Most companies have a mission statement.
It’s usually printed on a sign in the lobby, mentioned once at the annual all-hands, and forgotten by Tuesday.
Dr. Lani Jones has a five-minute exercise that exposes the gap between the mission on the poster and the mission your team is actually operating from. She calls it the Index Card test. It has blown up more leadership offsites than any consultant slide deck.
Lani is a clinical psychologist turned executive coach. She founded HBL Advisory Group out of the COVID era, when the executives she was working with stopped needing therapy and started needing someone who could hold a board meeting and a divorce in the same sentence. She brings the rigor of a doctorate in clinical psychology and the testing-side data orientation that came with it to the messy work of helping leaders build companies that don’t quietly fall apart.
This is what she’s learned about culture, feedback, and the work of architecting a legacy instead of stumbling into a career.
From Books to Brain to Boardroom
Lani didn’t take a straight line to executive coaching. Most coaches don’t.
She grew up in the cornfields of Indiana, the kind of kid who at four had memorized the original Madeline book and walked it around to anyone who’d listen. “Do you want me to read you this book?” People were usually impressed. Her brother usually ratted her out.
She went to college as a psychology and English major on a pre-physical-therapy track. Considered med school. Considered occupational therapy. Got a master’s in counseling. Decided that wasn’t it either. Got a doctorate in clinical psychology and landed heavily on the testing side: autism evaluations, ADHD assessments, hospital work with some of the most complex children in the system.
“I’m a data nerd. I loved getting all the testing data and clinical judgment.”
The transition to coaching happened by accident, the way most second careers do. COVID hit. Kids were home. The evaluation pipeline dried up. The therapy pipeline overflowed. And in the middle of all that, executives started showing up in her practice. Not because they needed clinical care, but because they were trying to lead teams through a pandemic with no end point, run reorgs while losing marriages, and be parent-teacher-CEO without dropping any of the balls.
“I came to love working with this population. It let me merge all my psychology skills with the business side of things.”
In summer 2024 she launched HBL Advisory Group and went all in on coaching executives and founders. The clinical practice still exists under Jones Behavioral Group. The advisory practice is where the rest of her energy goes.
Curiosity Is the Coaching Superpower
Ask Lani what makes a good leader and she doesn’t say charisma, vision, or grit. She says curiosity.
“One of my favorite shows is Ted Lasso, and he’s all about choosing curiosity, not judgment. Why did that employee drop the ball? How do I develop my leadership team or my employees, versus just the judgment piece, the black and whiteness of it?”
The leaders who fail at team development are almost always operating from judgment. The leaders who scale calmly are operating from curiosity. The difference is whether their first reaction to a missed deadline is what’s wrong with this person or what’s the system that produced this outcome.
Her coaching method runs on the same instinct. She approaches every client like a scientist running a small study.
| Behavior | Judgment-Driven Leader | Curiosity-Driven Leader |
|---|---|---|
| Employee misses a deadline | ”They’re not committed." | "What broke in the process?” |
| Team gives weak feedback | ”They don’t get it." | "What environment did I create that made honest feedback feel unsafe?” |
| Strategy isn’t working | Doubles down on the plan | Tests a hypothesis, measures, adjusts |
| New hire underperforms | Considers firing | Re-examines onboarding, expectations, support |
Curiosity isn’t a soft skill. It’s the operating system.
The “Minnow in the Ocean” Problem: Differentiating a New Coaching Business
Under her psychologist heading, Lani knew exactly what she did and didn’t do. There was a clinical scope. A regulator. A board. A clear set of services.
Under “coach,” none of that exists.
“Coach is an unregulated term, for better or for worse. It’s become the trendy lingo of the moment.”
She calls it the minnow-in-the-ocean problem. You walk into a market saturated with people who took a weekend certification and call themselves the same thing you call yourself after a doctorate in clinical psychology. Differentiating is hard. Communicating what you actually do is harder.
Year one she did what most new coaches do: tried to do it all. Followed everyone’s advice. Built three brands at once. Took every podcast guesting opportunity. Posted on every platform.
“It felt like I was throwing spaghetti at the wall.”
Year two she did the opposite.
“I had to be like, okay, I really need to cut out some of the noise and stick with a clear path. Trust myself on this.”
Her single biggest year-one regret, in her own words: I would’ve put blinders on a lot sooner. I would’ve stopped trying to pull the spaghetti off the wall or rearrange it. A narrow path. Keep it narrow.
If you’re a coach in year one, tape that quote to your monitor.
Why Annual Performance Reviews Are Broken (And What to Run Instead)
This is the section where Lani gets fired up. Evaluations are her thing. Both as a former testing psychologist and as a coach who watches the damage badly designed feedback systems do to teams.
Her core argument: if your employee is hearing information for the first time at their annual review, you’re way too late.
“The best feedback is immediate or as close to the time of the event as you can get it.”
She doesn’t mean call someone out in front of a customer. She means: pull them aside for two minutes in the hallway. Send a quick message. Have the conversation before the moment cools. Build a culture where feedback is data, not a sentence.
The cost of getting this wrong is bigger than most leaders realize:
| What Happens When Feedback Is Annual | What Happens When Feedback Is Immediate |
|---|---|
| People operate in fear of being fired | People take real ownership of outcomes |
| Tiny guardrails: nobody experiments | Creative risk feels safe |
| Mistakes are hidden until reviews | Mistakes surface in days, not quarters |
| Bottlenecks: everything routes through the boss | Owners are freed to do strategic work |
| Year-end reviews are dreaded events | Year-end reviews are unsurprising and short |
| Culture is whatever survived the silence | Culture is what gets reinforced every week |
Her flip line: “I want you to fail. Because if you aren’t failing, you aren’t really growing.”
The Final 1% Framework
The framework Lani built for her one-to-one clients is called the Final 1%. It’s for mid-career executives and founders who have already hit a level of conventional success and are looking at the next decade asking: is this it?
The 30-second elevator pitch in her words: “In order to transform your success into lasting legacy and to be an architect of that legacy, you have to have clarity on where you’re going and why you’re going there. We get really clear on your values, your mission, your vision. That clarity then influences all of your decisions, both personally and professionally, while reducing decision-making fatigue.”
She used the framework on herself before she used it on anyone else. Spent two days with her own mentor mapping a 2035 vision. Reviews her mission weekly. Quarterly deep-dives on whether she’s still pointed at the same star.
Most leadership teams who bring her in have the language. They have the values printed in the lobby. What they don’t have is a system to keep those values from being decorative.
That’s where the Index Card test comes in.
The Index Card Test for Culture
Here’s the exercise. Try it this week.
Lani brings the leadership team into a room. Hands every person an index card.
“Write down the mission of the business. Don’t look at your neighbor’s card.”
That’s the whole exercise.
She watches what happens. People sometimes write things that look like they came from a different company entirely. The CEO is left scratching their head. “Wait, you thought that was our priority?”
The test exposes the gap between what leadership thinks they’ve communicated and what’s actually landed. The gap is almost always wider than anyone expects.
And here’s the second-order insight that matters: a one-and-done values workshop never closes that gap. Not the lobby sign. Not the all-hands speech. Not the trust-fall offsite. Culture isn’t a moment. It’s what you reinforce every week.
“If they aren’t on board with the values, we have to plan a system in place to actually make sure those things are sustainable and working, and shift culture as we need to.”
The Index Card test doesn’t fix culture. It shows you what needs fixing.
Why Every Coach Needs Their Own Coach
Two questions Lani gets asked a lot. The first: do you have your own coach?
Answer: yes, always.
When she launched her clinical practice, she hired a coach who specialized in private practice testing psychologists. Niche enough to be useful, not a generalist. When she pivoted to executive coaching she hired another coach to help her plan scaling, hires, and roadmap.
“Whatever season you’re in, no matter how seasoned you are or how new you are, mentors and coaches are critical to success. You can’t go at it alone.”
The second question, which she gets even more often: was the pivot worth it?
She doesn’t answer with “more rewarding.” She answers with “different.” Diagnosing a complex child for a family is rewarding in a way that’s incomparable to anything in business. But helping an executive who’s responsible for the lives of forty employees architect a legacy that ripples through those forty families is its own kind of return.
“I had really come as a business owner myself to love business and what it can do outside of just here’s a practical income stream.”
How to Run Your Own Index Card Test This Week
If you lead a team, even a team of three, here are the steps you can run this week without hiring anyone:
- Index Card test. Hand out cards at your next leadership meeting. Have everyone write the mission from memory. Compare. Don’t critique. Just notice.
- One immediate feedback rep. Pick one report you’ve been saving up feedback for. Tell them today, in two minutes, in the hallway. Notice how it feels.
- One curiosity question. Instead of asking “why did this go wrong,” ask “what made this hard.” Watch what shifts.
- One values audit on yourself. Write your top five values on the back of an index card. Compare them to your calendar this week. Your calendar is a journal of what you actually prioritize.
None of them cost money.
The Real North Star
When asked what she’s learned about herself through this transition, Lani went somewhere most coaches don’t.
“Being an entrepreneur shows your strengths, your weaknesses, your triggers, your ingrained belief systems. A lot of entrepreneurs who have accomplished a lot will say, this is actually a self-discovery journey. This isn’t really about the business.”
The business shows you whether your definition of success is yours or one you inherited from someone else.
“My definition of success is, I have to do it on my own. I can’t ask for help. Especially as a coach, it can feel like a solo journey. You’re working from home. You don’t have a team on the ground with you. So how are you building your network? Are you asking for help when you need to ask for help?”
The Final 1% isn’t about legacy. It’s deciding what success means before the world decides for you.
Dr. Lani Jones appeared on Episode 29 of Coach as Entrepreneur. Connect with her at drlanijones.com or on LinkedIn. Watch the full episode on YouTube.
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