Contrary to what our clever minds try to convince us of, when we believe our resistance and continue to avoid what’s pushing our buttons, the challenge does not go away as we secretly hope.

As leaders, our brand introduces us before we show up. It’s the thoughts and feelings people connect with our name when they think of us, or speak our name. It’s how they relate and how much they trust us, and whether they even want to.

A harsh fact to face, especially if we are the executives…or the leaders or the managers. But, as harsh as it may be, in my experience, almost all leaders find holding their people accountable the most challenging of their responsibilities.

Become present to what your little voice is saying. Take a breath, and let the thought soften its grip on you. Ask yourself quietly…what if I didn’t blame them this time. What if I didn’t tell that same old story this time. What if I didn’t resort to self-criticism this time.

It’s a very costly cultural trait. Not only does this behaviour erode trust, create reactive employees across the organisation (because everyone’s procrastinating about raising an issue) and ultimately slow business down, it wastes your precious time that could be much better invested.

As a leader your challenge is to see the future before others do, move toward it with belief and certainty, inspiring your people to come with you. Empower them to step onto the path of growth and achievement, leap toward the future and in the process become more than who they are today.

Real, honest, sometimes heart-breaking conversations became the basis of creating true freedom and deep connection within our family relationships. Our appreciation for each other feeding our acceptance of our differences.

Driving our need for control, whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not, is fear. Fear of failure or of success, of not being good enough. Fear of being taken advantage of or of being rejected or not living up to our own, or another’s, expectations.

Dylan Marron, creator and host of the podcast ‘Conversations with people who hate me’…does exactly that.

Walking the line between the limits of the past to his left, and the possibilities of the future to his right, this leader wasn’t yet fully convinced that a change was worth what it was going to take to create it.

We often enjoy the complexities of conflicting priorities and the challenge of achieving and completing projects on time, to budget and to the highest quality.

Many leaders share they have at least one person in their team who, from their perspective, resists additional responsibility, turns down learning opportunities or avoids staying back to help out.

A successful and accomplished professional, wife and mum, this determined woman was ready for change when we met. She knew there had to be a better way than working even harder and longer, while trying to be everything for everyone at home.

When we’re vulnerable, it can bring others close – we let them in, rely on them, we have to lean on them for support. They can feel like they’re helping, making a difference for those they care about.

Recently I was asked by an organisation to coach one of its senior leaders. A man who was consistently exceeding financial results, but whose team was suffering under the pressure and his unrelenting expectations.

Being invited into a stranger’s home to talk about a crime his son had committed and the harm caused, and to prepare his son to meet with the victim of his crime, was, in my world, an unusual thing to do.

Making a change that we know we want to make, but haven’t yet made, can be less about needing more information, and more about mustering the courage to apply what we’ve already learned.

It’s such an easy trap to fall into. Believing we are right, and it’s someone else who needs to change for things to work out. But if everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else, whose responsibility is it to go first?