When the river sets the pace
Robert Corwin and I walked 3.5 miles along the river in Columbus, Ohio. Robert is one of my coaching clients. There's something different about the pacing of a conversation that happens on foot, alongside water, instead of at a desk.
We started where we always start: with a reminder that health comes first. Before strategy or ambition gets discussed, the question is whether you're healthy enough to think and talk honestly. If you are, you're already ahead.
We spent time talking about how building relationships is foundational to growth. Real growth depends on understanding how other people process information and what drives their decisions.
One of the accelerators we discussed was finding shared interests rather than shared approaches. Curious people work well together when their thinking differs. Handled with respect and trust, blending different perspectives speeds up progress.
That led to a deeper conversation about openness and learning. Professional growth eventually asks people to examine the assumptions and patterns that helped them earlier in their career and no longer fit the situation they're in now. That requires more than learning new things—it asks people to be honest about how they learn.
Family also came up, the way it often does on these walks. There's a particular kind of joy in sharing personal stories with someone you trust, even the ones that carry weight. Sometimes leadership looks less like having the right answer and more like being an ear instead of a mouth.
Toward the end of the walk, we talked about scaling a business. Growth works better when the operating model reflects how the leader thinks and runs things. The anchors we landed on:
Connection. Relationships before transactions.
Context. Decisions grounded in reality.
Simplification. Clarity beats complexity.
Accountability. None of it works without follow-through.
Somewhere along the river, Robert made another point worth carrying forward. Laughter has to remain part of the process, too.
What conversation might move differently outside the office?
