Lee Povey

My wife Sara has a saying I love.

"Would you rather be right or kind?"

I carry that question with me every single day. In the moments where my instinct is to point out someone's mistake. In the conversations where I feel the urge to correct rather than connect. In the times where being right feels more important than being useful.

Most people are doing the best they can with what they have.

That sounds straightforward, and it is one of the hardest things to actually believe when you are in the middle of a frustrating situation. When someone seems to be making everything harder than it needs to be. When a person you care about keeps repeating the same pattern. When it feels like people are deliberately getting in your way.

In my experience, that is almost never what is happening. People are not out to make your life harder. They are living the best they can with the toolset they were given, shaped by their history, their fears, and everything they have been through that you cannot see from where you are standing.

When I started approaching people from that belief, my life changed in the best way possible.

Relationships that felt stuck started moving again. Conversations that felt like dead ends opened up. And I found myself choosing kindness in moments where I would previously have chosen to be right.

We could all do with a little more of that right now. In our friendships, our families, and the way we treat the people around us on the hard days.

Sara, thank you for that one! It has made me a better friend, a better coach, and a better human. I would not want to figure any of this out without you. ♥️

Leslie K. John at Harvard Business School found that self-disclosure from leaders, talking openly about setbacks, values, and what they got wrong, is one of the most underleveraged approaches in leadership.

The mechanism is simple. When people see that mistakes are survivable at the top, they stop managing perception and start doing their best work. They bring problems early instead of sitting on them for weeks.

I spent decades in elite sport learning to never broadcast the wobble. Disclosure felt like weakness. It took me a long time to understand it was the opposite.

This week's newsletter is about how much truth is the right amount, and when to share it.

You can read the full newsletter here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nothing-declare-lee-povey-4gr7c

Nothing to Declare There's a version of leadership that looks like customs control: chin up, forms in order, absolutely nothing to declare. I spent a chunk of my twenties racing bikes, and elite sport trains that instinct into you early: you don't broadcast the wobble, you don't admit the doubt, you just deliver the w

For years as a cycling coach, I thought my value came from knowing everything. Every gear, every tactic, every decision.

I was wrong. I was suffocating the people around me and calling it leadership.

The moment I stepped back and focused on the three things only I could do, everything changed for my athletes and for me.

If you looked at your task list today, how much of it is your job, and how much of it is you refusing to let go?

Some of my best thinking as a sprint cyclist happened nowhere near a velodrome.

I would wrestle with a problem until my brain felt like a wrung-out sponge, and then go do something completely unrelated. Somewhere between the second coat of paint on a fence and absolutely nothing in particular, the answer would stroll in, unhurried.

Turns out there is a name for this. And it has everything to do with how the best leaders I know approach their hardest problems.

You can read my newsletter for this week: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/percolator-lee-povey-d9xuc

Most of us were taught that there are right choices and wrong choices.

Get it right, and you move forward. Get it wrong, and you fall behind.

That binary underlies many of the decisions I watch founders and executives struggle with, because the cost of being wrong feels unbearable both for their egos and what they believe it will do to their organization.

Here is what I have come to understand after years of coaching elite athletes and leaders: when you approach everything as a learning opportunity, wrong choices no longer exist. Every outcome becomes data. Every setback becomes a reference point for what you would do differently next time.

The fear of failure is not really about the outcome. It is a fear of what the outcome says about you. And as long as your identity is attached to always getting it right, you will play smaller than your potential.

The athletes I coached who improved fastest were rarely the most talented. They were the ones who could take a loss, extract what was useful from it, and come back to training the next day without the weight of the result hanging over them. They treated every race as information rather than a personal verdict.

Leadership works the same way. The founders and executives who grow fastest are not the ones who make the best decisions. They are the ones who learn the quickest from those that did not go as planned.

If you want to explore what that looks like in practice, I would love to have a conversation. A free initial call is a good place to start.

https://calendly.com/lee-povey/free-initial-consultation

It’s my job to meet the people I lead where they are at.

Often you will hear people say, “This is my natural leadership style”. In my opinion, this approach is stunted because they think they can only work with people that fit their specific leadership style.

In my experience, the best and most effective leaders are the most adaptable and tailor themselves to best meet and understand what their staff and colleagues need to be their most successful versions of themselves.

Today is International Youth Day, which is one of those observances that usually passes me by entirely. And this time I caught it.

Because I've spent a decent chunk of my adult life in the company of young people who needed something from an older person, and I've come away convinced that we've got the arithmetic of mentoring completely backward.

My latest newsletter is about what mentoring actually gave me. And I'm still not sure who came out ahead.

You can read the full article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-mentors-mentor-lee-povey-3k9uc

Who Mentors the Mentor? Today is International Youth Day, which is one of those UN observances that usually passes me by entirely, wedged as it is somewhere between World Chess Day and whatever day celebrates cheese. But this time I caught it, because I've spent a decent chunk of my adult life in the company of young peopl

I left school at 17 without a degree and just my bicycle. And frankly, feeling like a failure.

That sounds more dramatic than it was. I was dyslexic in an era when nobody called it that. The feedback I kept getting from teachers was that I was smart but lazy. I reluctantly accepted that story because I didn't have another one to replace it with.

What I did have was a track bike and a talent I couldn't yet fully explain. For a teenager who felt like he was failing at everything the world said mattered, that was enough to hold on to.

Cycling gave me something school never did: immediate, honest feedback and opportunity for success. You either crossed the line first or you didn't. The track was the first place in my life where I felt like the rules made sense, and I love rules!

It took me years to understand what those early years had actually taught me. How to perform under pressure. How to lose without letting the loss define you. How to show up on the days when nothing in you wants to, because those are often the days that matter most.

Leadership is more complicated than cycling. The feedback is slower, the variables are messier, and the finish line keeps moving. Yet the fundamentals are the same. You perform at the level you prepare for. You lead at the level you understand yourself.

36 years later, my clients don't care about my school results. What matters is the impact I have on their ability to lead and on how I help their organizations thrive.

If you are a founder or executive who wants to explore what high-performance coaching looks like for you and your team, I would love to talk. A free initial call is a good place to start.

👉🏻 https://calendly.com/lee-povey/free-initial-consultation