When you're trying to move a business forward and the people closest to you won't budge, it is one of the hardest leadership situations there is. Especially when those people are a partner, a co-founder, or a family member.

A listener asked: how do you implement real organizational change when the people around you are resistant, including someone in your family?

Adrienne and Emily have been on both sides of this. They get into all of it.

What they cover:

• Why resistance from partners usually starts with you pulling back before they even push back
• How to build a vision compelling enough that people actually want to follow it -- and why most leaders skip this part
• The difference between announcing a change and selling a change, and why one works and the other doesn't
• If you're shrinking your ideas to make them more palatable before you even share them, you're surrounded by the wrong people
• What healthy partnership dynamics actually look like: clear ownership, immense trust, and always knowing who gets the final call
• Why 50/50 partnerships often create stalemates -- and the structural fix for it
• What to do when family is on the team and you're avoiding a necessary decision to protect the relationship
• The energy question: are the people around you raising your ceiling or quietly lowering it?
• Why your identity slowly shifts to match the average of the people you spend the most time with -- and why that should scare you into being more intentional about who's in the room
  

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Read Adrienne's article on communal misery.

⏱️ Time Chapters

00:01 Welcome and banter

13:01 Today's question: how do you implement change when partners and family members resist?

14:28 Start with the vision -- everything else is a sales pitch

16:00 Pushback vs. pullback: why resistance is often your own energy coming back at you

19:00 Emily's take: if you're constantly dimming yourself, you're in the wrong room

20:39 When you're not even excited about your own idea before you share it

22:01 You slowly become the average of the people around you

24:02 Making conscious choices about who gets to be in your orbit

25:24 What Adrienne knows about the person who asked this question -- and what she sees

26:24 Finding synergy in a partnership without abandoning who you are

28:31 How to communicate with partners before you take it to the team

30:17 Leadership has to pull the team forward -- not fight itself in front of them

31:00 What the best partnerships actually look like: ownership, trust, and a tiebreaker

31:38 Why 49/51 beats 50/50 every time

32:45 The tiebreaker board member role -- and when to bring one in

33:35 If you have decision-making authority, use it

34:26 When family is involved: get a mediator, not a miracle

35:06 The business has to come first if you want it to survive