The Wheel of Change: A Framework for Personal Reinvention

    The Wheel of Change turns 'I want to be a better version of myself' into a concrete plan: what to Create, Preserve, Eliminate and Accept. Here is how I use it to reinvent leaders at work.

    The Wheel of Change: A Framework for Personal Reinvention

    The Wheel of Change: A Framework for Personal Reinvention

    Feeling stuck, stressed, or quietly unhappy with a part of who you are at work is one of the most common things I meet in training rooms. Even brilliant, talented people carry one flaw that quietly caps their potential. The Wheel of Change is the tool I reach for to turn that vague 'I should be better' into a concrete plan — and this is how I use it.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    The Wheel of Change is a Productivity (PQ) tool — it lives on the bottom side of The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). But here is the beautiful part: you almost never reinvent yourself in a vacuum. The moment you use the wheel to change how you give feedback or treat your team, you are also lifting your Emotional Intelligence (EQ, the left side) and Relationship Intelligence (RQ, the right side). That is the whole point of the kite — you rise on balance, not on one strength alone. The Wheel of Change is how you rebalance yourself on purpose.

    Why we all need a wheel

    Let me be honest about something. Even if you feel you are doing fairly well, there is usually one or two aspects of your personality that could use a change. Think of the highly intelligent but short-tempered techie. The responsible homemaker who speaks harshly when angry. The team leader who never praises and only scolds for minor mistakes. The colleague who keeps interrupting everyone in meetings. Despite all their positive qualities, these people are remembered for their one mistake — the flaw, not the brilliance.

    That is unfair, but it is how human memory works. And it is fixable. With effort and a willingness to try, any of these people can reinvent themselves into what I call a NEW-ME. The Wheel of Change is the map for that journey. It was developed by the renowned executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, and I use it constantly because it does something most self-help advice fails to do — it makes change specific.

    How the Wheel of Change works

    The wheel starts by breaking your life into distinct categories — family, career, health, personal growth, spirituality — and asking you to rate each one from 1 to 10 on how satisfied you are. The moment you do this, something clicks. In the chaos of daily life it is so easy to lose sight of your priorities. Rating each area forces you to pause and refocus on what is genuinely important. Suddenly you are not staring at a foggy question like "What is my purpose?" — you are looking at a career sitting at a 4 and health sitting at a 6, and you know exactly where to aim.

    That is the quiet genius of the tool: it takes life's biggest, most paralysing questions and breaks them into smaller, manageable parts. Change stops being an overwhelming overhaul and becomes a set of small, purposeful improvements. And that mindset — that gradual progress compounds — is close to what Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset: you focus on becoming, not on being perfect today.

    The four quadrants of the Wheel of Change

    The wheel runs on two axes. One goes from positive to negative. The other goes from change to keep. Cross them and you get four quadrants — four distinct moves you can make on yourself.

    1. Creating — reinvent yourself with a new positive

    Creating is about introducing a positive new behaviour into your life. It is the exciting quadrant — reinventing yourself, discovering a new side of you. It might mean joining a gym, trying a new diet, attending yoga classes, or enrolling in a certification course. At work, creating could mean sharpening your presentation skills or learning a new tool that makes your job easier. Think of a cricketer inventing a new weapon — Harbhajan Singh crafting his 'doosra', or a fast bowler developing a slower ball. Each new skill reinvents you and helps you stand out.

    When Virat Kohli set new fitness goals for himself, he discovered the champion within. I have seen the same thing in ordinary people: after six months of regular public speaking practice at Toastmasters, I have watched personalities visibly evolve. But here is the trap. Creating must be a conscious choice aligned with your goals — not a forced or fickle one. I have seen an IT engineer start preparing for a CCNA certification, then get distracted by a friend's excitement about data science, abandon CCNA, and later decide data science is dull and jump again to an ethical hacking course. That inconsistent, magpie approach to creating yields nothing. Like a good business strategy, what you create should not be changed too often, or it becomes ineffective. Create steadily, with a clear purpose.

    2. Preserving — protect what already works

    Preserving is about maintaining the positive behaviours that are already serving you well. It can feel dull and unexciting — there is no drama in keeping a good habit going — but it is crucial. In your personal life this might be simple morning rituals: pranayama, meditation, keeping a journal. In business it could be continuing to give customers personal attention, or holding on to team-building practices that genuinely work.

    Sport is full of preservers. Glenn McGrath maintained the same relentless line and length for over a decade. Chess champion Garry Kasparov stuck to a strict daily routine. Even Bill Gates, who reportedly reads around 50 books a year, shows that preserving a hunger for learning is what keeps you at the top of your game. When you fill out your wheel, do not only hunt for flaws — deliberately name the strengths you must protect. Reinvention that quietly destroys your best habits is not progress.

    3. Eliminating — drop the habit that no longer serves you

    Eliminating is about removing the negative habits that hold you back, and it can be enormously freeing. The classic example is micromanagement — a habit that once made you successful as an individual contributor but now suffocates your team's growth. Or a sales head who refuses to update an outdated reporting style even after the company has expanded into new regions. Or a project manager still tracking everything on pen and paper instead of adopting a modern ERP system.

    Here is the hard truth of this quadrant: even if a habit gave you success in the past, if it no longer works in the current scenario, it must go. What got you here will not always get you there. Eliminating is not an admission that you were wrong before — it is a recognition that the situation changed and you are wise enough to change with it.

    4. Accepting — make peace with what you cannot change yet

    Accepting is usually the hardest quadrant. It means making peace with the parts of your behaviour, or your reality, that you cannot change immediately. Most of us are terrible at it. When a boss gives us mixed feedback, we conveniently hear only the praise and ignore the criticism. In business, people refuse to accept a bad quarter, preferring to daydream about a better future than to take corrective action today.

    Stephen Covey put this beautifully: work within your circle of influence — accept what you cannot change while acting on what you can. Acceptance is not surrender. It is not giving up. It is acknowledging reality clearly so that you can make informed, honest improvements instead of fighting phantoms. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop wasting energy on the immovable and pour it into the movable.

    Case study: the program manager everyone had stopped trusting

    Let me tell you about a program manager I often describe in my sessions. He had climbed the ladder on the strength of his technical skills — genuinely excellent at the work. But managing people was breaking him. His colleagues saw him as selfish, overly critical and unsupportive. His way of giving feedback was frankly harmful: hurtful remarks, delivered inconsiderately, causing real distress on the team. He believed his people were lazy, not trying hard enough, taking things for granted — and he believed it was his duty as a boss to be brutally honest with them in public. The result was predictable. His coworkers no longer respected or trusted him.

    Here was the twist. Top management actually wanted him to lead an entire business unit. But everyone knew that if he were promoted, several key employees would walk out the door. His technical brilliance had taken him as far as it could; his behaviour was now the ceiling. He had to change — specifically in how he gave feedback.

    The Wheel of Change gave him a comprehensive plan. First, in the Create quadrant, he adopted the "Sandwich Approach" — open with genuine positives, gently introduce the negative in the middle, close with encouragement — and he learned to listen to colleagues with patience instead of interrupting. Second, he chose to Preserve his honesty, because genuine feedback really does drive productivity; he just had to soften the language while keeping the truth intact. Third, he worked to Eliminate the blaming, the sweeping criticisms, and the condescending, authoritarian tone. And finally he had to Accept a humbling reality: giving feedback is an art and a core part of his job, his old approach had been hurting people, and change would take time — including patience with his team as they slowly began to trust him again. That is a full wheel, all four quadrants, applied to one flaw. It rebuilt his interpersonal skills, restored trust, and made him promotable.

    Case study: how England cricket went from losers to champions

    My favourite illustration of the wheel operating at scale is the England cricket team. For years they had a reputation as perpetual underachievers. Then came the crushing defeat to Australia in the 2013–2014 Ashes series — the kind of humiliation that either breaks a team or remakes it. They chose to remake themselves, and they did it, in effect, through the Wheel of Change.

    Their coach, Peter Moores, pinpointed four critical areas: mindset, environment, culture and performance. Then they ran each through the quadrants. In Creating, they introduced new mental habits — positive thinking, visualisation — and upgraded their physical and mental conditioning. In Preserving, they held on to the team culture and values that were worth keeping: hard work, determination, strong relationships inside the dressing room. In Eliminating, they attacked the negatives — negative self-talk and in-match distractions — and worked to eradicate them. And in Accepting, they came to terms with their past failures, using them as fuel rather than shame, and they welcomed feedback and criticism from coaches and teammates.

    The result was a remarkable turnaround. They won the very next Ashes series in 2015 and became one of the best teams in the world. A group written off as losers reinvented itself into champions — not through a magic overhaul, but through disciplined, four-quadrant change.

    How to run your own Wheel of Change this week

    You do not need a coach to start. Take a sheet of paper, list five areas of your life, and rate each 1 to 10. Pick the lowest one. Then draw the four quadrants and honestly fill them in: What one positive habit will I Create? Which strength must I Preserve so I do not lose it? Which old, no-longer-useful habit will I Eliminate? And what reality do I need to Accept for now? Keep the creating focused — one thing, done steadily — and revisit the wheel monthly.

    QuadrantThe moveWatch out for
    CreateAdd a positive new habit or skillChopping and changing too often — pick one, stay steady
    PreserveProtect a strength that already worksNeglecting it because it feels boring
    EliminateDrop a negative habit that limits youClinging to what worked in the past
    AcceptMake peace with what you can't change yetConfusing acceptance with giving up

    This is exactly the kind of practical reinvention I build into my corporate training programs, and it forms part of the productivity work inside my Signature Programs. If Technique #2 is the wheel, remember it sits inside the larger picture of The Winning Kite — reinvent yourself on the PQ side and watch your EQ and RQ rise with it.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the Wheel of Change?

    The Wheel of Change is a four-quadrant self-improvement tool, popularised by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, that splits behaviour into two axes — positive/negative and change/keep. This gives you four moves: Create, Preserve, Eliminate and Accept. Instead of vaguely wanting to 'be better', you decide exactly which new habits to build, which strengths to protect, which old habits to drop, and which realities to accept.

    What are the four quadrants of the Wheel of Change?

    Creating (introduce a positive new behaviour), Preserving (protect a strength that already works), Eliminating (remove a negative habit that holds you back), and Accepting (make peace with what you cannot change right now). Together they form a complete plan for personal reinvention rather than a random list of resolutions.

    How is the Wheel of Change different from setting New Year resolutions?

    Resolutions usually only work in the 'Create' quadrant and collapse in weeks. The Wheel of Change is broader and more honest: it forces you to also Preserve your existing strengths, Eliminate habits that once helped but now hurt, and Accept the constraints you cannot fix. It is gradual, purposeful reinvention, not an overnight overhaul.

    Where does the Wheel of Change sit on the Winning Kite framework?

    The Wheel of Change is a Productivity (PQ) tool — the bottom side of the Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). Because reinvention almost always touches how you give feedback and treat people, it also lifts your EQ and RQ, so the whole kite rises on balance rather than on one strength alone.

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