In this episode of the DeadThree Coaching Show, we kick off 2026 by finishing a two-part conversation about getting into uncomfortable rooms—and more importantly, what it takes to stay there, grow there, and eventually belong there.

Getting access is only the first step. High performers separate themselves by what they do after the door opens.

This episode breaks down three defining principles that will shape who rises and who stalls in 2026: bringing value before validation, letting the room raise your standards, and earning belonging through repetition. These aren’t motivational ideas—they’re execution standards.

Using real leadership moments, business examples, sports analogies, and lessons from Gary Vee, Ben Newman, James Clear–style systems thinking, and years inside software and IT organizations, this episode challenges leaders to stop seeking approval and start earning relevance.

This is a message for leaders who are done being comfortable—and ready to raise their operating system.

You’ll hear:

• Why getting in the room is easy compared to earning your place in the room
• The hard truth: high-level rooms reward value and humility—not insecurity or performance
• What “value before validation” actually looks like in leadership conversations
• Why elite rooms expose your gaps—and why that’s a gift, not a threat
• How the right rooms raise your standards without saying a word
• Why belonging is built through consistency, reliability, and follow-through
• The real difference between inspiration and transformation
• Why 2026 will separate people based on standards, not goals
• How discipline, consistency, and preparation become your identity
• Why leaders don’t rise to the level of their goals—they rise to the level of the rooms they consistently sit in

Core Principles from This Episode

• Bring value before you seek validation
• Support momentum instead of dominating conversations
• Let the room raise your standards
• Treat every room like a classroom
• Belonging is earned through repetition, not one big moment

Three Questions to Take Back to Your Team

1. When I walk into important rooms, am I focused on being impressive—or being useful?
2. What gaps are the rooms I’m in currently exposing about my preparation, discipline, or consistency?
3. If my standards matched the rooms I want to be in, what would I need to upgrade immediately?

Identify one room that represents your next level in 2026—a client, a mentor, a leadership table, or a conversation that makes you uncomfortable.

Don’t wait to feel ready. Show up prepared. Bring value. Be consistent.
Let the room raise you—and earn your place through repetition.

This year isn’t about pressure.
It’s about opportunity.

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As we close out 2025 and look straight at 2026, this episode is a line in the sand.

Growth does not happen in familiar rooms. It happens when you intentionally place yourself in environments where you’re uncomfortable, challenged, and not the most experienced voice in the room.

In this episode, recorded on a cold Missouri walk, I unpack a core principle that will define elite leaders in 2026:

You don’t grow by preparing longer. You grow by exposure.

Drawing from coaching basketball, leadership work, and real-world business environments, this conversation challenges you to rethink how—and where—you pursue growth.

This is Part One of a two-part series focused on entering rooms you don’t feel ready for and learning how those rooms shape who you become.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why staying in the same rooms guarantees stagnant growth
• The difference between humility and insecurity when stepping into elite environments
• How to treat every unfamiliar room like a classroom—not a performance
• Why exposure beats preparation every time
• How the right rooms recalibrate your standards and expose blind spots
• The leadership discipline required to stop waiting for permission

If you’re serious about making 2026 a defining year—not just another calendar flip—this episode will force you to confront a simple but uncomfortable question:
What rooms are you willing to put yourself in this year?

Because the truth is this:
If all your 2026 rooms look like your 2025 rooms, nothing changes.

Key Takeaway:

The right rooms will stretch your thinking, recalibrate your standards, and force you to close gaps you didn’t even know existed.

This episode sets the foundation.
Part Two will focus on what happens after you enter the room—how to create value, how to stop being invisible, and how to belong without losing yourself.

Three Actions to Take Today:

1. List the Rooms: Write down three rooms, environments, or conversations that make you slightly uncomfortable—and commit to pursuing access to one of them in Q1.
2. Audit Comfort: Identify one area of your life or leadership where you’ve been too comfortable. That’s your growth gap.
3. Change the Question: Stop asking “Am I ready?” and start asking “What would this room teach me?”

If this episode challenged you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
And if you’re building toward something bigger in 2026—join the conversations we’re having, connect with us, and stay close.

The room will raise you—if you’re willing to walk in.

In this episode of the DeadThree Coaching Show, we start with a Duke vs. Florida basketball moment and turn it into a leadership blueprint for IT teams and organizations. Duke guard Isaiah Evans was 0-for-7 from three. Game on the line. Instead of going away from him, Coach Jon Scheyer drew up the final play for Evans — and he buried the game-winning three.

That decision wasn’t just about X’s and O’s. It was about belief, confidence, and the energy a leader chooses to bring to their team.

We break down why your team’s confidence and energy are a reflection of you — not your slide decks, not your strategy documents, but your daily presence. Using lessons from Duke basketball, High Performance Habits, Ego Is the Enemy, and Beyond the Hammer, he walks through three non-negotiables every IT leader (and any leader) must master to build elite, high-performing teams.

You’ll hear:

• Why belief in your people matters more than their last “miss”
• How Coach Scheyer’s decision to trust an 0-for-7 shooter is the model for how we lead at work
• Why your team feels your energy long before they hear your words
• How your emotional state becomes the culture your team lives in
• The three energy standards every leader must own:
  1. Leaders go first – you are the power plant, you generate energy
  2. Emotional calibration – your internal state becomes the team’s external behavior
  3. Consistency of presence – reliability and steadiness are your competitive advantage

This episode is for leaders, coaches, and managers who are tired of reactive, low-juice teams and want to create a culture where people feel trusted, valued, and ready to take the last shot.

Three Questions to Take Back to Your Team

1. Where am I withholding belief from someone on my team because of a recent “miss”?
2. What emotional ripple do I leave behind after meetings, stand-ups, or 1:1s?
3. If my team copied my energy this week, would we be playing to win or just trying not to lose?

Call to Action

This week, pick one teammate and intentionally “draw up a play” for them — give them a visible opportunity, tell them you believe in them, and support them through the outcome. Win or lose, you’re building a standard of belief and energy that your whole organization will feel.

Join the Conversation:

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• Website: https://deadthreecoaching.com
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• Community: https://community.deadthreecoaching.com

In the last episode, we named the silent accountability crisis—those moments when projects stall, standards slip, and no one speaks up. In this follow-up conversation, we tackle the next hard question leaders are wrestling with:

Drawing from years in the IT and software space, this episode breaks down why so many leaders unintentionally suffocate initiative, why teams stop thinking for themselves, and how to shift from control to clarity, trust, and ownership. You’ll hear practical stories, from coaching athletes to leading technical teams, that show exactly what happens when leaders cling to control versus when they create space for people to own the work.

This is December’s work: reset, realign, and raise the standard without burning people out.

🔍 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why micromanagement is usually a fear problem, not a “bad boss” problem
  – Fear the job won’t get done.
  – Fear mistakes will reflect poorly on you.
  – How that fear quietly kills ownership and initiative.
• The difference between control and clarity
  – Why “overchecking” shows up when expectations are fuzzy.
  – How replacing control with clear outcomes, support, and recognition changes the game.
• How elite leaders create extreme accountability without hovering
  – Building systems and standards so strong that people want to deliver.
  – Using the 10–80–10 idea: align on outcomes, let the team execute, then refine together.
• Why your team feels like they’re “leaf blowing in a hurricane”
  – Confusion, chaos, shifting priorities, and constant noise.
  – Why people don’t fear accountability—but they do fear being judged in a storm you created.
• What people really want from work (beyond the paycheck)
  – Feeling valued, trusted, and empowered to figure out the “how.”
  – Why trust-in-action looks like: “Here’s the goal. I believe in you. Go own it.”

🧭 Three Clarity Checks for Your Team

Bring these into your leadership meeting this week:

1. Does everyone know the goal in measurable terms?
   – What does “winning” look like this week, not just this year?
2. Does every person understand how their work connects to the mission and the next key win?
   – Can they clearly explain why what they’re doing matters?
3. Does everyone know how they’ll be recognized when the team wins?
   – Are you celebrating the right things loudly and consistently?

✅ Three Actions to Take This Week

1. Trade one area of control for clarity.
   – Pick one initiative where you routinely step in and replace that behavior with a clear outcome, timeline, and definition of done—then step back.
2. Spot and stop “leaf blower in a hurricane” behavior.
   – Identify one chaotic pattern (conflicting priorities, constant change, noisy environments) and calm it so your team can actually execute.
3. Have one ownership conversation, not a compliance conversation.
   – Sit down with a high-potential team member and say:
   “Here’s what winning looks like. Here’s why it matters. I believe you can own this. How do you want to approach it?”

Join the Conversation:

👉 Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more leadership and high-performance insights.

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deadthreecoaching
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👉 Join Our Community and connect with like-minded leaders focused on growth and execution.

• Website: https://deadthreecoaching.com
• Newsletter: https://deadthreecoaching.com/newsletter
• Community: https://community.deadthreecoaching.com

How many times have you sat in a meeting, watched a project completely miss the mark, and silently thought:

No urgency. No honest ownership. Just quiet avoidance.

In this episode, we kick off December — the reset and realign month — by naming what’s really happening in so many organizations:
a silent accountability crisis.

You walk through what you’re seeing across IT, software, and beyond: overwhelmed leaders, drifting teams, eroding standards, low execution, and cultures that quietly accept “good enough” as the norm. You contrast that with how elite athletic programs operate: clear standards, direct accountability, and leaders who say, “This one is on me.”

This conversation is a call for leaders to reset their personal and team standards in the final month of 2025 and intentionally raise the bar going into 2026.

🔍 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• What the “silent accountability crisis” looks like in real teams
  – No one speaking up, no one owning the finish line, and projects that linger instead of ship.
• Why it’s not a “people problem,” but a leadership and culture problem
  – It’s rarely about laziness. It’s about cultures that stopped expecting ownership and leaders who stopped demanding it.
• How elite teams treat standards differently
  – Stories from the court and the office:
  – Why “we’re tired,” “we’re sick,” or “we just came off a holiday” can’t become permission to lower the bar.
• The difference between punishment and accountability
  – How to position accountability as care, belief, and development instead of fear and judgment.
  – Why encouragement and accountability must travel together.
• The real cost of letting things slide
  – Execution stalls.
  – High performers burn out doing everyone else’s work.
  – Culture shifts from excellence to survival without anyone saying a word.
• What elite accountability actually looks like
  – It flows up, across, and down — rooted in trust, growth, and shared standards.
  – It sounds like: “This matters, and I am responsible for it.”

🧭 Questions to Reflect On This Week

Use these with your leadership team or in your journal:

1. Who consistently delivers without needing to be reminded?
2. Who is hiding behind “busy work” instead of real outcomes?
3. Where have you personally let the standard slide because it seemed easier not to address it?
4. Where in your team have you confused “kindness” with avoiding hard conversations?
5. If your culture is what you tolerate, what have you taught your team is acceptable?

✅ Three Actions to Take Today

1. Name one standard you’ve allowed to slip — and reset it clearly with your team this week.
2. Have one honest accountability conversation with someone who is capable of more and tell them that you believe in their potential.
3. Define what “doing your job” really means for your team in Q1 2026 — in simple, concrete terms.

🔗 Join the Conversation

👉 Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more leadership and high-performance insights.

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deadthreecoaching
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gevjen

👉 Join our Community and connect with like-minded leaders focused on growth and execution.

• Website: https://deadthreecoaching.com
• Newsletter: https://deadthreecoaching.com/newsletter
• Community: https://community.deadthreecoaching.com

Most leaders say they want to grow their people and build high-performing teams… but then keep doing everything themselves.

In this episode, George breaks down key ideas from Dan Martell’s book Buy Back Your Time and reframes them through a leadership lens. This isn’t about becoming a “busier” entrepreneur — it’s about becoming a stronger leader who builds people, systems, and cultures that can execute without you hovering over every task.

If you’re tired of spinning in the mud, exhausted from carrying the team on your back, and frustrated that your calendar doesn’t match your ambition, this conversation will give you a practical framework to change that.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why leadership without structure eventually leads to burnout
  How good intentions and hustle still fail when there’s no system behind them.
• The “Buy Back Loop” and how it applies to leadership
  Audit → Transfer → Fill: a simple process to reclaim your time and reinvest it in higher-value leadership work.
• How to delegate without losing control
  Why the goal isn’t perfection, but progress — and why someone doing the job at “80% of you” is actually a huge win.
• The difference between task takers, system builders, and empire builders
  Employee → Entrepreneur → Empire Builder: what it really means to build people who build systems that produce results.
• Why systems and playbooks are leadership tools, not bureaucracy
  Turning chaos into predictable performance through standards, disciplines, and team playbooks instead of ad-hoc heroics.
• How to plan your “perfect week” around energy, not just time
  Structuring your calendar so you coach, connect, and pour into people when you’re at your best — not when your tank is empty.
• Transactional management vs. transformational leadership
  Moving from “take a ticket, do the task” to “own the mission, define the how, and grow through feedback.”

Key Takeaways for Leaders & Executives

• If you don’t systemize success, you personalize every struggle.
  Without clear playbooks and standards, every issue lands back on your desk.
• Delegation is not about dumping tasks — it’s about building trust and ownership.
  The real question is: Who can I empower to run with this and grow from it?
• Your calendar exposes your true priorities.
  If you say people are your greatest asset but spend no meaningful time developing them, the gap will show up in performance and morale.
• Sustainable leadership is built on clarity and trust.
  People need to know what success looks like, how their role connects to it, and that they are trusted to execute.
• Freedom for a leader isn’t doing less work — it’s doing the right work.
  Your highest-value contribution is building people who can build systems that consistently produce results.
• You can’t pour into your team if your tank is empty.
  Planning your week around your energy allows you to show up present, engaged, and ready to coach instead of simply surviving meetings.

If this episode hits home, share it with another leader, manager, or business owner who’s carrying too much and needs a better way to build their team.

Join the Conversation:

👉 Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more leadership and high-performance insights.

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deadthreecoaching

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gevjen

👉 Join Our Community and connect with like-minded leaders focused on growth and execution.

• Website: https://deadthreecoaching.com

• Newsletter: https://deadthreecoaching.com/newsletter

• Community: https://community.deadthreecoaching.com