Chris Hunsicker uses a river metaphor to explain why rigid leaders fail. He introduces the FACES framework (Flexible, Adaptive, Coherent, Energized, Stable) and walks through a sales manager who lost his team by refusing to adjust. Three reflective questions and a 10-minute weekend writing exercise help you practice bending instead of breaking.
Chapters
Foreign. If your leadership style feels like duct tape and caffeine, then it's time to channel your inner river and not your inner wrecking ball. Because you remember, when it comes to pain, you will never be exonerated, that you will never escape uncertainty. And when it comes to hard work, it just never ends. And that's not negative. That's reality. And this week, we named it, we owned it, and we've taken it head on. But today, I want to leave with you something even deeper than grit. I want to show you how to flow. Leadership isn't about gripping tighter. It's about learning when to bend, when to hold, and how to keep flowing forward with strength and grace. I'm Chris Hunsicker, and this is the dealership war room. We are back in the United States after three weeks on the road. Leadership fire, built daily, fueled intentionally, and delivered relentlessly. So let's dive in today on how you can start channeling that inner river that we talked about. Picture your leadership like a river that flows between two banks. On the one bank, you have structure. This is your processes, your systems, your discipline. And on the other bank, you have spontaneity. This is your intuition, your creativity, your freedom. The mistake? Most managers don't flow. They build dams. They either grip too tight and become incredibly rigid, or they let go completely and they create chaos. But the best managers, they flow. Dan Siegel calls this the river of integration, a peak state of mental agility and emotional health. I like to call it the river of flexibility. And he breaks it into five specific traits or qualities that he calls the faces of flow. Let's take a look at those. Now, faces is an acronym for the five traits of Leaders who Flow and don't Damn. Let's break these down one by one. The F is flexible. You pivot instead of panic. The A is adaptive, you shift energy, not standards. The C, coherent. You stay mission driven even under pressure. E is energized. You lead with clarity, not crisis. And the S is stable. You don't crumble when the floor shakes. Now, let me bring this down to earth and tell me if you've seen this, too. I watched a sales manager absolutely blow up because the deal unwound, Customer bailed and he lost it. Tried to force it, tried to push it through, tried to control it, and it didn't work because rigidity never does a better move. Flex the pencil, shift the posture, reframe the path, but don't freeze the flow. And this connects back to what we've been building on all Week Monday, we faced the fact that problems never stopped. Tuesday, we looked at our leadership wake. And what happens Wednesday, we created the anchor code. And then Thursday we. We decided and we acted, we moved, and now it's time to flow. Because hope is not soft. Hope is strategy. This is what hope looks like in motion. It's the courage to flex without folding. Because your team doesn't need you to be perfect, but they do need you to be present, adaptable, flexible. The Marines have a saying, semper fi or semper fidelis, which means always faithful. Well, former Navy SEAL Mark Devine has his own spin on that, and he calls it Semper Gumby. Always flexible. No matter how far you bend, you always return to your center. That's resilience. That's leadership, and that is what we're after today. So here's your war room challenge for the day. And let's dial in some real clarity. I want three questions that I'd like you to go through, and I want you to do it three times. I want you to do it once mentally, as we're going through right now. I want you to do it a second time, writing it out on paper later on today. And I want you to do a third time before you go to bed tonight or. Or the first thing when you wake up tomorrow morning on Saturday morning. And I want you to rehearse these three questions. Question number one, where am I too rigid and where do I probably need to loosen my grip a little bit? Number two, where am I too chaotic and where do I need to pull it back in and ground the team again? And number three, which of the five faces behaviors do I most need on my team right now? Where does my leadership need absolutely the most of these five behaviors? Is it flexible and you need to flow a little bit more? Is it adaptive and you need to start looking at new innovative creative options and pull yourself out of 2005. Is it coherent and you need to get more dialed in on message, straight on point, day after day, week after week? Is it energized and you need to kind of bring the whole energy level of your team up, or is it stable and you need your own self regulation, your own emotional self regulation that needs to happen. Whichever one of those it is, great. But. But name it, live it, and adjust the dial. Now let me give you a bonus weekend anchor to create some momentum through the weekend to build yourself towards Monday and keep building on everything that we've done. And this is a simple reflection exercise where I want you to take 10 minutes at the end of the week. You spend 50, 60, 70, 80 hours this week in your store that you've invested in your store. Take 10 minutes and invest it in yourself to do this reflection. And here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I want you to sit down and I'm going to ask these questions of yourself. 10 minutes with a pencil and a piece of paper, thinking on paper. Question number one, where did I bend instead of break this week? Find a success. Let's capture what you're doing right. Number two, where did I force instead of flow? Create some awareness where you need to adjust to what needs to happen. Number three, what kind of energy do I want to carry into Monday? Be clear and specific and write it down. This is how momentum becomes identity. And this is how great leaders reset without relapsing. And I invite you to build this practice in every single weekend, but at least for this weekend. 10 minutes this Saturday. This is the dealership war room. And this week, you did the deep work. Congratulations. You faced the pain. You owned your wake. You rebuilt trust. You took action. And today you flowed. You're not a rock, you're not a fire. You're a river. Strong, steady, and unbreakable in motion. So let's flow today through the weekend and on into Monday. And again, if something today hit home, if something today touched you, please share the podcast, share the link with someone you know and help them start building their leadership fire so that we can continue to grow what is, I think, the single best industry on the planet. And with that, do the weekend workshop, do the weekend reflection, and I'll see you Monday in the dealership war room.
