I remember the feeling of falling in love with code.

Here was a universe where everything made sense, where input reliably created predictable output, where I could impose order on chaos with a few elegantly written commands. 

I fell head over heels with this kind of beautiful order!

Something clicked as I watched binary numbers transform into computation—zeros and ones becoming text on a screen, creating a world I could manipulate with perfect precision. 

It was literally intoxicating. 

What I didn't realize then was how this seduction of control would shape not just my career, but my approach to everything in life—especially the messiest parts of being human.

This is the story of how control propelled me to technical excellence, only to emerge as the silent saboteur of my own success.

The Seduction of Control

You see, as technologists, we're trained to value control. We debug until the error disappears. We track down anomalies until systems perform exactly as specified. We look for problems, we fix problems. We find deep satisfaction in making the unpredictable predictable. Our education and careers reward this problem-solving mindset.

That's precisely why I was drawn to computer science in the first place. I told myself and others that "I didn't like people." What I realize now is that what I really meant was that I didn't like what I couldn't control—the unpredictability of human emotion, the messiness of relationships, the vulnerability of connection. 

People were confusing to me; code was clear.

Between 17 and 21, I built a life around my technical abilities. At 19, I was an intern at Hewlett-Packard, receiving glowing reviews about my technical contributions. There was just one piece of feedback that puzzled me: "not a team player." I could get things done on my own, but collaboration? That required navigating emotions and relationships—territory where my debugging skills failed me.

Outside of work, I had constructed what appeared to be a mature life. I got married at 19, partly to escape an emotionally suffocating family situation. I appeared put-together and responsible. An actual, grown-up adult! But the true identity beneath that carefully controlled exterior was an emotional child—a deeply sensitive and empathetic person who had learned to bury her tender qualities to survive.

I was “mature” in a warped way—intellectually developed but emotionally stunted. I could articulate complex technical concepts but couldn’t express a single feeling — even if it were tattooed on my skin. I could solve complicated coding challenges but was clueless about the simplest emotional dynamics.

The Cost of Misplaced Control

It should come as no surprise then at 25 my carefully constructed emotional façade collapsed like a house of cards. I unleashed an emotional tempest that blew my first marriage apart, leaving me wondering how I’d gotten into such a destructive situation. I immediately started therapy, and what was revealed is something that, so far, I’ve never heard about from anyone else. 

As I began to express years of suppressed emotions, my body started speaking to me. Red, itchy welts appeared on the most sensitive parts of my body—inner elbows, behind knees—as if my emotions were literally erupting through my skin. My therapist reassured me that this was a physical manifestation of what happens when we try to control our emotional lives too tightly—eventually, something has to give.

At first, I was skeptical. My technical mind needed to know the biological “how it works” behind this. How could emotion manifest as physical symptoms? Impossible, I thought.

Yet, the welts would flare during sessions as feelings surfaced, then subside in the process of expressing them. An immediate biological feedback loop I couldn’t ignore. It was a visceral lesson: emotions playing out as energy in motion in real time. I experienced how when we dam up emotions, the pressure only builds until something breaks—relationships, health, or both.

I committed then to letting my feelings flow, recognizing that emotional suppression was taking a physical toll. But old habits die hard. Even as I began developing better emotional awareness, I found new ways to maintain control, like making sure no one was uncomfortable, especially me. I developed a superiority complex about my personal growth: I already have my “shit together” — why is everyone else lagging so far behind? I became masterful at blaming others without examining my own contributions to difficult situations.

My technical mindset had stayed intact. I was actually now trying to debug people—including myself—treating emotions like errors to be fixed rather than information that needed to move. This problem-solving approach to emotions is where many technically-minded people get stuck. We think: 

• Isn’t being emotional a problem? 
• Isn't being triggered something that shouldn't happen? 
• Doesn’t it make me less intelligent? Less in control? Less…perfect?

What I didn’t realize was that emotions aren’t bugs to be fixed—they’re perfectly beautiful features of being human.

The issue was never the storm of feelings, but how desperately I tried to control the weather.

The Proper Place of Control

Before going further, let me clarify something crucial: control itself isn’t a problem. In many situations, control isn’t just useful—it’s essential.

Technical systems require rigorous controls. Financial processes need safeguards. Regulatory compliance depends on careful oversight. Construction projects demand precise specifications. Medical procedures rely on exacting protocols.

The true issue is misplaced control—applying the technical mindset of control to situations where it creates harm rather than value.

Let me explain:

When we impose technical-style control on human systems—on relationships, creativity, innovation, and personal growth—we create what I’ve come to recognize as “expensive mediocrity.” We get outcomes that check all the right boxes but miss the breakthrough potential that emerges from human connection and emotional intelligence.

The confusion happens when we fail to distinguish between:

• Where control creates value: Technical systems, regulatory compliance, legal requirements, physical safety, basic behavioral boundaries
• Where control destroys value: Human potential, creative processes, emotional expression, relationship dynamics, innovative thinking

This distinction isn’t always obvious, especially to those of us trained in technical disciplines. We’ve been rewarded throughout our education and careers for controlling variables, eliminating unpredictability, and ensuring consistent outcomes. Applying this same approach to everything feels natural — even necessary to the highly rational mind.

But as beautifully rational as these metaphors are, human emotions aren’t code. Teams aren’t databases. Organizations aren’t operating systems. And people aren’t machines. 

When we try to control these complex living systems the way we control technical ones, we create superficial compliance at the cost of deeper engagement.

Trading Misplaced Control for Connection

My own journey from control to connection wasn’t linear. I met my second husband, also a computer scientist, and we initially reinforced each other’s rational approaches. We were technically savvy but emotionally limited—quick to make others wrong, convinced of our rightness, skilled at debate rather than dialogue.

Our conflicts became like code reviews of each other’s thinking, searching for logical flaws rather than understanding — a predictable pattern of disagree, defend, debate, determine who’s right. As much as we tried to shift out of “I’m right and you’re wrong,” we couldn’t break the cycle even as we could see it was happening. It was exhausting and ultimately futile. This power dynamic is a predictable quality of what I call “reactive rational either/or thinking” — which defaults into hierarchy—where one person ends up “on top,” a supposed winner—when in reality, no one truly wins — especially in a marriage. Neither of us felt heard, nothing truly changed, and the same issues kept resurfacing in different forms like a bad dream.

Thankfully, an early breakthrough happened when I was 28 and participated in a Human Interaction Lab as part of my Organization Development studies at the National Training Labs. This was essentially an immersive workshop where participants observe and experience group dynamics in real time—like a living laboratory for understanding human behavior. Over five intensive days, I learned about all kinds of group dynamics and especially psychological projection—how we unconsciously attribute to others the qualities we can't accept in ourselves. I began to see how my projections and need to control fueled the power dynamic. 

I thought I’d mastered this concept immediately. “Aha!” I thought confidently. “Now I can spot projection every time!” What I didn’t realize yet was that my very certainty was evidence I’d missed the point—that the unconscious parts of ourselves that we can’t acknowledge are, by definition, invisible to us. 

Slowly, painfully, I began to see how my need for control was limiting not just my relationships but my leadership. I’d developed big picture thinking and systems awareness, but I was still approaching everything through a primarily rational lens. I was still trying to control outcomes more than creating conditions for latent human capabilities to emerge like emotions and intuition.

A pivotal moment came when I hired a coach to help me become “more intuitive.” I had been working on becoming more intuitive and emotionally intelligent for several years, but it just didn’t feel real to me.  After a few conversations I asked her about my progress in being more intuitive. She laughed and said, “You’re one of the most intuitive people I know—you just think you're thinking!” Ironically, I had to think long and hard about what she was saying. (It’s still funny to me to this day.)

The realization that I was already intuitive stunned me. What I had labeled as “rational analysis” was often intuition wearing a disguise acceptable to my technical mind. I wasn't lacking intuition; I was lacking permission to acknowledge and trust it.

Self-Regulation: The Alternative to Controlling Others

My biggest breakthroughs came when I started working with a counselor who held me 100% responsible for everything in my experience. At first, this felt harsh—wasn’t I already owning my projections as I had learned in the HI lab? Wasn’t I sometimes the victim of others’ actions? But gradually, I understood the profound freedom in this perspective.

Taking full responsibility for my emotions didn’t mean others couldn’t hurt me. It meant I had agency in how I related to my own emotions and responded to others. It meant shifting from trying to control others to regulating myself.

My husband and I began developing new ways of navigating emotional terrain together. Instead of debating who was right, we slowly learned to share our experiences–with more and more honesty and less and less blame. We brought lightness and humor to tense moments previously filled with judgment. We would notice when we were thinking “this shouldn’t be happening” and we gradually began to welcome difficulties as opportunities to learn.

Most importantly, we learned to stay connected through discomfort. The need to run away and avoid was real, I’ll be honest. With practice, we built the capacity to be with tension instead of trying to control it. Yes, it got messy! But we learned to stay the course together, trusting that something valuable would emerge if we remained present with each other.

When I felt triggered, instead of blaming him for causing my feelings, I’d take responsibility for my reaction while still honestly expressing my experience. For example, “When you said X, I felt Y. I’m noticing I’m feeling defensive right now." Other times I would say, “I’m going to share this and I know you might feel like I’m judging you and I’m not feeling judgment.”

Setting boundaries became different than controlling outcomes. “I need a moment before continuing this conversation” is different from “You need to stop talking that way.” The former respects both people’s autonomy; the latter attempts to control another’s behavior. We’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way — but we keep practicing. 

We learned to hold our desires lightly, viewing our wants like seeds tossed into the space between us. We stayed curious about how these seeds might take root, transform, or even die to make room for something neither of us could have imagined. We started getting really good at being radically honest with each other! All of these personal lessons eventually became fodder for my holistic coaching and consulting work. 

This kind of holistic leadership approach to communication requires emotionally intelligent capabilities that go beyond basic awareness like “you make me mad.” It requires developing the capacity to:

• Recognize your reactive emotions so you can unhook from them
• Take responsibility for your reactions so you can clean up the blame
• Stay present with discomfort without controlling behavior and outcomes
• Express needs and wants clearly without demanding specific responses
• Remain open to influence without abandoning what is precious to you

Generative Conversations: Beyond Control

What emerged from this approach was something I now call “generative conversations”—interactions that create possibilities neither person could have accessed alone.

When we stay present with each other through emotional discomfort, without trying to control the outcome or fix each other’s feelings, we open a portal to creativity that doesn’t exist in controlled environments. We each bring parts of the truth, and together, we access more of the whole. Emotions then become the energy that fuels innovation when we allow it to flow freely between us.

In technical terms, it's like moving from a deterministic algorithm to an emergent neural network. The output moves beyond just the sum of our individual inputs—it becomes something qualitatively different, something that couldn't have been predicted by examining each contribution separately.

This creativity mirrors what happens in natural systems. A garden isn’t controlled; it’s cultivated. You can’t force a seed to grow, but you can create conditions that support its development. You can work with natural cycles rather than imposing arbitrary timelines. You can respond to what emerges rather than rigidly following a predetermined plan. I describe this as surfing the waves of your project plan.

Speaking of natural systems, let’s take a look at the season of winter—that fallow time of reflection and rest—is as essential as summer's visible growth. The darkness of soil is where new life begins, not in the visible light of achievement. Death and decomposition feed new growth in endless cycles.

I see these natural patterns play out with my clients when they learn to have generative conversations. What begins as a potential conflict becomes the soil from which innovative solutions grow. People become generous with each other—with time, compassion, patience, challenge, curiosity, resources—and unexpected shifts occur that couldn't have been forced or controlled.

I’ve seen this play out countless times in real organizations facing real challenges. Take this leadership team I worked with who were stuck in blame disguised as confusion. With lots of pressure for progress needing to be made, the CEO was pushing for transformational change, yet executives were defensive—they believed they had been doing all they could. But through practicing authentic leadership and generative conversation, they began sharing constraints and concerns without using them as excuses. 

What emerged was a willingness to receive help, to let go of the judgment that said “I’ve been doing this wrong,” and open to exploring what else might be possible. This conscious leadership approach created collaborative ownership of outcomes with remarkable learning across the organization–and targets being hit within a month.

The Business Case for Integrated Intelligence

I’ll say it again: technical brilliance without emotional intelligence creates expensive mediocrity — solutions that work on paper but fail in practice, strategies that make rational sense but don't engage human motivation, processes that control behavior but kill innovation and creativity. 

This is the fundamental difference between transactional leadership and transformational leadership—one enforces compliance while the other inspires motivation, commitment, engagement, and empowerment.

We see this difference playing out dramatically in what I call the "tech-bro rational crucible"—the phenomenon of technically brilliant leaders who believe their rational intelligence qualifies them to solve complex human problems without engaging emotional wisdom.

When these leaders cut funding to national parks or slash social programs in the name of efficiency, they’re applying technical control thinking to living systems. They’re debugging the code without understanding the context. They’re optimizing for measurable metrics while destroying immeasurable value.

The result isn’t true efficiency but expensive mediocrity—short-term cost savings that create long-term damage to natural and social ecosystems, just as surely as poor agricultural practices create short-term yields at the cost of soil health and species diversity.

Organizations led by technically brilliant but emotionally unintelligent leaders face similar outcomes:

• High turnover as people either flee controlling environments or quietly quit
• Compliance without commitment, leading to minimal rather than optimal effort
• Innovation limited to fragmented improvements rather than breakthrough optimization
• Decision-making bottlenecks as leaders fail to create shared understanding
• Burnout as natural human needs for autonomy, mastery, and meaning go unmet

In contrast, conscious leaders who practice empathic leadership by integrating rational and emotional intelligence create environments where:

• Multiple perspectives contribute to more robust solutions and resilient environments
• People bring their whole selves to work, accessing more of their talent and potential
• Conflicts become sources of creative tension rather than destructive force
• Change happens more organically with less resistance and struggle
• Innovation emerges from unexpected connections between ideas

Especially in an increasingly AI-supercharged world where technical solutions are becoming commoditized more and more quickly, your competitive advantage will increasingly lie in the uniquely human capacity for emotional wisdom, creative connection, and emergent thinking.

The Journey Continues

My journey from control to connection isn't complete. I still get triggered. I still find myself slipping into debate rather than dialogue. I still sometimes treat emotions as problems to solve rather than information to integrate and aliveness to celebrate.

But I’ve learned to recognize these patterns more quickly. I’ve developed practices that help me shift from control to curiosity, from certainty to openness. And I’ve discovered that my influence actually increases when I release pushy control—a paradox that still surprises my wee little technical mind.

The most powerful shift has been from seeing rationality and emotion as opponents to recognizing them as essential partners. My logical savvy hasn’t diminished; it’s been amplified by emotional intelligence that helps me apply it more wisely. I now have access to a big-ass pipeline of holistic intelligence that keeps me fulfilled, productive, and continually learning! 

For leaders trained in technical disciplines, this integration doesn't happen overnight. Personal development coaching and leadership development coaching can accelerate this growth, but it ultimately requires intentional practice, humble learning, and often, the courage to unlearn patterns that have been rewarded throughout your career. The journey from task-oriented leadership to purpose-driven leadership demands both discipline and vulnerability.

But the alternative — continuing to apply technical control to human systems — guarantees expensive mediocrity at best and destructive damage at worst.

The question isn’t whether you need emotional intelligence alongside your technical brilliance. The question is, will you develop it intentionally? — or — continue paying the hidden costs of its absence?

So where in your life or leadership might you be applying technical patterns of control to human systems that need a different approach? What might become possible if you blended your rational brilliance and emotional wisdom? How might you move beyond expensive mediocrity toward the breakthrough potential that emerges when your multiple intelligences work together?

The root cause of most of the challenges you're encountering might not be in your technical systems at all, but in your approach to the humans who interact with them—including yourself. 

True self-leadership, our foundation to holistic intelligence, begins when you recognize that the most important system to understand isn’t on your screen—it’s the one looking back at you in the mirror.

The next step in your journey

If you recognize yourself in this journey — brilliant at solving technical problems but sensing there's a deeper potential waiting to be unlocked — I invite you to take the next step.

At IAMX, we guide growth-stage executives through a comprehensive transformation that goes far beyond traditional coaching or consulting. It’s a profound metamorphosis that begins with you and ripples throughout your entire organization.

We'll help you evolve from an overloaded executive trapped in endless firefighting to a poised leader who can access both rational brilliance and emotional wisdom. Through this journey, you'll unlock your organization's full collective intelligence with an ease you may have previously thought impossible.

The path begins with 1-on-1 executive coaching where you will define what we call your “True Self” — that centered place where control is properly applied and your multiple intelligences work in harmony. From there, we'll guide you through transforming your team's culture (through group coaching) from stuck in silos to strategically smart, and ultimately to building systems where your entire team moves in the same direction.

Break the cycle of expensive mediocrity and you’ll build organizations that don't break down in the face of change but instead adapt like the thriving, self-organizing ecosystems they're meant to be.

Your journey from technical brilliance to transformational leadership is waiting for you. Let's start with a conversation that you can schedule here

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