Week 1 facilitator guide: lead yourself (the Lid + Priorities)
The problem this session solves: engineers over-index on competence and assume it transfers. Their impact is capped by a leadership lid they cannot see, and their calendars fill with activity that looks like progress but is not. This session makes both visible with numbers: a two-lid rating with a real incident behind it, and last week's calendar read as a dataset. It also names burnout and imposter syndrome early, before the course asks anyone to change behavior.
Pre-work to send (assigned at the kickoff): the one-pagers for the Law of the Lid and the Law of Priorities, including the Project Oxygen and Peter Principle summaries. Ask everyone to arrive with one question the reading left them with, and with last week's calendar open. Activity 2 needs the real calendar live.
Materials: slides (week-1-lead-yourself.md), activity-board.html (duplicated in Canva, one frame per pair), worksheets.md (the lid audit, the calendar ledger, the burnout early-warning checklist). Zoom Pro with breakout pairs pre-assigned before the call.
Week 1 note: this session has no evidence round and no teach-backs. Both start in session 2, so tonight is pure teaching with roomier blocks. The scripts you will use from week 2 on are below, and the close tonight sets them up.
Run of show (120 min)
- 0:00 to 0:08, pre-read question round (slide "What question did the pre-read leave you with?"). One question each, 30 seconds. This is your live diagnostic: three people stuck on the same concept means slow down there; silence means move fast.
- 0:08 to 0:18, teach the Lid (slides "The hard part: a lid you cannot see" and "One lid, both tracks"). They read the datasets already; go straight to the hard part: what do you do about a lid you cannot see? Say the bridge line out loud (talking points below).
- 0:18 to 0:23, story to land it (slide "When a 9 runs at a 4"). Your plateaued-IC story, then the IC twin: the architect whose designs never get adopted.
- 0:23 to 0:35, activity 1, rate your two lids (slide "Activity 1: rate your two lids"). Pairs, 12 minutes, the Activity 1 card on the board plus worksheet 1. Mechanics below.
- 0:35 to 0:43, debrief (slide "Debrief: put the incidents on the map"). 3 to 4 pairs share one incident each. You place each incident on the four arcs; where it lands points at the arc that person needs most.
- 0:43 to 0:48, break (slide "Break").
- 0:48 to 0:58, teach Priorities (slides "Five tools, one job", "The hard part of the calendar audit", "Same audit, different noise"). Frame the calendar as a dataset they will read, not defend. Say the bridge line.
- 0:58 to 1:02, story to land it (slide "The list of cuts is what saves you"). The Q2 2026 OKR critique at Breadfast, or Jobs' 1997 product grid as the fallback.
- 1:02 to 1:14, activity 2, calendar confession (slide "Activity 2: calendar confession"). Pairs, 12 minutes, the Activity 2 card on the board plus worksheet 2.
- 1:14 to 1:22, debrief (slide "Debrief: the room average"). Collect the numbers from the Activity 2 card on the board. Compute the average none-percentage and write it in the gold cell; read the stream counts out loud for range, do not average them. The average none-percentage is usually a shock. Use it: this week's take-home starts from that number.
- 1:22 to 1:37, universal module C, burnout and imposter syndrome (slides "Burnout and imposter syndrome, named" and "Activity 3: your early-warning checklist"). Teach both flavors, IC and EM. Then 7 minutes solo on worksheet 3, one signal per sticky on the Activity 3 card on the board. Two volunteers share one signal each. No fixing, no advice round; naming it is the module.
- 1:37 to 1:47, workbook walkthrough (slide "The workbook this week"). The lid audit and the calendar ledger: what they will do this week and what counts as done.
- 1:47 to 2:00, take-home, week 2 pre-read, close (slides "Take-home: the calendar audit" and "Before next week"). Hard stop at 2:00.
Teaching talking points
- The lid is measured, not a metaphor. Project Oxygen, Gallup's 70 percent variance number, and the Benson, Li, and Shue study of 53,000 workers all point the same way: the person who leads is the ceiling.
- Nobody feels their own lid directly. It looks like other problems: the design nobody adopts, the promotion that gets stuck, the team that ships slower than it should. By the time it feels like a leadership problem, it has been one for a while.
- Lid bridge line, spoken out loud: whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, your lid caps your architecture's adoption exactly as it caps a team's output. The same study that explains weak managers explains stalled Staff promotions.
- Priorities: five tools, one job. Eisenhower, Pareto, the three Rs, the 80 percent delegation threshold, and maker vs manager schedule all separate activity from accomplishment.
- The three Rs are the tagging scheme for the audit: Requirement (only you can do it and your role demands it), Return (your strengths, large results), Reward (it gives you energy). Everything else is none.
- The hard part of the audit: cutting work that feels productive, and cutting work that still gives results.
- Priorities bridge line: the EM's calendar fills with meetings; the senior IC's fills with review requests and "quick questions". Same audit, different noise.
- Burnout flavors differ by track. IC: scope anxiety, being the only technical voice in product conversations, "I do not deserve Staff". EM: carrying the team's emotional load; manager burnout does not look like IC burnout. Do not fix anything tonight.
Breakout mechanics (you are solo)
- Pairs are pre-assigned in Zoom before the session. Keep the same pairs for both breakouts.
- Each pair works on their own frame of the activity board. The instruction is written on every zone of the frame, so a pair that missed the spoken brief can still act.
- Set the Zoom room timer to 12 minutes. Broadcast at 6 minutes ("switch speaker") and at 10 minutes ("post your stickies now").
- Before the session, create one blank frame in Canva labeled Parking lot. Send tangents there. Promise them to the debrief or to the WhatsApp group, then actually follow up.
Evidence round and teach-backs (weeks 2 to 4)
From session 2 on, every session opens with the evidence round. The line to open it: "Evidence round. Four to five of you share last week's artifact, 60 seconds each. Show the artifact itself, not a story about it. No artifact means not done." Pick the sharers, keep the 60 seconds hard, and thank people for honest numbers more than for good numbers. The round is public on purpose: nobody wants to show up empty twice.
Teach-backs also start in session 2. Each slot: the pair presents for 8 minutes, then 7 minutes of structured discussion with three rotating audience roles: one challenger (must push back on something), one connector (must link it to a previously covered law), one summarizer (closes with a 30-second synthesis). Assign the roles at the top of each slot. Tonight, remind the session 2 pair that their slot is next Friday.
Debrief questions
- After activity 1: where did the gap between your two lids show up last quarter? Which of the four arcs does your incident point at?
- After activity 2: what was your none-percentage? How many streams per day? Then, once the room average is on the board: how far is it from what you expected?
- After activity 3, for the two volunteers only: which signal on your list has already happened this month?
Close
Assign the calendar audit (worksheet 2 is the template): tag every block in last week's calendar R1, R2, R3, or none, compute the none-percentage, and write 5 lines on what you would cut. State the counts-as-done rule exactly: a screenshot of the tagged calendar plus the computed percentage, submitted at [SUBMISSION LINK] by Thursday 6:00 PM, before session 2. Reflection without the artifact counts as not done. Assign the week 2 pre-read: the one-pagers for the Law of Influence and the Law of Connection, arrive with one question. Remind the session 2 teach-back pair. Then the forward line: tonight you led yourself. Next Friday: why would anyone follow you?