We Asked 42 Top Executives: How Did Therapy Make You a Better CEO?

As a licensed attorney, MBA in HR, and ICF-certified executive coach who’s scaled high-turnover teams into Great Places to Work, I’ve coached countless CEOs on delegation traps like mine.

Therapy helped me confront my “empowerment without accountability” issue—empowering team members on projects but skipping clear metrics, echoing the parent who tells kids to brush teeth without checking.

For example, early in Strategy People Culture, I delegated leadership training design but saw inconsistent delivery because I avoided follow-through accountability.

Addressing this boosted my CEO effectiveness by decentralizing decisions, like prepping for recessions by trusting empowered leaders with frontline feedback—freeing me to focus on vision and growth while cutting bottlenecks.

Andrew Botwin, President & CEO, EEO Training

I used to review every client-facing document before it left the building. Proposals, reports, important emails everything passed through me. I called it quality control. My therapist called it something else.

She asked what I thought would happen if something went out with a mistake I hadn’t caught. When I answered honestly, it wasn’t about quality. It was about blame. I was terrified that if something failed without my fingerprints on it, people would see me as careless or incompetent. What looked like high standards was actually a fear of being exposed.

That realisation stung because the pattern wasn’t new. I’d been the kid who checked homework three times, the employee who stayed late polishing things nobody noticed. Running a company just gave me a bigger stage and a better excuse.

The fix wasn’t forcing myself to let go overnight. My therapist suggested starting small pick one person whose work I trusted and stop reviewing their output for two weeks. The anxiety was real. I caught myself scanning sent emails afterward, looking for errors that would justify pulling control back. Nothing went wrong. Her work was consistently good and sometimes better than mine because she was closer to the client.

Over three months I handed off review responsibilities across the team, keeping my involvement only for genuinely high-stakes situations. I got back about twelve hours a week. But the bigger shift was watching my team change. People who had been passively waiting for my approval started owning their decisions. Quality didn’t drop in several cases it improved because the motivation shifted from meeting my standards to taking pride in their own work.

The lesson that stuck is that control problems are rarely about the work. They’re about what the work represents emotionally. No delegation framework would have changed my behaviour until I understood what the habit was actually protecting me from.

Raj Baruah, Co-Founder, VoiceAIWrapper

The therapy I underwent assisted me in resolving a control concern, namely my perception of being responsible as a function of maintaining close involvement. As a practical application, I was too often involved in reviewing too much detail too quickly and signalled to others through my actions that I had a greater faith in my own standards than the way in which we as a team would normally do things. This has leads to dependencies quickly, with people continuing to wait for my approval on decisions versus taking ownership for them.

What changed for me was learning how to delegate the decision-making process with clearer boundaries defined, rather than hovering over the process as it was executed. I began to use a very simple framework for this process. This framework included (1) defining the outcome, (2) placing limitations on the decision-making authority, (3) designating the individual with the ultimate authority to make the decision, and (4) providing established criteria for when the decision should be reviewed. This made me much more effective as a CEO and provided me with additional time to work on strategy, increased the speed of team response due the removal of bottlenecks, and allowed the leaders that reported to me an opportunity to develop true ownership for their decisions. My view of this issue is not that I was giving up control, but rather, moving that control into the systems that the team will be able to use to make their decisions. I hope this adds to your understanding of the topic.

Abhishek Pareek, Founder & Director, Coders.dev

One control issue I had to work through was the tendency to stay too close to execution, even when the team was capable. Therapy helped me recognize that this often came from a need for certainty rather than a lack of trust. By stepping back and defining outcomes instead of methods, I created more space for ownership within the team. It improved decision speed and reduced bottlenecks without sacrificing quality. The key shift was understanding that effective delegation is about clarity and trust, not constant oversight.

Aditya Nagpal, Founder & CEO, Wisemonk

When I sought therapy, one significant issue was my problematic utilization of control when it came to delegation. I would always remain close to the decision making and execution side because I believed that if I did not remain involved that nothing would get done the right way.

By working through this issue, I was able to effectively separate responsibility from control. I was able to provide clarity on my expectations to others and allow others to own work that I was previously too involved in. This was extremely beneficial to my effectiveness as a CEO because I could spend more time on strategic issues, hiring issues, and ultimately the few large decisions that are the sole responsibility of the CEO to make. This also aided in the growth of the team as there were increased levels of trust, autonomy and opportunities for leadership provided to team members.

Nick Mikhalenkov, SEO Manager, Nine Peaks Media

I fired someone three times before I actually fired them. That was the problem therapy helped me see.

When I was scaling my fulfillment company toward that $10M exit, I had this warehouse manager who was costing us maybe $15,000 a month in operational inefficiencies. Missed shipments. Poor communication with clients. The works. I knew he needed to go. But every time I’d get close to pulling the trigger, I’d convince myself to give him another chance, create another improvement plan, have another “serious conversation.” My therapist finally asked me a question that changed everything: “What are you really afraid of?”

Turns out I was terrified of being seen as the bad guy. I’d built this identity around being the founder who cared, who gave people opportunities, who wasn’t like those corporate jerks who just cut people loose. So I was sacrificing the entire team’s success and my company’s performance to protect my own self-image. That warehouse manager’s failures were creating stress for twenty other employees who were doing their jobs right. I wasn’t being compassionate by keeping him. I was being selfish.

The breakthrough was realizing that real delegation means trusting your judgment enough to change course when someone isn’t working out. You can’t delegate effectively if you’re too scared to undo a bad delegation decision. After that session, I let him go within a week. Promoted someone from within who turned that department around in sixty days.

Now at Fulfill.com, I’m ruthlessly clear about expectations and equally quick to make changes when things aren’t working. My team actually respects that more than the false kindness of keeping someone in a role they’re failing at. The best thing you can delegate is accountability itself, but only if you’re willing to enforce it. Most CEO control issues aren’t about holding on too tight. They’re about being too scared to let go of the wrong people.

Joe Spisak, CEO, Fulfill.com

One issue therapy helped me work through was holding onto decisions longer than necessary because I wanted to ensure they were “done right.”

At the time, it felt like maintaining quality and control. In reality, it was creating a bottleneck. Too many decisions were flowing through me, which slowed execution and limited the team’s ability to operate independently.

The shift was learning to delegate not just tasks, but ownership of outcomes. That means being clear on the objective and constraints, but not controlling every step of how it’s done.

Addressing this had a direct impact on effectiveness. The team moved faster, decisions were made closer to where the information actually exists, and I could focus more on higher-leverage problems. The key realization was that control doesn’t scale, but clarity and ownership do.

Louis Ducruet, Founder & CEO, Eprezto

The biggest control issue therapy helped me work through was linking visibility with leadership. I felt calmer when I could see every part of the work so I stayed too close to decisions that should belong to the team. Over time I saw that this habit was not helping anyone grow. Therapy helped me see that constant visibility can turn into control and limit others.

Once I understood this I started to lead in a different way. I focus on sharing the reason behind goals and setting clear limits for the team. Then I let people decide how to move forward and own their work. This change helped the team move faster and with more confidence while I focus on direction and long term growth.

Christopher Pappas, Founder, eLearning Industry

A common challenge in business development is the difficulty in delegating tasks due to perfectionism and a lack of trust in others abilities. This often results in micromanagement, hindering team growth and productivity. Therapeutic interventions can help leaders understand their reluctance to delegate, enabling them to build trust in their team. By improving delegation skills, leaders can create a collaborative environment that encourages team contributions.

Mohammed Kamal, Business Development Manager, Olavivo

The issue therapy helped me see clearly was that my delegation problem was not actually about trust in other people’s competence. It was about my relationship with uncertainty and the way control functioned as an anxiety management strategy rather than a leadership strategy.

That distinction matters enormously because if the problem is trusting others you solve it by building better systems, clearer communication and evidence of capability over time. But if the problem is your own anxiety wearing the costume of quality standards you can build all the systems in the world and still find reasons why this particular decision needs your involvement right now.

What therapy surfaced was a pattern I had been completely blind to. The things I held onto most tightly were almost never the highest stakes decisions. They were the decisions where the outcome was most visible and therefore where being wrong would be most attributable to me specifically. I was optimizing unconsciously for personal risk reduction rather than organizational effectiveness and calling it high standards.

The moment that reframe landed I could see how much it was costing the people around me. Every time I reclaimed a decision I had nominally delegated I was communicating that their judgment had a ceiling and that ceiling was determined by my anxiety rather than their actual capability. The most talented people on the team were receiving that message loudest because they were being given the most responsibility and having it quietly retrieved most often.

The practice that changed my behavior was a simple question I started asking myself before getting involved in something I had already delegated. Am I adding value here or am I managing my own discomfort. The honesty required to answer that question accurately was the therapeutic work. The question itself just made the work operational in daily decisions.

Effectiveness improved because the people around me started making better decisions faster once they understood that delegation was real rather than provisional. And paradoxically my anxiety decreased rather than increased because I had fewer things demanding my attention and the things that genuinely required my involvement got more of my actual capacity.

Sovic Chakrabarti, Director, Icy Tales

One thing I had to work through was holding onto too much because I felt responsible for outcomes, especially with clinical advice and product decisions. In the early days, I reviewed everything, from customer responses to content, which slowed the team down and created a bottleneck. Through that process, I realised it wasn’t about control, it was about clarity. Once I defined clear standards and trusted the team to work within them, things shifted quickly. My view is that over-involvement often comes from unclear expectations, not capability. After stepping back, decisions were made faster, the team took more ownership, and I had more space to focus on bigger priorities like partnerships and education. The practical takeaway is to document what “good” looks like, then let go of the how. That’s what allows a business to scale without everything depending on you.

Rebecca Rushton, Founder, Blister Prevention

Running a generator company for 30+ years means I’ve personally touched almost every part of the business—installations, service calls, sales. That hands-on background made delegation feel dangerous to me. If I wasn’t directly involved, I assumed something would go wrong.

The real shift came when I stopped treating every technician job site like it needed my eyes on it. We’ve installed thousands of generators across Michigan, and I finally had to accept that the team I built was capable of handling commercial projects—hospitals, businesses—without me hovering. Therapy helped me see that my need to control outcomes was actually slowing the team down and stunting their growth.

Once I pulled back, my lead technicians started owning their work differently. Quality didn’t drop—it got more consistent because they had real accountability. That freed me to focus on expanding our service offerings and building out our second location in Alpena.

The practical takeaway: if you’ve hired well and trained well, your interference is the bottleneck. Trust the system you built.

Eric Osburn, Owner, Osburn Services

Since founding Twin Metals in 2007, I struggled with the “if you want it done right, do it yourself” mindset. Therapy helped me realize that my obsession with precision was actually a bottleneck that hindered my team’s development.

Addressing this control issue taught me to trust my crew’s expertise rather than micromanaging every shingle and nail. This shift was vital during a massive 15,800 sq. ft. church project where I had to step back and rely on my team’s efficiency to solve a major water damage crisis.

By delegating the hands-on execution of our standing seam metal and asphalt systems, I can now focus on high-level strategy and sustainable growth. This transition ensures that every project meets our high standards for durability without me being the single point of failure.

Tom Gordon, Owner, Twin Metals Roofing

I’ve been building Netsurit since 1995, scaled it across three continents, and managed hundreds of people — so control issues weren’t optional therapy material, they were survival requirements.

The biggest thing I worked through was letting go of cultural stewardship. I believed that if I wasn’t personally involved in how people were developed, the culture would slip. Therapy helped me see that holding that tightly was actually the thing killing the culture — because it signaled to my leaders that I didn’t trust them.

The practical shift was building the Dreams Program — a structured way for employees to set and achieve personal goals — and then handing it to my people to run. Once I gave that away properly, it scaled in ways I never could have managed alone. It became something the team owned, not something they tolerated.

The CEO lesson: systems and values can carry your intent further than your presence ever will. If you’ve hired right and built the right framework, your job is to protect the culture, not perform it.

Orrin Klopper, CEO, Netsurit

I’ve built websites for 20+ years and ran technical/analytical roles at JPMorgan Chase before starting J&A Digital Solutions with my wife Ashley, so my default mode was “if I don’t touch it, it won’t be right.” Therapy helped me see one control issue clearly: I was using “quality” as a reason to keep decisions in my head instead of making them a shared system.

The specific problem was lead-handling and client comms. I’d rewrite follow-up messages, personally review every draft page, and jump into small client requests because I didn’t want our “5 Lead Guarantee” tied to anything imperfect.

Addressing it meant moving control from me to process: clear definitions of a “qualified lead,” response-time expectations (we only work with responsive, high-integrity clients), and checklists for Google Business Profile + on-page SEO + review generation using our GetReviews4.Us app. Now the team executes the same standard every time, without me being the traffic cop.

The CEO win wasn’t “less work,” it was better focus. I’m more effective because I’m building and refining the lead gen system and setting expectations up front with contractors (HVAC/electric/plumbing, cleaners, etc.), instead of being the bottleneck inside delivery.

Josh Preece, Owner, J&A Digital Solutions

Running an agency means you’re constantly pulled between being the creative visionary and the operational safety net. My issue wasn’t hovering on job sites — it was rewriting client deliverables myself instead of coaching my team to get it right the first time.

Therapy helped me see I was confusing involvement with value. I’d jump into a franchisee’s Meta campaign build or rewrite ad copy because it felt faster — but I was actually signaling to my team that their work wasn’t trusted. That quietly killed their ownership mentality.

The shift that changed everything: I stopped being the editor and started being the standard-setter. I built out creative briefs, campaign frameworks, and brand guidelines that my team could execute against independently. When we structured our franchise Meta campaigns with clear centralized controls — creative libraries, audience guidelines, reporting dashboards — my team could run complex multi-location builds without me in every decision.

That’s when I could actually do CEO work: building partnerships, speaking at franchise conferences, developing new service offerings. Delegation only works when you’ve built the system your team delegates into.

Rusty Rich, President, Latitude Park

Therapy helped me spot a “control through pixel-perfection” issue: I’d keep tweaking UI details late into a project because it felt like my job was to personally prevent every possible user confusion. As a Webflow designer/dev founder, that turned into me acting like the final gate for everything—design, UX, build, even copy polish.

On Hopstack, the real challenge wasn’t just modernizing the site without dropping SEO; it was coordinating a smooth CMS transfer + performance-first build. I started delegating with clear guardrails instead of hovering: defined acceptance criteria (speed, responsive behavior, CMS integrity), and let my team own execution inside those rails.

On Asia Deal Hub’s dashboard/design system work, I used to “own” every component decision; therapy pushed me to shift from “I decide” to “the system decides.” Once the design system rules (typography, buttons, inputs, shadows) were documented, my job became reviewing consistency and user flow, not re-litigating styles.

That made me a better CEO because I could spend my attention where it actually compounds: stakeholder alignment, defining user journeys, and setting constraints that prevent rework. Paradoxically, letting go of micro-control improved quality because the team had fewer moving targets and faster feedback loops.

Divyansh Agarwal, Founder, Webyansh

As CEO and co-founder of Lifebit, with 15 years building genomics platforms across CRG and two startups, I’ve scaled secure federated data analysis for biopharma and governments—demanding total control over high-stakes decisions like TRE security.

Therapy helped me release my grip on micromanaging data access protocols, where I insisted on personally vetting every encryption and RBAC setup, fearing breaches in federated environments.

One shift was delegating airlock export controls to our certified teams, as in Genomics England’s model, letting admins handle approvals while I focused on strategy.

This boosted my effectiveness by accelerating multi-site collaborations, like Nordic TRE federations, turning months of oversight into weeks of innovation and compliant scaling.

Maria Chatzou Dunford, CEO & Founder, Lifebit

I came up the hard way in restaurants—FOH, ops, concept, daily management—so my default as an owner was “if I don’t touch it, it won’t be right.” Therapy helped me see my control issue was checking and correcting in real time, especially during rushes, instead of letting people run their stations.

The concrete shift was delegating “game-day execution” at The Break Downtown (right across from the Delta Center) to a designated floor lead and bar lead, and giving them clear boundaries: what counts as a comp, when to 86 an item, and when to pull me in. I stopped hovering over seating, TV/game requests, and ticket pacing and only stepped in for true escalations.

That made me more effective as a CEO because I could finally focus on higher-leverage work—training the leads, tightening opening/closing checklists, and improving consistency in a high-volume sports-viewing environment. It also reduced the whiplash for guests and staff because decisions stopped getting reversed mid-shift.

Ryan Oliver, Owner, The Break Downtown

I run client strategy and operations at a healthcare marketing agency, so I live at the intersection of high-stakes decisions and fast-moving execution. Therapy surfaced something uncomfortable: I was mentally carrying every client account as if only my judgment could protect it.

The specific issue wasn’t micromanaging tasks — it was withholding context. I’d brief my team on what to do but not why, which meant every edge case came back to me. On the Redemption Psychiatry engagement, when campaign decisions needed to move fast across website, AI acquisition, and full-funnel tracking simultaneously, that bottleneck nearly cost us momentum in the first 30 days.

Therapy helped me see that hoarding context isn’t quality control — it’s a trust deficit dressed up as standards. The fix was building shared strategic frameworks my team could own, not just follow. Once my team understood the clinical sensitivity behind the messaging decisions, not just the execution checklist, they started making judgment calls I would have made myself.

The shift changed my role. Instead of being the decision point, I became the person who builds the decision-making infrastructure. That’s where a CCO actually creates leverage.

Madeline Jack, Chief Client & Operations Officer, Blink Agency

I’m a CPO in regulated life sciences (Valkit.ai) and I’ve spent 20+ years in IT governance/software assurance, so my default control issue was “I need to be in every decision to keep us compliant.” Therapy helped me see that I was using compliance as a reason to micromanage, especially around what “good enough” looks like for GxP-ready product work.

The shift was delegating decision rights, not just tasks: I wrote a simple RACI + “guardrails” doc for product/engineering—what they can decide solo, what needs cross-functional input (QA/security), and what must come to me. Example: integrations like Jira/Azure DevOps could move fast under a checklist (audit trails, e-signatures, access control), and only exceptions or novel risk patterns escalated.

That made me more effective as a CEO-level operator because my calendar stopped being a bottleneck, and I could focus on the few things only I can do: roadmap tradeoffs, regulatory narrative (CSV/CSA/CQV), and partner alignment. Bonus: the team got faster and safer because the rules were explicit instead of living in my head.

Stephen Ferrell, Chief Product Officer, Valkit.ai

Running a company with divisions across electrical, excavation, and mechanical means you’re constantly pulled in different directions. Therapy helped me see that I was using “staying involved” as a crutch – I’d jump into project-level conversations that my team leads were fully capable of owning, which quietly signaled I didn’t trust them.

The real shift happened when we were scaling our commercial electrical division. I had to let my project managers own client communication end-to-end, even when I disagreed with their approach. Sitting on boards like Indy IEC and iTeam forced me out of the business long enough to see it actually ran fine without me narrating every decision.

What therapy surfaced was that my involvement wasn’t about quality – it was about anxiety. Once I separated those two things, delegation became a leadership tool instead of a last resort.

Clay Hamilton, President, Grounded Solutions

One control issue therapy helped me work through was my need to stay “in the middle” of every negotiation to protect the client. After 15 years at Grubb & Ellis, time at Highwoods in the Research Triangle, and another decade at Oxford Development, I’d internalized that the deal lives or dies in the details—and I was carrying that into my own firm.

Therapy helped me separate “being accountable” from “being the bottleneck.” I started delegating client-facing steps like first-draft lease language reviews, tour scheduling, and market comps to my team with clear guardrails—then I’d step in only at defined decision points (deal strategy, leverage moments, final redlines).

A concrete example in Pittsburgh: on an office relocation where the landlord’s proposal looked clean but hid expensive operating expense pass-throughs, I let my team run the document scrub and questions list. I focused on the negotiation posture and alternatives, which kept us tenant-first and faster—without me being the constant translator between every email and every call.

It made me a more effective CEO because I now spend my time where I’m uniquely useful: protecting tenants from conflicts of interest, setting negotiation strategy, and coaching clients through the big trade-offs. The team grew, clients got quicker answers, and the process got more disciplined—especially in a market where Pittsburgh tenants need every advantage at the table.

Jack Donahue, SIOR, President & Founder, Donahue Real Estate Advisors

Therapy helped me spot a control issue I hid behind “quality”: I personally gatekept client-facing language decisions, especially anything “culturally sensitive,” because I grew up in a Venezuelan context and run bilingual U.S./LatAm projects. In localization, one last-minute phrasing change can ripple through translation, terminology, and QA, so I kept my hands on too many approvals.

A concrete example: on a multilingual interpretation + content workflow for a conference-style event (simultaneous/consecutive plus supporting materials), I was the choke point for glossary calls and interpreter briefing notes. I’d tweak wording myself instead of letting my certified PM process and native linguists run, which made everything feel urgent and fragile.

The fix was delegating authority with guardrails: I formalized “decision lanes” (terminology owner, style/brand owner, compliance owner) and let my PMs and lead linguists make the call inside those lanes. If a request didn’t violate the client’s approved glossary or intent, it didn’t need me.

That improved my CEO effectiveness because I stopped being the escalation path and started being the system designer: better project predictability, calmer delivery, and more time for me to work on multilingual-content strategy and the tech stack (CAT/MT/PMS) instead of word-by-word control.

Jacqueline Rufflo, President, JR Language Translation Services

When I launched Seek & Find in 2021, I thought being hands-on with every client decision was a strength. Therapy helped me see it was actually a fear response — specifically, fear that if I let go of a decision, something would fall through the cracks and reflect poorly on me personally.

The real issue wasn’t that I didn’t trust people — it was that I hadn’t built systems they could actually operate inside. When I started onboarding clients onto Altruist, I realized I was still manually touching steps that the platform was literally designed to handle. I was creating bottlenecks and calling it diligence.

Once I stopped confusing my presence in a process with quality of a process, everything shifted. Clients got faster responses, I got more strategic thinking time, and the firm ran cleaner.

The lesson that stuck: control feels like protection but usually just means the ceiling of your business is the ceiling of your bandwidth.

Daniel Delaney, Owner, Seek & Find Financial

My control issue was “I’ll handle the hard conversations because I can keep them calm and mission-focused.” Therapy helped me see I was using that as a way to avoid giving my leaders real authority, especially when a client was upset or a deployment went sideways.

In Mobile Vision Technologies, that showed up in incident escalations—an AI alert storm, a geo-fence zone misconfigured, or a construction site wanting changes mid-stream. I’d jump in, rewrite the plan, and become the bottleneck, even though we build these systems specifically to be flexible and redeployable.

The fix was delegating ownership of outcomes, not just steps: one person owns the technical path (edge/IoT setup, camera placement, intrusion detection tuning) and another owns the client-facing response (what we’re doing, by when, and what we need from them). I stay in the loop only for high-risk calls—things like access control decisions or anything that touches liability/safety.

That made me a better CEO because I stopped being the “human router” for every problem and started building leaders who could run the playbook without me. The side benefit: clients got faster, clearer answers because the person responding wasn’t waiting for my availability.

Chris Edens, Owner, Mobile Vision Technologies

I run day-to-day operations at Zia Building Maintenance (family-owned since 1989), and therapy helped me spot a control issue: I was trying to “protect quality” by personally owning every escalation and client expectation—especially when something got missed or a space was high-stakes like a medical office. That wasn’t leadership; it was me using urgency as a reason to stay in the middle.

The fix was building systems instead of relying on my memory and personal follow-up. We tightened onboarding/SOPs and made communication a measurable deliverable: who the client contacts, response expectations, and how we confirm resolution so it doesn’t bounce back to my desk by default.

One concrete example: when a client reported recurring missed touchpoints, I stopped doing the whole “I’ll handle it” loop. I had a consistent supervisor own the site plan, document the corrective steps, and run the follow-up—my role became approving the standard and reviewing the pattern, not being the messenger.

It made me more effective because my attention shifted to improving the operation (training, consistency, accountability) instead of firefighting. Clients got faster, clearer responses, my team felt trusted and supported, and I had bandwidth for sales and long-term improvements instead of living in my inbox.

Ashley Cordova, Vice President, Zia Building Maintenance

My biggest control issue was believing I had to “hold it all together” for everyone—clients, team, even my family. That’s the same mindset I had as a functioning alcoholic accountant: look fine on the outside, manage everything via willpower, and don’t let anyone see the mess.

Therapy (CBT/ACT, plus a lot of self-honesty) helped me spot the pattern: I was using hyper-responsibility to manage my anxiety, not to lead well. In practice, it showed up as me over-owning client outcomes—rewriting staff notes, stepping into sessions I shouldn’t be in, and taking late-night calls because I didn’t trust the process to “hold” someone the way I wanted it to.

The fix was delegating the “rescue role,” not just tasks. I made our boundaries explicit: coaches own session structure and follow-up, and I only step in for pre-agreed situations (like pre-rehab support decisions or a family session where CEO-level containment is actually helpful). It forced me to tolerate discomfort and let the team do the work they’re trained for.

It made me a better CEO because I stopped being the bottleneck and started being the container: hiring/training, building services (1:1, couples/family, TSF, CBT/ACT), and protecting a culture where recovery is strength, not shame. Ironically, letting go of control made clients safer—because they got consistent support from a stable system, not an overextended founder.

Rachel Acres, Director, The Freedom Room

Big one for me was control around “how things are said” externally — I’d rewrite team emails, event briefs, even merch pack copy because I wanted the brand + sustainability message to be perfect. Therapy helped me see that perfectionism was really anxiety dressed up as standards, and it quietly trained the team to wait for me.

The fix wasn’t “delegate more,” it was delegating voice with a clear bar: I wrote a one-page messaging guardrail (what we will/won’t claim about eco, quality, turnaround) and then gave someone else final sign-off on customer-facing comms. I only stepped in for genuinely high-stakes moments (big-name clients, sensitive issues).

Example: our conference/event planning content and client checklists used to bottleneck with me; after the guardrails, the team shipped it end-to-end and I stopped being the last-mile editor. Same with corporate gifting programs — I’d obsess over the follow-up wording instead of letting the team run the survey + relationship cadence.

It made me a better CEO because I got my time back for the few things I actually need to do: product direction on the “3-step online order” experience, supplier relationships, and building a healthier culture (I’m big on things like a weekly “no meetings moment” so people can actually do deep work). And weirdly, the brand got more consistent once it wasn’t trapped in my head.

Ben Read, CEO, Mercha

Running an agency since 2009 means I’ve had to make thousands of decisions — and for too long, I thought being involved in every client deliverable was what made the work good. Therapy helped me see I was actually making decisions out of fear, not judgment.

The specific thing I worked through was approving every single website before it went to a client for review — every stage, every revision. With 1,000+ projects under our belt, that’s not sustainable. I was the bottleneck on my own company’s growth without realizing it.

The shift wasn’t “let go of quality.” It was building a clear internal QA process so the standard lived in the system, not in me. Once that existed, my project leads could move sites through review without waiting on me, and our throughput actually improved.

As a CEO, my real job is making decisions nobody else can — new ventures like Racino or B-File Systems, major client relationships, where the agency goes next. The moment I stopped treating every deliverable as a referendum on my judgment, I got my focus back for the work that actually requires me.

Blake George, Owner, BMG Media Co

Since 2005, I’ve navigated the shift from being a hands-on painter to a CEO managing high-stakes restorations like the Fairholm Mansion. Therapy helped me address “technical gatekeeping,” specifically my belief that I was the only person qualified to draft the meticulous project plans required for Newport’s historic landmarks.

I used to hover over the preparation phase, such as the hand-sanding of weathered wood at the Loeb Visitors Center, fearing the architectural integrity would be lost without my direct oversight. Addressing this allowed me to empower my team to own the craftsmanship, which was essential for scaling our specialized cabinet refinishing and soft washing divisions.

This shift improved my effectiveness by freeing me to focus on regional growth while my crews delivered the “flawless finishes” our clients expect. Trusting my lead painters to manage complex multi-step lacquer processes independently has made our operations more resilient and our customer experience more seamless.

Douglas Smyth, Owner, Smyth Painting Company

As a third-generation president who pioneered our 3D volumetric load scanning technology, I struggled with “founder’s grip” over the technical evolution of our products. Therapy helped me recognize that tying my identity to being the sole innovator was creating a bottleneck in our R&D cycle.

I had to intentionally step back and allow our engineering team to take full ownership of the 3D imaging software updates for our scanner systems. This delegation enabled our technology to be adapted for diverse global mining and agriculture environments much faster than when I was overseeing every technical detail.

Addressing this need for control improved my effectiveness by allowing me to focus on scaling our global service support and rental operations. Our nearly 60-year-old company is now more agile because our experts have the autonomy to drive the technology forward.

Matt Walz, President, Walz Scale & Scanner

With over 22 years in digital marketing and a mindset where losing is not an option, I’ve often struggled with delegating the “big picture” execution. Therapy helped me realize that my relentless pursuit of excellence was actually a control issue regarding departmental handoffs, which created a bottleneck in our process management.

I had to learn to trust the integrated systems I built rather than micromanaging the tactical implementation of every campaign. For instance, during our work for Elite Spine and Sports Physical Therapy, I deliberately stepped back from the “BE ELITE” rebranding and website design to let my team fully own the creative and psychological strategy.

This shift improved my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on high-level innovations like the transition to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and enterprise scaling. By addressing my need for control, I transformed our agency into a robust, data-driven machine that delivers results through team autonomy rather than my constant intervention.

Joseph Riviello, CEO & Founder, Zen Agency

For me it was “protecting the customer experience” by controlling every decision in the room—especially with engagement rings where emotions (and budgets) run high. Therapy helped me see that my need to be the reassuring expert was quietly turning into a control habit: I’d step in too early, answer for my team, and carry the whole appointment on my back.

I changed one thing: I stopped being the default voice in our appointment-only studio and made a deliberate handoff. The team runs the first part of the consult (intake, lifestyle questions, design direction), and I only jump in for the high-leverage moments—diamond selection with GIA details, proportion tradeoffs, or a custom design decision.

A concrete example: on custom work and trade-ins/trade-ups, I used to personally “approve” every option because I didn’t want a client to feel pressured or confused. Now the process is standardized and values-driven (ethically sourced, GIA-certified, recycled/refined metals), so my team can confidently guide without me hovering.

The CEO payoff was huge: I’m more effective where I’m actually unique—diamond geek stuff like recutting conversations, proportion nuance, and timeless design direction—while the business isn’t dependent on my constant presence to deliver that calm, personalized Washington Diamond experience.

Tom Daube, President, Washington Diamond

40 years in fitness taught me one hard lesson: I held the member feedback process hostage. Every complaint, every compliment, every suggestion — I wanted to personally filter and respond to it. No one else could possibly understand the members the way I did.

When I finally worked through that in therapy, the real issue wasn’t quality control — it was trust. I wasn’t delegating feedback management; I was hoarding it. Once I implemented Medallia as a structured system and actually trained my team to own the response process, member satisfaction improved and I stopped being the bottleneck.

The practical shift was this: I moved from being the person who handled member concerns to the person who designed the system that handles them. My staff became empowered to resolve issues in real time instead of waiting on me. That’s what freed me up to focus on growth and strategy across multiple locations.

If you’re a gym owner or any kind of operator reading this — if you’re the only one who “really gets” your customers, that’s not a strength, that’s a liability. Build the system, train your people, then get out of the way.

Pleasant Lewis, Owner, Fitness CF

Running two companies and co-founding a third meant I was constantly the bottleneck on decisions that had nothing to do with actual strategy. The control issue I had to work through was approval dependency — my team would pause real execution waiting for me to greenlight things I’d already trusted them to handle.

What therapy surfaced was that I wasn’t holding on because I doubted my team. I held on because I hadn’t clearly defined where my judgment actually added value versus where I was just adding delay. That distinction changed everything.

The concrete shift happened when we rebuilt CI Web Group’s internal structure using the Right People, Right Seats framework. Once I assigned real ownership — not just responsibility, but authority — I stopped being the decision layer on things like client onboarding sequences and campaign execution. The team stopped waiting. Clients got faster results.

The honest CEO lesson: if your team consistently checks in before acting, that’s not a team problem. That’s a systems problem you created. Fix the structure, define the ownership, then actually let go.

Jennifer Bagley, CEO, CI Web Group

I’ve spent 30+ years in social services (from Mills/Peninsula Hospital and Shelter Network to leading LifeSTEPS), and the control issue therapy helped me tackle was “emotional gatekeeping”—feeling like I had to personally hold the hardest resident stories and crisis decisions so no one else carried the weight.

In therapy I learned that carrying everything didn’t make me compassionate; it made me slower, more reactive, and it quietly trained my leaders to wait for me. We set a simple rule: I stop being the first call for urgent program decisions unless it’s a true safety/legal escalation.

A concrete shift was moving day-to-day triage for special-population services (seniors aging in place, formerly homeless residents) to a designated program lead and creating a weekly “exceptions only” review with me. That forced clarity on what decisions are principles-based vs. fear-based.

The impact on CEO effectiveness was immediate: I had more bandwidth for partnerships and policy work, while my team built confidence and consistency in how we serve residents across a large footprint. Paradoxically, releasing control made the organization feel more stable—because support wasn’t dependent on my nervous system.

Beth Southorn, Executive Director, LifeSTEPS

With 25+ years as CEO of CC&A Strategic Media—growing it from a 1999 web design boutique to a global leader in marketing psychology—therapy sharpened my leadership through better delegation.

I clung to controlling every keynote and workshop pitch personally, fearing others couldn’t weave in behavioral insights like “The Psychology of Buying Decisions.”

Therapy revealed this as perfectionism blocking scale; I delegated pitch development to my team, starting with panel discussions on sales strategies.

This unlocked my focus for game-changers like the Cuba CEO delegation and keynoting with Yahoo’s CMO, accelerating client wins and firm prosperity worldwide.

Steve Taormino, CEO, CC&A Strategic Media

With over 20 years in manufacturing operations—from plant scheduling to continuous improvement leader—and as VP at Lean Technologies, I’ve honed servant-hearted leadership through personal growth, including therapy.

Therapy helped me release my grip on micromanaging shop floor implementations, where I’d insist on overseeing every module rollout in Thrive, like safety audits or defect tracking.

A key example was guiding Assa Abloy from manual chaos to Thrive’s connected platform; stepping back let their team own goal boards and real-time dashboards, going live in days per our custom plans.

This freed me to champion customer partnerships and lean strategy, scaling Thrive for small shops to billion-dollar ops, boosting my impact through empowered frontlines rather than control.

Jamie Gyolai, Vice President, Lean Technologies

With over 25 years in global leadership, including two decades at HP, and now coaching CEOs through transitions at 4 Leaf Performance, I’ve seen control issues sabotage growth firsthand.

Therapy helped me confront my tendency to micromanage—overseeing every detail and redoing others’ work—which stemmed from a deep fear that standards would slip without my constant involvement.

One breakthrough was adopting the “1-3-1” rule from my succession work: team members bring a problem with three written solutions and pick the best one. This shifted me from fixer to coach, building their ownership.

As a result, my effectiveness soared—I focused on vision, capital, and hiring the right people, while the team executed faster with higher confidence, turning our growth plan into consistent progress without bottlenecks.

Andrew Lamb, Founder & Owner, 4 Leaf Performance

Coming from the Navy, I was wired to believe that good leadership meant being the most technically competent person in the room — and keeping my hands on every decision that touched quality or execution. When I transitioned into running Western Wholesale full-time, that habit followed me straight into the supply business.

The specific issue therapy helped me crack was perfectionism disguised as accountability. I was personally reviewing delivery logistics, pricing approvals, even customer invoices — things my team was fully capable of handling. I told myself it was about standards. Therapy helped me see it was about distrust, and that distrust was silently signaling to my team that their judgment didn’t matter.

The practical shift was letting our operations team own delivery coordination end-to-end. We serve contractors across Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming — that’s a lot of moving parts. Once I stepped back, our team started solving routing and timing problems I never would have caught because I wasn’t close enough to the daily rhythm anymore.

The CEO unlock wasn’t more free time — it was better intelligence. When your people know they own outcomes, they bring you real problems instead of waiting for permission. That’s the loop that actually makes a business sharper.

Jake Bean, President & Co-Owner, Western Wholesale Supply

Running multi-unit franchise locations across fitness and wellness brands taught me a lot about operations — but therapy helped me confront something sneakier: my need to control the client experience so tightly that I was bottlenecking my own team’s growth.

At BARKology, the experience is everything — the Paw-ndos, the curated music, the specific grooming products, the PEMF and Red Light Therapy protocols. Early on, I’d insert myself into decisions that my groomers and wellness staff were fully capable of making. I thought I was protecting the brand. Therapy helped me see I was actually signaling that I didn’t trust them.

The real shift came when I stopped controlling outcomes and started owning standards. I documented what non-negotiable looked like — product quality, how a dog is settled before pickup, how a wellness session runs — and then got out of the way. That freed me to focus on franchise growth and expansion instead of standing over someone’s shoulder during a grooming appointment.

The result was a team that felt genuinely empowered and clients who could feel that confidence in how they were served. Turns out, trust is part of the luxury experience too.

Nabilah Shamseddine, Founder & CEO, Barkology Wellness