I have a client who has a $20 million business, and a lot of bad associations with power.

Power was his angry father breaking his toys. Power was retaliation and punishment. Power was what happened when you pushed things to far.

He swore he would never be like that.

And now he had a leadership team who was always bickering, whether in front of him or behind his back.

Now he pleaded with his team to do things but was not willing to impose consequences. He avoided conflict because of the associations it brought up in him.

The company was suffering. Customer service was suffering. Even sales was suffering.

My client needed to find his power, fast, or he was going to lose his company.

But his model of power was a toxic one, and he refused to use it.

The Toxic Model—Power Over

Many of the models of power that we have are toxic.

The angry general berating his troops because “lives depend on it.”

The abusive football coach making his team run wind sprints until they vomit to “toughen them up.”

These are what we call “power over.” Power because of positional authority.

Do what I say or you’re out.

You’re off the team. You’re fired. You’re grounded.

Many of my clients have experienced this form of power and fight it or deny it in themselves. They understand it doesn’t work but they don’t know an alternative.

Even when exercised with calm and respect, positional authority assumes that the leader knows and does not allow for the fact that they may not.

The Collaborative Model—Power With

Another model of power is about the goal at hand rather than the people.

“Power with” is about moving toward a goal together. It assumes that there is not one person who has a monopoly on either knowledge or power, and allows people to adapt accordingly. Ideally it is power through improvisation, exercised as the situation calls for.

“Power with” is elegant when you are able to pull it off, but there is a reason that “power over” is still the dominant model. “Power with” is very difficult to negotiate.

Because “power over” is the model that everyone is familiar with, it tends to be the model that people revert to when things get hard.

“Just tell me what to do,” a team member will say.

Most people are inherently uncomfortable with power and don’t want to exercise it.

And the people who are comfortable with power are often, unfortunately, the people who are least likely to use it responsibly.

The Flawed Assumption

There is a reason that neither of these models work.

They assume that power is something that must reside outside of ourselves, that it must be granted by either the position the person is in or the task that needs to be accomplished.

It assumes that we cannot trust the purest form of power. The power that is deep within each of us.

Our Inherent Power

We each have power and use it every day. We make requests and choose to grant them to others. We decide what is consistent with our values and what is not. We choose goals and team members and relationships.

And yet almost all of us, from time to time, hesitate to exercise this power, worried about abusing it, or about the conflicts that our exercise of power can produce.

But this authentic power is the closest thing we have to a North Star.

What is it that you are willing to claim with your power? What is it that you are willing to, even required to, fight for?

Chances are these are the things that are most dear to you.

Your most cherished relationships and values.

At some point you must exercise your power, or you will risk the things that are most dear to you.

And yet you are likely scared of this power.

How do you exercise it in a way that feels true for you?

My client began to state what he wanted. He began to create clear and measurable goals.

Technically, this was power over, positional authority.

He is, after all, the CEO and owner of the company.

But he also gave people a lot of autonomy in HOW they reached their goals.

They were given power to create as they see fit.

There was a lot of collective power in his leadership team. And business results soared because of it.

What is your relationship to power? What version of power is the one that you want to create?

Going Deeper

I’m having a deeper conversation about power with Nathaniel Dunn – Change Maker tomorrow on Zoom, at 9 pacific, noon eastern, 5 UK time.

Here’s a link to sign up—

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrcu2spjsqHtw-BAWBCUPfNMBdNmDdu6Hu

If you want to go deeper, these are the types of things I write on.

Because I believe that the world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

When I start working with a founder or CEO, the first thing I hear is often something like, “I’m not sure I can do this right now. I’m crazy busy.”

Sometimes, there are events that can’t be avoided—

—A capital raise

—A sale

—An IPO

I have a client who just completed the process of selling her business and another one who is just starting that process. These things can feel like a death march, but of course there is a reward at the end and most people at least will say the reward is worth the punishment along the way.

But if you are feeling that in the day-to-day operation of your business, if your normal operating mode is “crazy busy,” I have good news for you.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Real Reason You Feel Crazy Busy

I notice that whenever I feel too busy, or whenever a client feels too busy, I can get them to focus in just a minute or two.

All we have to do is breathe together.

Slowing down for just a minute or two, taking a few deep breaths from your belly and letting them go, does a profound reset of your nervous system.

And it points out a fundamental fact—

You feel busy because your mind is racing.

Not the other way around.

When you are able to slow down your thinking, it becomes clear what you need to do next. And you never need to know more than the next thing to do.

Noticing when your mind is racing, and breathing a couple minutes in response, is transformational in and of itself. But there are other habits and practices that can create even more space, time, and perspective.

Habits That Create More Time Than They Take

In one sense, time is a construct and the feeing of being busy is merely a recognition that we are thinking a lot of repetitive thoughts. That our mental engine is redlining, and if we take the foot off the mental accelerator it will naturally slow down.

But in another sense time is one hundred percent finite and limited and using it wisely is essential.

Breathing can open up our capacity to intuit one essential next step.

And there are several other habits that have the seemingly magical quality of creating more time than the take.

Meditation, Exercise, and Sleep

I call sleep the magical elixir. Nothing has a more profound impact on me than getting enough good sleep.

When you get enough sleep the world looks like it has your back. You feel strong and powerful. Seemingly magic coincidences fall into place.

When you don’t, you feel frazzled and overwhelmed. You barely make it through the day. You wonder why you are doing what you do, day after day after day.

LeBron James gets 10 hours of sleep a day, including a nap. And he is performing like no other NBA player has at his age, night after night.

Meditation is like a 15 minute power nap. Exercise has the same impact.

If I have all three consistently, I get more done in 20 hours than I get done in 60 when I’m depleted.

Are you telling me you don’t have time for them? You don’t have time NOT to do them.

Teaching, Delegation, and Leading

When you are the leader, every interaction with one of your people is an opportunity to teach.

I had a client who led a sales organization and her people were constantly asking for help. Can you find me this RFP? What is our process for this? Etc. etc.

When she took five minutes to point out where her people could find things, they started doing it themselves.

The investment of that five minutes of time paid back a hundred times.

She discovered that when she stopped helping people, when they started figuring things out for themselves, it freed up 20 hours a week for her.

Which she used to create another job, at the same organization, that was more aligned to her long term interests and values.

Everything you teach creates an opportunity to delegate.

Leading can be harder but is even more powerful.

When you lead, you focus on the result of your team’s effort, not how they got there.

You are not teaching how, you are pointing where.

This is the goal. This is how we will measure whether you attained the goal.

Leading is true leverage. Yet it requires a giving up of control that is incredibly difficult for many people. Especially founders who have been rewarded for being the smartest person in the room for much of their lives.

Teaching, delegation, and leading are as powerful in the outer world as meditation, exercise and sleep are in the inner world.

Want more time? Want more freedom? These six practices will get you there.

Does That Resonate?

Does any of that resonate with you?

If so, reach out to me and I’ll send you a special video that goes even deeper.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

This week is my 59th birthday and I recently got an amazing present.

It started in November. My 14-year-old son said something to me that seemed out of the blue.

“Dad, I want to go to Japan next year as an exchange student.”

What?

I have never had an experience like hearing those words.

I was so excited for my son, so proud of him, and, at the same time, my heart broke at the thought of him being gone for an entire school year. A world away, immersed in a vastly different culture and language. Where his parents could not take care of him. Or help him.

I gathered myself. Pulled my heart up out of my stomach. “Tell me more, Lucas.”

“I want to know what it’s like to live in a different place. I want to experience a big city. And I love the culture and the history and the art and the food of Japan. I’d really like to go.”

“I would, too, Lucas. Can I come?”

“Ha, ha, Dad.”

“So how does this work?”

At this point, Lucas, a high school freshman this year, had already talked to his high school counselor. He had figured out that, while uncommon, it might be better to do this his sophomore year than wait for his junior year, when he would otherwise be taking SATs and thinking about colleges.

He had already found the 10 page online application and started filling it out.

His mom’s reaction was very similar to mine.

Proud, excited, and heartbroken.

When she was in high school (actually the year after), she went to Sweden as an exchange student. And it was life changing.

Recently, we had spent time with an incoming exchange student that we had agreed to host. From Japan. (She moved in Sunday for the rest of this school year.)

All of this, apparently, had been swirling in Lucas’s brain. It had become a clear goal. A dream, even.

Lucas went through a first round of interviews in December through our local Rotary.

We went to Grand Junction, about 90 minutes away, for a weekend of interviews in mid-January.

We met a lot of determined kids like Lucas, and a lot of amazing parents who were dealing with the same feelings (so many feelings!) that we were.

We sat with him for a few minutes in his final interview as he explained to ten adults why he wanted to go to Japan and how he would handle it when things got difficult. And we explained how we would handle it if he called and said he hated it and wanted to come home.

And then we left the room as he finished the interview alone and explained his top five choices.

Last Friday, we got the email. Lucas was in. He got his first choice.

He is going to Japan in August.

I am in awe of what he has done. The research, the determination, the filling out of a ten page online application, the two rounds of interviews, the unhesitant “yes” to what he wanted.

I am still reflecting on the lessons for this. And I’m sure that in a lot of ways the learning is just beginning.

Knowing

Lucas just knew what he wanted. He had no doubt.

Where did this dream come from?

I can speculate. The fact that my wife and I are both self-employed and routinely go after things that are important to us had an impact. Lucas’s love of anime and video games and sushi had an impact. Jen’s experience as high schooler in Sweden had an impact. His interactions with Rikako, the Japanese student now living with us, had an impact.

But in the end he just knew. And he honored that knowledge.

Pursuing

As soon as Lucas knew, he began to pursue.

He had taken a lot of the steps before telling us. He walked us through exactly what was required. He filled out all of the things that he needed to and actually nagged us to finish our part (a bit of a role reversal for you parents of teens).

He took action. Lots of it. And he didn’t stop until he reached his goal.

Reframing

This may be the biggest aha for me.

There are a lot of reasons NOT to go to Japan as an exchange student.

It’s a huge culture shift. The school days are long. The language is difficult.

We talked about all of that with Lucas. How a classmate of his is currently struggling there. About how hard it could be.

“But Dad, that’s why I want to do it.”

Lucas looks at all of those things as advantages.

Lucas is bored in his current school. He wants more challenge. He wants to experience something different than our idyllic mountain town. He wants to spend time in big cities.

He, at least at this point, is embracing the challenge. Even without fully understanding what that is.

Receiving

Finally, when he got the news, he didn’t hesitate. He said yes.

He put everything out there and then accepted what came back to him. Embraced it.

Has he fully realized what he is getting into yet? No. I’m not sure he really will until he gets on the plane in August.

But his full embrace of it is inspiring to me and I hope it is to you, too.

Because I see a lot of adults shy away from this journey every day.

Where Do You Say No Instead Of Yes?

Where do you not fully embrace what life is asking of you?

Do you deny what you actually know to be true? By saying it’s not practical or you’re not sure if it will work?

Do you say no to pursuingit? To taking the necessary steps, out of fear or practicality or “I’ll do this once I’m less busy”?

Do you not have the courage to reframe it? (Seeing Lucas do this was awe-inspiring for me–I am trying to learn more from him.)

Do you have the ability to receive what you have created when it actually shows up in your life?

There have been points in my life where I have failed at all of those–

Ignoring what I knew. That I wasn’t happy in my career.

Telling myself I would go out on my own as a coach. And not pursuing it. Until I was fired.

Getting interest in my coaching and saying no to receiving that interest because I didn’t think I could generate a full time income from it.

Over and over again.

Does That Resonate?

Does any of that resonate with you?

If so, reach out to me and I’ll send you a special video that goes even deeper.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

I hear a lot of complaints from founders as they are trying to build out their leadership teams.

“I can’t find good people.”

“I have to micromanage everyone.”

“No one takes ownership.”

The response that I always give is to ask a question—

“What if the problem is YOU?”

The Three Mistakes

I’ve found that the vast majority of the time, when a founder tells me they have a problem with their team, or with a particular person, it’s not because of the person, but, at least in part, because the founder has made one or more of the following three mistakes.

Firing Too Slowly

At the beginning, founders tend to hire people they know who are excited about being with a growing organization. They tend to be relatively good at a lot of things, and passionate about startups.

But the jack of all trades that is helpful at $5 million or even $10 million of revenue is often a disaster at $50 or $100 million.

That pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that is so helpful at the beginning no longer works at a bigger organization. What you now need is clear ownership and systems and processes.

My friend Ken Goulet, an advisor to several health care startups, calls this the “fire your friends” stage of leadership.

Hiring Wrong

Anytime you hire someone for your leadership team, you need to hire for the organization you are wanting to become. Not the organization you currently are.

One of my clients was struggling with his CFO. He decided to make a big leap. To hire someone who had CFO experience at a company TEN times the size of his.

At the time, it was a huge investment. But within six months he saw all the ways that his new CFO could contribute (and he let her run with them—see the third mistake below).

Today, that CFO will likely become president as my client spends more of his time thinking about bigger picture issues around vision and growth.

Leading Wrong

One of the most difficult things for a founder to hear is that they have, most likely unconsciously, trained their team to behave exactly as they currently do.

The first few times a founder hires people they have been doing things a particular way, their way, and they want to hire a person who will continue to do it their way.

They will monitor the person and make sure that they do it their way. They will correct them if the new leader does not do it their way.

In other words, they are training their people to think like them and check with them if there is any doubt.

They are training them to be micromanaged.

Most founders have never been a CFO, or a head of sales, or a head of product at a larger organization.

They only know what they have been able to cobble together in startup mode.

If you want to grow, though, continuing to do more of the same thing (just with more people) is a disaster.

A former client of mine got stuck on this. He could never find a COO who would run things exactly the way he would. He admitted this to me.

“The one thing getting in the way of my being a bigger company is me.”

Unfortunately, he is still saying this. The progress he has made on this front is minimal, because he continues to think that new people have to think like him.

You have to hire people better than you and let them run.

Control Versus Growth

Once you have a solid business, this is the most important question—

Do you want control? Or do you want growth?

This question will show up in different versions throughout the startup journey. With your team, with your investors, with an exit partner.

A founder who wants growth will hire good people (better than the founder!) and point them in a direction. Give them no more than three priorities, which will tend to conflict. For example—

• Profitable delivery model
• Customer delight
• Rapid growth

Hire excellent functional leads, give them simple priorities, and let them run.

You’ll be amazed at what happens when you do this. The tension between the priorities will create conflict, and conversation. Good leaders will thrive in this conversation.

The results will not only be different than the way you would have done it, but it will be better.

Way better.

I was working as an advisor to a co-founder who took over when the founder died.

The advisory team provided her lots of new ideas on how to grow the business, and its impact, in a way that honored the founder.

But the co-founder was comfortable with the way things were. She said she wanted to grow, but she wasn’t willing to try anything new.

That organization is slowly dying today.

Pruning is necessary from time to time. But only to make room for new growth.

Going Deeper

Does that resonate?

If so, reach out to me and I will send you a special video that goes even deeper.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.