There's a difference between knowing where your Zone of Genius is and actually being able to operate from it.
The two-circle model — your purpose overlapping with your personal definition of success — gives you the map. But the map isn't the territory. The territory is the room where someone just told you they don't like you. The territory is the retreat you're facilitating after a six-hour travel delay. The territory is the hour you don't know if the person across from you is going to open up or shut down.
I've been refining how I actually get into that zone and stay there, especially when things don't go as planned. There are three steps. They sound simple. The work is in the execution.
Step One: Decide It's Happening for You
Before I walk into any high-stakes situation — a forum retreat, a long stretch of travel, a one-on-one where I don't know what the person needs — I make an explicit choice about what the experience is.
I remind myself: I get to do this. Not I have to.
That's not a small distinction. "Have to" frames the work as obligation. "Get to" frames it as ownership. The people I'm about to work with chose me. They could have chosen anyone. They chose me, and I'm here. That's an honor, and I try to hold it as one.
The second part of the reframe: this is happening for me, not to me. If the flight is delayed. If the room is cold. If the connection through customs makes me late. I don't control any of that. What I control is the relationship I have to it. And I choose the frame that keeps me resourceful.
My coach Dr. Daniel Friedland used to watch me before big sessions and say: "Remember — it's happening for you." He'd seen what I was like when I carried the work as a burden. He'd seen what I was like when I carried it as a gift. They were not the same person in the room.
Step Two: Set an Intention, Not an Expectation
Before I walk in, I also clarify my intention for the room — not my expectation of it.
An expectation is a demand. When the room doesn't meet it, I'm in conflict. The amygdala fires. I'm reactive. I'm defending or adjusting rather than serving.
An intention is what I'm committed to bringing. I intend to create conditions where people feel safe enough to be honest. I intend to stay curious. I intend to serve whatever the room needs, not whatever I planned to deliver.
Neurologically, that shift matters. When I'm operating from expectation, I'm in my amygdala — the part of the brain that processes threat five times faster than the thinking brain. When I'm operating from intention, I'm in my prefrontal cortex — where judgment, empathy, and executive function live. You cannot facilitate well from your amygdala. You can only react.
So I stop at the door, literally, and I move from expectation to intention. What do I want to bring today? That question keeps me in my zone rather than at the mercy of the room's mood.
Step Three: Get Comfortable with Discomfort
This is the hardest one. And the most important.
I was facilitating a day-long retreat for an EO group in Texas. About halfway through, I did a temperature check. How was it going? I went around the room.
One woman said: "I don't like you."
Not the most comfortable moment of my career. But my first thought wasn't about me. It was: what's happening for her?
I said, "That makes sense. I'm not for everyone. I'd love to know what you don't like."
She said she'd come expecting a lecture. A teaching session. She hadn't expected us to do personal work, to sit with her own stucks in front of her peers. She was angry. She was scared. And she'd decided the anger was about me.
I asked her what she'd like me to do differently. I told the whole room: forget the plan if you need to — we're here to get you what you need. I opened the door. And she went quiet for a while.
Her turn came later in the afternoon. The group was watching. She said she didn't want to do it.
I said, "You don't have to. Can I ask why not?"
She started to cry.
She said she was afraid to be vulnerable. That her generation — she was in her mid-sixties — wasn't taught that it was safe. She was afraid of being judged.
I closed the space. I asked her what was going on — not what was wrong, not what she needed to fix. Just what was going on.
"Nobody loves me," she said. "That's the biggest stuck in my life."
We spent an hour and a half there. Everybody was supposed to get thirty minutes. Forget the plan.
She gave the day a zero for the first half and a ten for the second. The group — people in their twenties and thirties alongside her — came together in a way that wouldn't have been possible if I'd rescued her from that discomfort. Or mine.
Staying comfortable with discomfort — other people's and your own — is what makes it possible to be in the room for the real work. The impulse to fix, to reassure, to fill the silence is strong. But growth lives in the discomfort. If you pull someone out of it right before the breakthrough, you've taken the breakthrough from them.
The Sacrifice Nobody Talks About
Living in your Zone of Genius also requires knowing what you're willing to give up for it.
I love being on the road. I love the work. After a twelve-hour retreat, I often have more energy than I had at hour one. That's not performance — that's what living in alignment actually feels like.
But I also love my home. I love the people in it. And there was a stretch where I ran back-to-back retreats without coming home between them. I started to feel resentful on the road. Not burned out — resentful. Which was a signal.
The zone of genius model has a third element that doesn't make it into the diagram: what am I willing to sacrifice to be there? Because there's always a sacrifice. For me, the sacrifice is time away. And I've learned my limit. Five or six days. Then I need to come home and recharge. When I don't, the work suffers — not because I lose skill, but because I lose joy. And joy is the fuel.
Knowing your sacrificial ceiling isn't a weakness. It's how you make the work sustainable.
What Happens When You Get This Right
There was a perfectionist CEO I worked with — everything platinum to diamond level, nothing less than perfect. Business was thriving.
We talked for thirty minutes about all the ways life was great. Then I asked how his standards showed up in his marriage.
"Not good," he said.
His wife, he told me, felt like a complete failure as a spouse. Because she wasn't perfect.
He started to cry. He had kids who were three and five. I asked if he was perfect as a father.
Something broke open.
He'd been raised in a household where perfect was the only acceptable outcome — as a student, as an athlete, in everything. That standard had built an excellent company. It was quietly dismantling his family.
"I have to go fix this," he said.
He came up and hugged me at the end of the day. Thirty minutes before, he'd been telling me his life was great.
The real work almost never looks like what you expect. It lives underneath, waiting for a safe enough space to surface. Staying in your zone of genius is how you create that space.
If you're trying to understand where your zone of genius actually is — and what's keeping you from operating there consistently — the Growth Ceiling Audit is a place to start.
With gratitude,
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I actually get into my Zone of Genius before a high-stakes situation?
The process starts before you walk in the room. Step one: remind yourself that you get to do this — it's happening for you, not to you. That reframe moves you from obligation to ownership. Step two: set an intention, not an expectation. An intention is what you're committed to bringing; an expectation is a demand on the outcome. Neurologically, intention engages the prefrontal cortex; expectation activates the amygdala. Step three: get comfortable with discomfort — your own and other people's. You can't stay in your Zone of Genius if you're compelled to rescue every uncomfortable moment.
What's the difference between intention and expectation in leadership?
An expectation is a demand you're placing on reality. When reality doesn't comply, you end up in conflict with it — reactive, unable to think clearly. An intention is what you're committed to bringing to whatever shows up. It's portable. It travels with you into uncertainty. When you lead with intention rather than expectation, you can adapt to what's actually in the room rather than fighting to make the room match your picture.
How do I stay in my Zone of Genius when someone directly challenges me?
By depersonalizing the challenge fast and getting curious about what's behind it. When a workshop participant told me she didn't like me in front of her entire peer group, the first question I asked myself was: what's happening for her? Not what does this mean about me. That curiosity is the tool. Most challenges are about the other person's unmet need. Get curious. Stay in the question.
What does "I get to do this" mean as a leadership practice?
It's the simplest version of the "everything happens for me" reframe. Before entering any high-stakes situation, you make an explicit choice: this is happening for me, not to me, and I get to be here. That phrase interrupts the obligation mindset and replaces it with ownership. It sounds minor. The difference in what it unlocks is significant.
Why is patience the hardest part of operating in your Zone of Genius?
Because patience requires you to be comfortable with someone else's discomfort — and in Western culture, we're wired to relieve discomfort, not sit with it. Growth almost always lives in the discomfort. If you rescue someone from the moment right before their breakthrough, you've taken it from them. Staying in your Zone of Genius when someone is struggling means trusting that the discomfort is productive and letting it run its course.
