Your Team Made A Rule Out Of Something You Said Once

<p>New manager tips almost never cover this one. Six months ago you said one sentence. You were probably walking out of a meeting, thinking about something else, and you said something like &quot;yeah, let&#39;s just run those by me first.&quot; You forgot it by lunch. Your team did not. They wrote it down, they told the next new hire, and it is still running today.</p><p><br></p><p>That is an accidental rule. You made it. You just were not in the room when it got made.</p><p><br></p><p>This is not about the policies you wrote on purpose. It is about the offhand comment, the one bad day, the one time you got surprised in a meeting — the things your team filed permanently while you filed them as a passing remark. Every one of them is costing you speed, and more importantly, every one of them is a piece of somebody&#39;s judgment they quietly handed back to you.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode John Espinosa walks through The Accidental Rule — three moves to find the rules you never made, kill the ones you did not mean, and stop creating new ones every week.</p><p><br></p><p>Go find the rules you never made. Ask &quot;why do we do it that way&quot; three times this week, then be quiet and listen for the answer that starts with &quot;because you said.&quot; They hide in four places: approvals, formats, timing, and who is allowed in the room.</p><p><br></p><p>Kill it out loud, with your name on it. The correction has to be as public as the original was casual. Name it, own it, kill it clean, and say what replaces it — because a rule removed without a replacement gives people uncertainty, not freedom. And never ask why they were still doing it.</p><p><br></p><p>Label it before they file it. Tell your team what kind of thing you are saying as you say it: this is a decision, I am thinking out loud so do not act on this, this is a preference and not a standard. Then add the four words worth the whole episode — that is your call, not mine.</p><p><br></p><p>This is leadership communication at the level where it actually breaks: not the big announcements, but the small sentences your team is still following months later while you have no idea they exist.</p><p>----------------------------</p><p>Get my coaching frameworks behind the scenes. One idea and one small shift to your inbox every week. </p><p>Start here: https://www.thejohnespinosa.com/start-here</p><p><br></p><p>Ready to take your leadership to the next level?</p><p>Join our Coaching Program and start buildi