ISSUE #018 | THE LEADERSHIP CONTRARIAN
Kathryn and I were invited into an upper-division university class last week to talk about marketing and leadership. We spent time talking about principles - things that don't change, even when everything around them does. In a world where people chase tactics and trends, it was refreshing to stay grounded in what actually lasts.
The conversations were good and the questions were thoughtful, but one question at the end stuck with me.
A student asked, "How have you and your wife been able to work together for 23 years?"
It's a question we've heard a lot over the years. Usually it comes with some version of, "I could never do that."
Sometimes it's said jokingly. Sometimes it's said seriously. But underneath it is almost always the same assumption - that working together as a married couple is supposed to be difficult, if not impossible.
What made the question land even more is that this week Kathryn and I are celebrating our 33rd anniversary.
Here's what I've come to believe: most people have it backwards.
They assume marriage makes business partnership harder. In our experience, when you build it right, marriage removes the escape routes that exist in ordinary partnerships. You can't avoid hard conversations indefinitely. You can't quietly disengage without it showing up somewhere else. The accountability structure that feels like pressure is actually an advantage if you're willing to use it.
The same is true in any serious partnership. A co-founder. A business partner. A leadership team that has to make hard calls together.
The reason Kathryn and I have been able to work together this long comes down to a few decisions we've made consistently over time, decisions most people either don't make, or don't make consistently enough for them to matter.
The first decision is this: We make the big decisions together
When it comes to major choices - risk, direction, investments - we decide them together. That means we both own the decision and we both carry the outcome.
There have been times when those decisions were uncomfortable, times when the path forward wasn't obvious, and one of us felt more confident than the other.
In those moments, it would have been easy for one of us to take the lead and the other to defer. That's often what happens in partnerships - one person becomes the driver, the other the passenger.
But going along is not the same as agreeing.
And when one person is driving and the other is just along for the ride, the problem shows up later. If the outcome isn't what you hoped for, the person in the passenger seat has a natural place to put that frustration.
We decided early on not to operate that way. If it's a big decision, we both engage in it. We both wrestle with it. We both agree to it.
If something doesn't work, there's no second-guessing and no blame. There's no, "this was your idea." There's no quiet resentment building because one person feels pulled into something they didn't fully choose.
When decisions aren't truly shared, the consequences aren't either. One person ends up carrying more of the emotional weight, and that imbalance compounds over time.
That's where friction starts - not in the moment, but in the months and years that follow.
You may not like the outcome, but it's hard to resent each other when you chose it together.
This is true in marriage. It's equally true with anyone you're building something with.
The second decision is this: We know our lanes and we stay in them
Over time, we've gotten very clear on each other's strengths. There are areas where Kathryn is stronger, areas where I am stronger, and areas where we're both capable.
The discipline is what happens next. We don't just recognize those strengths, we defer to them. We decide who owns what.
There are things I could do that Kathryn does better. There are things she could do that I do better. And there are plenty of things we could both do reasonably well.
But "reasonably well" isn't the goal. Clarity is.
Early on, we didn't always have that clarity. We both stepped into the same decisions, the same conversations, the same responsibilities. Not out of control, but out of habit or urgency.
An example of that would be how we managed the team. Sometimes Kathryn would ask an employee to do something when they already had an assignment from the person supervising them. She didn’t mean to confuse people, she was just working on a project and she wanted some help and that person was closest to her.
And almost every time, it created friction. Not loud conflict, just subtle tension. A sense that something was slightly off.
Two capable people stepping into the same space doesn't create strength - it creates noise.
It leads to overlap, second-guessing, and unclear accountability. And when ownership isn't clear, everyone feels responsible, and at the same time, no one really is.
That's exhausting. And it's one of the most common things I see in business partnerships and leadership teams - two capable people doing the same job with half the clarity.
We've learned it's better to have one person clearly responsible than two people partially involved.
That doesn't mean we don't communicate. It means when something is owned, it's actually owned.
Respect isn't just recognizing someone's strengths. It's trusting them enough to get out of their way.
The third decision is this: We deal with things when they're small
That's the goal, anyway. Life isn't always that clean, and we don't do it perfectly. But we don't avoid hard conversations, and we try not to let frustration sit for long.
Part of how we do that is simple, but not easy - we give each other the benefit of the doubt.
When something feels off, the first move isn't to react. It's to ask: "Did you mean this, or did you mean that?"
We've both had moments where something was said that didn't land right. The natural response is to interpret quickly and react.
But what you think someone meant is often not what they actually meant.
So we slow it down. We ask for clarity. We make sure we understand what was said, the intent behind it, and the context before deciding how to respond.
Because most frustration doesn't start with bad intent, it starts with misunderstanding.
Part of that is how I choose to see her. I love and respect Kathryn deeply. So when something feels off, my first assumption isn't that she meant something wrong, it's that I'm missing something.
That changes how I respond. It slows me down. It moves me toward understanding instead of reacting.
We also have a simple rule we've tried to live by: don't let the sun set on your anger.
In practice, that means we don't go to bed angry when something needs to be worked through. If something is off, we come back to it and deal with it, even when it would be easier to avoid it.
There have been plenty of nights where that meant staying up longer than we wanted.
Sometimes it meant deciding together that we would come back to it the next day when we weren’t exhausted, but it was a plan, not a “letting it go.”
Because "letting it go" usually just means "letting it sit." And what sits doesn't stay small.
We keep short accounts. We don't let things build into something bigger than they needed to be.
Because most relationships don't break from one big issue, they break from a thousand small ones left unresolved.
I've watched that happen in businesses too. Not from one blowup, but from a hundred small frustrations that nobody wanted to address until they couldn't be ignored anymore.
That student thought they were asking about marriage.
What they were really asking was why some partnerships last and others slowly fall apart.
The disciplines that have kept Kathryn and me working well together for 33 years aren't unique to marriage. Shared decisions. Clear lanes. Short accounts. They apply to any partnership worth building.
The question isn't whether it's possible. It's whether you're willing to operate that way.
Are you building your partnerships this way - or just hoping they hold?
If this was helpful to you, email me and let me know.
Until next time,
Keep learning.
Keep growing.
And God bless,
Michael
