Welcome to Friday 411, issue #132. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll develop three practices to help you live with the tension of the already and not-yet.
1 Insight
Leadership demands an uncomfortable stretch—one foot planted in the realities of today, the other reaching toward the future you’re creating.
The Leadership Stretch
I (Garland) hate stretching.
I hated it when I played high-school soccer and the coach made us stretch before every game. Now, in my late forties, I still hate it. Stretching hurts. It feels awkward to contort your body in ways it doesn’t naturally move.
But my doctor insists it’s one of the most important things I can do to stay limber as I age.
The same is true in leadership. You need to stretch—even though it’s uncomfortable and sometimes painful.
The stretch leaders need most is the future stretch: one foot firmly planted in the challenges and realities of today, while the other reaches toward the future you’re creating.
When you engage that stretch, you feel pulled in multiple, uncomfortable directions.
Your grounded foot has to deal with meetings, budgets, deadlines, and people who need your attention. You can’t ignore what’s happening today unless you want to make decisions detached from reality.
At the same time, your forward-reaching foot pulls you toward tomorrow—the clear, preferred, and desired future you can see but haven’t yet built. The further you reach, the harder the stretch becomes.
That’s one of the great challenges of leadership: You live in the tension of the already and the not yet.
If you live only in the “already,” you never progress because you can’t see beyond the day’s demands.
If you live only in the “not yet,” you drift into idealism detached from reality.
Living the Stretch
Over the last few months, Dorothy and I have been living that tension firsthand.
We’ve had one foot planted in the realities of our current business—serving larger companies that want to unleash leaders at every level.
At the same time, we’ve been stretching toward the future: finishing our book, Unleashed Leadership, while also laying the foundation for The Unleashed Community, a new leadership ecosystem for mid- to senior-level leaders who feel overextended and isolated. (It launches in January 2026.)
Writing one book would have been enough. Building a community at the same time? That stretched us in every direction.
It was exhilarating—turning two visions into reality—but also overwhelming. We love creating, yet we’re not naturally gifted at managing dozens of moving pieces. During one team meeting, as we reviewed every project and next action, I felt a migraine creeping in. That’s my signal: too many moving parts, not enough focus.
I kept thinking about a lesson from The 4 Disciplines of Execution: When you pursue 11 or more goals at once, you have only a 5 percent chance of accomplishing any one of them.
We were only chasing two goals—the book and the Community—but it often felt like 200.
We’ve lived with that stretch for six months, but we’ve endured it because leaders like you deserve the outcome.
Why We Endured the Stretch
For seven years, most of our work has been with large organizations—companies with 750 employees or more. Some had tens of thousands. We’ve helped them develop leaders at every level.
But we realized two major gaps in leadership development—gaps many of you face:
1. Small-company leaders lack access.
They don’t have Learning & Development teams. They have to piece together their own growth from podcasts, books, and conferences—usually before or after their “real” jobs.
2. Big-company leaders lack immediacy.
They have resources, but they move slowly. It can take months for HR or L&D to build training while leaders face challenges that need answers today.
Both groups face the same trap: helplessness that turns into hopelessness.
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- Helplessness happens when you need new skills or training but don’t know where to find them.
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- Hopelessness sets in when you feel stuck—when you stop believing there’s a way forward or that your actions will even matter.
When leaders feel helpless or hopeless, their teams eventually do too.
That’s why, while writing Unleashed Leadership, we also started creating The Unleashed Community. We wanted to offer both access and immediacy—to give leaders the help they need when they need it.
We can’t wait to share Unleashed Leadership with you on October 24 and to open The Unleashed Community in January 2026.
How to Make the Stretch Less Painful
Even though I still hate stretching, I’ve learned that the more I do it, the less it hurts. The same is true with leadership.
The more you practice the stretch between today’s demands and tomorrow’s vision, the stronger—and more flexible—you become.
Here are three practices to help you live in the tension between the urgent and the ultimate:
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- Celebrate Daily Wins
Each day, identify three wins—actions or outcomes that moved you closer to the future you want to create. They don’t have to be big: a meaningful conversation, a decision made, a moment of alignment.
I write down these wins in a journal every day so that I can see daily momentum. Naming wins reminds you that even in chaos, you’re making progress.
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- Schedule “Future Time.”
Block time each week to think about the future. No emails. No meetings. Just vision. Reconnect with what matters most and decide the next step to take. If you don’t plan it, the urgent will always devour the important.
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- Share the Stretch.
Help your team understand the leadership stretch—they feel it too. Let them see both the current reality and the preferred future. People handle uncertainty better when they see how their work today builds the future tomorrow.
1 Action
Before you finish today, identify your three wins—the actions or outcomes that moved you closer to the future. Write them down. Celebrate them. Then take another step tomorrow.
Because the stretch never fully disappears—but it does make you stronger.