Lesson #2: Own your part
Learning #2: Own Your Part
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about “sharpening the saw.” When I first read that, it clicked immediately. I’d lived it through sports. Playing competitive tennis taught me that growth doesn’t come from talent alone. It comes from repetition, reflection, and a willingness to look honestly at your gaps.
When I first entered the world of professional coaching, I never intended for it to become a profession. I saw coaching as a skill set that would make me a better leader. After all, one thing that separates leaders from managers is their ability to coach and grow others.
As I went through coach training, something clicked again.
Coaching conversations felt almost magical. I finally had a way to move conversations forward with clarity and structure, increase accountability, and create momentum toward real goals. But more than that, I was inspired by the insights that surfaced at every turn.
Then, midway through year five of running NextGen, I hit a roadblock.
I struggled with one specific part of my craft: delivering direct feedback to highly assertive leaders. By that point, I had coached well over 150 people. I had enough reps to know this wasn’t an anomaly, it was a pattern.
So I did what any invested coach does. I hired my own coach. And that’s when I confirmed that when you go deep enough into any craft, it stops being just about skill. It starts revealing other parts of you.
Whether you’re a business owner, a parent, a coach, a sales rep, a customer service leader, or an executive—when you run enough laps around the same track, patterns show up. Those patterns tell you a lot about the operating system you’re running on, and what factors have helped to create your system.
Specifically, my pattern was a tendency to accommodate during tough conversations. When things got tense, I defaulted to facilitation instead of saying the hard thing. I was managing perceived risk, especially emotional risk, and overestimating the consequences of saying something that landed the ‘wrong way.’
The reality was simpler. I’m a coach. Saying the hard thing isn't overly risky. In fact, it’s part of the job.
For two years I worked diligently to improve this gap. I sharpened the saw.
I also learned along the way that this isn’t about judgment. It’s not even about good or bad. It’s about awareness and understanding your default tendencies and how they help or hinder your ability to get results and work well with others.
The funny thing about this particular gap is that I could hide it with skill. Most people wouldn’t have noticed. But I could tell. And I felt it when I coached, especially under very specific conditions with specific individuals.
And that’s where lesson #2 stems from. As a leader and as an entrepreneur, you have to own your part(s). Not just your strengths and values, but the parts you’d rather avoid.
Owning your part means asking yourself the same hard questions you’d ask someone you’re coaching:
Where do I get uncomfortable? What’s contributing to my discomfort?
What patterns keep repeating?
What role do I play in the friction I’m experiencing?
Until you’re willing to look there honestly, growth stays superficial.
Owning your part – all of it - is the work. And while it’s painful and often scary in the short term, it is unquestionably the path of least resistance in the long term.
And the best part of it all? When you own your part, you take control of what’s yours to control. It’s in your hands.
