The Book That Started From Being Fired

Read Time: ≠3 minutes

ACTUALLY, I was fired 2.5 times in 4 years.

The first time, I told myself it was politics. The second time, I lied to myself. The feedback was the same both times, delivered with different words but the same brutal truth: I was excellent at getting things done and dangerous to work for.

The thing that had gotten me hired, was the thing that got me fired.

The final straw was when the half firing happened. As I was looking for a new job I had a potential employer share with me feedback they had gotten from one of my previous directors.

He told my potential employer:"He's excellent at getting things done. I'm just not sure he cares about the people."

When that sentence got back to me, it changed everything. (Believe it or not, that company hired me, and changed my life.)

The Lie We've All Been Sold

For decades, the leadership development industry has been telling supervisors to level up their game and become leaders.

Management is mechanical. Leadership is noble. Managers control people. Leaders inspire them. And if you're still managing at your level… well, why haven't you evolved past that yet?

That framing has hurt a lot of supervisors and teams.

The truth is simple to understand, but harder to implement. Management and leadership are not opposing forces; they are two essential tools in the supervisor’s toolkit. The ones who succeed master when to manage and when to lead.

I call this situational fluency. And it's the skill that almost nobody is teaching.

What Situational Fluency Actually Means

Situational fluency isn't about being soft. It isn't about abandoning accountability or avoiding the hard calls.

It means having the ability to read a moment. This includes recognizing a team member’s confidence, a project in crisis, or a culture that’s quietly disengaging. In such situations, responding with the right approach is crucial. This approach should not be your default or most comfortable one; it should be the right one for the specific situation.

Sometimes that means managing: clear direction, specific expectations, direct intervention. A safety violation isn't a coaching opportunity. A missed deadline with a new hire isn't the moment for a vision conversation. There are times when management isn't just appropriate, it's the most caring thing you can do.

And sometimes that means leading: asking instead of telling, creating space for someone to struggle productively, investing in development even when it feels slower than just fixing it yourself.

The supervisors who burn out their teams, let chaos reign, or get fired like I did for being relationally bankrupt, aren't bad people. They're one-tool supervisors in a world that demands a full toolkit.

Why I Wrote This Book

I spent a decade after those firings doing the work I should have been doing earlier. Working inside organizations to develop people by learning the difference between task completion and genuine supervision.

Then in 2023, my wife encouraged me to step out, take what I had learned and done, and use it to start my own business. Courageous Coaching has since worked with organizations across multiple industries, and the pattern I see almost everywhere is the some version of the one that nearly derailed my own career.

Great executors get promoted into supervisory roles but are left without the tools for the new job.

Faced with this challenge, they either manage everything they see, leading to team disengagement, transfers, or departures. OR, they attempt to implement a few leadership concepts they’ve learned but shy away from any of the management responsibilities in fear of being disliked which ultimately allows chaos to prevail.

Lead. Manage. WIN! is the book I wish someone had handed me when I was twenty-five and convinced that task execution was the entire job.

Join Me Monday

The book launches Monday, March 23rd and my publisher is hosting a Virtual Launch Party at 12pm EDT to mark the moment.

It's short, 15 to 20 minutes, and you'll get a live introduction to the book, a chance to ask me anything in a real Q&A, and first access to purchase at a special launch-day price.

Register here

Whether or not you've been fired twice, I think you'll recognize yourself somewhere in this book.

That's the whole point.

Your Move This Week

Register for the Launch Party.

Show up Monday at 12pm EDT.

And if the book resonates, bring it to the people in your organization who are running hard on one mode, and wondering why the results aren't matching the effort.