Preparation Is How Leaders Demonstrate Competence and Earn Respect
January 28, 2026
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I walked into the massive ballroom right as the CEO took the stage. Looking around the room, all I saw were dollar signs. The sheer amount of money this company had spent on getting everyone together in a venue this nice started to add up in my mind. What came next was fantastic.
The CEO knocked his presentation out of the park in front of employees and partners. It intertwined what the company had accomplished, where it was going, and he landed the plane with a vulnerable and authentic story of his own battle with cancer. The room responded with emotion and applause. He had prepared and then performed.
But what came next was more educational. His VP of Sales took the stage, and he clearly underthought and underprepared for his presentation. He threw up a slide with so many numbers that it looked like we were in an Excel spreadsheet demo. The deck had clearly been created by someone else, and he attempted to rely on his public speaking skills to carry his time. They didn’t. He lost the room and left the audience feeling uninspired.
One prepared and performed. The other was underprepared and underdelivered.
That contrast is why I haven’t forgotten the moment, and why I share it with you. It’s possible the CEO is just a better speaker, but most VPs of Sales can communicate at a high level. What it taught me is that preparation is how leaders demonstrate competence and earn respect.
Not with words. With what people feel when they show up. Or said differently:
The best leaders overprepare, they don’t overthink.
That one hits hard because we have all been guilty of the latter.
Most leaders don’t prepare to act, they overthink to delay. They fall victim to the paralysis by analysis. Overthinking disguised as planning. Or worse, they don’t prepare at all and wing it.
Overthinking lives in your head. Preparation shows up in the world. Overthinking tries to eliminate risk before acting. Preparation accepts risk and gets ready to move anyway. One is anxiety disguised as strategy. The other is service disguised as discipline.
Preparation isn’t the action. And the action won’t be perfect, no matter how long you wait. So the preparation doesn’t have to be perfect either. It just needs to be thorough enough to help you move.
I was reminded of this in a conversation with Dan Casey and Griffin Brand on the John Eades Podcast. He shared a story about Bill Walsh that stuck with me. Before practices, before games, before anyone ever saw the product on the field, Walsh obsessed over details most people never noticed. Scripts, play sequences, and contingencies based on defensive adjustments. He even scripted how recpetionists would answer the phone! Not because he needed control, but because he wanted clarity under pressure.
Walsh wasn’t preparing to look good. He was preparing so his team and organization could act without hesitation when it mattered. As Dan put it, “Walsh believed preparation was a form of respect for the players. If he hadn’t done the thinking, he had no right to expect them to execute.”
Dan Casey and Griffin Brand explore this idea deeply in their book Bring Your Own Pencil, especially through stories about leaders like Walsh who treated preparation as ownership, not performance.
Author Sahil Bloom has this great line, “Get the rocket ready before you light the fuse.” It’s so true because issues that aren’t discovered in preparation become big issues once a rocket is airborne.
Leadership works the same way.
When leaders are under pressure, it exposes the amount of preparation that was put in. If you are adequately prepared, you will walk into rooms calmer. You will make decisions faster. You will carry less anxiety. You will rely less on improvisation.
Think back to the example of the CEO. He didn’t fall to the pressure. He rose to it. He didn’t get lucky. He was ready.
I can’t give you an exact formula for how much preparation you should do before action. Your situation will be different than mine, and your expertise might be more or less advanced. However, preparation tends to feel like dining at a restaurant. You know almost immediately if the meal is good or bad. Your team will know immediately if you are prepared, just like you will know immediately if a team member shows up prepared.
Most people never see the preparation. They only see the final product.
They see your calm, confident, and clear action that produces an outcome. What they don’t see are the hours of thinking, strategizing, and the decisions made early when no one was paying attention.
But leadership has a way of revealing what was done when no one was watching.
The leaders who prepare don’t need to announce it. Their presence does it for them.
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About the Author: John Eades is the CEO of LearnLoft and The Sales Infrastructure. He was named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices. John is also the author of Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success. You can follow him on Instagram @johngeades.
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