Why good intentions fall short (and the 3 questions leaders should ask instead)

A few weeks ago, I sat across from an accomplished senior lawyer who was struggling with a common leadership quandary. She cared about her team. She meant well in every interaction. And yet, her team was showing signs of burnout. When we unpacked what was happening, the problem wasn’t a lack of care. It was a lack of clarity about three things she assumed she already had straight: what was driving her, what she actually meant to do, and what she was trying to achieve. There is a lot of leadership advice around “being intentional.” This is based on the assumption that motivation and intention are the same thing. They’re not. And once we see the two as distinct, a third question becomes impossible to ignore: What outcome, specifically, am I trying to produce? Together, these three questions form a simple but rigorous filter leaders can run before any high-stakes conversation, email, or decision. I call it the MIO filter—motivation, intention, and outcome. Motivation is the why. Intention is the what Philosophers who study human action have long argued that motivation and intention do different jobs. Motivation is the psychological force that inclines you toward a category of action—…