If you’re a high-powered leader, there’s a good chance you didn’t get where you are by accident.
You learned how to read situations quickly.
You learned how to manage outcomes.
You learned how to stay in control.
And somewhere along the way, you may have also learned that closeness is complicated, trust is risky, and power is easier to maintain than intimacy.
I see this all the time.
Many leaders don’t struggle because they lack intelligence, discipline, or drive. They struggle because they’ve unintentionally built lives where relationships feel like liabilities instead of learning environments.
Here’s what I believe, and what experience has taught me again and again:
Other people are not obstacles to your growth. They are the place where your growth happens.
Power Can Hide Blind Spots — People Expose Them
Power is useful. It gets things done. It creates momentum. It protects you.
But it also insulates you.
When you have authority, success, or influence, it becomes surprisingly easy to avoid your blind spots. People defer. Systems bend. Results validate you.
Relationships don’t care about any of that.
Other people show you:
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How you respond when you’re not in control
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What happens when your authority stops working
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Where fear is masquerading as logic
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Where independence has quietly turned into isolation
You can be highly competent and deeply unpracticed at vulnerability at the same time.
You can lead organizations and still struggle to let yourself be known.
People don’t threaten your power — they show you where it ends.
Why Trust Feels So Uncomfortable When You’re Used to Control
Trust isn’t weakness. And it isn’t blind faith.
Trust is a skill. And like any skill, it requires practice.
It requires clear communication, presence, and low attachment to outcome. It asks you to stay engaged without trying to control how things land.
That’s hard if your nervous system learned that control equals safety.
In leadership, control often works. In relationships, it creates distance.
I don’t believe in trusting everyone. I believe in trusting intentionally. Watching patterns. Staying curious. Letting people show you who they are — and letting yourself be seen in the process.
Trust isn’t about surrendering power. It’s about learning how to share it without losing yourself.
Discomfort Is Where the Learning Is
Most people surround themselves with others who think like them, validate them, and feel familiar. It’s comfortable. It’s efficient. And it’s limiting.
The relationships that challenge you — the ones that unsettle you, frustrate you, or force you to see yourself differently — are often the ones teaching you the most.
Discomfort doesn’t mean something is wrong.
It means something is unfamiliar.
And unfamiliar is where growth lives.
If every relationship in your life reinforces the version of you that already exists, you may be successful — but you’re probably not evolving.
Intimacy Isn’t Losing Power — It’s Refining It
Intimacy isn’t oversharing. It isn’t emotional chaos. And it isn’t letting people destabilize your life.
Intimacy is the willingness to be real without armor.
It’s letting feedback land without immediately defending yourself.
It’s allowing influence without collapsing.
It’s being strong enough to be seen unfinished.
Power that can’t coexist with intimacy is brittle.
Power that can is resilient.
The strongest leaders I know aren’t invulnerable — they’re integrated.
Not Every Relationship Is Meant to Last — And That’s Okay
One of the biggest barriers to connection is the belief that if something ends, it failed.
I don’t see it that way.
Some relationships are meant to teach you timing.
Some are meant to show you a pattern.
Some introduce you to a version of yourself you hadn’t met yet.
Learning how to take the lesson without hardening is a form of emotional leadership most people never develop.
People Are the Curriculum
You won’t learn everything you need from performance metrics.
You won’t find your edges in strategy alone.
And you won’t resolve relational struggles by thinking harder.
People are not distractions from your work.
They are part of it.
They are mirrors.
They are teachers.
They are feedback loops you can’t replicate on your own.
If you want to grow not just as a leader, but as a human being, start paying attention to how you relate — not just how you perform.
Because in the end, your real education won’t come from what you built.
It will come from who you became in relationship to others.