Shedding the Bitch™

I’ve met a lot of leaders who are incredibly good at their jobs.

They hit their numbers. They manage their deliverables. They’re in every meeting, on every call, on top of every deadline.

And their teams still feel completely unsupported.

Because doing the job and leading people are not the same thing, and the former approach sabotages your success as a leader.

Doing is about tasks, outputs, and results. Leading is about the people behind those tasks, outputs, and results do their job they were hired to do.

Leading is about noticing when someone is struggling before they say a single word. It’s about making sure your people know you’re in their corner, not just when things go right, but especially when they don’t.

The leaders whose teams will genuinely go the extra mile for them aren’t the ones with the best strategy decks or the most output. They’re the ones whose people actually feel led, are empowered to do the work, and grow in their capacity.

Which one are you prioritizing right now, the doing or the leading?

I asked employees across dozens of companies one question:

“What’s the single best thing your manager could do for you?”

Not one person said money.

Not a promotion. Not more flexibility. Not a team offsite.

They said a thank you. An ‘attaboy’. Something that told them their manager actually noticed.

After 25 years in coaching rooms with leaders at every level, that disclosure still stops me in my tracks. Because it means the most powerful leadership tool available to you costs nothing and takes two seconds, and most managers aren't using it.

My new episode is live now, and in it I walk you through exactly what real presence looks like. Here are three things I want you to take from it:

- Showing up means being there before your team has to ask. Not just responding when they reach out, but, anticipating what they need and making sure they know you’re available for them.

- There’s a real difference between checking in and micromanaging. One asks “what do you need?” The other does their job for them. Your team needs the first one. Stop using the fear of the second one as an excuse to do neither.

- Your team is forming their opinion of you every single day. They know if you’re showing up and they know if you’re not. The question is whether you do

If any of those hit close to home, this episode is for you.

Most leaders I work with think they're showing up for their team.

Their teams think otherwise.

I've been coaching corporate leaders for over 25 years. And one of the most painful patterns I see, over and over, across industries and org charts is the leader who genuinely believes they're present for their people.

They’ll explain that they have an open door policy, replies to emails, and shows up to meetings.

Meanwhile, their people feel invisible, unheard, and oftentimes, unsupported.

Here's what I've learned: presence isn't about proximity. It's not about your calendar or your office location. It's about three things:
- Whether your team knows, without asking, that you have their back
- Whether you notice when someone's struggling before they have to tell you
- Whether you actually respond when they reach out, not just when it's convenient

That's it. Those three things determine whether your team feels led or just managed.

I recorded an episode this week that goes deep on exactly this; the dimensions of leadership presence most managers are missing, and five things you can do starting this week to change it.

No theory. No buzzwords. Just the stuff that actually moves people.

Episode drops tomorrow. Follow so you don't miss it.

https://balloffirecoaching.com/podcast

There is no soft landing in this one.

Norman Wolfe has spent decades watching leaders choose the familiar over the effective; going home depleted, frustrated that people aren't stepping up, asking the same questions in every all-hands and getting the same non-answers.

He offers compassion, but he doesn't offer an easy exit.

The shift to a living organization model is real work. It will surface fears. And it is absolutely a choice. The leaders who make it don't just build better organizations, they build better careers, better teams, and frankly, better lives.

What are you waiting for?

LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/

Every leadership development program on the market treats strategy setting as the pinnacle of the leader's role.

Norman Wolfe says it's barely the starting line.

The real work is in developing your people through the challenge of pursuing goals, building the maturity and capacity of your talent to handle complexity, and closing the ex*****on gap.

If your calendar doesn't reflect you getting that work done first, your ex*****on results will tell you that.

How much of your leadership time is spent after the strategy is set?

LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/

This reframe alone is worth the price of admission.

Norman Wolfe isn't asking leaders to let go of control, he's merely pointing out that obsessing over every individual behavior in a complex organization is the least effective form of it.

As a leader, you need to step back and look at the patterns, narratives, and context being actualized around you, and suddenly you have far more influence in the direction your team and organization takes, with far less chaos.

The leaders who seem most in control are often the ones doing the least frantic managing.

What level are you trying to control at right now?

How is it working for you and your team?

LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/

PART 2 of my interview with Norman Wolfe drops May 12th. Follow the show so you don’t miss it. balloffirecoaching.com/podcast

Compliance looks like ex*****on. Commitment is ex*****on.

The gap between those two words is the gap between an organization that performs when someone is watching and one that performs because people genuinely want to do their job.

Norman Wolfe argues that most performance management systems are accidentally engineered for compliance: targets set top-down and performance is evaluated by judgment versus with a utilization of strength and development growth focus.

What would your talent retention, your ex*****on rate, and your team energy look like if every person had genuinely chosen their goals?

Stop pushing down or excluding them from the conversation. You’ll be shocked by the results you get when you do.

Listen to the full episode of Part 1 of 2, and then pick up a copy of his book, The Living Organization, at www.thelivingorganization.com

LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/

This is one of the most generous and important things Norman Wolfe says in this entire episode.

The machine model doesn't produce disengagement because leaders are failing, it produces it because they're succeeding at the wrong game.

When the dominant narrative you are telling yourself says your job is to direct and control, you will direct and control, and your people will quietly stop growing, will quietly quit or disengage.

According to Norman, the shift isn't about being a better person. It's about operating from a better story.

What narrative is quietly running and potentially ruining your leadership right now?

Listen to the full episode of Part 1, then be sure to follow the show for Part 2 on May 12th.

LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/

This isn't cynicism, it's the logical conclusion of how most organizations are still designed.

When you treat a company as a black box that converts inputs to outputs, every person in it becomes interchangeable equipment.

Norman Wolfe, author of The Living Organization, argues this is the hidden reason AI anxiety is so pervasive right now: because employees can feel, accurately, that the model their organization runs on has always seen them as replaceable.

The question for every leader is: does your culture reflect that, or something fundamentally different?

If you want to retain not only top talent, but critical talent, do you need to shift your perspective that people are replaceable?

Check out the full episode of PART 1 of 2:
LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/

Part 2 is coming on May 12th.

Your organization is not a machine. And the moment you truly understand that, not intellectually, but operationally, everything changes about how you lead, how you execute, and why your people either show up fully or quietly check out.

Part 1 of my conversation with Norman Wolfe, author of The Living Organization, is live right now, and I need you to hear this one.

Norman is a former Hewlett Packard leader, executive consultant, and the creator of the Living Organization Framework. Norman has spent decades asking a single uncomfortable question: why do so many companies fail to execute their strategies? And his answer will challenge every assumption you have about leadership, engagement, and what your job as a leader actually is.

In this episode you'll walk away understanding:
-Why the machine paradigm is quietly engineering disengagement, not by accident, but by design
- What the real difference is between a machine, a living system, and a living organization, and why the distinction changes everything
- What the ex*****on gap actually is and how closing it requires a completely different kind of leadership
- The three dimensions of organizational maturity that skills assessments completely miss
- Why setting goals is just the beginning of the leader's job, not the end of it

Norman also has a free copy of his book, The Living Organization, waiting for you at thelivingorganization.com/book1. Grab it. Read it with your leadership team.

Part 2 drops in two weeks on May 12th where we get into the four specific skills you need in today’s ever-changing business environment. Don't miss it.

Listen or Watch now… it’s also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube , and at balloffirecoaching.com/podcast.

LISTEN: https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/