In this talk, the speaker shares his personal journey from repeatedly declining managerial roles to becoming a leader at Gym Launch. He explains why many high‑performing individual contributors resist leadership—believing they can do everything better themselves, feeling a loss of personal satisfaction when others do the work, and fearing loss of credit. He argues these feelings are normal, rooted in self‑bias, and can be rewired. The speaker outlines three key mindset shifts: (1) accept that the urge to do tasks yourself will persist but must be managed; (2) re‑train to find satisfaction in team members’ achievements; and (3) deliberately give credit to the team while taking blame yourself, measuring success by the team’s performance rather than personal accolades. He emphasizes that these challenges are common to all new leaders, especially first‑time managers and founders, and encourages embracing the discomfort as part of growth rather than seeing it as a sign you’re not cut out for leadership. The talk concludes with a call to action for viewers to recognize these patterns, adopt the suggested mental shifts, and continue developing their leadership capabilities.
Chapters
All right, in this video, what I want to talk about is going from a high, high-level individual contributor to a leader. And a lot of the lies that I feel a lot of people believe that prevent them from actually being a leader and doing what it takes to become one. And so the reason I felt like it was really important to share this video, and I feel passionate about sharing it right now specifically, is because this is a conversation I had with a lot of my team at our recent quarterly meetup. And so we fly in all the leaders on the team. A lot of them happen to be newer leaders or in leadership positions that are higher than they'd ever been before. And a lot of them shared with me these different feelings and stuff that have arisen with them. And I think that what they thought that that meant by feeling this resistance was that they shouldn't be a leader. And so I'll kind of dissect this for you and just first tell you my story, which is before Gym Launch, I had literally been offered to be a manager at every job I had. And I said no every time. And the reason I said no is because I was like, well, I can just do it better myself. Like, what, have to rely on these nunchucks over here to do it? Like, I remember thinking like, these idiots can't do what I wouldn't do. Like, I had that belief. I was like, I'm better than everybody. I can do a better job. I don't want to rely on other people for my performance. Like, that just seems— no. What's funny is that this is what I'm hearing a lot from my team, is that, as well as this, um, thought that it is really hard to get a sense of satisfaction from other people doing the work rather than doing it yourself. And I find that so funny because that is exactly how I felt when I actually stepped into this role. And I think that I'm actually lucky because when we start Gym Launch, I felt like I will do anything to ensure this business doesn't fail. And so that means I'll become whoever I need to become. I'll believe whatever I need to believe to make sure that I can progress forward and become the next best version of myself so that the company can progress. It's really interesting because, because of that, I was open to finally doing this, to managing people and to leading. Prior to that, I was not. I just felt like I could rely on myself. I didn't want to have to rely on other people. And so that's the first thing is like what I'm noticing is that so many people believe that that is a sign that you should not be leading, that you think that. And I'm like, no, I think that's just like the cost of entry is that you feel that way. Like, of course you do, because we're all biased towards ourselves and all of our own actions. Of course we think we're better at getting things done than everybody else. You know, we see all of our accomplishments, we see all of their flaws. That's just how perspective works. And so that's the first part. The second part was something that someone said, one of my leaders, He said, I just don't gain the same sense of satisfaction out of watching others get the work done that I do in doing it myself. And I'm like, well, of course you don't, because you've literally trained yourself to get satisfaction from the work you do and to disregard the work others do. In fact, maybe even discredit the work others do because you've been a high-level individual contributor. I would say that that's normal. You have made the habit of rewarding yourself or feeling satisfied, right? You've told yourself that you become satisfied when you do the work, and now you just need to rewire that thought and teach yourself to be satisfied when others do the work. This is something that was probably the most frustrating when I first became a manager, a leader in our own company, was I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so— I just want to go in and do something. I'm so sick of all these calls and meetings and one-on-ones. I just want to go get this satisfaction, scratch this itch. And what I wanna say here is that that's completely normal and to be expected. That doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong or that you're not meant to be a leader at all. In fact, this is normal. And when this works against you is when you believe that thought and you let that thought mean that you shouldn't be doing what you're doing, right? Rather than just being like, oh, that's a shitty thought. I should just try and think something else. Instead, you make it mean like, oh, I'm not meant to be a leader. I'm just too selfish. I'm just too self-centered. I'm definitely just an individual contributor. It's like, no, you're a human. We're all humans. I truly don't believe anyone's born a certain way. Like, I think that you can mold yourself however you want, and it's just like you've trained yourself into thinking these thoughts that don't serve you. In this way, you can train yourself to think other thoughts, right? And then the last piece to this is the piece that I think is the hardest for others to get over, which is that I was talking to my friend when we were on a walk the other day, and we were talking about being a leader, and she said, you know, sometimes I feel like you don't even give yourself enough credit. And I was like, well, that's because I don't believe I should get the credit, almost sometimes to a detriment. She's like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I believe that a leader should give credit to their team and to all those around them and that they should take blame. Right? And so sometimes I think I do it a little bit too hard to the extent that I take all the blame and I give all the credit. But I still think that that is probably one of the first mindset shifts that you have to make, which is that most people like being a high-level individual contributor and not managing or leading because they get all of the credit, right? Like you get the credit for saving the day, you get the credit for doing a good job, you get the credit for leading the project, you get the credit for talking to the customer. You get the credit for everything. And then the funny thing is that when you become a leader, your measurement of success is not on the credit that you are receiving, but on the credit your team gets, right? So when I look at somebody, say, head of customer success, I don't really look at what kind of credit she is getting. I'm looking at her team because the measurement of her success to me is now how well her team is doing, how much credit her team is getting, not her, right? Because her job is to create and empower her team. It is another shift, of course, in which we have to understand that you have to be able to sacrifice that. And in the short term, I think the reason that most people just decide that they're not meant to be a leader or manager is because it feels shitty. And they think because it feels so crappy that they shouldn't be doing it, that there's something wrong, that they're doing it wrong, or they're just not meant to be this role. They're not meant to be this person. And what I told somebody the other day is I said, I constantly feel a lack of satisfaction in the sense of I don't do the things directly. I have to coach people to do them. And I so badly want to do them. It's been like 3 and a half years since I've been the one doing a lot of those things day in and day out. And I still don't get— I still have that urge, right? But it's one thing to feel something. It's another thing to act upon that emotion, right? Rather than just saying like, I get that having this emotion is part of leadership and management. It's going to be one of the downsides of a role like this is that I'm going to have that urge constantly. I'm going to have to train myself to not succumb to the urge and jump in. I have to train myself to not succumb to the urge and try and take the spotlight, right? And so I've had to retrain myself. It doesn't mean the feeling goes away. It gets much more subtle, but it doesn't go away. But what you do learn to do is resist it, right? And so if you're thinking like you're not made up to be a manager or a leader, especially if you own the company and you have that thought, which is just so like not true at all, especially if you own the company, like there's just no reason why not. I think acknowledging that like we all still have those feelings Like, we would like to do things ourselves. We believe that we can do things better than anybody else. We would like to get a sense of satisfaction from the work we do. We'd like to just rather do it ourselves because we can do it faster and better, right? We all think that. Um, and then we think that there's something wrong with us if we're having these thoughts, when I just want to tell you, like, there's nothing wrong with you. Every single leader or manager I've talked to pretty much has these feelings. Some just don't want to admit it. Some say it in a different way, but they're all there at the end of the day. And so I hope that that helps if you're struggling with overcoming like this new hump of having, say, a bigger team and outsourcing more, maybe delegating more, or just you're a first-time leader, it is completely normal and to be expected to have these feelings. And so I think that everyone should know that. And I think that it is kind of BS if you just pretend like, like it's all sunshine and rainbows. I just love watching other people succeed all the time. It's like, no, sometimes you just want to go in there and get it done yourself, right? You're like, dude, I missed that. That's okay. Right. Over time, you will feel a much greater sense of satisfaction for knowing that you have delayed your own sense of gratification for the greater good of your company and your life. So if that was useful, go ahead, hit subscribe.
