When it comes to the biggest challenges you face and the hardest conversations you have to have, you are always part of the problem.

I know that's not what anyone wants to hear.

It's far more comfortable to blame the underperforming employee, the cranky time-consuming client, or even traffic. It's not that the challenges aren't real. It's that as leaders, we tend to resolve conflict based on the facts as they appear on the surface.

I was recently working with a business owner having challenges with someone on her leadership team. There was friction between this one person and the rest of the team. That person had become a gatekeeper of information, a role the business owner had quietly encouraged.

Finally I said: she isn't the problem. You are.

She wanted to deny it. But she sat silently, chewing on it.

Then the lightbulb clicked on.

"Oh," she said. "I see it. I've created this situation because I allowed her to take on conversations and decisions I didn't want to have or make."

The business owner took ownership. She and her team member had an honest conversation about what needed to change. The rest of the team felt the shift. Trust grew. The complaining stopped.

What made the difference wasn't a new process or a restructured team. It was one person willing to look honestly at herself.

What shows up in your external world is a reflection of who you are being internally. The dialogue in your head. The commitments you're actually honoring. The fears you're carrying without naming them.

I've been sitting with this practice in my own life. Every time something isn't working the way I want it to, I ask myself who I am being that might be contributing to it. 

It doesn't feel good. But the ROI is worth it 

Because it keeps bringing me back to personal responsibility, and to the gap between who I'm showing up as and who I actually want to be.

The business you are building is not separate from who you are. It is an expression of who you are. The moment you recognize that you are the source of what you're experiencing, you also recognize that you have the power to change it.

The fix is rarely another strategy,  process or conversation. 

Most of the time it is the quiet, uncomfortable work of asking: who am I being, and is that person creating what I actually want?

That question, sat with honestly, changes everything.