“Your emotions don’t disappear when you walk into work—they follow you, whether you acknowledge them or not.” – Rachel Leigh
Brief Summary/Overview:
In this episode of The Leadership RaDar, we dive into a conversation about the undeniable connection between home life and leadership. Many leaders believe personal matters should stay out of professional coaching, but is that truly realistic? We break down how emotions, relationships, and daily interactions at home influence leadership effectiveness, decision-making, and workplace culture. Plus, we discuss the importance of clear agreements, emotional regulation, and the power of a strong recovery plan when things go off track.
Key Takeaways:
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- Emotions are truth. Suppressing them doesn’t make them disappear—they show up in your leadership.
- Leadership and parenting have surprising parallels. Clear agreements, accountability, and emotional regulation apply in both spaces.
- The impact of unspoken agreements. If expectations aren’t clearly communicated, frustration and resentment will build, both at work and at home.
- The power of the ‘same team’ mindset. When conflicts arise, remembering you’re on the same side can diffuse tension.
- Recovery is the game-changer. Disagreements are inevitable, but real leadership is about how you repair and rebuild trust afterward.
Timestamps:
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- 0:00 – Welcome! Darren and Rachel talk about why leaders hesitate to discuss personal matters with their coaches.
- 3:15 – Dad joke time: Should Darren get approval first?
- 6:00 – The hidden impact of home life on leadership performance.
- 12:45 – Leadership bogeys: When emotional baggage affects decision-making.
- 18:30 – Clear agreements: How unspoken expectations create workplace frustration.
- 25:00 – The ‘same team’ philosophy: A simple but powerful tool for conflict resolution.
- 31:20 – Recovery plans: Why making amends matters more than avoiding mistakes.
- 40:00 – Final thoughts: How self-awareness and coaching can help you lead more effectively.
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Transcript
Rachel
All right, everybody. Welcome to Leadership RaDar. I’m Rachel Leigh, COO and executive coach, and our founder, Darren Kanthal. We are here today to talk about what we’re calling the home field advantage—essentially, the merging of home life and leadership life and how they impact each other.
Yet, many times when we’re coaching individuals or talking to leaders and executives, they say, “I would never talk to my executive coach about my personal life.” We think that’s a bit of a miss, but to each their own. So, we’re going to break down what it looks like when your home life impacts your leadership. We’ll cover leadership bogeys, emotional impact, candid communication, clear agreements, our unique dynamic when we are elevated, the same-team philosophy, and the recovery plan. If there’s tension or friction, what’s the plan to repair? And this applies across all relationships.
So, before we dive in—dad jokes.
Darren
Okay, you know this joke. It’s pushing the envelope a little bit—adult content for adult programming.
Rachel
I think I should approve these before you do them.
Darren
Well, you know, I’m not on social media, so I’m not getting my full array of jokes all the time. I’m not sifting through, so I’m going back into the old archives here a little bit.
Rachel
Okay, let me ask you this: Are we going to get banned? Are we going to end up in LinkedIn jail with this one? All right, everybody, hold on.
Darren
I don’t think so.
All right. Did you hear about the new drug for erectile dysfunction?
Rachel
No, you can’t say this one.
Darren
It’s called MyCoxafloppin’.
Rachel
I can’t. All right.
Darren
Come on, that’s a good one. You know you like it.
Rachel
I’m not saying it’s not a good one. I’m just saying maybe we need to have a team meeting and reevaluate our jokes. That’s not a dad joke. No, it’s not. Fine. You’re officially on a PIP.
Darren
I think it is a dad joke. Fine.
Rachel
I’ll give you a formal warning or whatever later today.
Darren
Know your audience.
Fred, let me know—do you actually like that joke? Is it a good one?
Rachel
Are you talking to me or the people watching us?
Darren
No, our buddy Frederick Van Riper’s watching. He’s giving us a little feedback on the joke.
Rachel
Thumbs up or thumbs down?
Darren
Well, we’re waiting to see.
Rachel
It makes sense that he’s watching, given the work he does, which I think is so important. His work is grounded in the Fair Play philosophy by Eve Rodsky, and he specifically addresses dads or partners at home—how they show up for their family, their spouse, and how to bring more equality into the home so the relationship is better.
Bravo, hats off—I’m cheering him on all the way. All right, let’s dive in. Home life impacts leadership and vice versa, okay? So, how have you seen that? Tell our listeners how it has played out for you in our relationship, or maybe even in your previous marriage or relationships.
Darren
Yes.
All right, well, let me preface what I’m going to say with one of the spiels I give my new clients. I am not a fan or believer in “check your emotions at the door.” What I always say to people—and I’ll say it as if I’m speaking to you like you’re my client—is it doesn’t matter where you are. You’re always a mom, a partner, a business owner, a coach, a mountain biker, a daughter, a sibling. You’re always in those roles every single day, all day.
Now, certainly, depending on where you are, one role may take precedence, but suffice it to say, you’re always all of those roles. And if one part of your life is out of harmony—especially when partners fight—it’s pretty hard, in my opinion, to just turn that off, go to work, and pretend like everything is fine.
Maybe said another way—when we’re not fighting, when we’re in sync, life is better and easier. My brain is clearer. I’m not spending energy thinking about how I’m annoyed, how I’m going to approach the situation, etc. So, making it more pointed to our discussion today, you’ve had people literally tell you, “I’m not talking to my coach about my marriage or my parenthood.”
I haven’t had anyone say that to me directly, but just recently, I had a client who, between one session and the next, decided with his partner that they were getting divorced. When I saw him at our next meeting and asked, “Hey, how are you doing? What do you want to coach on today?” he didn’t mention it. As we were talking, I asked, “What did you and your wife decide?” And then he told me. But like so many people do, he talked about it for a hot second and then immediately went back to his job search.
So, I don’t think I answered your question, but I felt like that was important.
Rachel
Well, yeah, I think you teed up the conversation really well and gave a real-life experience. What we’re not here to do is say that we are life coaches who are going to help you with your relationship or that you must talk to your leadership or executive coach about your personal life. What we’re here to say is that the two affect each other. And really—why wouldn’t you? You have access to a professional coach.
Right? The whole point of coaching is to move you forward. So why wouldn’t you utilize that? Now, maybe there’s some fear—like, “Well, that doesn’t apply to work,” or “I don’t want my manager or CEO to know.” And by the way, if you’re working with a coach and ever feel like your conversations are being shared, you need to run. That is fundamentally 100% unethical. Coaching stays with coaching.
But if you’re feeling that way, that’s what we’re addressing. It’s okay. There’s value in bringing everything to the table—whatever is creating stress, disharmony, or distraction—so you can be the best leader. And ultimately, I’m not even sure that’s deep enough. Ultimately, you just want life to be easier.
Like you said, when there’s harmony, we’re operating at our best. There’s laughter, collaboration, connection. Everything flows. The business runs smoothly. Don’t we all want that? So whether you bring personal matters into coaching or not, we’re just showing the connection as we talk about this.
One of the things on our list—our Leadership Bogeys—is the emotional impact.
So, when you and I are fighting and not in sync, for me, it’s really sad. I feel depressed. I don’t feel like working. I’m not creative. I don’t eat—which I need to fuel my brain, otherwise, I’m useless. I don’t want to connect with you, share a win, or say, “Let’s collaborate on this tough challenge.”
Rachel
And it just sucks. There’s no other way to say it. I don’t want life to suck. That’s not why I got divorced and partnered with you—to go through all the suck again. That doesn’t make sense to me. This is my do-over.
So, emotional impact, okay? When home follows you to the office, and the office follows you home—what have you seen?
Darren
Well, for me personally, the other thing I was thinking about is how, when we’re not at our best and we’re fighting, you retreat.
Rachel
Yes, good one.
Darren
And, as you just said, you don’t want to connect—which is the same as the retreating you do. When I’m at my worst, I have my own version of retreating, which is more of checking out. I don’t engage. I don’t want to talk. I’m not interested. I’m short, irritable, impatient. And when we’re in the thick of a fight, I get aggressive. I’m very pointed.
Rachel
Yes.
Darren
Way more than I normally am. There’s probably more curse words in a sentence than non-curse words. And I get mean.
The meanness comes from feeling like my expectations haven’t been met—at least in my mind. That also leads into explicit and implicit agreements, which I know we’re going to talk about. But ultimately, for me, it’s about feeling like an expectation wasn’t met. And then it turns into, “I have to prove to you that you did this thing to me.” It’s definitely a victim mentality.
And just like you, I don’t want to connect.
On a different note, I really liked that you used the word “distraction.” I think that’s actually the perfect word. Because when I think about it—this is my workspace, right? I stand here talking to you, and I stand here talking to all my clients. And when you and I are in a real fight—not just a minor disagreement—there’s this buzz. My brain is buzzing.
Yes, I’m present with my client, but that buzz of frustration, irritation—whatever it is—stays with me. And it’s a distraction. That distraction takes me away from being fully present.
Look, I’m human. I’m sure I project in certain ways. I’m influenced by my frustration with you, and it probably comes out of my mouth in subtle ways—maybe a little more rebellion or feistiness. And then, as I’m coaching clients, I’d guess certain questions or comments I make might reflect that frustration.
The last thing I’ll say is that when I’m in these negative headspaces, I can’t tap into my fullest creativity or my fullest empathy. I can’t get frustrated and then shake it off as quickly as I can when I’m in a good space. I get heated quickly sometimes. I want things done super fast.
Rachel
Mm-hmm.
Darren
And when I’m annoyed with you and we’re fighting, I just stay up there. I’m elevated almost 24/7, so to speak. When we’re not fighting, sure, I can get elevated, but I can come down pretty quickly. I don’t have that capability when we’re fighting. And the last thing I’ll say—I know I dominated here for the last two minutes—is I see this with my clients too. When they come to a meeting, it’s evident if they’re heightened.
That’s my word—heightened, elevated, frustrated, annoyed, angry—whatever the emotion is for that person. Whether or not they tell me they’re having a fight with their spouse, which happens sometimes and not other times, it’s clear that they’re heightened. Their cadence of speech, the way they talk about their colleagues, coworkers, or direct reports—it all carries that same level of heightenedness.
Rachel
Those are all great points, and the correlation I’m seeing—well, that we know—is that you can’t just shut that off. Some people are better at compartmentalizing than others. But I’ve had people—clients—say to me, “I can 100% shut off what’s going on at home and just go to work and be totally fine.” And I call complete and utter bullshit. That is called avoidance. That is called suppressing.
There is a time and a place, right? You and I both know people who wear their emotions on their sleeves—unchecked, unregulated. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not saying you should just express all your emotions anytime. But completely stuffing them down is unhealthy too.
Your emotions impact your leadership. Even if you’re not expressing them, you carry an energy about you. There’s no way to escape that. Emotions are truth, and emotions are energy. Even if you’re stuffing them down and not processing them cognitively, they are in your body. Everyone knows that feeling—you’re walking down the street, and there’s that guy at the gym. You know who I’m talking about? He throws the ball, he throws his phone, he’s walking around with this energy about him.
Darren
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rachel
But we haven’t said anything. Nothing. We just feel it. If you’re a leader, your team is feeling it. Your coworkers are feeling it. Everybody’s feeling it. You’re taking those emotions to work, and they’re following you back home. You think you’re stuffing it away, that you’re living in a silo, but you’re not.
So what we’re saying is—use your coach. Use them to help you work through these areas where you want to grow. Anything else on the emotional impact? Actually, hold on, I’m going to interrupt because, as a functional nutrition therapist, I understand the impact of stress on the body. When you’re not addressing emotions, that energy gets stuck.
Or it’s an emotion creating a chemical reaction in your body—usually negative if it’s a negative emotion. That sets off a cascade effect—blood sugar imbalance, inflammatory markers, slowed digestion, increased blood flow but not where you want it. It’s not going to your brain; it’s going to your muscles. And then we start seeing health implications. Case in point: Two months ago, a woman told me, “I think I’ve spent so much of my life suppressing my emotions that it caused my autoimmune condition.” I see it over and over. It doesn’t just impact leadership—it impacts health too.
Darren
All right, two things. First, you said a moment ago, “Emotions are truth.”
Rachel
Yes.
Darren
Explain that, please.
Rachel
They’re a fact. They’re truth. Sometimes people make excuses for them or try to downplay them as an inconvenience. If we acknowledge them for what they are—not as problems but as sources of immense wisdom—then we can actually learn from them. But I see people avoiding this all the time. They think, “I don’t need to talk to my executive coach about that.” No. All emotions are truth. They are facts. And how we interpret them, how we shape our perspective around them, determines how we operate, what we do or don’t do.
Darren
Yeah, I always say, “My emotions are my truth.” When I do 360s or when someone gives feedback—when someone says, “I am hurt, upset, disappointed, happy, angry, irritable, whatever”—even if you want to argue with me about it, you can’t. Because I feel the thing, period. Just a different way of saying it, but I agree—emotions are truth.
Second point I want to make, and then I want to segue into agreements. So many leaders say leadership and parenting are the same thing.
Rachel
Yes! That’s what I was thinking before we started. It’s like having kids—but not in a derogatory negative way.
Darren
Right? Any leader watching this who is also a parent knows exactly what we’re talking about. It’s about clarity of speech, clear expectations, agreement, buy-in, understanding. If certain measures aren’t met, there’s a consequence. You put me on a PIP earlier—same thing leaders do when they have underperforming employees.
Leadership and parenting overlap a lot, blending home and office. That brings me to agreements. I hope I can articulate this clearly—one aspect of overworking is avoidance. Some people overwork to avoid home.
Rachel
God, yes.
Darren
Two, I see this with clients who don’t have clear agreements at home—with their spouses, partners, kids. The same pattern shows up in their leadership. There are unspoken rules, lack of clarity, no buy-in. “I told Rachel to do this thing.” My question is, “Did you ask Rachel if she understood what you said?” “It was clear as day.” “Did you clarify?” Ultimately, no. And I suspect the same thing happens at home. That’s why, when you have a coach, everything is on the table. There’s carryover to all areas of life.
Rachel
Absolutely. That’s the biggest point. If you’re willing to look at yourself, you’ll see the correlation across all areas of life—how you perceive things, how you communicate, how you set standards and boundaries, how you resolve conflict, how you fight.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complete separation between a person’s home life and their work life. Your skills, your tools—they go with you everywhere. You want clear agreements? Stop assuming. Start agreeing.
Darren
Stop assuming, start agreeing. You know, there’s something I want to share real quick, and I’m not going to give great context because it’s personal for the two of us. But I thought this was really telling—a couple of weeks back, maybe a month ago now. So for those listening, Rachel and I had some rocky moments in 2024. A lot of it was about how we integrated our business and how it impacted our home life.
What I realized was that you had an implicit agreement with yourself about what you were or weren’t willing to do. And I had an implicit agreement with myself about what I expected you to do. But we never fully agreed explicitly on what those agreements were. And I can only speak for myself—the more my implicit expectation of you wasn’t met, the more and more I got incensed.
If I said that correctly—I was so angry with you. And then there was no recovery. We stayed in this heightened state for far too long, and I’m embarrassed to say it. My actions were certainly not becoming. But all of it was because we didn’t have an explicit agreement.
Rachel
Yeah, I believe the words I said were, “You’re holding me to a set of standards that I never agreed to.”
Darren
And you were holding yourself to a set of standards that I never agreed to. That’s what I mean. We both had implicit agreements.
Rachel
Yes, yes. And I think that’s so common among friends, coworkers, teams, partners, and even kids. Because we just didn’t put it together. And honestly, I think the reason we didn’t realize it sooner was that we were emotionally hijacked.
When you’re in your emotions, you’re not thinking with your cognitive, prefrontal cortex—your critical-thinking brain. At least for me, I was in a little bit of fight mode, but then a lot of “F you” mode. There was no freeze. It was one or the other. That’s where my distraction and focus were—I wasn’t focused on slowing it down.
I wasn’t diffusing my emotions, processing them, or sitting down to say, “Okay, we are not—” which we’re going to talk about—”we are not same-teaming here. Something is clearly wrong, but we’re being stubborn.”
And it really slowed our business down exponentially. But the lesson from it—the Sage perspective—is that we had to learn a lot about each other before and during the process of combining our businesses.
Think about it—we took two very established businesses and merged them. I have a friend who leads a team, and they have to work with another team to complete a project. That’s exactly what you and I experienced personally within our businesses—how do you create clear agreements that everyone understands explicitly?
Rachel
And that everyone agrees to.
That takes time. But if you’re not practicing it at home, you’re probably not practicing it at work.
Darren
Three things are coming up for me. You mentioned “same team,” so I’ll leave that for the end.
One, I read this book, and I forgot the title. It was referred to me by Kirk Wilson, the chief of police in Lone Tree. Hello, Kirk, if you’re watching! I think it was called The Art of Happiness or something similar.
I have a Post-it on my monitor that says, “Is your heart at war or is your heart at peace?” Unfortunately, for a lot of those weeks and months in 2024, my heart was at war with you—which is upsetting to even say out loud. What I forgot is that we were on the same team.
But I was fighting with you instead of treating you as my teammate. So, to talk about the “same team” concept—this is literally something Rachel and I say to each other when we’re in conflict. Mine says “Same Z’s.”
Rachel
Yep.
Darren
Yeah. So when we’re fighting or arguing and one of us catches it, we literally stop and say, “Same team.” We remind ourselves that we want the same things. What are we doing?
As a quick sidebar, I listened to this book called 30 Lessons for Living. You and I didn’t listen to this one together, but it’s by the same author. A gerontologist wrote it—he interviewed “experts on life,” meaning elderly people. He spoke to about a thousand older adults and asked them life-related questions. He categorized their answers by topics like career, parenthood, marriage, etc.
One of the themes that came out regarding marriage was that when you and your spouse are in an argument and both of you have your heels dug in, part of resolving it is figuring out who is more passionate about the issue. If one person is significantly more passionate about it, the other person can choose to step back and say, “Okay, we’re same team. You feel more strongly about this—I stand down.”
I thought that was really powerful.
A lot of times, we fight because we want to be right. I know that’s what I fight for—I want to be right. And I know a lot of my clients argue, debate, and fight to be right. But if we’re on the same team, and you feel more passionate about an issue, what’s right is preserving the team—not proving my stance.
Rachel
As long as it’s not going to hurt the company or cross any ethical lines, of course.
Darren
100%, 100%. All right, one last story. Please, let me—I know I’m dominating here again for another minute.
Rachel
We have like 15 minutes, you’re good.
Darren
One of my biggest leadership successes was with Katie Strieve. And Strieve, if you’re watching, I call it the Strieve’s Rule. In our kickoff meeting—her first day—I can’t remember exactly how we got there, but I had a story where I wished I would have said blah, blah, blah. Right? And she had a similar story.
So we took that and said, okay, we’re starting our relationship from scratch right now. How do we use this? Instead of getting to the future, realizing we hadn’t said something, and then thinking, “Well, shit, I should have said that,” we would literally say it. In the spirit of not saying “I should have said,” we just said the thing.
For her, it allowed her to check in with me without feeling like she was micromanaging her manager. And the same was true for me—I could ask her the same questions without seeming like I was all up in her business, micromanaging her. It was wonderful. It was the best explicit agreement we made right from the start, and it set our relationship up for success.
Rachel
You were both in understanding. And I think even deeper, it wasn’t just understanding what it meant—you also understood that it was safe. It was in the best interest of both of you, right? You clarified that and cleared it all up. That is high-level leadership.
All too often, people are really busy. In corporate America, everything is metrics-driven. But good leadership slows down. Because they’re not in the business of busy—they’re in the business of people. If you’re constantly doing, doing, doing, and you’re not leading people—especially high potentials who are coming up, who will be the next set of leadership—then life and work are going to be harder. Your team will be disconnected and disjointed.
It’s like when you go home. If you walk in the door and just start doing and controlling everything or avoiding, life is going to be harder. So taking these skill sets—clear agreements, understanding emotions, processing and communicating them—makes a difference. Looking at your team’s emotions as their truth matters. Having the same team philosophy immediately diffuses disagreements—unless you’re really in it. And then sometimes I’m like, “Take your same team and stick it, I don’t give a shit about the same team!” But quickly, my brain resets—”No, no, no, that’s not how we operate.” It’s an immediate diffuser of disagreements. These are universal skills.
Slow down to practice the human side of leadership rather than getting caught up in the weeds of doing. Otherwise, you’ll miss all of this, and then you’ll go home and what will you do? Complain. Ruminate. Not sleep well. Drink a bottle of wine. Eat crappy food. Snap at your kids. Push your partner away. Then you get into a fight at home. Now you’re stacking stress. And even if you compartmentalize it and manage stress well, you’re walking around exuding this energetic ball of yuck. People feel it, and you feel it.
Anything else on the same team philosophy?
Darren
There’s something going through my brain. I’m thinking back to a story from a mentor of mine—a senior executive at a Fortune 100 company. He told me how he and his colleagues would sometimes treat the world outside of work the same way they treated the workplace.
These were senior executives who could say, “Do this,” and people did it—whether it was direct reports, their EA, whoever. And if things weren’t done to their liking, there were consequences. But then they took that mentality outside of work. They’d go to a restaurant and start making demands. They’d go home and expect their spouses or kids to treat them with the same level of deference as in the company.
Some execs bark at their EA, expect a lot, and bark at their direct reports. Then they come home and do the same—”Why isn’t my dinner ready? Why is there shit everywhere? Why aren’t the kids bathed?” And this ties into your stories about the women you’ve coached—spouses and moms—who deal with the “second shift.” They’re expected to run the household with very little support. It seems like an implicit agreement, and they’re not willing to speak up.
Rachel
Yeah, absolutely. They don’t speak up at home because it’s uncomfortable, or they’ve had negative experiences, or there’s been retaliation, or they’ve got long-standing generational beliefs. Fill in the blank. And by the way, I was one of them.
If I did ask for support or shared how I felt, there would be retaliation. So what do you do? You self-protect. You stop sharing. You start doing more and more. And looking back, I was doing that at work too. My clients would say, “Can you just do this real quick?” when it was clearly their job. My assistant would say, “Can you make that call?” because it was easier for me. I overfunctioned and didn’t speak up.
I was the only woman on a sales team of 12 men in a male-dominated industry. I stopped speaking up at work, became resentful, and blamed work, my teammates, my husband. But I had to own what I was creating for myself.
So, let’s talk about the recovery plan. I’ll be honest—I don’t think we’ve totally mastered this.
Darren
It’s the hardest. There’s a profound story in my mind. I had a client who tested people through pointed questions. If they didn’t answer “correctly,” she’d put them in her doghouse—but they wouldn’t know they were in it, and she wouldn’t tell them how to get out.
Recovery is important. My therapist taught me that fights will happen, but how do you recover? Many people have fights with half-assed recovery and never fully repair. And I see this in leadership—there’s a rupture but no adequate recovery.
Rachel
I think it’s more than just trust.
Darren
Are you asking me? I didn’t use the word trust.
Rachel
You’re saying trust and maybe I’m, yeah, maybe I’m being literal, but it’s sometimes trust.
Sometimes, you know, it’s hurt. I mean, think of our friend who was on the call with her senior leaders, and that guy threw her under the bus—complete blatant lie. And then his half-ass apology was something along the lines of, “Sorry, I hurt your feelings.”
Totally flippant. Total bullshit. And she’s like, “It’s not about the feelings. It’s about your action—what you legitimately tried to sabotage me for your own gains. Let’s address that.” But it’s interesting what you say…
I have not seen it, and we’re just learning this as well. So let’s be honest, right? We are not professionals, but we are learning to do this. The recovery, the repair process—it takes exponentially longer than the infraction itself.
Darren
Recovery. Yeah.
Rachel
The recovery, right? And you know how long it’s going to take? As long as that person needs. So if you want me to forgive you and you start getting antsy and itchy because I’m not forgiving you fast enough to make you comfortable, then you start getting pissed about that. Like, “When are you going to get over this?”
I’ve heard that before—”It’s been a year. When are you going to get over this?” No, no, no, no. That’s not your words. That’s somebody else in my life with a major infraction. And so if you’re the one who did the thing, the repair needs to happen, which means direct communication of “How do we repair this?”
Darren
That’s not my words, by the way. Just clarifying that.
Rachel
Great. And then you—I believe the person who caused the hurt, the harm—you’ve got to just be patient and keep showing up, and keep showing up, and keep showing up until the other person believes and trusts that you genuinely have remorse. I think when you said that, I was like, “That. Right there.” You can’t bullshit your way out of this.
You can try, but it’s not going to do the complete repair of the relationship. And this is, I think, probably the number one thing that individuals need to work on—because we’re human. I know we’re right at time, and there’s going to be discord, right? That is a truth. The repair and the recovery are the pieces that will be a game-changer for you at home and at work.
Any parting words?
Darren
On that point—my earlier self, and I see it in others: clients, friends, family—during the repair process, there’s a pointedness of, “Well, you did this, and you made me feel that,” right? That’s not repair. Yes, your actions might not have been appreciated. Your actions might have led me to feel a certain way. And yes, that does need to be addressed. But you—
Rachel
That’s not repair.
Darren
Me, you, listeners, leaders, et cetera—a repair is not, “Well, you did this thing, and don’t do it again.” The repair is about what is acceptable, what is unacceptable, what infractions were broken, what boundaries were crossed, and what actions we’re going to take—or insist on taking—to bring us back to a reasonable baseline. And quite frankly, there’s also an element of, “Are we past the point of no return?”
Rachel
That’s fair, too.
Darren
That’s also part of the gig.
Rachel
Yeah, right. And that’s a level of maturity—to be able to look at the other person and say, “The foundation has crumbled. The house has fallen down.” We could continue to destroy each other in this relationship, with what little is left of it, or we need to call it quits. And that could be at home with marriage—and we do not advocate divorce, that’s not what I’m saying—but you need to know when to be able to call it.
And I know we’re a minute over, but there was something there with that—that yeah, you can’t hold it against the person forever, right? It’s your responsibility to do your own repair and your emotional healing and everything that comes with it, just as it is the offender’s responsibility to do their own work.
We don’t get to keep abdicating our emotions to the other person. Manage your own shit. Grow from it, learn from it, and don’t hold onto it. Don’t continue to use it against each other. That is not repair. If that’s what you’re doing, you’ve missed the whole point of this.
Darren
And there’s gotta be some form of forgiveness.
Rachel
Yes, absolutely. So, hopefully, we were able to show you—the dogs barking, blending the two—home life and leadership, how you’re showing up. I challenge everybody to do an audit, start an awareness, and look at yourself. How am I speaking to my partner at home? My kids? My spouse?
How am I showing up as a leader? Like you said, I retreat. I did that when I had my team too—working with my team of practitioners. I didn’t want to confront them. I didn’t want to hold them accountable. I just wanted to do what my mom does—ostrich, stick her head in the sand. And I had to work through that discomfort to be a better leader. So, hopefully, we were able to shine a light on ways you can grow in both areas because they support each other.
Alright, we’re not back here next Tuesday. We’re off next Tuesday, but we’ll see you in two Tuesdays. Two, two Tuesdays. Alright, bye.
Darren
Alright, see you next time. You too, Tuesday. Bye, everybody.
