Leadership
The hidden cost of should
Inherited obligation can look like discipline from the outside. Inside, it is often the thing standing between you and a life you could actually inhabit.
A lot of capable people are not lost. They are loyal. Loyal to a version of themselves that made sense ten years ago. Loyal to a family story about what success is supposed to look like. Loyal to a company that still needs them to be the person they were when it was smaller.
Should is not always a villain. Sometimes it is how a life gets built. The cost arrives later, when the structure is still standing and the person inside it cannot breathe.
In the work, we do not smash the structure for the theatre of it. We tell the truth about which walls are load-bearing, and which ones you have been holding up with your own back.
That is story work. It is also strategy. A company, a role, a marriage, a calendar: they are all architectures. Courage without that architecture is just a mood.