This week I want to talk about something I have believed for a long time, and a person I recently found believes it just as deeply.
A leader I worked with was stuck on a task. Every day it moved to the next day’s list. They told me they were procrastinating and needed to be more disciplined, so they tried the usual fixes: time-blocking, waking earlier, a productivity app. None of it worked. The task just sat there.
When we finally slowed down and looked at it together, the task was not the problem at all. Finishing it meant sending it to a colleague they were in quiet conflict with, and they were dreading that far more than the work itself. They were not undisciplined. They were avoiding something, and the task had become the place the avoidance lived.
This is what I mean when I say I do not coach a job title. I coach a whole person. Because the thing on the surface, the stuck task, the missed deadline, the meeting you keep going quiet in, is almost never the actual thing. And you cannot fix what you cannot see whole.
Here is the conviction I share with Myra Reisler, the founder of She Commands, who arrived at it through completely different work than I did. You are not a stack of separate parts that occasionally cooperate. You are one system. How you fuel your day shapes your focus. Your focus shapes how you listen. How you listen shapes whether a room trusts you. It is all connected, whether or not we are paying attention to it. Aristotle put it plainly a long time ago: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
So why do most of us try to get better backwards? We treat ourselves as a list of separate fixes instead of one connected whole. Think of the leader stuck on that task. They attacked it as a discipline problem, grinding on the one silo they could see, when the real issue was somewhere else entirely. That is the first mistake: pick a single piece and push harder on it in isolation. The second is the opposite, panicking at how connected everything is and trying to fix all of it at once. The first does too little. The second is a fast track to overwhelm.
There is a third way. See the whole. Then change one thing.
For that leader, the one thing was not a better calendar. Seeing the whole showed them what they were actually up against, the conversation they were dreading, and that is what let them prepare for it instead of avoid it. They thought through what they wanted to say, steadied themselves for how it might land, and walked in ready. The conversation went well not because they forced themselves to have it, but because they prepared themselves for it. The task was done by that afternoon. One change, in the right place, and the thing that had resisted a week of willpower simply dissolved.
But that raises the real question, and it is the one I sit with most as a coach. How do you actually see the whole? Most of us cannot, not on our own. We are too close. We see the piece that is loudest right now and miss how it connects to everything else. We cannot read the label from inside the jar.
That is what coaching is for. A good coach helps you step back and see your full self, the parts that are working, the parts that are quietly draining you, and the gaps you have stopped noticing because you have lived with them so long. Once you can see the whole picture, the small step stops being a guess. You can choose the one piece that will ripple through the rest, and trust that moving it moves more than itself.
You do not have to work on everything at once. You have to see clearly enough to know which one thing to move.
Where I focus on how you think, listen, and influence, she focuses on how you prepare and practice the physical, mental, and communication techniques that shape how you show up and perform under pressure.
I asked her to share the heart of it in her own words:
Most leaders walking into a high-stakes meeting, presentation or difficult conversation already know the material. They have the experience, judgment and technical capability. However, knowing the material is not the same as being able to command the moment.
What we carry in our bodies and minds into high-stakes professional moments can materially affect how our knowledge, judgment and presence show up. Full-body readiness means arriving fuelled, regulated and prepared so capability is available when it counts. Research links nutrition, movement and mindfulness with the focus, regulation and work performance leaders rely on in demanding moments.
Nutrition supports mental clarity and sustained energy. Leaders need consistent fuel to process information, regulate their reactions and communicate clearly across demanding days. Movement supports energy and attention while helping leaders become more aware of how they breathe, stand, carry tension and physically respond under pressure. Mindfulness supports stress regulation, focus reset and controlled response. It helps leaders recognize when pressure is affecting how they listen, think or communicate, then pause and respond more deliberately. In an Institute for Mindful Leadership survey, nearly 70% of leaders who completed mindfulness training reported stronger strategic thinking.
Through She Commands, Myra brings this to life specifically for women, with multidisciplinary programming that helps them apply their capabilities under pressure, consistently.
No exercise this week. Just an invitation.
Sometime this weekend, take a few quiet minutes and imagine your favourite self. Not a better resume or a longer list of accomplishments. The version of you that feels whole, steady, and fully yourself. What is that person like? How do they move through their day, handle the hard moments, treat the people around them?
Do not try to solve anything. Just let your mind explore and see who shows up.
We spend so much energy trying to fix the parts of ourselves we can see, and almost none learning to see the whole. But the whole is where the leverage is.
When you understand how your energy, your focus, your body, and your presence actually connect, you stop treating them as separate battles and start making one good decision that moves several things at once.
You do not have to do it alone, and honestly, you cannot. Whether it is a coach, a peer, or someone like Myra working a different angle of the same problem, the clearest view of yourself usually comes with a little help.
Here’s to finding your spark and letting it shine.
Karen.