Over the years, I've had several conversations that start almost the same way. A founder calls because more than one person in their life has recently pointed out something they don't want to believe. Maybe the team thinks they've mentally checked out. Maybe a business partner has stopped trusting them to follow through. Maybe someone at home is telling them they're physically present but emotionally somewhere else. The details change. The pattern doesn't.
Sometimes, once we get into it, I discover the issue has been around a lot longer than the first phone call suggested. Other people may have raised it before. Previous attempts to change it may not have stuck. That's useful information, because repetition tells us we're probably dealing with more than a bad week.
Somebody on the outside sees a pattern long before the person living it does. And by the time they call me, it's usually not the first time they've heard it. It's simply the first time they're willing to wonder whether everyone else might be seeing something they can't.
I know how easy it is to hear the same concern more than once and keep finding reasons everyone else doesn't fully understand. I did versions of that myself. It wasn't that I lacked intelligence or information. With $600,000 in debt and the business sixty days from closing, I had plenty of both. I wasn't ready for what the information meant.
So when someone starts giving me the polished version of a story I can tell they've told themselves a hundred times, I'll sometimes stop them. Not to announce that I already know their real answer — I don't, and I'd rather stay curious than certain. More like: "I'm hearing a very polished version of this, but I'm not sure I'm hearing you yet. What's the thing you're trying hardest not to say out loud?"
Multiple people saying the same thing doesn't automatically make them right. Teams can share a narrative. Families can misread each other. So the move isn't to surrender to the consensus. It's to get curious. One person's read can be an opinion. When the same theme keeps showing up from people who aren't coordinating, that's worth investigating. Feedback is data, not a verdict.
Here's the thing I tell people once we're actually talking: I'm not being paid to tell you what makes you feel better about yourself. I'm being paid to care enough about the outcome to tell you something you may not enjoy hearing. That doesn't mean I need to be an asshole about it — in fact, the harder the truth, the more it matters that you trust the person delivering it. But safety isn't the same as comfort. If our relationship only works when I agree with your version of events, I'm not coaching you. I'm helping you rehearse the story.
What I'm actually after is simpler than it sounds: I want to help you see what you're not seeing, own what's yours, and make the decisions you've been avoiding, so the business has a better shot at supporting the life you actually want.
When I see somebody fighting this hard not to look at something, I try not to stop at "they're resistant." I want to know what the resistance is doing for them. What does this story protect? What would they have to admit, risk, grieve, or give up if the feedback turned out to be true? Maybe checking out keeps someone from admitting they don't want the company anymore. Maybe overpromising protects them from disappointing people. Maybe staying the same protects a relationship they're afraid to test. That's usually where the more interesting work starts.
I had a client once tell me flatly that he understood what needed to change with his team; he had it handled; he'd already talked to the person about it. Three weeks later, nothing had moved. He wasn't lying to me. He believed it when he said it. That's the whole problem with being interested instead of committed — interested is sincere in the moment, and it evaporates the second something more convenient comes along.
I don't measure commitment by how fired up somebody sounds on a call. I watch what happens after it. Do they have the conversation? Do they try the new behavior? If it doesn't stick, do they come back and tell me honestly what got in the way, or do we build another explanation together? Commitment isn't perfection. It's continuing to return to the work.
Prochaska and DiClemente's research on behavioral change describes an early stage called precontemplation, where a person genuinely doesn't yet see a reason to change. Their research doesn't tell me why a particular founder is sitting there. What I often get curious about, in my own work, is whether seeing the problem clearly would force them to confront something bigger — about identity, control, or the life they've actually built versus the one they meant to.
I've also learned not to assume we can neatly separate how someone leads from how they live. The same need for control, or approval, or certainty can show up in very different ways at work and at home. Not always. But often enough that I stay interested in both.
Here's where it stops being only personal. If a leader consistently rejects information they don't like, the people around them learn that fast. The team stops bringing the ugly number in early. Someone softens the customer complaint before it reaches the top. The bad news waits an extra week. Now the founder isn't only struggling with self-awareness — they're running a business on increasingly filtered information. That's how a human pattern quietly becomes an operating problem.
Sometimes it also helps to hear from someone who experiences the founder in a completely different context — a spouse, a business partner, whoever is closest to what's actually changing or not changing. Not because that person gets a vote in the coaching, and not because they're responsible for making anyone change. They can simply offer a window into the gap between how someone believes they're showing up and how the people around them are actually experiencing it.
I want to be honest that this register isn't how I coach everyone, and it shouldn't be. Most of my work is quieter than this. Direct doesn't always mean loud — some of the hardest coaching I've done has been one plain question followed by a long silence, and letting the silence do the work instead of filling it.
So here's the question worth sitting with: what truth keeps showing up in your life that you keep finding a new reason not to act on? And not what would you have to understand about it — what would you actually have to do?
Enough safety to tell yourself the truth. Enough accountability to act on it.
Here when you need me, Todd
P.S. If this one hit close, hit reply. I read every one.
