So Who Are You Calling Forth?
4-Minute Read
Somebody on your team is performing the exact part you assigned them. Flawlessly.
September 1997. Fred Rogers (aka Mr. Rogers) steps onstage at the Daytime Emmys to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award, in front of a ballroom of TV’s most recognizable faces.
He speaks into the mic: “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are?”
Think of that person for you. They related to you as more than you were living at the time, and you grew toward the version they were already treating as real.
Now turn that around. As a leader, you're the one doing the relating.
Do you have a problem child on your hands? An employee, a co-founder, a spouse. The one you've quietly filed under “hopeless.”
As long as that's who you see, that's how you'll lead, and that's who you'll keep getting back.
This week in The Grip, we flip the lens that decides which version of that person you’ll get to lead. And that is entirely up to you.
leadership perception and team behavior: why founders who relate to capability instead of problems change what their people do
The Problem Employee Label: How a Leader’s Perception Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
One of my guiding principles for over twenty years comes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
But how you treat people starts one step earlier: first you must see them that way. Because you always behave in a manner consistent with how you see the situation.
See someone as the problem child and your tone, your agreements, your expectations, your consequences all arrive pre-loaded. You hand them the role. They play it. You collect the evidence and call it proof.
You have the capacity to call forth your team’s best or worst, depending on how you see them.
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How to Relate to a Difficult Co-Founder or Spouse: Why Seeing the Person Instead of the Problem Changes the Relationship
How do you deal with a monster? You give it a lot of room.
Ordinary relating engages the junk in a person’s way and keeps its distance from who the person really is. Transforming leadership engages who the person really is and keeps its distance from the junk.
Same person. Different relationship. Very different result.
One of my clients spent several frustrating years coaching her husband on everything she was getting out of our work together. It went nowhere.
So I asked her to consider that there was nothing wrong with her husband just as he was. That there was no need for him to change at all. If that were the case, how would she relate to him?
"I'd stop pushing him to change. And I’d stop being disappointed when he doesn’t."
"Great. Go do that and see what happens. Be a demonstration of this work in you; let it ‘bear fruit.’ And relate to your husband as the version that doesn't need to be coached."
Within weeks she reported back. Her husband had gotten curious about the changes he was witnessing in her and started asking how he could make some of those changes himself.
She never coached him. She stopped needing him to be different, and he came looking. Changing how she saw him changed how she showed up with him.
And even if he had not made changes, my client was freed from the energy drain of fixing him. She could channel that energy to create more of what mattered to her.
Another client, a founder, was looking 10 years down the road at the partnership with his co-founder and seeing a break in it. He had been doing the work; she hadn't. He would raise the idea of her getting a coach of her own and watch her shut down.
So I asked him: "Does she look to you like she's willing or unwilling to do the work?"
"She very much looks like she's unwilling." Then he caught it himself. "But if I view her as willing, how would that change my approach?"
If he saw her as willing, he would stop holding back with her. He talked with his leadership team constantly about what he was learning, because they're on board. With his co-founder he said almost nothing; he assumed she didn't care. Seeing her as unwilling had him withholding the one thing that could have reached her.
“People don’t want to be corrected; they want to be inspired.”
How to Lead a Difficult Employee or Partner: Two Perception Questions and a One-Week Practice
Years ago at a high performance training, the wife of the coach leading it attended as a participant. Someone asked her what it's like being married to "that guy." Her answer: "He doesn't coach me. He just is with me in a way that makes me want to be more like him."
That's the standard.
People don't want to be corrected; they want to be inspired. Inspiration moves people. Correction rarely does.
This week, pick the person you've labeled a “problem” and ask yourself two questions:
Who am I being with them that this is the situation I'm creating?
How would I show up with them if they were already who I imagine they could be?
Then go be that with them. No speech, no announcement. Just relate to the version that doesn't need to be coached. Nothing is wrong with them. There is nothing in them to fix.
You decide which version of them to relate to. That one choice shapes the outcome more than any other.
The team you've been griping about and the partnership you've been grieving are both sitting right there, waiting on the only thing that is yours to change: how you see them.
Relate to who they're capable of being. Watch who shows up.
Keep creating.
key takeaways
The version you relate to is the version you get. Your read on someone sets your tone and your asks, and those produce the behavior you then call proof.
The label costs the leader first. Seeing a co-founder as unwilling had one founder withholding the exact conversation that could have reached her.
Dropping the campaign to change someone frees your energy either way. One client stopped needing her husband different; he got curious on his own, and her energy returned to what mattered to her regardless.
WORK 1:1 WITH BECKY
As a self-mastery coach, I help mission-driven founders accelerate desired results without sacrificing what matters. If that sounds like good news, REACH OUT to experience how 1:1 coaching can empower you to be the masterful leader your mission requires.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.