I Was the Problem and Didn’t Know It

I used to think reacting quickly was part of being a good leader.

Something went wrong? Deal with it.

Someone screwed up? Address it.

Something was great? Let everybody know.

There was never much mystery about how I felt. 😂

Then I went through 200 people trying to fill six positions over two years.

Yeah.

Two hundred.

For six positions.

At some point, you run out of people to blame.

And I finally had to admit something I really didn't want to admit:

The only constant in all of it was me.

I’ve been a hothead for most of my life.

I remember being in high school when a teacher told me:

“You wear your emotions on your sleeve.”

I didn't even fully understand what that meant at the time.

Years later, I understood it perfectly.

Something happens...

I react.

Good, bad, indifferent—I react.

And for a long time, I actually saw some value in that.

You never had to guess where you stood with me. If I was excited, you knew it. If I was pissed off, you definitely knew it.

But as I became a leader, I started seeing the other side of that.

My reactions weren't just happening to me.

Everyone around me was experiencing them too.

And people don't experience your reaction based solely on what you intended.

They experience it through everything they bring into that moment.

Their past.

Their insecurities.

Their fears.

Their experiences with previous bosses.

All of it.

Think about the last time somebody yelled at you.

Even if you knew logically that you were an adult and could handle it...

what happened inside you?

That reaction goes deeper than logic.

And I wasn't thinking about any of that.

I was just reacting.

Eventually, after enough people left, I started asking:

What the hell is going on?

I tried different hiring tactics.

Different management approaches.

Different people.

But eventually the answer became embarrassingly obvious.

People kept changing.

I didn't.

That forced me to look at my leadership differently.

And I realized the problem wasn't that I had emotions.

I still have them.

Believe me. 😂

The problem was believing that because I felt something immediately, I needed to do something immediately.

Those are two very different things.

That realization eventually brought me back to a principle I'd learned years earlier:

No problem can be solved in the same mind in which it was created.

Think about what happens when something goes wrong.

You get the email.

Someone drops the ball.

A client says something.

An employee makes a decision you can't understand.

Immediately, your mind starts working.

You have an emotional reaction.

You start interpreting what happened.

You start assigning meaning to it.

Maybe you even decide why the person did it.

And then...

you respond.

Except you're trying to solve the problem from the exact emotional state that was created by the problem.

That's where I kept getting myself into trouble.

So I had to learn something that sounds ridiculously simple and, for someone like me, was ridiculously hard:

Pause.

Sometimes my pause is three seconds.

Sometimes it's ten minutes.

Sometimes I need to sleep on something and come back tomorrow.

The amount of time isn't really the point.

The point is creating enough space between what happened and what I do next.

And I want to be clear about something.

I'm not talking about suppressing emotion.

If I'm pissed, I'm pissed.

If something hurts, it hurts.

If I'm disappointed, I let myself be disappointed.

Feel it.

Just don't automatically hand that emotion the microphone.

Give yourself enough space to actually experience what you're feeling before deciding what you're going to do with it.

Because once that first reaction settles, something interesting happens.

You can start asking better questions.

What actually happened here?

What are the facts?

What am I assuming?

What does this person know that I don't?

What could I learn from this?

What needs to change so we're not back here again?

Those are very different questions from the ones my hotheaded brain wanted to ask. 😂

And this has become one of the most important leadership lessons I've learned:

The pause isn't weakness.

It doesn't mean you're avoiding the problem.

It doesn't mean you're letting somebody get away with something.

It gives you enough distance from your first reaction to decide what the situation actually needs from you.

I wish I'd learned that before going through 200 people.

But apparently, I needed the expensive version of the lesson. 🤦‍♂️

Can I ask you something? 🤔

What situation makes it hardest for you to pause before reacting?

For me, it's when something happens that I feel should have been obvious. That's when I can feel that old instinct to react immediately come right back.

What's yours?

Hit reply and tell me in one sentence.

I'd genuinely love to know what that moment looks like for you.

Want the full story? 👇

I recorded a video going deeper into what being a hothead cost me as a leader, why controlling your emotions isn't really the answer, and how I've learned to build the discipline of the pause.

For the physicians reading this 👨‍⚕️

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A few things worth checking out 👀

Just sharing a few things I've been exploring lately:

• 🤝 Let’s connect: I share more AI experiments and business lessons on LinkedIn.

• 📘 Book I keep thinking about: The Delegation Trap

• 🤖 What we’re building with AI: A look at what we’re working on with AI

• 📖 Currently reading: The book on my nightstand right now

• 🛠 Tool I’ve been using: GoHighLevel (GHL) — keeps the important stuff in one place.

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— Atiba