I danced alone in a hotel room in Sarasota.

Hey {{first_name | default: friend}},

Last week I found myself in Sarasota, Florida on a Sunday afternoon, in the middle of a three-day boarding school onboarding.

Sign-off stations. Coaches. Gear. Shoes. Badges. Blue and white team colors. Music playing. Food out. Kids laughing. Parents pretending to be okay.

Halfway through the day, I stopped and thought, why does this feel so familiar?

Then it clicked.

This was exactly like my first day at Google. Sunnyvale campus. Bikes and food and a rock concert at lunch. Security. Lanyard. Badge. The full ritual of being absorbed into something bigger than you.

This time I was standing on the other side of the badge line, watching the person I raised walk into the machine.

I had just dropped our daughter off at boarding school.

And I want to tell you what actually happened this week, because it was not the story I expected to write.

A few weeks before drop-off, she ordered a hutch online for her dorm room.

I saw the link before she clicked buy. I knew immediately it was going to be a nightmare. Cheap particle board. Fifty screws. A YouTube video required.

I said nothing.

She bought it. It arrived. It took hours to assemble. It never worked right.

And she will never forget it.

That is the exact experience I would have robbed her of if I had jumped in.

Now translate that to your team.

The bad hire you rescue before they can course correct. The pitch you rewrite because it isn't how you would have said it. The client meeting you take over because you cannot stand watching. The proposal you polish because your name is on it.

You call it standards. You call it protection. You call it "I just work faster alone."

What it actually is: you playing savior when the job is to be the setter.

Your people cannot grow inside your rescue.

On the walk back to the car, I noticed the trees mirrored perfectly in the lake behind her dorm.

I stopped and said, "Josie, look how beautiful this is."

She said, "Yeah mom. This is home for me now."

Six words. Not sad. Not defiant. Not performed. True.

She is home somewhere I did not build for her.

That is the whole point.

Sunday night I danced alone in a hotel room in Sarasota to that old song, “Feels So Good” by Chuck Magione. Curtains open. No audience.

I want to tell you what the dance was really about, because it surprised me.

I grew up in a large family with resource scarcity. I was athletic in school but my parents awarded academics (much easier and requires no after school, weekends, or special drop offs) so I had none of what my daughter has now. No recruited spot. No beautiful campus. No coach shaking my hand and telling me I belonged.

She has all of it. And I paid for it. I built the career that funded it. I stayed in rooms I strongly disliked so she could walk into rooms she loves.

The dance was about realizing I became the sponsor I never had.

There is a stage in my framework called making space and room for success.

It is the fourth stage. The hardest one.

It requires you to stop performing your value through control and start trusting the acceleration that happens when you finally get out of the way.

Every senior leader I coach hits this wall eventually.

The founder who cannot let the COO run the meeting.

The executive who rewrites every deck.

The parent who still sends reminder texts to their thirty-year-old.

The operator who cannot become the sponsor.

The mature move is to stop being the hero.

To do the set instead of the spike. To sign the check. To open the door and then step back.

You will not always be in the frame. You are still in the story.

{{first_name | default: friend}}, if you are sitting inside this identity shift right now, a role you built and are ready to hand off, a team you have been rescuing when you know they are ready, a version of yourself that was the operator and needs to become the sponsor, reply SETTER and I can help you figure out what to do next.

Look at the people you are still trying to save.

Ask yourself which of their “hutches” you have been quietly canceling for them.

Then let them order the bad one.

Fix in your mind the benefits of being the one who sets the ball.

P.S. If this landed, and you know someone who might benefit from reading this, please share it with them. ➜ https://lilahs-newsletter.lilahjones.com/p/07329bd8-e6f5-4529-a557-b4be321b6dcb?draft=true&utm_source=lilahs-newsletter.lilahjones.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=i-danced-alone-in-a-hotel-room-in-sarasota

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