Twice in one week, I found myself saying the two words I often say to clients in jest: Stop it! It’s the simplest coaching line there is, because if you stop doing the thing that’s holding you back, the job’s done, and if it were really that easy, we’d all be doing it, right?

The first time, I was with a CEO who had a reason for everything, from a market that had turned, to a team that was falling short, to a key supplier who had let him down, and every explanation pointed out the window. So we looked in the mirror instead, and a different pattern came into view: decisions made on Monday and reversed by Thursday, work handed over without the context to succeed, then taken back the moment the result looked different from the picture in his head. His team had learned that anything they were given could be taken away, so why would they pick it up properly?

The second time, I was with a founder whose business has grown phenomenally, and while from the outside it looks like a shining example of business done right, from the inside it still runs through her. She knows it too, and she told me so before I had the chance to say it myself, which left me with two very different leaders caught in exactly the same trap.

I could see the answer for both of them, and telling them would have taken thirty seconds, although it would probably have lasted about a week. Patterns like these live below the surface, out of reach of a quick instruction, in the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the emotions we’d rather avoid. That might be the fear of what happens if it goes wrong without us, or the deep-seated belief that we’re the only one who can do it properly, and until you get under those, “stop it” stays a punchline.

Getting under them is where my own learning comes in, because I study every week as part of my mastery and my commitment to this profession and to my own growth. The latest chapter was nine nights of training in a row, from midnight to 9am, led from Oxford with practitioners joining from the US, so New Zealand (me) got the graveyard shift, and I was happy to take it because I really wanted to do this training, whatever the time zone. It completed my Master Practitioner in NLP, Time Line Therapy® and Hypnotherapy, all designed to work beneath the surface on limiting beliefs and the emotions attached to them, and while some of it landed instantly, some of it still felt clunky, a bit like writing with my other hand.

I used it anyway, asking the questions that turn “this is happening to me” into “what am I doing that creates this?”, zooming out to what they truly wanted and then back into the one decision in front of them that week, and sitting in silences I once would have filled. It was far from polished, and I could hear myself reaching for the next question. I ended both sessions with the same question, “What will change?”, focused on what will actually be different between now and when we next meet, rather than what they’d like to change or might try, because their answer shows me how committed they are and gives us something real to measure.

It worked, and the CEO sat back and said, “I need to own this. I’m the one who can drive the change. I want to, and I know we can.” His next step is to trust his team and stay close to the action while leaving the doing to them, leading by serving rather than grabbing the wheel back. The founder has since hired someone to take the load off, and while the relief was obvious, the excitement was bigger because she finally has time to lift her eyes and work on the strategy only she can do.

The lesson, for them and for me

Mastery has no finish line, and I’m always learning, because the day I think I know it all is the day I become the problem in the room, which is just as true for every founder I work with. Waiting for perfect usually wears one of three disguises:

• I’ll hand it over when the process is right.
• I’ll step back when my team is ready.
• I’ll think about exit when the business is where I want it.

Meanwhile, everything keeps flowing through you, and that comes at a price. John Warrillow’s Value Builder System analysed the offers business owners received for their companies and found the average was 3.7 times pre-tax profit, rising to 4.49 times where customers dealt with the team rather than the owner, and dropping to 2.93 times where the founder knew every customer by first name. That’s the same profit with a very different price tag, and the difference is you.

What actually moves things is ownership and openness to feedback, and both my clients heard hard truths about themselves and leaned in instead of defending, which takes real courage, so kudos to them both. The research backs them too, with a Zenger Folkman study of 51,896 executives finding that leaders in the bottom 10% for asking for feedback were rated at the 15th percentile for overall leadership effectiveness, while those in the top 10% were rated, on average, at the 86th percentile, which tells me the leaders willing to hear it are the ones others want to follow.

A line from Sophia Bush’s Work in Progress podcast has stayed with me: we’re allowed to be a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time, and my clients are both, as am I, and so is your business. So, where are you waiting for perfect before you let go, and what will change before this week is out?