Every mind is 
A jumbled ball
Of yarn and time 
Clasped, entrapped 
In kittens’ claws

Unraveling
At the speed of pause 
Sanding clean
Chic, sharpened jaws
And ribbons stream
But no one sees

The cage
Encased
Behind
Your face
Your brain
A lockbox

Of your most
Insane

And no one knows 
Your runs of shows  
What comes to blow
What’s been disowned 

The secret caverns
Folding taverns
Of vast emotion 
Passive moments
Remain unspoken 
But never frozen 

Cat’s cradle, 
Broken

Through land and sea
We’re traveling 
As the knot begins
Unraveling 

While the mind does its thing—
You float in between 

And the present’s 
One light bulb 
On a vast mass 
Of strings

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

And yet, I find myself writing these words. Attempting to salvage some kind of lesson from what I’ve recently learned.

This is not a story about one human. But it is a story inspired by one human.

One human who I did not know, or did not know well. I knew her in the kind of way where you think, “hey, have I been on a Zoom call with you before?”

Me not knowing her does not make her unknowable.

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Her family knew her. Her friends knew her. Her boss, her co-workers, her HR leadership. They all knew her.

Her small children knew her.

This is a reflection on business, on humans, on humans in business.

Because this is not my story to tell, I’m not focused on “facts.” Because honestly? I’m not close enough to this specific scenario to know the details.

But here is what I do know…

There are children going to sleep without a mother.

There are parents grieving their child.

There is a GoFundMe in circulation and headcount to fill. Perhaps even a cost savings!

There are Human Resources leaders who put too heavy an emphasis on “Resources” and seem to forget that “Human” comes first.

There are incompetent leaders and botched communications and scared employees and scarred loved ones.

There are medical emergencies and leaves of absences and reorgs and performance plans and role eliminations.

And somewhere in the mix, the people whose job it is to manage the company’s human resources, forgot.

“We aren’t in the business of saving lives. It’s not like we’re curing cancer.”

Sure.

But your unethical decision making has suddenly gone too far. It’s not just livelihood now, it’s actual life. Human life.

Human life is not something I am ok trading for cost cutting and efficiency.

And when you make irresponsible decisions that end in not cost cutting, but life cutting, do I even need to declare that this is not good for business?

Things have gone too far.

Human Resources leaders – I beg you – don’t neglect the “Humans” in favor only of the “Resources.”

We might not be curing cancer, but apparently lives still depend on it.

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

The universe, a pivot

Clean

Away and near away again

All clear

I fear

Don’t stray again

The strands are thick

And braided, bent

To fold, unfold

Tenfold, the hands

Their worthy roles

Abandoned bones

Mothers sleeping

Far from home

And sons defeating

Unworthy souls

But it all comes back

The fraying braid

That betrays the maid

Annoyed and afraid

Cleaning up after

The ticker tape parade

Of confetti shame

It’s rained for days

So now I’m waiting…

Anticipating…

The next wave

In my hexed braid

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

Remember that time when we all worked for a start-up, and everyone knew each other, like, on a personal level?

Ok, that didn’t happen. We didn’t all work together. But you know what I mean – that dream of rolling up your sleeves, David vs Goliath, fighting The Man and solving first world problems.

The camaraderie, the “family,” the feeling part of something bigger. Afterall, sometimes we all just want to go where everybody knows our names. You know?

So when I joined a new company several years ago as their first HR Business Partner, I was thrilled when the CEO set up time with me directly just for us to meet.

As it turns out, he did this with every single employee.

And honestly, it was amazing. We exchanged book recommendations, and discussed them the next time we met. A co-worker told me that, during his own meeting, he shared that his kids only eat noodles with butter – so the CEO sent him some bags of artisanal pasta.

This kind of behavior is what helped build the culture of that company to be what it was when I started – warm, personable, supportive, scrappy, and shockingly successful.

And then, one month after I joined, the company went public. Within the next year, it would go on to execute two acquisitions.

And the CEO was in a pickle, because he had said that he would never give up his one on one meetings with every new hire.

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Like I said last week – your employees don’t experience your leadership intent. Instead, they experience your leadership actions. And in this case, the CEO had only the best intentions in wanting to keep the culture that had brought the company so far.

But his actions threatened to create something different.

They put him at risk of missing important decisions that needed to be made, strategies that had to be shaped, and politics that required managing. They distracted his energy from the things that only the CEO could do for a company embarking on a massive phase of growth.

And please don’t get me wrong – the answer isn’t to care less about your organization or the people who keep it functional. The answer is to figure out how to care about them effectively based on where the business is today and where you see the business going tomorrow.

Because, the CEO who got that company to IPO is not the same version of him they needed once public.

And what exactly did they need?

They needed someone who could figure out how to create those same vibes – not the same exact experience – at scale.

Let’s face it – nothing feels quite like the energy of the early days, when you all sit in the conference room together, when the CEO of the company knows what your kids eat for dinner, and you crush some Bud Light before a late night game of foosball.

Often, startup Leaders and Founders must trade those moments – the blood, sweat, and tears – for strategy, security, and an employee stock purchase plan. One isn’t better, they are just different. What was once exciting, tenuous, and a roller coaster loop must become steady, predictable, and a test of endurance more so than strength.

Otherwise, we all suffer from a permanent head rush. And no one is productive under those conditions.

For my paid subscribers, I sent out another worksheet this morning to help you align yourself to the Founder your future business needs. For everyone else, here are some words of wisdom to keep in mind:

1. Your team should not be relying on you for the same support three years from now. What do you want your company to look like and what changes do you need to make to get there?

2. What are the behavioral tendencies and unintended patterns standing in your way of being the Leader your future business needs?

3. What are the themes and core values that will always be meaningful to your organization, and how does the way your team experiences these evolve with the business?

4. What is one immediate shift you can make starting today?

As Benjamin Hardy says, “Your current self is the product of your past decisions. Your future self will be the product of your present decisions.”

Buying fancy pasta might be the right move today.

But for a publicly traded company quickly onboarding new organizations, there is more pressing business than pasta.

This is what you worked for. This is where the late night fire drills culminate and the long-term success stories are separated from the failures.

Your future is waiting. No pressure or anything. But how you act today will dictate how high the rocket ship goes.

Please. Don’t get bogged down in the pasta.

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

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At the time, my Dad said that the only people who could actually enjoy living in New York City were either very young or very rich.

I was not rich.

But I was young, and I was willing to work hard, and I moved with my best friend. What could go wrong?

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In college, I’d had a successful internship at the hottest local ad agency and parlayed that into an entry level offer upon graduation (and a short summer stint in South America). I worked there for two years after college, and built up a surprising cache of well-connected ex-New Yorkers who were willing to help me navigate Madison Avenue.

I landed a job quickly. An amazing job. One I’ve talked about a few times.

This job was hard. It tested me. I worked long hours and started near the bottom of the heap, clawing my way up to middle management (my Mom was so proud!).

And I love-hated it. Or, I hate-loved it, depending on the day.

But one thing was true – I had moved to NYC as a young but poor person, and I was wild and free. I openly stated, “Now is the time in my life that I can focus on my career! I have no other responsibilities! Who needs sleep anyway!?”

So I grinded until I was dust, and I pushed the pedal all the way to the floor.

After five years, I moved jobs but kept the hustle. Ad life in New York is no joke. This is NYC culture. You are what you do.

And then, in 2014, I got married, and promptly moved across the country to Arizona, but kept my New York job. Still, I worked hard, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t all-consuming. I was… lonely?

So, I had a baby! A great solution to all predicaments.

And suddenly, I’m no longer that 20-something ingenue muttering “Let’s Party My Friends” (Lexington, Park, Madison, Fifth) on my way home at 4am. I’m not working through dinner or joking about taking a half day when I leave for a 6:30 pm yoga class.

I went from middle management to middle aged in the blink of an eye.

Because the thing is, if I’m being honest, I’m no longer at the point in my life where I’m willing to sacrifice it all for my career.

And thank heavens we got here!

Truthfully, when I became a mom, I suddenly became bad at everything. Parenting took up so much space in my head, my heart, my goddam BEING, that I just didn’t have space to do anything well.

Including parenting. Or at least it felt that way.

But there is acceptance over time in a way that I never could have understood back then. Ultimately, I left Advertising because I didn’t want to do client services anymore. Ultimately, I left HR because I didn’t want to feel like an Evil Corruptress (there are some amazing HR leaders out there, by the way).

And now where am I?

This weekend, we began Summer vacation. Yes, it’s early, Arizona is weird. And I am building a business and on my way to making money that is meaningful, but we aren’t there yet.

Yet. YET.

So that means I’m Momming it up over the Summer. And still trying to build my business in a meaningful way so I am flush with opportunities come Fall.

And this feels scary, and stressful. Partially because my children are barbarians, and partially because my children are expensive.

And yet, I find myself seeking calm, and noticing that it feels right. That there’s no point in freaking out.

I left Advertising, and I left HR, and I left my college town, and I left New York City, and leaving has been sad every time, but it always led to something more, something greater, something that ultimately has allowed me to view this situation with serenity.

Or, I mean, as much serenity as I can have with the barbarians lurking.

Written with a five year old whispering in my ear, “Mommy, you’re the greatest Mommy ever. Mommy, I don’t know what to do. Mommy, I know, I’ll do math. But you have to get paper out. Come on! Mommy, do you trust me, Mommy? You trust me, right?”

I recall bee stings and 
Diamond rings, 
From violent dreams 
Come petty things

Strung out, strung up 
On pretty strings  
Left behind 
In gritty scenes 
Fly away,
Invisible wings 

Singing, bringing 
Seething meaning 
Intriguing, demeaning  
Scars born of leaving 

Visions, instant 
Missives, distant 
Admonitions, diminished 
Dismissals, finished 

Rocks returned 
And eyesight blurred 
After foresight stirred 
These blistered burns 

But time’s demise
Binds tides to pride
In mind-made shrines 
The story’s revised 

Through fevered screams
From drama queens 
But the queen is me 
And her scheme’s
Unseen

Floating, coded
Thoughts are molded
Folded verse 
Dispersed but golden 

A honeyed sheen 
Makes psyches clean
But my life’s still sticky
Always missing 

These bygone diamonds
I’m never 
Finding

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

With persistent resistance
I wait for roadside assistance 

For I locked my keys
Inside my car
After yesterday’s battles 
Left me sweaty and scarred 

No this isn’t a metaphor 
Not a storybook setting for
A love tale’s false lessons
There’s no allegorical presence 

I’m not intellectualizing 
Inside jokes 
Or contextualizing 
A ruthless hoax

There’s no romanticizing 
My own role 
As the comedy of errors 
That is my life unfolds 

Because yesterday 
I had a rental car break 
On my way to a swim class
Kids in back my hot dates 

And by hot I mean literal
Perspiring water bottles
We live in the desert 
Black tar streets 
Never rescued

Because roadside assistance 
Employed the B team that day
Towing wrong locations 
With thirsty delays 

Hark! 

A white horse was beside us 
My friend Ally’s Honda Pilot 
A/C for my kids 
While Enterprise tried to find us 

But the assistance was missing
Some brain cells
Bad systems 
So we we locked up the car 
And said,
“Let us know when you finish.”

Husband got the kids
To book club with Ally I went 
Thinking it was all over 
My roadside patience, fast spent 

Then today, a new rental 
Guess I’ll Ford Escape my own rescue 
For the last day of school 
I’ll have wheels again,

Phew 

Pick the kids up from school 
And to ice cream we go
Messy cones, sugar rules 
And my new key feels home 

In the Escape’s front cup holder 
Doors locked in a moment 
Entry blocked and shut tight 
Mid afternoon’s smolder 

But an Angel saved me today
In this cautionary tale 
With roadside assistance 
But this time, answered prayers 

For Angel was an angel
And popped open my door
Long after my husband and children 
Had walked through the heat home 

There’s no moral to this story
There’s no meaning one should glean
But I hope to avoid roadside assistance 
As a recurring summer theme

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

Your fishbowl’s filled
With cotton balls 
Packed to the rim 
So they pad your fall
No space in between 
To hide or crawl
Still you shove more down 
Transparent halls
Until your expanse of mass
Can’t move at all 
And your breath comes fast 
With what you just can’t stall 
So you take one out 
Pin it to your wall
To create a break 
And let the space evolve
But while your back is turned 
A new force observed 
The very cotton ball 
Pierced through your wall

And now your breathing burns 
And the fishbowl yearns 

To walk it back 
With protection pads 

But the infection’s inflection 
Has no more room 

To expand 

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

What does it mean to write about something deeply personal? What is the cost of putting our life experiences online? What is the reward? Instagram vs Substack.

Then, too tired to do anything else, I went to sleep.

Actually, first I shot off the last of about a dozen late night rapid-fire Notes, chuckled at my genius, and then I went to sleep.

And now, here I sit at 12:09pm the next day. Pondering my state of mind from last night. Picking up my phone every four seconds when I don’t know what to write to refresh my email and tease my jonesing dopamine receptors.

Because I don’t think what I felt last night when I wrote down my thoughts was a deep intellectual curiosity or insight.

No.

Both myself and my dopamine receptors were searching for validation. On Substack. From strangers on the internet, while my family slept.

And I think that I thought to myself, “I bet I could get more subscribers if I shared more personal information.”

While some might say I overshare in this space – letters to the people who laid me off sort of terrified me if I’m being honest – what’s on your screen barely scratches my surface.

And hence (yes, I used “hence” non-ironically) – the bolded question becomes:

How much of myself am I willing to give away to strangers on the internet in exchange for their admiration, devotion, and maybe even $8 per month?

Right now, you get my ideas on leadership development. Honestly, these are worth more than I’m charging.

Remember, if I don’t promote my work, no one will.

You get my unhinged poetry. That feels so personal, doesn’t it?

But in reality, it’s code. In reality, it’s a tool for me to translate my own experiences into something that evokes emotion in your world without ever really divulging anything about myself.

I have written poetry that is extremely personal. It is not on Substack.

But what I’ve moved away from most recently in pursuit of building content around leadership development has been my personal essays.

So here I am, playing with the deeply personal. Teasing you with it, perhaps. Testing how far I’m willing to take it, and figuring out how to keep the seesaw balanced.

Because, for me, ultimately it comes down to the question of cost. What does it cost me to put myself out there on a personal level? My husband? My kids?

I have shared my struggles, but I don’t share true heartbreak.

I have shared my bad leadership experiences, but have never named names (you know who you are, and I know you are still reading this 👋).

I have shared the twisted corners of my mind as it sews together words that tell a story, but never really give you myself.

Why?

Because my family sleeps peacefully while I look for your validation.

My family – they get all of me. Every single fucking piece. And there’s a lot of pieces they probably wish they could trade.

They don’t exalt me.

They love me.

They don’t validate me.

They teach me.

They don’t neatly heart my late night rapid-fire Notes.

They endure my real-life rants and diatribes.

So yes. I save the truly personal for the truly personal.

And I show up here, on Substack, as my “best” self – always self deprecating, always sarcastically funny, even while insufferable – and I wait for my phone to tell me I’m alive with your validation.

And this, my friends. Perhaps this is the most personal piece I’ve ever published.

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

Once upon a time, at an advertising agency far far away (from where I live now), I had a boss who was a freaker-outer.

I, on the other hand, am a methodical and steady problem solver. And while I can’t help but be a ball of frantic energy when it comes to life’s minor inconveniences like not being able to fit the water reservoir back on the coffee maker, when something is really wrong, I promise I’m someone you want around.

Because of this, it took me a little while to realize that being a methodical and steady problem solver was not seen as productive or helpful in this specific professional scenario.

Um. What? Stay with me.

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Back then, I decided to try something different. The next time a catastrophe struck (I’m sure it didn’t take long), I freaked out. I went into full panic mode.

The outcome?

My boss calmed herself. She adopted the now vacant role of problem solver. She talked me down, and once we were both thinking clearly, we developed and executed a plan to take care of our situation.

All I had to do to succeed was pretend to lose my mind!

And while I don’t think this manager ever realized what was going on, I knew. I had figured out – relatively quickly – that I needed to crumble for her to find the strength to stand tall.

So I modified my behavior. I made myself less capable in a crisis in an attempt to make the overall team – and our fearful leader – more productive.

At this point, I was about 8 years into my professional career, and only a few years later I’d transition into the HR space. I had a knack for reading people and giving them what they needed to succeed. This would serve me well in the world of NYC advertising, and it would serve me well as an HR partner to C-Suite leaders.

But what if I hadn’t had the self-awareness to know that this was a modifier I must employ for this specific manager only.

What if I hadn’t realized that this bizarre need was not also a universal truth.

In that case, I would have learned (the hard way) that I will only succeed if I fall apart.

I have to believe that was not the message this manager was trying to send.

I do believe, however, that she lacked the basic self-awareness to understand how not only her behavior, but also the team’s perception of her behavior, impacted all of us, and more importantly, impacted the work.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken about some of the “unique” challenges company Founders and start-up Leaders face. What makes these challenges “unique,” however, isn’t their make-up. A Founder or start-up Leader might face the exact same challenges as a leader in a large company, like the one I described above.

What makes these scenarios harder for Founders and start-up Leaders is that the stakes are so much higher than that of an ad agency Account Director. In my example, I was the sole person impacted, and fortunately had enough experience to know how to manage it.

But imagine what would happen if a Founder needed their team to freak out every time something went wrong in order for them to feel calm?

It would be untenable. It would be chaotic. It would not last long.

Because your leadership style is not based on your intention. Instead, it is based on what your team experiences repeatedly.

So you best get out of your own way (and your own head), and figure out what those experiences are – before your team does it for you.

Because, simply stated, the perception gap is the distance between who you believe you are as a leader, and how your behavior is actually interpreted by your team.

You think you move quickly – your team sees no room for discussion or diversity of thought.

You think you care deeply – your team feels like nothing is ever good enough.

You think you stay involved – your team senses that you don’t trust them.

You think you solve problems with speed – your team worries they should not take initiative.

Like my well-intentioned, kind, and experienced manager of yore, most Founders don’t take the time to consider potential perception gaps, often because they are unintentional, based on patterns (not words), and create cultures through tacit reinforcement.

Said another way, employees are constantly learning what is safe, rewarded, ignored, and dangerous, and they absorb these data points whether a Founder or Leader is aware of their perception gaps or not.

And truly, the only way to effectively take control and “close the gap,” is to self-reflect, ask yourself (and your team) difficult questions, and work towards a culture of multi-directional, radically candid feedback.

Because what’s at risk are the things that actually matter to your business.

If you can only function as the hero, your team will become helpless.

If you engage only when something is wrong, your team learns they earn visibility by having problems.

If you praise speed over thoughtfulness, your team learns that quality is not a priority.

If you change your tone in a disagreement, your team learns that there’s no space for honesty.

And listen, we are all growing, every day. And the thing is, you get back what you put in.

So please, study your gaps with data and intentionality, listen to the constructive feedback from your team, your peers, your mentors.

Create a culture of transparency and feedback that rewards trust, ownership, initiative, communication, decision-making, and psychological safety.

And remember that this starts at the top. Because even if you aren’t aware of it, I can promise you your team is. And they are currently modifying their own behavior and performance to accommodate your mixed signals.

For anyone out there looking for a mirror, a way to interrupt your patterns, or a strategy to expose invisible leadership habits, I got you.

Paid Subscribers, peep my Week 4 Worksheet, intended to help you identify reinforcement patterns and external truths, recognize what people avoid bringing to you, and choose one meaningful behavior shift.

Your team is already responding to your leadership, whether intentional or not. The question is – are they responding to the leader you think you are, or are they responding to the implicit behaviors you repeat under pressure?

www.silverthreadcoaching.com

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

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There’s a spot on the apple
That’s bruised and discolored 
Not quite rotted, but grappled
With abusive past struggles 

So I cut it away
Clean slices, bright bowls
But the pieces decay
In the bin, ripe with spoils 

And to the children 
Go the nutrients 
Fresh farmed fruit for
Infinity’s feast 

While every hindrance
Plus accoutrements 
Goes to modus 
Masticating me

And in those moments I return 
To the hellish smell of trash
From festered flesh my nostrils burn 
And what was suppressed
Has now come back  

But rotted and clotted 
With time’s abandonment problem
That’s robbing, absolving me 
From crimes I’m pridefully solving, see…

With years, tears, wrong steers
Forever shifting the gears 
I can see, hear, and feel 
Where dead fruit reappears

In the garden of words 
Born from battling burns 
Lit by the Phoenix 
Rich with Kleenex 

Turns out the circle of life 
Comes from nurturing 
Meaning

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

There is a slit 
That’s at the top
Near where I sit 
High on the wall
Where the moon 
Streams in 
And the tunes
Bleed clean
And I quiet 
Vicious riots 
Delicious, higher 
Abandoned matter 
At random minutes
Light streaks inward
Through the window
Near where I linger 
Illuminating 
What’s ruminating 
Through hibernation 
Then germination 
To manifesting 
Perhaps creation 
Is just vacation
From homeostasis 
Or homogenization 
Gross colonization— 
But at night I relax
Life’s reflecting through glass
And bursts of light dance 
Over choices and chance

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

There was a body
That grew inside me
One that embodies 
The bruise of timing 

A child clings
First to his mother, though
There’s a quiet sting as  
Touch shifts farther 

Away in space and the 
Ways we engage
Inside pages reframing 
The strangeness of aging 

You’ll pull away 
From my gaze 
From my reign—
I’ll hide my pain  

But I will remain

And I pray
That you will stay 
Like yesterday, as 
Summertime plays

Nearly as big as I am
But I picture the hand 
That wrapped round my finger,
Brand-new eyes caught my glance 

And now a decade’s advanced
And you grant me the chance 

To hold you and sing you
Songs of futures

And pasts

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

Of Substack, sure, but also just of anything exciting.

Off to sleep away camp, off to college, off to the big city. Everything is just so fucking exciting.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You got engaged!? How exciting!

Your bachelorette party!? How exciting!

Of course I’ll fly out for your wedding! How exciting!

You’re having a baby!? How exciting!

Cue the curtain. End scene. No more excitement.

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43 years old, and I’ve moved across the country, across the country again, then closed the loop.

I’ve started new jobs, new careers, a new business.

I’ve made new friends, and kept the old, because once a Girl Scout, always a Girl Scout.

I’ve had babies, and didn’t understand how anything could be harder than the newborn phase.

Surprise!

Are life’s surprises over and done?

Have I seen all the magic, and now have to create my own if I’m jonesing? Do I mooch some of the magic off my kids and hope that it regenerates for them like a lizard tail caught in sticky fingers?

What happens when the lesson you’re learning is that there aren’t new lessons to be learned – only experiences to reshape and repurpose?

I’ll use Substack as an example. Yes?

You start your page. You don’t know who you are here! But then, you meet some kind souls. You read some wise words. You exchange pleasantries – heartfelt pleasantries – with total strangers.

You struggle. Is this page for me? Is this for my work? What is me? What is my work? Where do the lines blur?

Or maybe you don’t struggle. Or maybe you pretend not to struggle. Maybe you hide the struggle from yourself.

Maybe you change into goddesses, villains, and fools, or you just incessantly quote Taylor Swift.

You assign self-value based on metrics and the opinions of strangers, while the people who love you are knocking on your door and you shout at them to come back later because you are too overwhelmed.

And then.

And then, you gain self-awareness. You recognize the snag you’ve hit in the perpetual cycle, that you’ve been here before.

So you course-correct. Then you overcorrect. Then you overcorrect again in the opposite direction, and close the loop in the same way you traversed the country searching for home, only to find it one mile away from your parents in the same school district where you grew up.

And you return to yourself – your messy self.

The self that is a poet. An executive coach. A disgruntled former HR leader. A mom. A diarist. A writer?

And it comes to me – I started here on Substack as a writer.

I morphed into a poet.

I overcorrected back to a coach.

And now I am me. Or am I?

I will write what I want. I will be confused about who I am. I will show up again to face the blinking cursor in an effort to assuage said confusion, and will likely end up buried even deeper.

But listen – I’ll have fun trying.

And I’d love to continue trying – together.

So keep coming back, for more unhinged musings, in an inbox or newsfeed near you.

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

There’s a burn on my finger 
And nobody knows
I relish the danger 
And embellish the prose 

Trees don’t fall in the forest 
If no one smells smoke
But like you, I spin stories
I right what you wrote

And I make it my own
A sycophantic self-ode
Where a frantic and panicked 
Saran wrapped heart knows

Every verse hugs the chorus 
I run rivers,
Swim forests 
Flowing and growing 
And unsewing my corners

I hear songs hummed in storms 
That singe through the pores 
Of my finger 
Where it lingers 
Static scars 
Secret scores

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

A coaching mentor of mine spoke recently about a proposal he created for a scaling company looking to get their business, executive team, and Founder to the next level.

Specifically, they asked for help with the “Founder dynamic,” wanting him to rely more on his executives so they could operate cohesively in a unified partnership and scale from a small business mindset to a strategic corporate structure.

So, my mentor put together a comprehensive proposal to help them. But there was one problem with what he delivered.

It truthfully identified the Founder as a bottleneck.

While the proposal was well received, the executive team asked him to revise some of the wording so that it didn’t make it seem like the Founder was the problem.

After all, any one person (even a Founder) is rarely actually the full problem.

But Founders and Leaders – we can do better.

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I invite you to ask yourself:

Do you want your team spending their time and resources trying to figure out how to dance around you?

Or do you want them dedicating that bandwidth to, oh I don’t know, their actual jobs?

And alas – you have power here! And that power comes simply in the form of self-awareness.

Of knowing your strengths, but also knowing your shadows. And how to emerge from them into the sunlight, where your business actually has room to grow.

I began this series talking to Founders and Leaders about establishing a leadership baseline. From there, I shared resources around behavioral assessments and how to identify the ways different types of thinkers can optimize working together.

And now, I am inviting you to come to the dark side, where the shadows lurk and frustration-fueled outbursts emerge.

Why?

Because we all have it. That side of us that makes things harder, blows up conflict, or misses an important detail. But the key isn’t to run from it, no. The key is to embrace it. To identify it, see it, hold it, and release it.

To bring in experts who shine light on your dark spots, and who are, in turn, illuminated by what you have to offer.

Last week, we established your patterns as defined by the DiSC Assessment. This week, we are going to look at what happens to those patterns when you’re under pressure; when you go to your shadow self.

For context, in this essay, we are defining your “shadow self” as what happens when your strengths go too far…

Moving fast got your business up and running quickly – but now your team can’t keep up.

Having high standards enabled high quality work – but now nothing ever feels done.

Heavy collaboration resulted in sophisticated strategies – but now you feel paralyzed when you have to make difficult decisions.

Being reliable meant you could pivot and deliver what’s needed – but now your tolerance is too high to be discerning.

Essentially, when you are operating from your shadow self, you’ve lost the line between strength and corrosion. And once something is corroded it is difficult to correct.

Meaning, when you don’t manage your shadow self, your team does it for you.

They wait instead of deciding. They avoid bringing you their challenges. They stop taking ownership. Not because they are weak, but because they are learning how to work both with you and around you.

Because you are the bottleneck, and your team is too scared to tell you. Which is the exact situation my mentor stumbled into – one that the organization is now paying him to help them unwind.

And to be clear – this is not about blame. This is not about “good” Founders and Leaders or “bad” Founders and Leaders.

This is about self-awareness, empowerment, and strategic big picture thinking. Recognizing the role you play in the “problem” is grounding. It is the “you are here” point on the map.

So, instead of trying to fix everything under the sun, start here:

1. What should I stop owning?

2. Who could take this on?

3. What would make it easier to hand this off?

You don’t need to become a different leader, or act in a way that is inconsistent with your authentic self.

Instead, you need to lean into what makes you you – the good AND the bad. Then explore, with an open mind (and potentially an Executive Coach) how to maximize your strengths and mitigate them before they turn into shadows.

Founder, you are not the problem.

But unmanaged, you will become the bottleneck. We all do.

The first step is knowing it. The second step is addressing it.

Paid Subscribers – Leadership Shadows worksheet dropped today.

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.

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Yesterday my time ran out 
Today I pace through fog 
It came to play, but rhymed with doubt
‘Twas laced with shades of wrong 

So I first recrossed 
The viscous strands 
Of time embossed 
Over criss-crossed lands 

Just to find I’d lost
The voice of pause 
The choice of straws 
Severed short to long 

If I burned one down 
To the stubbiest mound 
Shroud of strums and
Testing sounds

Of what is lost 
But silently loud 
I might succumb 
To what can’t be found 

But the second beckons 
Through braids sewn strong 
And I reckon discretion
Can be imagination’s pawn

The mind is rich
The thread stays stitched 
The child of wild inspired films sits 

Alive, shrined in resin 
Forever imprisoned 
Smaller selves filled with wonder  
Embodied past treasures

©Rachel Nasatka. All rights reserved. You can’t have her she’s mine.