What a Spark looks like

Sample Issue

A potter's clay-covered hands shaping a rough, unfinished bowl on a spinning wheel in a dim workshop.

Before You're Excellent Again

You don't want to change. You want to already be changed.

The version of you that figured out how to be excellent at the thing you're known for is well-defended. Years of competence, refined. A track record that quietly says: I know what I'm doing here.

Then we decide to grow. A new behavior. A different way of leading. Something the next chapter actually needs.

And the moment we try it, we feel it. Slow. Clumsy. Watched. We hear ourselves say the new thing and it sounds rehearsed, because it is. We're not good at this yet, and the part of us built on being good at things treats that as a problem to solve.

So we abandon the rep. Or we rush past it. Or we wait until we have time to do it “properly”… which never quite arrives.

What we call resistance is mostly aversion to being awkward in front of ourselves. The standard we used when we were great at the old thing is now evaluating us at the new thing… before the new thing has had one fair attempt.

Awkward isn't a sign something's wrong. It's the texture of something becoming.

A question to sit with this week

Where am I refusing to be a beginner because I've already proven I can be excellent?

The honest answer is rarely abstract. It's the conversation we've been postponing, the habit we keep meaning to start, the new way we said we'd run that meeting. Awkward, all of it. Which is the point.

The new version of you can't show up fully formed. That's not how becoming works. Welcome the awkward… and the change you've been envisioning starts showing up.

Warmly,

Thomas Stelter
coach & founder
ThomasMarc & co.

Topics you'll find in the Spark

Decision-making under uncertainty
Leading through ambiguity
The isolation of leadership
Navigating AI as a leader
Work-life integration (not balance)
The identity shift in leadership growth

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