Shedding perceptions: Moving from lone wolf to team player

Nikhyl: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Skip podcast. This is Nikhyl Singhal. I'm your host. And as always, this podcast is designed for tech professionals to help them get ahead in their career. And it's another coaching call that I recorded with a highly successful product manager who's a bit of an entrepreneur who works at a later stage technology company.

And in this case, he's given me a call to sort of help him understand some feedback that he's received in the workplace.

Before we get into the call, I'll give you a little bit of background. You know, this is a highly successful leader who's kind of mid stage in career. And in this stage, he's receiving some feedback that he is very successful in charging forward to new zero to one projects, but struggling with collaboration along the way. This is a great example of a shadow of a superpower.

So for those of you that have listened to some of my prior work, I talk about, oftentimes, that our greatest strengths, to some extent, hide hidden development areas. And in his case, the development area isn't maybe quite so hidden. He's received feedback and getting very strong signal that his peers don't love working with him.

Though, in his mind, he doesn't understand where this feedback is coming from. He in his mind is very open to collaboration, but that signal is really what's holding him back.

And so we're going to go right into the episode and we start with him exploring coaching and eventually kind of unwind what's the core of the challenge that he has in the workplace.

So let's jump over to the call. As always, I anonymize these conversations. And in this case, we start with him exploring coaching options and then eventually move to what really is holding him back in his workplace.

Guest: Over the summer, my VP, was like, I want to get you a coach. because I think there's some things that we can work on and, you know, these these, these coaches help.

But what I told him is look, I've tried these coaches in the past. And the problem is those programs are a lot like therapy sessions, equivalent to, are you passing the ball, are you involving your teammates? The things that any career professional knows, right? It's kind of like rolling your eyes, right? And so I told him is I want somebody who's played the game. Who's actually like knows the nuances, not only the tech industry, which I think our industry is very specific because of the pace and stuff, but even the product management function, which is kind of a unique role. And it has evolved quite a bit over the past 10, 15 years, and so that's why, to go by the basketball analogy, a coach that has actually played the game versus some person who watches ESPN and then regurgitates what they what they see there. So that's kind of the impetus of why I reached out because I shared one of your podcasts the superpower one, and there's some things I agreed with in there and didn't agree with but I think that it was a really concrete discussion that I thought was super useful.

Nikhyl: No, I appreciate that. my kind of sense is that you need kind of the buffet approach here. If you think about a professional athlete, they're going to have, strength and conditioning coaches.

And they're going to have folks that are physical trainer types, and that might be a little closer to the executive coach that you get. They don't have context. So, they may never played this particular game before. They certainly don't know the nuances of what you're working through with your shot or with your teammates or with the sort of challenges around rebounding or whatever it might be, but they're really focused on strength and conditioning, which is perhaps a horizontal thing that all professional athletes need to go through. So if you go to them with the right questions, you'll get the right answers. But if you go to them with, hey, I'm early struggling with, you know, rebound the ball, and, you know, make sure that I'm available in the right position or I'm trouble struggling with spacing. They're not going to know it.

Unfortunately, most managers use this blunt instrument, it's like, you need a coach. not every coach is going to do that. Then there's folks that are domain experts, but they may not have context. And then there's people that have a ton of context, maybe your peers, but they may not be skilled at actually coaching.

And so the smart person's going to be able to say, okay, I've got this board of director — a few folks know my function a few folks really know what's going on in my office setting and then a few folks are sort of helping me maybe on my more generic soft skills, leadership skills, you know, maybe know who I am from the past, but don't know who I am today.

And then I'm putting it all together. And then I'm doing the calculation, the sort of sewing together. That sort of eventually kind of works out, but if you're don't have all of these aspects, or if you're asking someone to play out a position, you end up with the situation you just described. So, and I think that now there's, lots of content out there who can actually fill parts of the void. So you can kind of maybe sew it together, but it does take a little energy to your point.

Guest: I've been actually very impressed with HBR, which I used to think roll my eyes, but a lot of those things fill in the soft stuff, the generic stuff. That's something I've really benefited from, but, that's just some context of why I'm here, but let me give you a little bit of a setup. An honest kind of reflection of a stage of my career, things I need, I need to work on.

My career has taken an interesting arc where when I joined my first company as a product manager, I immediately shot up as a superstar. I just always found myself in the right conversations. The early uh, leadership group, they were very level independent. it seemed like at times they liked going to product managers to get thoughts and skipping over these senior folks and stuff like that. I thrived in that environment and I did really well, but I developed a reputation at the time. Oh, he uses these connections to get his ideas through. He doesn't work with the engineers. He doesn't work with the people around him. And he's just kind of this smart ass. So that was actually legitimate feedback. I would say that as a 22, 23 year old, my perception of a corporate world was, oh, you got to just get the senior folks to really like you. And that's how you go up. I've had a kind of interesting career. I left to do a startup, worked at a couple other companies, then came back to my current one.

And so over those years, I've actually almost flipped the other way where if you ask people now, if you were to come to my work and you would say the people who kind of love me the most, it's the IC engineers, basically he, he always involves us, but on the other hand, peers that I have trouble with are kind of the peers that are at the same level as me or kind of one level above me. Because I basically have developed this perception that I get this kind of rebel alliance behind me, and then it's kind of impossible to kind of move because he has this grand plan where he's like, oh, it's not me. Look at the 10 engineers who agree with me and you have to convince them. It's impossible for other folks to convince them because they just tend to agree with my ideas.

And so I've developed this, this is like a one issue I'm struggling with, where I have this perception among my kind of same level peers or, you know, L8, L9 folks who think that somehow I'm orchestrating this master plan of running this rebel alliance to advance my ideas. When a hundred percent honest, I'm just advancing what I think is good for the company and those ideas catch fire, they get traction, they grow organically. It's this perception that I can't get off my back where everybody thinks that I have an agenda playing something and I really don't.

Nikhyl: What's the implications of what you're describing?

Guest: Let's go very concrete. Uh, I was about a year and a half ago. I was like, hey, I'm interested in doing my own project. And so it worked. now I'm in a position where this thing has grown and now all those peers are like, Oh, we need to get involved. We want to get involved because it's catching fire. It's becoming a top priority, but he's really hard to work with, that's kind of the implication, which is a linear situation over the break where there's a kind of a discussion of Okay, well, I know he's been this guy to take it from zero to one. But now, given the organizational dynamics, we have to create room for all these other people, which I sort of disagree with a little bit, but I can appreciate why my VP thinks that.

And he's like, these peers all think that you're a kind of a rebel leader and you're not going to play ball with them long term. To be 100 percent genuine. I'm happy to work with these folks. but I do want the people who are on the ground with me to get recognized also.

So, for example, 1 thing I said is here's this person, she joined from another company. And she helped build a lot of our kind of thing. She should be elevated as a leader as one of these things. She shouldn't just automatically just get subservient to the person who is kind of on the periphery who happens to hold the title.

So, it's a little counterintuitive, but basically that's the situation I'm in, the implication, which is I've taken this thing from zero to one, but I have this perception that like, I'm a rebel guy. And so I'm the startup zero to one guy and now go hand it to the professionals. And to be honest, it's not something I want to do.

So that's what I'm going to start going in 2024 is basically saying look, that's not good for the business and this perception you guys have that I'm only a rebel leader. It's just not right.

So maybe the broader question is. Sometimes the perception isn't reality and how do you go about influencing that?

Nikhyl: Such a good example of what I would consider the sort of dynamics of power within an organization. And I, I think the simplest way to describe it, I haven't actually published this point, but I always talk about when you don't have power, you need to find ways to acquire it or amass it and then when you do have power, you have to find ways to distribute it. Give it away. And I think that both of these are hard for people. I think what you described, look, early in my career, I had sort of a knack and an instinct and an intuition for acquiring power. And what I meant by that is I knew who to talk to, how to influence them.

And my ideas came through and it was a very merit oriented place. And so my ideas and my energy and my creativity made me bigger than I perhaps was by role or stature, level or tenure or whatever you want to call it. And then as I got to a certain stage, I've actually mentally flipped.

I have recognition that I hold more stature, more power, and I do spend time working with lower power folks in this case, your IC engineer that you described really motivated them on the ground, not staying in the ivory tower, by going directly to the people that do that and then using my role and my, my position to sort of amplify them. That's good news and I think that this sort of notion, is not translating to your peers. The genesis of your current project was to be a little bit of an army, an independent by definition, you were looking to be innovative and doing that with the 14 legged sack race, where you are in any organization trying to spend all your time and inside the building problems, would slow you down and prevent any of this working. And I think now you're at a point where you need to figure out a way to scale and bring other people along.

But I think the point you're making is you've got two challenges. One that you've identified pretty clearly, which is your peers have a perception that you're not necessarily a team player, when you're about ready to be in a team game, which is very much a scale question. And I think the second thing is you're like, look, I'm okay with that. I don't feel like mentally I am allergic to being part of something bigger.

I think the concern I have is that there's a trade off and I think that's the question for us to get into is that what trade off are you willing to take to bring others along. And I think you made this very concrete example, which is, look, I'm willing to work with other people, but I want to make sure my team is recognized along the way.

I don't want them to be buried. And I think there's probably 50 of these examples, which is as we merge, you know, in any kind of situation, you're feeling like we've gotten this far because of the team and because of your own efforts, your own ideas, and your ability to kind of put blinders on and be focused and at the same time, you know, that's sort of the next step. And so the trade off is really the key.

And to answer your question around perception and reality, my advice is that there is more reality here than you may admit to yourself, because you may not be willing to take the trade offs. And people know you're not willing to take the tradeoffs. And so what you're saying is, look, I'm totally open. I'm not closed door locked by definition. I just want to make sure my team, myself, the project, you know, doesn't slow down, doesn't compromise and I'm like, that is probably the key thing that everyone's like, I don't know if this guy's willing to have me join and take any kind of hit. And if you're not willing to take a trade off, then you don't have this perception of collaboration.

Guest: So as we're talking about this discussion of scaling this project, I'm very open to researchers, eng leaders, coming on board and working with me because I think that the best teams are like a puzzle board where basically you have complementary skill sets.

I am very resistant on other product folks. One of the theses that I had when I started this project — you have a low ratio of PM to engineers. And you empower the engineers and designers to try to take ownership over some of the product details. And the product manager, in my case, is orchestrating things. What's happened in the industry a little bit, as you had a proliferation of PMs of a variety of backgrounds, often too many PMs, is it's often the PM, in every single detail and it kind of disempowers the engineer and the designer.

So probably the element of truth you're talking about, which I will probably be a little less collaborative if some PM comes in and says, Oh, let me tell you how your product's going to work that you guys have been working for two years as opposed to a researcher, who's like, oh, I can help take this next level. Right. Because I do something like that. So that, that's probably that element of truth that I haven't been forthcoming on.

Nikhyl: This is a good one and I think you have two choices, right? One possibility is you don't compromise and in some ways, your tightly held perspective of how to innovate, particularly at scale is perhaps the right way to do things and you have a proven track record of understanding how to achieve that.

You've gotten to a place in your career where it's well informed and there's lots of examples in industry where this top down, very opinionated, here's what we want to do from an organization product focus point of view has yielded results. And you stay with that and you lean into the reputation and you essentially say that, look, you know, there are certain areas that I'm willing to compromise and others that I'm not.

And I'm willing to live with that because ultimately my north star is the sanctity of what we're trying to build. That's what I'm trying to optimize for. And I'm willing to take the trade offs when it comes to career or, level or whatever it might be, whatever you perceive those trade offs to be in order to sort of hit my north star.

Opportunity two is you take a compromise on that north star to sort of bring others along and merge. And you probably gain in the second case, the sort of reputational improvement that you desire, you essentially slow down, bring more overhead, teach. You do more teaching and you care less.

Right? These are two things that are like, wait, you're telling me I got to slow down and bring others along and teach as opposed to practice. And you're telling that I have to find a hobby. I literally have to go find something other than this project to care about, because if I care too much, if I care about all the detail, and not majority of the detail, then I'm going to go crazy, fighting.

But if I just like, eh, it's fine, 80 percent of the time I get what I want, 20 percent of the time I don't. And I just care less, you will definitely build a more collaborative reputation and you will be enfranchising more to your peers and then you just have to make sure you sleep well at night. But the question is really what are you optimizing for your career within your organization or your ability to hit on this product?

Guest: You spend time wandering and in some parts of your career, but at some point you had to figure out, this is what I do. This is what I go deep on. Right. And I think I found that I think I have the opportunity now. Where I could be like in the room with my CEO talking about a strategy because I have something in our hands this is my chance to earn because I can be that leader. Now, over the holidays, I was thinking about, how do I know when holding my ground will give me a short term win, but long term cost?

Nikhyl: One route that you could take and it's a question of risk and, you know, personal choice. One route you could take is look, I'm going to hold my ground. Let's use your words. And then the product is going to be wildly successful and I'm going to have attached my name to it.

And then what will happen is the success of the product and my close proximity to it is going to be career additive. Essentially that in and of itself is going to be so known that I'm going to become bigger than any internal organizational structural thing. And I'm going to take a risk. The risk is look, I'm going to hold my ground, push on what I believe in, do it in a way that I have not made friends along the way, but then the success of the product speaks for itself. That works in a meritocracy that works in an organization that tears tremendously and that works at the product actually is a success. And there's plenty of examples of products when you kind of reverse engineer their success, they work everyone behind it. There was like 3 different competing projects or lots of leaders and that was their ticket to fame, not be exactly the route that you're on.

In which case this feedback of hey, compromise now, et cetera is not the right way. The possibility two is the product doesn't succeed in a way that provides that visibility or you don't live in a meritocracy. You live in a political organization that despite the success, every successful product has 20 different people that were part of it there's countless examples of the real person behind the project kind of got kicked to the curb and the actual, like, success came to some leader who very strong politically. If you live in that kind of world, then your success is actually to compromise, have more people part of it, build this reputation that you can kind of get products to a certain stage and then bring others along.

And that actually might be longer term. I think these are the two paths and a lot of it has to do with how much of your career arc is tenure at the organization versus using this to jump off into something new. I'll make a kind of a slight aside, but I think this is the key is much of your anxiety is because you have a founder mindset, but you're in some giant, large organization. And I would say my core feedback to you is you can't have your cake and eat it too. You know, you're essentially like, look, I want to be a founder. I want to have a strong opinion. I want to build my own team. I want to have no compromise.

I want to be able to go out, build something first and then show others. But then I want the comfort of doing that in a large big tech company, which has distribution and the cushiness and the clarity and the resources that are perhaps available. And I'm really struggling with how to manage my personal founding mindset and the success that I've achieved in the small.

With all the friction and challenges that this big organization has. And I'm like, well, I mean, that's part of the deal. You can't have one without the other. What you should do is you should take your mindset and your excitement and your power years of earning you should have the courage to go do your own thing.

And if you did your own thing, you would have a new set of problems. But it certainly wouldn't be this class of problem and I think that's actually the elephant in the room

Guest: So I did do a startup and it failed dramatically. But the downside of that is I've had a couple windows, right? Try it again. I'm gonna go do it again, but it couldn't get my peers, especially during the boom years to come along with me.

They're like, we got family now, stuff like that. This doesn't make any sense. So you're a hundred percent right though. That was my whole thing of working with this founder. I'm going to have my own thing. I'm going to recruit my own engineers that we, I worked with before. And it worked up until now, basically, basically. Right. And so you're right. But, trust me, it crossed my mind, I feel like I've gotten to the third quarter. And I have now an unreasonable belief that I can keep this going.

Nikhyl: I think this is the easiest way to make compromise is to understand what benefit you're realizing. And so, for me, what I would say is, and I'm going to be particularly, aggressive in my, commentary, I'm going to say, I am not in a position to go found.

So I've decided to work in a innovation area within a large company, and as I've succeeded, the thing that I'm now confronting is the tax associated with being in that organization and how much longer I can remain independent versus quasi independent, but knowing that I benefited from the decision of not being independent, Knowing that I essentially got this runway from this organization, there was going to be a time when I will have to slow down, compromise, bring others along, and now it makes sense.

And so if you sort of, mentally come to that conclusion that I could have gone my independent, but I failed to do that for a variety of reasons. I was just kicking down the pain. In fact, ironically, both of them had some peer element. When you went to found, your peers weren't available on the right life structure.

And now your peers are like, hey, I can't find my way edge wise into your opportunity. But my point is that these are all related compromise. There's always going to be these compromises that exist. Now, did you pull it off at the beginning?

Is it actually in the middle? Is it near the end? But there's no way that you can eliminate it. So that's why you're at this juncture now versus before versus in the future.

Guest: But maybe one thing I will mention that, I'm all for compromising, for bringing people along. And one of the things I tell my, my leaders is that like, guys. I'm not some wizard tricking all these engineers to like me they like working with me. They want to follow me. They say that. But I think that some of the peers, and you know this in a large organization, their intentions aren't as pure of heart, right?

That's where I struggle as I love collaborating, love compromising people who are like, I can see that they're trying to make the product better but where I've always kind of organ rejected is when I see people trying to play this Game of Thrones thing. And I just have this deep in me that that is not something an organization should reward. I'm always told, I always kind of reject it, you're living in too idealistic world. That is just the reality.

Nikhyl: I would try to partner with them to a degree because my nervousness is as follows. I worry about compromising values. Values that you believe in around how projects are, you know, should be run, how decisions should be made, where merit fits in how recognition should be created. how we collaborate, how we communicate. There are certain values that come to any project. And I worry about, uh, advice that people have, which is, you want to collaborate, even if it compromises the values that you hold true, because I think ultimately it's very hard to live with yourself if you're working in a non value based system that you believe in, and sometimes at your level, you have to actually create a little bit of an umbrella when it comes to values.

And I think that's core at a lot of what we've been discussing. There is a possibility that I want you to play with and even test this in Q1, which is the perception that you see of those that are more territorial is actually a reflection of your perhaps tightly held nature.

Guest: That's painful, but there's probably some element of truth to that, yeah.

Nikhyl: It's almost like you're out there. Your shields are up because your shields are up, their shields are up because you're essentially being pretty tightly held and pretty vocal on what you care about. They're being tightly held and vocal on what they care about. You then reach a observation that they're being a bit petty, being a bit narrow-minded, and then they probably, if we were sitting and having a conversation, would make the same comment for you now.

You can keep pointing fingers and spinning and escalating, or you can kill 'em with kindness. But I think the majority of cases I have found that when I've confronted someone who really is very tightly held and they're difficult to work with, you know, majority of time when I very openly build relationship, openly discuss.

Here's where I stand. Here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I'm nervous about. Here's what I worry that you're pushing for, but here's actually what I would love to see. You know, people end up like being very open about working through things.

Let me play my cards out on the table. My goal is to work well, but I'm nervous about this. You know, this is the story that's in my head. So you just sort of say, Hey, I have this perception. This is what I'm seeing. This is the story.

How is this coming across now? Perhaps a politician on the other side will react negatively. Perhaps they'll play games. But two thirds of the time they're like, hey, I'm really glad that this person's really reaching out. I'm going to take my shields down cautiously and you cautiously reduce your shields.

And this turns into quite a relationship. And what's powerful is you do it in one case. And your reputation magically shifts because that person goes out and says, Oh, you know, I, I was really struggling, but then I had this discussion. I realized that there was an opportunity for me to work and then you go a little bit out of your way to amplify that person, their team, their successes, their decisions and other people immediately say, boy, I see a different version here.

And then two other people that are sort of a little bit in limbo, they are like, oh, maybe I can work because that person is going to have allies. And they're going to bring their allies to the system. And so you end up getting about two thirds of the folks on your side, but you never compromise your values, you're just really clear on what they are.

And frankly, you make that list short. So, as you said, maybe product decisions are something that you're willing to let go of maybe. Your ratio of PM to eng you're willing to let go of, but the quality of the PM that you bring on is still very high. And so you're like, look, I want to make sure that we're adding value, not just bloating the organization, because we need to make sure it hits this stage before we start to scale.

And I want to be really thoughtful about when we put the gas on and people are like, oh I can see that. And then that changes reputation, but you have to be really, really concise and clear on what lane you're asking people to play in.

Okay, there's a lot to unpack in that conversation in a bit of a short time. I would say this is one of my favorite conversations I've had in this live coaching format, because it really cuts to the heart of a bunch of development areas, all sort of sitting together. I think maybe I'll start by saying that, collaboration means a lot of things to a lot of people, but when you start out as a professional, you really want to make sure that your boss likes you. And so you look up, and you make sure that you're partnering well with leadership. So that's kind of the first thing that you think of. And then as you become a manager, you pick up this sort of second skill. You look down, you make sure that the folks that you're supporting.

Are really connecting with you and that you're adding value and so you're up and you're down and in some ways along the way, sometimes when you look to the side, you start seeing other projects that might have other people that you may desire to pull into your project. Or perhaps other peers who, if they succeed, they may pull away from the attention that you receive.

So, kind of naturally, you start being a bit competitive with the people to your side, and you focus very much on up. And very much on down. Now, at some point in career, this is what catches up with you. In mid career, in your power years, the up and the down is required. But actually, the side to side is what gets people ahead.

And you ask yourself, boy, you know, the more I involve my peers, the more I might slow down. And the more I might have to compromise, but that's really what makes me special. What makes my team successful. And so collaboration is sort of this three way optimization. And in many ways, it's the third that gets in the way in these later stages of career, but it perhaps is the most critical.

Now, it's not always the case. You could be someone who actually continues to focus on the end goal, the objective function, what you're trying to deliver, making sure the company succeeds, making sure that your boss succeeds, your team succeeds. And if you're wildly successful. Then actually bringing others along also may not be as justified, but most organizations, at some point, require team players.

They're not looking for swim teams, they're looking for basketball teams. Because you have to pass the ball, particularly when there's a large, large number of complexities in delivering anything in the organization. And so, in that sense, You really need to be thoughtful about when to compromise and when to slow down, and that was a lot of the conversation that we had, but I would note that values are hard to compromise at some point.

If you don't care about the end goal, you don't care about how things are done. You maybe have to give up on your team or perhaps deliver a product that you don't get excited about or work in a way that you don't feel good. That is too far. So, the goal of collaboration is to do so by maintaining values, but by being transparent.

By being transparent that you're earnest in trying to collaborate, not trying to hold and protect, because that can create a behavior of anti collaboration on the other side. And it gets into all of these power dynamics around who has more control, who has more power, who has more resource, and things spin out of control.

And these perceptions then become realities, and you find yourself really frustrated, or maybe kicked to the curb, and those are the things that we're trying to avoid here.

And so when you find yourself partnering with someone who you may not want to, or may not even respect, my counsel is to be very open around what you're trying to achieve, and hold in the back of your mind that maybe they're better and more, maybe more, And hold in the back of your mind that maybe there's more alignment in how they want to work with you than you realize.

So one of the hardest things that we solve when we have to collaborate. It's partnering with people that we don't necessarily respect or enjoy working with. And in that case, I think what you have to sort of leave room for the possibility is there is actually more room for compromise, but there's a story in your head that's playing out.

And that story that's in your head is maybe getting in your way. And so sometimes the best approach is to be direct, not necessarily confrontational, but sit down and say, look, my interest is for us to work together, but I'm finding that we're struggling and I have a story in my head that you and your team might be trying to do something that I'm not excited about, but at the same time, I want to be better at this and I want to take some compromise. And so let's hash this out together. Sometimes people will find that you're being political and there's an agenda and that it may not be meant to be and those are tough situations and there is no quick solve but what you want to leave room for the possibility is by you taking the temperature down, others also take the temperature down. And they repeat a story that's in their head, which you might find false.

And then you laugh a little bit and then say, hey, you know what? We're both kind of found ourselves in an awkward spot. But now that we've talked through it, we realize that we kind of have a common goal. And perhaps I've been sending a signal erroneously. That's leading to your behavior. And perhaps you're doing the same.

We can kind of find a way to find some common ground and, and work together. And that story then travels in the organization and good things can happen.

Now, lastly, I want to kind of pull up a bit and talk about how important it is to have the self awareness, albeit the courage, and the coaching that's necessary to kind of expand from an excellent leader to a world class leader, a high potential to someone who has really realized the gifts of their skills in this case, you know, this individual is not so set in their ways.

That they won't get better, they won't learn, they won't improve, but they realize that they have to ask themselves the right questions. And often a great executive coach or a great mentor or perhaps an experience that someone else shares with them is an unlock.

Because if you ask the right questions, most terrific professionals will find the right answer. The hardest part is finding the questions to ask, the observations that they need to have. In this example, it's what signals are you sending, which is creating the behaviors that you're most challenged with in the workplace? What trade offs are you willing to take to collaborate? And most importantly, what are the shadows that exist under the strengths that you have that are well recognized in the workplace but go hand in hand with some of the challenges that you're experiencing?

When you ask the right questions, oftentimes, a leader like this will quickly start to realize, oh, I need to make subtle adjustments in my approach, but if I do, it could be a huge unlock. And, you know, frankly, I'm willing to try that, because I am at a bit of a crossroads, and I'm at a threshold, and I need to make some change. I just don't know which change to make that will lead to a better, higher level place.

This is why leadership coaching is so essential, but how often is subtle and frankly, a lot of why I built The Skip and this podcast and the newsletter and the content that I tend to share.

Thanks for listening for today's episode. As always, if you have questions or a challenge you're facing in the workplace, please drop me a line on LinkedIn or Twitter. I'd love to be able to help and maybe have you on a future podcast episode.

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