5 Emotional Mistakes Men Make in Relationships with Lee Povey

I In this episode, we delve into the hidden challenges that hinder the drive for success and how they affect men. Discover the importance of trusting over rescuing, as we discuss leadership transformation with world-class coach Lee Povey. Lee shares his journey from elite cycling to executive coaching, emphasising emotional intelligence and vulnerability. Key points include the impact of carrying the world on your shoulders, the significance of aligning for greatness, shifting from immature to mature masculinity, and building fulfilling relationships and leadership. Join us to learn how to lead a purposeful life and transform your leadership style. 

Key moments in this episode:

 02:18 A Life-Changing Crash: Vulnerability and Transformation

06:11 The Hero's Journey: From Rescuer to Mentor

18:12 The Role of Upbringing: Shaping Leadership

20:37 Toxic Masculinity and Anger

22:29 The Importance of Community for Men

25:04 Building Strong Inner Circles

26:28 The Value of Process Over Outcome

38:23 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

How to reach Lee:

Website: https://www.leepovey.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leepoveycoaching/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@leepovey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leepovey/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/leepovey/

Chapters

• 0:03 Provocations on Success and Trust
• 0:36 Show Intro and Mission
• 1:40 Guest Introduction: Lee Povy
• 2:18 The Crash: Vulnerability Awakens
• 6:08 Masks, Neurodiversity, and One-Up Dynamics
• 9:59 From Sales to Sport to Leadership
• 13:04 Rescuer vs Mentor: Real Growth
• 16:11 Fathers, Scripts, and Redefining Manhood
• 20:04 Community, Competition, and Process
• 24:09 Rituals, Relationships, and Repair
• 27:34 The Trust Gap in High Performers
• 31:13 Parenting, Leadership, and Discomfort
• 34:12 Developing People to Replace You
• 36:58 Fulfillment Beyond the American Dream
• 40:01 Empathy, Detachment, and Integrity
• 42:05 How to Connect with Lee and Closing CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:03

What if the drive to succeed is actually hiding everything that's holding you back? And how would your leadership and your life transform if you stopped rescuing and started trusting? If you've ever felt that you're carrying the world on your shoulders while silently doubting yourself, this episode might be for you. So be sure to hit like and subscribe and leave a review so we can keep bringing you to the bold conversations that matter most for men today. And so with that, let's get on with today's episode.

SPEAKER_00: 0:36

The average man today is sleepwalking through life. Many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs, and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05

Welcome back to the show, my friends. And before we took this break, I posed a couple of powerful questions for you. Questions that speak to the heart of what so many high-performing men wrestle with. And that is how much of our leadership is real and how much of it is a mask that we've learned to wear. Because we live in a world where strength is often confused with silence and leadership with control. But today's guest believes that there's truly a better way, one that embraces emotional awareness, healthy challenge, and of course, all seated and rooted in deep trust. And he knows that real leadership starts with leading ourselves first. And so to help us unpack this, I'm joined by Lee Polvey, he's a world-class leadership coach, entrepreneur, and former elite cycling coach, who's trained Olympic champions, startup founders, and mission-driven CEOs. And he leads men not just to lead with performance, but with purpose, bringing emotional intelligence, vulnerability, and a strategy together in a way that what truly transforms their lives. And so let's welcome Lee to the show. Welcome to the episode, my friend. How are things today?

SPEAKER_02: 2:09

Hey, Alan. Wonderful. I just stepped off a plane coming back from doing some go-kart racing in Portland. So I'm in my happy place right now.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

Outstanding, outstanding. I Leah here at the Revolutionary Man, I believe that we are all living our own version of a hero's journey. And for yours, I'd like yes to you to tell us about that death and rebirth moment that truly changed how you lead and live life.

SPEAKER_02: 2:32

Sure. So many. I listened to your intro and I'm like, oh God, Alan, how do I help here? How do I keep up with the breadth of what you've introduced us to? I think one of the most pivotal moments for me was I crashed really badly in 2010. It was 10 days before the British National Championships. This was when I lived in the UK still. I now live in California in America. I was a defending champion. I was in the best shape of my life. I'd trained so hard and I crashed in a race. It was a silly little bumping of shoulders. The guy next to me lost control, crashed into me, and up in the air we went. And unbeknownst to me at that moment in time, I'd broken pretty much every brain in my shoulder. So I tried to get back up and race. I really wanted to race. And luckily, one of my friends was in the stand who's a doctor, and he came rushing over and he was like, You are not getting back on your bike. That was a bad fall. I dislocated my shoulder, I put it back in there, and I was so amped from the adrenaline. I'm like, let's go. And he was just physically stood in front of me. I remember embarrassing myself by arguing with him quite aggressively. I want to race, get out of my way, I'm going to race. And he's no, you're not. Went to the hospital, got X-rayed. The doctor tested my mobility and redislocated my shoulder. I swore at him. He ran away. I had to put my shoulder back in myself, had some x-rays. They told me I hadn't broken anything, which unfortunately was incorrect. I drove home from there with no painkillers. It's a four-hour drive by myself. Luckily, I had an automatic car, which is a little bit more unusual for the UK then. Went and saw the consultant the next day in Brighton where I'm from, did a CT scan, and it was one of those calls where he calls you and he says, You need to come in and we're going to talk about this in person. I'm like, oh no. So yeah, broke pretty much every bone, broke four bones in my shoulder, had to have two reconstructive surgeries. And it was the first time in my life, Alan, that I fully realized I was vulnerable and I didn't know what to do with it. I'd had crashes before then, never hurt myself. I generally thought I was unbreakable, at least on some level. And this was the first time I'm like, oh God, I'm not just breakable, but easily breakable. And my mind was just as broken as my body. I'd been with a woman for four years. Within a month, we were split up because I realized our relationship only went when I was the hero and she was the victim. And I didn't want those kind of relationships anymore. I needed room for my own vulnerability. First operation, I asked a friend to give me a lift to the hostel. And he said, Oh, just get a cab. It's only a mile down the road. And what neither of us realized at the time was I was saying, Can you please come and hold my hand? I'm really scared. And it took me a while to it took me to get into the hostel and being there to go, oh God, I'm terrified. I've never had an operation before, I've never had an anesthetic. I don't know how this is going to go. I am scared, genuinely scared. And at that point, I really couldn't use my arm. What's this going to mean? And I renegotiated a bunch of my friendships and I realized not just the friendships we created, but my role in creating those and how my inability to experience my own vulnerability, I had disdain for it. So my inability to experience it meant that I people didn't know how I felt and just assumed I was always okay. So even when I was struggling, they couldn't tell that, and I wasn't telling them.

SPEAKER_01: 6:08

I really got that from preparing for today's episode, reading some of your blog and looking at the work that you're doing. And what really resonated with me, and especially hearing you tell the tell your story, is how many of us men do live exactly the life that you're describing, where we have this facade and we think that this is how it is, and we just don't realize that it is a mask that we're wearing until life forces an adversity in front of us, and then we have to deal with it. Mine came when I was 30 and ended up by have losing everything, got divorced from my high school sweetheart. It was something I decided would never happen. And for you, your character started to be revealed, wasn't it? But you realize that the relationship you were in, you're talked about wasn't the right kind of relationship, not just the intimate one, but also with family and friends. So let's talk about how that transformation happened for you and where that led you.

SPEAKER_02: 7:02

Yeah. It's so hard. I'm still unpacking it now. I'm 52, Alan, and I'm still learning so much now. So recently I've discovered I'm both autistic and dyslexic. The dyslexia I've strongly suspected, and people have told me throughout my entire life, I cannot spell. I struggle to find words. We might even experience it during this where there's a word I want to use and I can't find it. And it feels in the back of my brain all these drawers are being opened, looking for a word, and I can't find the word. So I knew that I had some interesting stuff around language and learning, but I didn't know about the autism. So we talk about masks. There was a mask there about how I fitted into society. And I think because of school was interesting for me, I was either the best at something or the worst. So the message I got a lot at school was you're exceptionally gifted and you're lazy. And I'm not at all lazy. I just have certain limits to where I need to rest and recover. And especially, I didn't know how to learn in the school model. So it was very tiring and challenging for me. So that's definitely a mask that I've needed to unpeel as time is going on. I'm still learning about. And the reason I bring that up is because it relates to how do I speak to people, how do I get on with other human beings. And because I had this kind of monkey on my back of I've got to be smart because I was getting this message, you're really smart, but you're lazy, and I was insecure about it. I would create these one-up relationships. So this is what Terry Real, the relationship calls, coach calls is one up, one-down relationship. So I would make myself better. So I would be the hero. And then I would search out people that I could rescue because it made me feel good about myself. And if I'm better than you, I must be okay. And even in therapy, I had a great therapist as a young man and men's groups. I had this stuff reflected to me. And it took me a long time to really get that. And it's very interesting. The people I admire most in the world are the people that do the opposite of that and make everybody around them feel better about themselves. And that's still my journey. That's I want to die on my deathbed with people around me going, You made me feel better about myself. That's my challenge in life.

SPEAKER_01: 9:23

Yeah, what a great challenge to have. I think many of us struggle with that as well. So Lisa, kudos for you for being so open and sharing that with us. And then you took this transformation, this experience and many more, I'm sure, in your life and used it to transform the work that you're doing today. And so now, as I said in the intro, you've worked with Olympic athletes and you've delved with high, high performing CEOs. So you must have recognized some parallels that you've seen between high performance sports and let's say high performance leadership in business. And what would you say are some of those common parallels?

SPEAKER_02: 9:58

Yeah. So I started my career in sales, which tends to happen to bright people that don't go onto further education. What can I do? Okay, I can speak to people. I'm smart, I'll do sales. So started in real estate, worked for a corporate company for six years, then my own for six years, then sold that to become a cycling coach, as you mentioned. And I made that into a proper business. And at that time, most cycling coaches were amateur, it wasn't professional, they were part-time, they were doing other jobs. And I was like, no, this needs to be done properly. And that led me to work into many highly motivated, very driven, purpose-driven, mission-driven people. And then COVID came. The velodrome that I was, by this point, I was running the Olympic development program for USA cycling. COVID came, the program got shut down, the velodrome we trained at was closed for 18 months, and it was another one of those big pivot points in my life. And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if I wanted to keep being a cycling coach or not. I wanted, I knew there was a bigger purpose to my life, and I wasn't sure exactly what. So I started running men's groups, started first with my friendship group because we're all struggling during COVID, trying to figure out what it was. Some of us are suddenly unemployed. I went from working in the Velodram six days a week to being at home with nothing to do. So I started this men's group very shortly into that. The guys, you have to do more of these. This is super important work. And then at the same time, I listened to a podcast on a leadership coach. My wife's a therapist. I showed it to her. We were watching the TV series Billions at the same time that has a character called Wendy Co Wendy Rhodes as a high performance coach. And we just looked at each other and went, that's what I should be doing. And I thought to answer your question, so I've got a very long-winded way about it, but I will get there, I promise. I thought that there was going to be this big difference, and I was going to have so much to learn. And there is a learning process to this, absolutely. And it's a different type of coaching. But I'd actually been training myself to coach in a different way from many of the sports coaches already. And I was much more looking at the psychological side of it, uh, the human side of it beyond the sports performance and how to inspire and motivate people rather than just here's your training and the physiology of it. So I didn't realise everything I'd done in my life until that point had actually been preparing me for this career. My own entrepreneurship had been preparing me for this career. And while I definitely did a lot of training, the similarities between a high-performing CEO stroke founder and a high performing athlete are unbelievably close, which is why you often see good athletes become founders and CEOs. And I think, trying to think now, I think everybody I work with has some kind of athletic background. So there's just such this crossover between it's the ethos of I want to do this better than everybody else. And that's what gets them out of bed. At least in the beginning. Then we can come to fulfillment later. But to begin with, it's I want to do something somebody else can't do or is challenging, and that internal drive to prove something to yourself of I can do this differently.

SPEAKER_01: 13:20

Yeah, I completely relate to that as well. And it's just with some of the men that that work that I work with in our group, and similarly, just learning and watching from these other high performance individuals. And I would completely agree. I think it's just wired a little bit differently. They're willing to do what most people just won't do. And I think that in order to be the best or attempt to be the best, you have to be willing to put yourself out there. And I think those are such key things. I listen, I just started to hire, I hired a fitness coach finally. I'm 59 years old and says I can try and keep doing this on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02: 13:53

I hope people are watching this on YouTube. You look like you're bloody 40. Come on out, man.

SPEAKER_01: 13:58

Thanks, brother. But the point being is I could continue to do what I've always done and not get any other results, or I can lean into it and hire somebody to mentor and coach and lead. And I think that's the difference between what the work that you're doing and that and those of us that choose to not get involved and get somebody in there. And I think there's a danger. And so you said you talk, you do some men's work. I think there's a bit of a danger. I caught myself doing this. I'm wondering if you did too in the beginning, where you talked a little earlier about this idea of maybe rescuing people. And we can't really rescue people. Maybe we can give an opportunity to liberate them. But I want to talk, I want you to give us your perspective on what you feel are the dangers of when we're trying to be this rescuer versus then versus being a mentor.

SPEAKER_02: 14:44

Yeah, it's such a great question, Alan. And it's an important one because many of us drawn to these kinds of professions are drawn with a noble cause, but it's the boyhood cause of being the hero rather than the kind of the mature masculinity of being the king. And I rally against at the moment, we see a lot of press about toxic masculinity, and I struggle with that term because there can be toxic effects of immature masculinity, but I'd much rather we called it immature masculinity than toxic masculinity because immature masculinity says there's somewhere for us to go. We can grow up, we can learn, we can adapt and change. Whereas toxic is you're bad, you're broken, you're wrong. So yeah, I I think I've drifted off course slightly here. Remind me of the question. Let's see if I can actually answer that one.

SPEAKER_01: 15:32

Yeah, no, I think you're right on you're going right on point there. The idea was about how we start to do these things like coaching, whether that's a in men's work or other thing, and maybe that we're in that boyhood hero space where we're wanting to rescue. I'll rescue, I'll save you. And then what ultimately happens is we realize that something has to shift. And so I just wanted to get your perspective on that.

SPEAKER_02: 15:53

Yeah, you get you can't. So here's the first thing, right? You can't rescue somebody else, they can only rescue themselves. And you can be a coach, be a teacher, be a mentor, and they're all different in their own ways, but all of them, for me, there's a showing up of I'm gonna be here for you, but I can't do it for you. And it's that adage of you can fish for somebody and always reliant on you. And there is that feeling of, oh, I'm a desirable person because I help you. And often the hero in the story is desperately afraid of not being needed. And when I think back to my athletes when I was coaching them, my job, I believed, was to coach them to such a point that they didn't need me. Because the day of the Olympics, if I got food poisoning or got run over on the way there or whatever, their performance can't be affected by me not being there. They need to be able to perform the same whether I'm there or not. And that doesn't mean I don't have value. And this is where a lot of coaches and leaders get it wrong because they think their value is in what they do, their value is in what they create and what they empower and how they teach. So I love the model of I don't fish for you, I teach you to fish, and my job is to help you to be so good at fishing that you don't need me anymore. And guess what? You'll still want me because you'll still want those conversations. You'll still want to bounce ideas, which is why Roger Federer had a tennis coach because he still wanted somebody to bounce ideas off of and to talk to. And the higher up you get, the harder that is. I specialize in the smartest, most brilliant founders. That's my that's my area of excellence, is working with these high performance teams and these incredibly smart founders who are struggling to find people that understand it and to bounce these ideas off. And it's not my job to tell them what to do, it's my job to help them understand what it is that they really want to do and then what's the best path for getting there.

SPEAKER_01: 17:49

Yeah, absolutely. And it's that's a great, that's a great point that you made there about being able to understand where you're the value that you're actually bringing. And and it takes a while. And now we're spending a lot of time speaking to this in terms of coaching, but that's also really important in our relationships. And so I want to just take you back a little bit further. And your upbringing, your your experience of being really growing up in an environment with a narcissistic father, I'm sure shaped you into what you ultimately became and are now doing. So talk a little bit about how those past experiences have really shaped and tried and transformed you.

SPEAKER_02: 18:29

Yeah. Womkit, we look at mom and dad if we're lucky enough to have a mom and dad, and they are our idols of what a man and a woman should be. So we take on their traits and their behaviors because they are literally role modeling to us what men and women are and what the ideal version of men and women are, until we get old enough, and then that spell breaks, and we go, is this really what we want? And we're having outside influences from teachers, from school, from sports coaches, from media. And now for kids, it's social media. And we get to that point we're trying to figure out who we are. So I got to that point pretty young, younger than most, and realized I did not want to be my father. The problem is I didn't really know what I wanted to be. I looked at a lot of the stereotypical masculine stuff in the media, and it part of it resonated, the high performance part and the sports part. And I still have problems with admitting that I'm in pain when I should and getting the physical help I should. I broke my ankle and didn't do anything about it for 18 months. So that's still a journey for me because of that programming. And I just think it's just such a challenge for men, which is why I run men's groups, to figure out who am I as a man. And interestingly, from my own experience with that, and I joined men's groups very young. I was like 21, I was the youngest guy in my group by a decade, easily. My own journey was I realized that there is no man. What is the man? What is being a man? And I see people answer it, and a lot of it that people answer when they're on podcasts like this, I just strongly disagree with because the men that come to my groups, they're all different. And we might have some similarities and some similar experiences. Like we struggle to really share our emotions until we understand how to, and until we find a place we feel safe enough to, and we feel like we're given permission, because typically men are trained not to experience our emotions as a young man and boy. We're told don't feel things, it's bad, don't be weak, don't be a pussy. All the homophobic and sexist slurs that go with that, like the worst thing you could ever be is be feminine. Uh, you can have some anger, but only in a sports context, or like a, or if somebody has wronged you in some way, then it's okay. And typically a lot of men struggle with anger because they think that means they have to have a fight rather than I'm frustrated. What is this frustration telling me? And I had to relearn all of this. Could have been trained out of me societally by my parents. And yeah, I had this dad that was a caricature of a man. He was the most extreme. He was large, he was aggressive. Now, luckily, he never hit me, but I saw him hit other people, and he was always in confrontations. He used to drive us to drive me to cycling events. The only thing I did he was interested in. Catching the school rugby team never watched me play rugby once. Swam for my county, never watched me swim once. Cycling was his sport, that was the only thing he cared about. Um, and he would drive us to races and he would get into confrontations with other drivers that he had created. He'd create the situation where they're going to cut him off so that then he could get angry. And I'm watching all of this and absorbing it as a young man and then thinking, I don't want to be that, but what do I want to be? And getting caught between this media portrayal of a man and then what felt right for me inside as a human. I I remember watching the movie Drive, which a popular movie, Ryan Goslin spends the first 45 minutes not speaking and committing atrocious acts of violence, and it's this super popular movie. And I enjoyed the movie, but then I'm looking at it from the perspective of the male protagonist, and I'm thinking, this is desperately sad. This is a desperately disturbed young man. And where is the space for him? And this is what I see with men. They just don't have this space to talk and to connect. Yet human beings are designed to, and human beings are designed to experience and feel emotion. And we have let down men and women, but particularly men, in their journey of learning by dismissing their emotions.

SPEAKER_01: 22:47

I completely agree with that. And I find the similar things happen in our group as well. And I think, especially when you see new members coming into the circle and you know how they struggle with being vulnerable because they're not sure, because they're still ingrained from a young age that well, if I say the wrong thing, then I'm either going to be teased or banished, or wait, when's the hazing ritual start? And yeah, all of that stuff, right? So it takes a while for because we don't we haven't been modeled anything any different. And so the challenge with I think that we find with that I see with with men is just breaking that mold. And I see it with myself as well, like just getting while there's lots you we can learn from sports. There are those parts of it where yes, I love in Canada, I love hockey. Yes, I get all excited when I'm watching the game, and I'm going, Why is the guy not going in there and just crushing him in the corner on the board? Right. But then in life, that's not how we would respond to that situation, right? There's a different way to approach that. And so being around other men, I think, is really important to help us learn and relearn the model. And there is no real definition of it. And I like the work that Terry Porter does with the man box and really helping shape young men's ideas of what women are and respect for themselves. And so kudos to you for continuing to do men's work with everything that you have on your plate. I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02: 24:13

I think it's really important and I'm a bit stuck, Alan, because I think there's a much larger movement that's needed. And I have a blueprint in my mind and somewhat on paper, and I just don't know how I accomplish it by myself. I need other people to accomplish it. And I think there's an opportunity to create something that is literally a home for men where men can come and learn and be in groups and find community because what we're seeing is the opposite. Men are becoming much more lonely. Women are much better at creating and keeping relationships than men are. And then you have this generation of young men that are failing because society isn't meeting them where they're at. And they're only going to become angrier, more upset, more lonely, more unsatisfied and unfulfilled. And we I feel like society needs to meet that right now.

SPEAKER_01: 25:02

Yeah, I completely agree with that as well. I think what we're we're starting to really get into and touch on is this idea of having a strong inner circle, whether that's through a men's work or even if you're not involved in men's work, but having a strong inner circle. So basically building your tribe. And so why do you think that's so important? And how can someone who's looking for that can start to build a tribe and an inner circle?

SPEAKER_02: 25:26

Yeah, great question. Well, human beings are designed to be community animals. That's one of the reasons we were so successful, because we were better than any other animal at communicating. We developed speech. Um, through speech, we connected through stories. So it's important for us to be able to share our stories and have stories. That is how human beings connect. And if we go back ancient tribal times, the men would have gone and hunt and then they would have sat around and talked and communicated with each other. And now that's been skewed into this competition thing where we think we've got to be in competition with each other. And one of the great learnings from my life, being in competition with others never gave me fulfillment. Didn't matter what I won, it didn't give me fulfillment. The only person I want to be in competition with these days is myself. And not even in competition, I just strive to be a better version of myself. That's my challenge, that's my driver, that's what motivates me. And I've started a new sport, as I mentioned earlier, go-kart racing two, three years ago. And being able to step into this differently in cycling, there was that moment after I crashed where I realized I have to enjoy cycling for cycling's sake, and I have to enjoy the process. And I did enjoy cycling much more, and actually was more successful after I broke my shoulder than before it, which is crazy, but I was because I lent much more into the process. And this is what I work with people on, which is the process is much more important than the outcome. The outcome is the byproduct of the process, and we get hooked on competition, and then what we find in society is we believe that to win there must be losers. And I just don't believe that anymore. The winning is about what I accomplished for myself and how I feel about myself. It's not about any kind of external scoreboard. And don't get me wrong, like in sports, there is a scoreboard of we go to the Olympics, we do the track cycling of the Olympics, one person wins that event. But if I feel I shut up as the best version of myself and somebody else beat me because they were better than me, I'm going to walk away from that feeling truly fulfilled. And it's much easier in business because this there doesn't need to be winners and losers in business. There's so much opportunity, there's so much available that pretty much all of us can win and lift each other up. And we need to get rid of this notion that somebody else needs to fail for me to win. And you see this when new categories are created and companies come in with new ideas, other companies come up around them and suddenly there's a market for this thing that didn't exist before. So we see it all the time. It's just more and more available if we're willing to support each other. So I definitely come from that thought that we achieve a lot more in life by being in community. So to come back to the original question about why it is so important. Human beings are designed to be in community. And we can show that loneliness is a killer. Loneliness takes years off of your life. You're more likely to get serious illnesses and diseases if you're lonely. Human connectivity is so important. And we have to be intentional about it because our world is now not set up for it. We think it is because of social media. And hey, I've got 10,000 connections on LinkedIn. How many of them do I know? How many of them do I spend actual time with? So I've become very intentional about making sure I spend time with people. I have my own personal men's group every Wednesday morning. I was go-kutting till 10 o'clock last night. By the time I got back, I'd eaten and got to bed at 12 o'clock. I got up at 6.20 to join my personal men's group, 6.40 this morning, because that's how important it is to me. So that I have regular catch-up calls with friends, and I'm maybe the autism. I don't know, but I'm such a stickler that I they are all regimented and they are all ritualized. Every other Monday, I have two guys that I catch up with. Once a month, I have another friend that I catch up with, and I have various friends like that where we don't need to think about it. It's in our schedule and it's done. I have a group of friends here locally in Long Beach that we get together for dinner once a month. And I just have all of these different touch points and ways of being in connection with people. I have friends at the go-kart track. Me and my wife are just about to start pickleball. Part of why I want to do that is because I want to spend more time with human beings. Yes. And it's so fascinating, Alan, that when I was a cycling coach and I spent a lot of time around other human beings, I thought I didn't like human beings. And what I've discovered is that I have a limit, an energy limit for how much I can spend around people. And as long as I don't go over that, I adore and cherish my. Time with humans. So I'm just much more intentional about it now.

SPEAKER_01: 30:03

Well, that's a great learning, absolutely, when you realize when to step back and how much to lean into and really participate in that. Because I think that's also key for lots of us, right? To being, we tend to re not remember or realize how we get our energy and that juice happens. And so I like the idea of how you put some structure into your life. One of the things that one of the things that we did with my wife and I was that we found that we weren't connecting as deeply as we should. And so we set up this process where the second Friday of the month is her day to plan a date night and the fourth is my day. And the rules are is that whatever that individual person, whatever they pick, the other one has to go along with it. And it needs to be a little more than just dinner and a movie. It's just to go and explore and try some different things, really get a better understanding of each other's interests. And I can't get over how I gotta tell you how much we've learned about each other. And we've been married for 20 years now. And this is the things that you've you'll probably just taken for granted, you didn't pay attention to. And so it's great to hear that you're doing that in even a bigger, broader perspective with family and friends and others. And I think that is just that's just awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 31:18

I've realized that traveling is very important to me. And I only just recently I've known it for a while, but only just recently I've had the epiphany. I think it's because when I travel, I don't have to mask my autism in any way because nobody has any expectation of me. I mean, I mean my wife does, but she understands me pretty well. So I can just be utterly myself without worrying about being too direct or offending anybody, or my bright sneakers offending somebody. So I travel is very important to me. I love what you do there with your wife. I think me and Sarah might need to incorporate some of that if we pick these different date ideas. So we have a date every Wednesday night, just after this podcast. Now I'm going for a meal with my wife, and we have what we call a state of the union every week. And I got this from a podcast, and it was actually another well-renowned leader who used to do this with his wife and talked about how this affected his leadership. And I completely agree with him because the stability of your home life makes a huge difference. But they we have this date, and there's a structure to the date. We follow a process, so it's like the business of the relationship. Is there any things we need to do? Is there any chores we need to get sorted going through that process? Then there's what are we looking forward to? What things do we need to do? Then there's an appreciation section. We've got to find three to five things that we want to appreciate, appreciate each other for that week. And then the last bit is one or two gripes or things that we would like to discuss with each other. They're a little bit more charged. And it's been wonderful for our relationship. I think it's so helpful. And because you start with the appreciation, by the time you get to the gripes, you're really connected with each other. And I find that you come to them with a lot more empathy.

SPEAKER_01: 33:02

Love that. Love that. Love that. Okay. So we've already talked about well, there's lot there's lots of similarities and parallels with high performance athletes and high performance CEOs and that, but you must have also come across maybe there's something that does hold them back. And so, how do you help men, high-performing men who are struggling with this one thing that may be holding them back? And is there something there that you can tell us about?

SPEAKER_02: 33:28

Yeah, we've already touched on it. Hope I'm saying that correctly transgenically. And that is the people that I work with are very often the smartest or most capable person in the room. And how does that hold them back, you might ask? It holds them back because they can't trust others to do it. So they have to do it themselves. So I'm usually called in when your company is between 20 and 50 people, maybe as much as 100, depending on the business. And you, the owner, founder, and CEO, is the person holding the company back because you can't empower other people to do it. So you rescue them, you take it off them, you do it better than them. And what you constantly create is this feeling of they are lesser than you. And you're teaching them that they're lesser than you, because you keep going, don't worry, I'll do that, I'll take that off your or you know what, I'll just you're not doing it right. Let me do it properly. And it holds scaling companies back and it really gets in the way. So my job is to help that person come to terms with themselves, their need for things to be perfect, their need for things to be done their way. And typically the deeper-seated issue and the thing getting in a way is their inability to trust themselves to be okay. And it's their inability to live through the discomfort of somebody else not doing it how they would do it. And while we're on that, I might as well touch on parenting because it's this is what I see often with parents as well, and something we work a lot on in my men's group is you want to be a really good parent, you have to be able to be comfortable with your discomfort of the discomfort that your child is going through. And that sounds a bit complicated, so I'll just explain it again. You are going to watch your child go through discomfort. That discomfort is typically good for them because without it, they don't develop resistance, sorry, resilience, and they don't develop the ability to be able to do things and to think for themselves. If you rescue them, you are actually doing them a massive disservice. Exactly the same in leadership. The more we rescue somebody, the more we actually hold them back. We need to be comfortable with we're going to watch some failure and we're going to watch people in discomfort going, I don't know how to do this, and I'm stuck, and we're going to go, it's okay, you figure it out. Or why don't you try this and give them little nudges and suggestions, but we don't take it from them. And I was listening to a podcast last night. I really like the work of Adam Grant, psych organizational psychologist. And he has some great guests, and I can't remember the guest name, I'm embarrassed to say, but she's just written a book on parenting. And one of the worst things a parent can do is take things off of their child, do it for them, instead of allowing them to do it and to learn and to grow and to develop that resilience and that trust in themselves that they will be okay even when things aren't going well.

SPEAKER_01: 36:20

Yeah, what a great way to put that and really bring business, the idea that of doing that in business to really hit home. Excuse the pun, that to help us to be better fathers and leaders. Really before we wrap up.

SPEAKER_02: 36:33

It's all the same, Alan, right? Sorry, mate. It's all the same. I often say to my leaders, and I don't want this to sound patronizing because it's not meant like this, see your team like children, and not from the point of view that they're stupid and capable, but from the point of view it's your job to develop and grow them, just like it's your job to do that for your children and support them. And like I said about my athletes, I believe true great leadership is you are supporting somebody to take your job. That's what you should want for them. Oh, and if they don't take your job, they go and do whatever it is they want somewhere else. But you are enabling them to be the absolute best version of themselves because your company will benefit from that while they're with you. And if they go on to something else, all they're ever going to do is talk about what an amazing leader you are and tell everybody that they meet that you should go and work with this guy because he's incredible, or you should go and work with this woman because she's incredible. It's just a fantastic advert for your business, too.

SPEAKER_01: 37:30

Completely agree. I was just thinking about a program I was developing for five people that report to me right now. And as I look at a transition through my career, is to prepare them for they may it if any of them are interested in sitting in my chair. Whether they're actually going to do that or not, it wasn't the point of the program. The point of the program is to develop them and help shape them so that they can be ready regardless of what ends up, the ultimate outcome comes for them. And I think that's just so important. And I think what you're just dub dovetails and what you were just saying, and really leading and developing people, whether that's through high performance individuals or somebody brand new into an organization, just given that that playing field, that structure that allows them to grow and to and evolve as humans.

SPEAKER_02: 38:38

Only you can do it. Nobody can do it for you. There are many men's groups out there. Anyone's very welcome to reach out to me and have a conversation with me. Doesn't mean you have to work with me. I'll happily talk to you about my experiences and give you any advice I can about what is going to help you get to where you want to get to. The first part is that recognition, Alan, of I'm not happy. And I have two types of clients. So I have the high-performing founder, and then I have the middle-aged man who has it all and is not happy. And he can't figure out why he's not happy. I write a post about the American dream that I'm going to release next week. And it's because we've been sold this dream of if you are successful, I've seen financially successful, have a big house and cute kids, you've won. But that doesn't bring fulfillment. That's just an achievement. Fulfillment is something very different. So I work with people and figuring out once they've got that, what's my fulfillment? Once they've got a million dollars, a billion dollars, what's my fulfillment? So I think what's one great piece of it's not about you. I think if you can just keep remembering everything that is happening in the world that you are taking personal offense to and getting frustrated about is absolutely not about you. It's typically about the other person. Life becomes a lot easier because you have more empathy. So you look at the other person. I wonder what's going on for them why they're giving me bad service today or they cut me off in their car. And it allows you to be a lot less stressed and a lot more thoughtful. And when we don't take things personally, we don't end up fighting the world. And I see a lot of men fighting the world, like taking personal upfront about things that are just not about them. So I think that's a great one to take away. If you can trust everybody's doing the best they can with the skill set they have, might be an undeveloped skill set, but they're doing the best they can with it. And you can truly believe that. And it's not about you. It's much easier to have empathy and have a far less stressful life.

SPEAKER_01: 40:37

Absolutely. I just want to say thank you for spending time with us today and sharing your wisdom on leadership, emotional mastery, and what it really means to lead with integrity. And so your journey from elite athletics to executive coaching has really given us some powerful models for us to show up better fully as men and as leaders and as fathers. And so if anybody's interested in participating in your programs and getting a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_02: 41:02

Thank you, Alan. I make it super simple. So I'm Lee Povy on everything. My websites, LeePovy.com, LeePovy on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I'm most active on LinkedIn. Go to my website, sign up for my newsletter. I am doing my best to share anything I can every week that has some kind of impact that is so important to me. I am looking to provide the mentorship for men and women, and I like working with women just as much as men, that I didn't receive as a young man. And that's how I'm healing that part of myself is I am out there hoping that I can provide a path for other people to not have to go through what I went through.

SPEAKER_01: 41:44

I love that. So I'm going to make sure today, in the show notes for today's episode, that everywhere that you're found on social media and on the internet, that people get an opportunity to find you. And as we get ready to close today, I also want to throw a challenge to our listeners today. And are you leading from belief or are you leading from fear? And so if you're ready to lead your life and your family and your mission with greater clarity and conviction, then join me and take our free integrity challenge. Just go to members.net and start your journey today. And let's get after it. With that, thank you so much. Lee, once again, really appreciated having you on the show.

SPEAKER_02: 42:17

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 42:18

It's been wonderful, and thank you for listening to the Revolutionary Man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny? To become more the man you are destined to be? Join the Brotherhood that is The Awakened Man at theawakendman.net and start forging a new destiny today.