What Leaders and Managers Can Learn from The Untethered Soul
The defensive inner voice that narrates a piece of feedback as a personal attack is not the same thing as you, and noticing that distinction changes how you actually respond to your team.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
You are the awareness watching the defensive voice, not the voice itself
The inner voice that narrates "this feedback means I'm failing as a leader" is an object you're aware of, not a fact you're required to act from simply because it arose.
A leader responds defensively to reasonable feedback, driven by an inner narration treated as fact rather than examined as a passing reaction, damaging the trust that prompted the feedback in the first place.
The next time feedback triggers a defensive inner narration, name it explicitly as a reaction you're having, before responding to the person who gave it.
Unreleased reactions to past team conflicts resurfacing later
A past conflict that was never genuinely resolved, only suppressed to keep the team moving, tends to resurface as disproportionate tension during a later, only loosely related disagreement.
A leader reacts with outsized frustration to a minor current disagreement, driven by an unresolved reaction to an earlier, unaddressed conflict.
The next time your reaction to a small team friction feels disproportionate, ask whether it's connected to an earlier, unresolved conflict.
Staying open rather than closing off after difficult feedback
Closing off after receiving difficult feedback from your team, rather than staying open to the discomfort of hearing it, tends to keep the underlying issue unresolved and the team more guarded going forward.
The next time you receive difficult feedback, notice the urge to close off or explain it away, and instead stay open to it fully before responding.
Letting go as a daily leadership practice
Consciously releasing the day's accumulated friction, rather than carrying it forward unresolved into tomorrow's interactions with your team, is the ongoing practice this framework centers.
Holding your team to real standards and not being controlled by defensive inner narration aren't opposites — releasing the reaction is what lets you respond to actual performance issues clearly rather than personally.
Name one thing, honestly
Think of a recent piece of feedback that triggered a defensive reaction in you. What would it look like to let the reaction go rather than act from it?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
The next time you receive difficult feedback, notice the urge to close off or explain it away, and instead stay open to it fully before responding.