I once walked into a board meeting to facilitate a conflict that half the people in the room didn’t think existed.
The board chair — a dear friend and colleague — had called me in. We spent weeks prepping. We put together a survey, a worksheet, tons of framing notes, careful engagement. They were clear about the tension, the factions, the decisions that were happening and the ones that needed to.
We got on the Zoom — a Wednesday evening board meeting after a long day of clinical care and grant proposals and political turmoil — as so often seems to be the case. I introduced myself, explained the process, started to name what we were there to address.
And almost immediately, several board members pushed back: “Wait — what are we even talking about. We have a conflict? No, we don’t.”
I was taken aback. Literally — I physically leaned back in my seat and had to pause for a moment to search for my next words.
Every single board member had written about this conflict in their intake forms. And yet, out loud and in a room together, several folks insisted there was nothing to discuss.
The conflict was real; the power dynamics were fraught. The pattern was exactly what we’d named in our prep calls — a major decision stalling out, a staff unified one side and a board that vehemently disagreed. Tensions surfaced and were quickly smoothed over or smothered, the same conversation looping without resolution.
But the inner, hidden conflict was also about who gets to decide when something is “a problem.”
We ran face-first into a hidden story about what happens to leaders when they see the pattern but half the room can’t — or won’t — admit it’s there.
And, about what it costs to be the person holding that sight alone.
This is a story about privilege, power, and who bears the cost when we get it wrong.
There is a difference between leading alone and lonely leadership.
Not alone as in no one else is in the room, and not alone as in unsupported by community.
Lonely as in: sometimes we feel like we’re the only one doing the math.
We’re weighing whether pushing back right now is care or cruelty. We wonder whether naming the pattern will land as insight or accusation. We worry about whether we’re seeing something real or projecting our own shit [trauma, oppression, attachment wounds, niggling anxieties, etc] onto a situation that’s actually fine, maybe.
We’re three steps ahead of the conversation, running scenarios: If I say this, they’ll hear that. If I don’t say it, we’ll be here again in six months. If I defer to the board, I’m abandoning the staff. If I protect the staff, I’m undermining the board’s authority.
And we do all of this quick-take mental gymnalysis (gymnastic analysis!) in split-second real time — lonely and alone — while maintaining the appearance of professional composure.
Heavy air quotes on that “professional,” obvi.
I don’t know which way is right, and someone will get hurt no matter what I do.
I think about that “we don’t have a conflict” moment often. (That board chair recently said to me I hope you use that as a case study… so here we are!)
Now don’t get me wrong — none of us handled it perfectly — and besides, perfect is an impossible standard.
But we decided to make the implicit explicit and name what was happening anyway, even when half the room said it wasn’t. Often, that’s the critical first step.
That facilitation became a catalyst for that organization — something that surfaced tension, rooted out the actual problems, identified the necessary steps, and accelerated the rate and scale of the change they needed.
Not because I had magic words that fixed everything — as I am so often asked to do, as a mediator, and I will joyfully fail at, every single time.
Rather — because what was hidden became seen. We dared to speak what had yet been unspeakable.
The change that followed wasn’t clean, or tidy, or even remotely what we had expected — but change it did.
Sometimes, all it takes is admitting that something isn’t quite right, that maybe it isn’t supposed to be so hard.
If you’re reading this and thinking “holy shit, I have had that board meeting, this is me” (or maybe it’s your bestie, your partner, your colleague) —
If you’re the executive director impossibly caught between board expectations and staff reality, or the program officer navigating family foundation politics while trying to actually move resources toward justice, or the department chair who can see exactly what’s broken but can’t get anyone else to admit it’s a problem —
If you’re lying awake at 2am doing unconscious power analysis about a situation you have to navigate at 9am, wishing you had an insomniac whiteboard to mindmap it with —
Those aren’t mental gynmalyses to do alone, and they aren’t questions without answers.
I have a few spots open for leadership coaching this spring.
This is 6 months of bi-weekly coaching and advisory for leaders navigating the tension between integrity and impact. Changemakers who’ve done the personal work and the systems work but get caught in the rub between the two. Advocates who are brilliant at pattern recognition but exhausted from getting stuck on the woman of color in the workplace pipeline.
I don’t do therapy. I do strategic partnership with poetic justice — “that gentle fierce accountability that is truly a balm to my soul,” as one former client put it.
We work on the real-time situations you’re navigating: the board conflict, the staffing decision, the coalition tension, the grant proposal that’s going to get pushback, the meetings that should have been an email and the emails that should have been a meeting.
You bring the impossible calculations. I help you diagnose the power dynamics, treat the root cause infections, build the rehabilitation practices, and make the transitions sustainable, resourced, and easeful.
By the end of six months, you’ll have practices you’ve actually tested (not just theory), frameworks that account for actual complexity (not oversimplified models), someone who sees the patterns you can’t see from inside them, and a toolkit for navigating power with integrity that doesn’t require you to disappear, minimize, or explode.
Read more about leadership coaching →
I know the world is on fire.
I know this is a particularly brutal moment to be making these calls — about care, about accountability, about what integrity looks like when every choice feels impossible.
That’s exactly why you need support that can meet the complexity.
I refuse to give you platitudes or binaries, and I definitely won’t give you the internet’s favorite advice to “set boundaries” and “practice sElF cArE.” 🙄
You need someone who won’t flinch when you bring the hard stuff and who will give you time and space to say it the wrong way first. You need someone who will offer you warmth and rigor while we figure out what leading with integrity actually means right now.
If you’re ready to stop navigating alone, let’s talk.
Book a free 30-minute inquiry call →
Maybe you’re in spaces where half the room can’t see what you’re seeing. It’s important that you have someone who can. Let’s figure it out together.
