This TED Talk features management expert Elizabeth Lyle, recorded live at TED at BCG 2018.

I am guilty of stacking my dishes in the sink and leaving him there for hours.

I fact-checked this with my boyfriend. He says it's less like hours and more like days, but that's not the

point. The point is, sometimes I don't finish the job until the stack has gotten high enough

that it's peeking over the lip of the sink and my inner clean freak loses it. This charming habit

developed when I was in college and I had tons of excuses. I'm running to class.

What's one more dirty dish in the sink?

Are my favorite.

I think I can save time and water

if I do them all together later.

But it's not like I needed those excuses

because nobody was calling me on it.

I wish they had.

I look back now and realize that every time I didn't put a dish in the dishwasher

and finish what I started, it became more second nature to me and I grew less likely to question

why I was doing it. Today, I'm a 30-something certified dirty dish lever and breaking this habit is hard.

So when I'm not at home avoiding the sink, I work

with large complex organizations on leadership transformation in times of change. My job is to work

with the most senior leaders to examine how they lead today and establish habits better suited

for the future. But what interests me more than

senior leaders these days is what's going on with the junior ones. We call them middle managers,

but it's a term I wish we could change because what they are is our pipeline of future talent

...