Confident and wrong

Welcome to the "The Catalyst," Kevin Noble's weekly newsletter about becoming a more effective leader.

🗒️ Past newsletters can be found online here.

❤️ If you enjoy this newsletter please forward it to a friend!

😎 If you're that cool friend, sign up for the newsletter here

☕ Loved this? Say thanks with a coffee and keep this ad-free.

Quick Note

When I started this newsletter in 2023 I wasn’t sure what I would eventually do with it. I just knew I wanted to get started and would figure it out later.

One of the things I’ve learned is how closely it is connected to my business. I’ll be talking to a client and we’ll cover a topic I’ve written about. I’ll send them the link, and maybe they sign up for the newsletter.

A few parts of this are weird.
- The newsletters are hosted on my newsletter platform URL, kit.com.
- For a client to read the deep dive they were interested in, they have to pass through the intro, quote, and three things.
- The intro is timely and sits next to the deep dive that’s more timeless.
- The client gets an email from kevinnoble.xyz although they know me from group18.co.

I’ve been noodling on this collection of challenges and I’m now ready to make a change.

Going forward I’ll send this newsletter from kevin@catalyst.group18.co. I’m going to split the deep dive out by itself, and then have the intro and other sections in another feed. I’ll host the deep dive on my website, so when I share it, the URLs will point there. The intro section will be email only (not hosted online).

The path from here to there isn’t fully planned out yet, so this is just a heads up. I’ll switch the sending email next week, but won’t make the other changes without giving you a heads up in advance. I’ll let you know what I’m doing so you can choose what you may do in response (you may choose not to receive the intro, or not receive the deep dive).

Relatedly, I launched a new Group 18 website this month!

​https://group18.co/​

The prior one was so bad! 🤣 Visually and structurally it was a mess. Worse, it didn’t really represent what we do. The business has changed so much, but I didn’t keep the website up to date.

I built the new site myself with Claude Code in a couple hours. In advance of that, I chose a font, adjusted the logo, selected new colors - but most importantly, got more clear on what we’re doing, who we’re selling to, and what the distribution channel is.

The pipeline to update it is really smooth. I make changes via Claude Code, and they’re pushed to a code repository. The code repo is connected to my host. The time from idea to updated website is measured in minutes.

For example, my sister gave me feedback on the site last week, and a few minutes later, I pushed an edit. We also recently closed a new client. I grabbed the logo, told Claude, and boom - it’s on the website.

Six months ago I was debating paying someone $4000 to give me a “real” business website. I'm glad I waited. It felt good to save money, get a good website, and to have ownership over such an easy updating pipeline.

I won’t bore you with all the other things I’ve built with Claude Cowork and Claude Code, but it’s been really fun. I've essentially switched away from ChatGPT. Besides the actual model/system capabilities, there are two things I significantly prefer about Claude: its concision and its push back.

ChatGPT responses have gotten really long! I ask it one thing and get a two page response. I’ve stated a preference for concision in my responses, but it doesn’t care. Claude gives me the "right" response length just about every time; short when it needs to be, long when it needs to be.

Also, I try to ignore ChatGPT’s sycophantic language, but Claude gives me more confidence that it's really thinking about what I'm saying. It actually pushes back on my ideas and tells me not to do something. I love productive conflict.

Have you been playing around with new AI tools? What are you building?

Kevin

PS - Remember to look for this newsletter to come from kevin@catalyst.group18.co starting in two weeks!

A Quote

“ Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you. — Anthony De Mello in "Awareness"

(Enjoy this 7️⃣ minute read)

Deep Dive on Presence and Perspective Shifts

I had a moment last week where I realized I was solving the wrong problem.

I was coaching a founder through a difficult people situation. One of his team members was struggling - snarky in meetings, resistant to change, sending frustrated emails after hours. On paper, it looked like a performance problem and a culture/values problem. I built my assessment around that frame.

As a leader you’ve probably been in one of these people escalation situations. Meetings are held. Emails are exchanged. Slack messages are sent. It can be tense all around.

Now that I’m on the other side of the situation, I recognized something I’ve been contemplating for a while. We talk about leadership concepts like they’re individual tools you pull out one at a time. But real life is much messier. Situations are dynamic. They’re layered. The leader has a tool belt, and the job is to know which tool to use, how long to use it, and even when to put one down.

The Three Things

I’ve come to believe that navigating complex leadership moments requires three things working together.

The first is a library. Frameworks, mental models, concepts - the stuff I write about in this newsletter every week. Seek first to understand. Drama triangle. Emotional intelligence. You build this library through reading, through conversation, through curiosity. It gives you lenses to look through.

The second is experience. Pattern recognition. Intuition. The ability to sense that something is wrong before you can name it. You can’t shortcut this. It comes from years of paying attention to how people behave and how situations unfold.

The third - and this is one that gets overlooked - is presence. Being fully in the room, attuned to what’s happening, with enough stillness to notice when the situation is asking you to shift. You can have a massive library of frameworks and decades of experience, but if you’re not present - if you’re rehearsing your next point, or locked into the diagnosis you walked in with - you’ll miss the signal that tells you to pick up a different lens.

All three were in play last week. Let me walk you through it.

The Lenses

Lens 1: Pattern recognition and quick diagnostics.
I noticed warning signs during a group call one day. Tone. Word choice. Energy that didn’t match the room. Snark. I’ve seen this behavior maybe hundreds of times in my career, so I messaged the founder with alarm bells. I didn’t know what was wrong exactly, but I knew we had to address this head on before it spread. And then that night I was copied on an email that confirmed what I’d sensed. The person was frustrated and was letting the founder and I know. Seeing patterns is almost like being able to predict the future.

Lens 2: Seek first to understand.
We got into a live call the next day. The founder opened the meeting by defending a recent decision. Understandable instinct - he felt criticized and wanted to justify himself. But justifying yourself to someone who feels unheard only confirms they’re unheard. So, I used a different technique: I reflected back to the person the themes I heard from her email and asked if I’d missed anything. I was doing two things: 1) Literally making sure I understood her perspective, and 2) Modeling for all parties what seeking to understand looked like in practice.

Lens 3: Don’t have a logical response to an emotional discussion.
Partway through the live conversation the emotional undertones became really clear to me, and I knew the conversation had shifted. We were no longer having a logical discussion. We were having an emotional one. The founder’s instinct was to keep explaining his rationale - because that’s what logical people do when they think someone just needs more information (I do this all the time!). But it turns out the logical debate was just on the surface, and this was really about feelings. Feeling stressed, or scared, or unheard, or unsupported, or abandoned. You can’t rationalize someone out of a position they came to emotionally. I messaged the founder to shift to feelings. Demonstrate care and active listening.

Lens 4: The right seat.
One part of the conversation hit me like a key clicking into a lock.

Deep into the conversation, I asked her what role she wanted to play in solving the problems being discussed. I could tell there were unstated assumptions on either side and wanted to be direct. Her response was clear: she wanted to do the core work of her craft. That’s what she was good at. That’s what she loved.

Nobody else reacted. The founder kept talking. She kept talking. But I was like: that’s the whole thing!

My original diagnosis was evaluating her as a senior leader - someone who should be shaping operations, influencing how people work, building systems. That’s the work the founder wanted to be done. No wonder frustration had built up; there was no agreement on the role. This was the problem.

You may know that my very first newsletter was about judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Here was the fish, being told she wasn't very good at climbing. Of course she was frustrated. Of course he was confused.

My original diagnosis wasn’t wrong. The snarky comments were real. The drama was real. The lack of ownership was real. But the cause of all that behavior looks completely different once you realize she’d been placed in a role she never agreed to, didn’t want, and wasn’t wired for. The behavior wasn’t a character flaw. It was a stress response to being in the wrong seat!

If I hadn’t been present - if I hadn’t been actively listening, and stayed locked into my original diagnosis - I would have walked out confident and wrong. My one question and her clear response changed everything.

Lens 5: Reflection and Systems Thinking.
You can get through the meeting, but if you don’t look for and solve root causes, you’ll find yourself here again. Every system is made of people, and all elements should be analyzed.

On the people side, everyone involved needs to ask: how am I contributing to the conditions I’m frustrated by? What role did I play? What could I have done this differently? This is how people grow and become more capable.

​Good people working in a bad system create bad outcomes. What policies, procedures, systems - or lack thereof - got us here? What adjustments should be made to reduce the chances that this error will reoccur?

The Gift

The night after the meeting I got a message from the team member that included something surprising.

During our conversation she shared an particular expectation. It’s been her experience across different jobs and companies and expected it to be that way here. I understood her perspective, but I also knew that there were other ways to look at it that may be more helpful. I shared my experience and resulting way of looking at things, which was almost the opposite of hers.

I didn’t push it. I didn’t say “you should think about it differently.” I didn’t make it an argument to win. I just put a different perspective on the table and left it there for her to examine if she wanted to. Not zero-sum. Not “I’m right and you need to change your mind.” Just: here’s a lens I look through. You might find it useful.

And to her credit - she picked it up.

In her email message, she told me she’d realized she had never been in a role where she was invited to help shape how a company operates. She was saying she’d never been given the opportunity to think any other way. She recognized this as a welcome shift - something she wanted to lean into, even though it was unfamiliar.

That’s a person examining their own assumptions in real time. Not because someone forced her, but because someone created enough safety for her to look at her own perspective and go, “huh, maybe there’s something here I haven’t considered.”

This was not compliance. This was not surrender. This was genuine curiosity about a lens she’s never looked through. I simply offered a perspective without requiring her to give up theirs.

This was awesome - I’m seriously going to remember this experience for a long time. The email was such a punctuation point. When I’ve seen people gain new perspectives it tends to happen really gradually. This felt like a hammer strike.

One of my favorite interview questions is: “Tell me about a time you thought your boss was an idiot, but it turned out you had something to learn.”

I ask because I’m testing for exactly this capacity. Can you be open to the possibility that you’re missing something? Can you let an experience teach you, even when your emotions are telling you to fight?

Everyone and every experience is an ally in your learning. The question is whether you’re humble enough - like this person was - to listen.

Call to Action

This week, pick one conversation - at work or at home - and try to notice which tool you’re reaching for while you’re reaching for it. Not after. During.

Are you in diagnostic mode? Coaching mode? Problem-solving mode? Then pay attention to the signals that tell you it’s time to switch: you’re being logical and they’re being emotional. You’re evaluating performance and they’re asking for clarity. You’re solving the current problem and the situation is asking you to prevent the next one.

Those signals are everywhere. The question is whether you have the presence to notice them - and the willingness to put one tool down and pick up another, even when the first one feels right.

I’d love to hear what you find. Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz - or test out kevin@catalyst.group18.co!

Kevin