What I’ve Learned About People From 10,000+ Hours of Working with Leaders

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that.”

After more than 10,000 hours sitting across from founders, executives, change-makers, and seekers, listening not just to their goals but to their challenges, tensions, and unspoken longings, I have come to believe this: Most people are not trying to become something new, they are trying to remember who they were before they forgot. Leadership, it turns out, isn’t just about acquiring skills or managing better; it’s about intentionally integrating. It’s about reclaiming disowned parts of ourselves, making peace with the complexity of who we are, and learning how to move through the world with wholeness. We are all works in progress. But progress doesn’t always mean forward motion. Sometimes, it means digging, unearthing, and reconnecting. This is what I have learned from hours spent in the deep interior spaces of people’s lives.

The Most Powerful Leaders Aren’t Performing; They Are Integrating

Adult development theory teaches us that growth doesn’t stop at competence; it deepens into self-authorship. Then into self-transcendence. And at each stage, the questions evolve:

• From “How do I succeed in the system?”

• To “Whose game am I playing, and do I even believe in it?”

• To “How do I become a steward of something larger than myself?”

The leaders who create real impact – quietly or boldly – aren’t those with the best resumes. They are the ones who have integrated the parts of themselves they were once taught to hide: the sensitive child, the rebellious teen, the poetic dreamer, or the doubting philosopher. They are no longer performing a role. They are inhabiting their full humanity, and that’s magnetic.

Many of the leaders I work with arrive at a threshold moment: a strength or style that worked for them for years, no longer does. They have outgrown their working identity. Maybe they were the fixer, the rainmaker, the relentless achiever. And now… they’re tired, unfulfilled, or quietly wondering, is this all there is?

This is not a Failure; It Is Evolution

One CEO told me, “I feel like I built this whole company from the version of me that had something to prove.” Another shared, “I don’t want to hustle anymore. I want to create from a deeper place.” These are not breakdowns. They are breakthroughs in disguise. When we stop seeing our identities as job titles or polished bios and start seeing them as evolving expressions of who we’re becoming, something opens. There’s more space, agency, and truth emerging.

I have yet to meet a client who wasn’t brilliant in some way, but I have met many who were disconnected from it. It’s rarely because of a lack of ambition. It’s usually because they have buried their creativity beneath competence, their wonder beneath their polished strategy, and their voice beneath performance expectations. One of the most sacred parts of my work is helping people unearth their brilliance, not the kind that wins awards, but the kind that feels like coming home. The brilliance that’s aligned, alive, and uniquely theirs. Sometimes, it begins with a single question:

What part of you have you left behind in order to be taken seriously? That question has changed careers. It has saved marriages and helped people stop chasing significance and start embodying it.

Despite what the coaching industry sometimes suggests, transformation rarely arrives through a grand epiphany. More often, it happens quietly. In the space between two breaths, in the shift from reactivity to reflection, in the courage to ask a better question instead of clinging to an old answer. I have witnessed breakthroughs in the moment a leader pauses instead of posturing. In the moment, they admit, “I don’t know,” and discover that’s where their true wisdom begins.

Full Expression Is a Leadership Act

In a world that rewards conformity and performance, showing up as your whole self is an act of quiet defiance and profound leadership. To live and lead from full expression is not indulgent; it’s our birthright. And when we show up integrated, we invite others to do the same. We make it safe for truth, creativity, and trust to enter the room. And that changes everything.

After thousands of hours, I still sit down with each client with a sense of reverence. Because I know that beneath the goals and the roles, there is always something more tender at stake: The desire to be fully seen, the yearning to bring our inner lives into alignment with our outer expression, and the hope that we can create, contribute, and connect not from who we think we should be, but from who we really are.

If you’ve been moving fast, succeeding loudly, and still feeling like something essential is missing, ask yourself not just what you want to do next… but who you are ready to become. That is where the real work begins.