The Catalyst

Relationships for me have been an ebb and flow in life.

I seemed to have friends and made friends easily. But I never had a “best friend” during my middle school and high school years.

I blamed it on moving at the end of elementary school.

We moved just far enough to go to a different school, but close enough I could still be involved in the same clubs and activities I did before we moved.

I blamed the circumstance rather than looking at myself.

I could make friends, but didn’t have real friends.

I didn’t have friends sleep over, and I didn’t go to sleepovers. Life on the farm meant that weekdays and weekends were for chores and work, not for playing.

My parents didn’t disallow it, and I never pressed it.

At the time I could have started building genuine relationships, I made it even harder for those around me.

Just imagine how much more difficult it is to have a relationship with someone who has had a tragic death in their life as a teenager.

When the relationship is casual, it stays casual.

My intensity and drive to prove myself made it even harder.

So I worked.

I survived because I worked harder. That was the story I told myself.

It wasn’t the whole story.

Looking back, the people who actually changed the trajectory weren’t the ones who admired the work. They were the ones who pulled up a chair. Who asked. Who stayed long enough to see past the effort.

The catalyst was never what I produced. It was who showed up.

I didn’t have words for it then. I do now.

The Things We Hide — Moment

In The Things We Hide, I write about the belief cycle. Beliefs drive thoughts. Thoughts drive actions. Actions drive results. Most leaders try to work on the results. The work is underneath, in the belief.

Here is the belief that ran me for years: my value is decided by what I know.

That belief made me a good problem solver. It made me a brutal teammate to others, when everything I saw was a problem to fix. If my value was decided by what I knew, every answer I didn't have, every setback, every quiet room became evidence that I was slipping.

The belief had a second ring around it. If what I know is who I am, then anything that threatens what I know threatens who I am.

That is the wall. When someone walks into my office and tells me I got it wrong, I don’t hear feedback. I hear a threat to my identity. So I defend. I explain. I deflect. I find the book title I have already read.

The people around me learned fast. Don’t challenge him; he’ll make it an argument.

Letting that belief go is not a mindset trick. It is a reconstruction. Who am I if I am not solving all the problems? Who am I when I can’t figure it out? Who am I if I am not the smartest kid in the room?

The leader who can sit with that question is the one who can finally hear what the team has been trying to say.

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Podcast

Blue Stiley is a keynote speaker, author of The Sum of Four, and host of The Blue Stiley Podcast. He found his way to leadership through eight-year-old eyes, bullied and isolated, until his parents dropped him off at a martial arts dojo, where one instructor changed the trajectory of his life. He has spent the years since studying what made that kind of impact possible and how to multiply it.

Here are three takeaways from my conversation with Blue.

1. Find Your Table

Blue talks about a dojo, but it's an example, not a requirement. The principle is older than that.

He calls it finding your table. The place where you sit across from another human and actually listen, without an agenda, without trying to extract anything. He told me:

“It can be any place that you can meet other people and actively listen to another person. It could be church, a CrossFit gym, a mastermind, a rotary club. It could be the water cooler.”

Most leaders do not need another conference. They need a table. A standing place where the people who shape them get to speak honestly into their lives, and where they get to do the same for someone else.

If you can’t name yours, build one.

2. Trust Is the Catalyst

Knowing famous people does not change your trajectory. Blue made this clear.

“If I had a real relationship with Howard Schultz or Jeff Bezos, they would text me. Blue, you have to meet Tyler. Blue, you need to apply for this job. That is a relationship. And that is the catalyst.”

Proximity is not impact. Trust is.

He breaks it down with an acronym he calls RELATE. Respect. Emulation. Love. Admiration. Trust. Empathy. Most leaders I work with would name at most two of those in their key relationships. Real impact requires the full set.

The shortcut is to learn what someone’s currency is. Not money. What actually moves them. What makes them feel heard, seen, and valued. You only learn that by asking.

3. Significance Is What Shows Up When You’re Gone

Blue lost his father and his martial arts instructor within three weeks of each other. His father was a well-known lawyer in Spokane. His instructor was a quiet staff sergeant who taught judo at a non-profit dojo for forty-five years.

His father’s funeral had fifty people in a bar.

His instructor’s funeral had hundreds, with cars stretching back like the ending of Field of Dreams. Headlights as far as he could see.

Blue said it like this:

“He had so much reach, and he did it simply by gaining their trust, making a real and genuine relationship with them, and then bringing them into his community.”

Success is the metric the world hands you. Significance is the room that shows up at the end. They are not the same thing, and they do not always live in the same person.

Blue’s challenge: pull out your phone, scroll through your contacts, land on a name, and call them. Tell them what they meant. You might blow their mind. And one day, when it counts, they will be the room.

Be the Catalyst — The IDL Summit, May 7–8, Spokane

The IDL Summit is next week.

May 7 and 8 in Spokane. A room of people looking to make connections, not network. Two days of telling the truth about what we hide and what it costs us.

Three speakers I would have wanted in the room when I was building, right past the relationships that mattered most.

Nikki Barua spent years performing what success was supposed to look like. The wardrobe. The etiquette. The golf lessons. Until everything was stripped away in a single week, and she had to rebuild from the inside out. She knows what it costs to confuse polish for relationship.

Joe Delagrave had his identity rewritten by an accident at eighteen. He spent years hiding behind an inspirational version of himself, privately having no idea who he was. He will tell you what it takes to stop performing and start showing up.

Dr. Abbie Maroñó studies the science of how we read each other and how we hide from being read. If Blue’s story shows you what real relationships make possible, Abbie shows you the mechanics of building them and where you are closing the door without knowing it.

Three perspectives, in a room where nothing gets hidden.

General Admission for both days is $499. We have also opened a Thursday-only option at $99 if you can only join us for the first day. Seats are limited.

If you are ready to stop chasing performance and start building the catalyst, I would love to see you there.

Get your tickets: idlsummit.com

Did you catch this podcast? If not, listen to it here.