people take ownership. I value accountability and mutual support. Performance and trust show I am making a difference.
Maya has a direction, but “develops people,” “ownership,” and “trust” need evidence and an honest account of where she falls short.
Her evidence from the past six months
- May: Gave two managers customer-exception approval up to $5,000. Source: approval matrix.
- June–August: Those managers led six customer issue reviews she previously chaired. Source: agendas and minutes.
- September: Eight of ten follow-up actions met deadlines; two remained open. Source: action log.
- July: Moved two disagreements into private conversations; shared decisions remained unresolved. Source: meeting and follow-up notes.
- August: Canceled two mentoring sessions without rescheduling. Source: calendar.
These facts do not establish that Maya caused better outcomes or that everyone trusts her.
Questions coaching raises
- Where are you developing judgment, and where are you retaining control?
- When does calm help, and when does it avoid disagreement?
- Which claims are established practices? Which commitments must you still earn?
Maya’s revised paragraph after coaching
I am a steady leader who makes complex customer problems easier to act on, and I am learning to address disagreement directly. I develop managers who make sound decisions close to customers, building a team that relies on its own judgment. I want people who keep commitments, challenge assumptions openly, and expect the same from me. Giving two managers approval authority up to $5,000 and having them lead six reviews show progress; two missed deadlines, canceled mentoring, and unresolved disagreements reveal gaps. Protecting development time and resolving disagreement in the room are commitments I still need to demonstrate.
What improved: She connects all five answers, grounds claims in evidence, names limitations, and distinguishes practice from aspiration. The draft is clearer and ready for further coaching.
Apply it: Which claim needs evidence? Which limitation is missing? Revise once and bring the remaining question to coaching.
Kobe Bryant: mastery and contribution
Kobe Bryant after NBA retirement. Bryant, right in a blue suit, with Mayor Eric Garcetti at Kobe Bryant Day, August 24, 2016. Photo credited to Eric Garcetti, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Identity: I am a relentless student of my craft who studies weaknesses and expects disciplined preparation.
- Mission: I pursue mastery and use what I learn to help others discover what they can become.
- Vision: I want the lessons of my work to reach beyond basketball through athletes, young people, and meaningful stories.
- Culture Fit: I want people who study details, challenge me honestly, and do the work when no one is watching.
- Career evidence: Twenty seasons with the Lakers and five NBA championships; two Olympic gold medals; a shared 2018 Academy Award for Dear Basketball.
Sources for the career record: NBA; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Dolly Parton: creativity and opportunity
Dolly Parton reads to children, 2018. Photo by Shawn Miller, Library of Congress. Public domain. Photo source.
- Identity: I am a storyteller, creator, and businesswoman who remembers where I came from and treats success as an opportunity to help.
- Mission: I use my gifts to connect people, create joy, and open doors.
- Vision: I want the opportunities and resources I create to improve lives beyond my own career, especially for children and families.
- Culture Fit: I want people who work hard, keep their word, treat people with dignity, and bring different talents and backgrounds.
- Career evidence: Founded the Imagination Library in 1995; contributed $1 million to Vanderbilt’s COVID-19 research in 2020; contributed $1 million for pediatric infectious disease research in 2022.
Sources for the career record: Imagination Library; Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Use the examples
Look at how the five answers connect. Public accomplishments offer only part of a leadership account. Write your own. Would the people who experience your leadership recognize it?
Coach Conversation Guide
Examine the paragraph, four statements, and evidence together. Begin with what was easy, hard, or missing. Help the participant advance in clarity rather than seek a permanently finished platform.
- What survives a change of title or employer?
- Does the vision describe a future beyond achievements?
- Does culture fit include reciprocity, challenge, and different perspectives?
- Which evidence supports or contradicts the account? What contributors or information are missing?
- What does a real decision reveal? What needs revision?
Optional after coaching: one 30-day experiment
Choose one gap and observable behavior. Record the starting point, first action, people affected, and review date. Collect examples. At day 30, examine what changed, what else contributed, and what to keep, change, or stop. This experiment is not required for course completion.