The room was tight with weather.
- Sarah Gruneisen
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
💚🔥🐉
A product manager wanted to ship by Friday, “We promised the client.”
Our security lead said absolutely not, “We’ll risk user data.”
Both were speaking from conviction.
One from promise and impact.
One from protection and integrity.
I felt my own fire start to rise. Then I breathed. Ohhhh I needed to breathe. I looked for the wind beneath their words.
“Let’s slow the sky,” I said. “What do we refuse to break, and what do we refuse to risk?”
We named the non‑negotiables together:
💚 Keep real customer data safe.
💚 Keep our word in a way we can stand behind next week.
Then I used clean, values‑anchored prompts:
🔥 What kind of “done” is that done?
🔥 When protection is at its best, it’s like what?
🔥 When impact is at its best, it’s like what?
The picture sharpened.
We didn’t need a full release to honor the promise, we needed a sandbox demo with synthetic data, a feature flag, and a 72‑hour risk review before anything touched production.
No one “won.” Trust did.
The client saw progress, our team slept, and our integrity stayed intact. That is the kind of conflict I’ll stand in every time: convictions meeting in the middle without either side losing its soul.
📖 Breath of the Dragon - Lesson 8:
“In conflict, wisdom unites where force divides — great leaders stay calm, read the room, and choose the path that preserves trust while finding resolution.”
🐉 Wise dragons don’t roar to win, they read the winds and shift the sky.
This is the heart of The Leadership Leap, Chapter 16: From Insight to Action: learning to hear the values beneath positions, slow the air, and choose a path that solves the problem and protects the relationship. Without trust, any victory is short‑lived. With trust, resolution becomes foundation.
💬 What convictions have collided in your world lately and how might you protect both the promise and the people?
🐲 Come breathe this work with me on September 25 in Utrecht. I’ll read from The Leadership Leap, we’ll practice clean, values‑anchored conflict skills, and you’ll leave with tools you can use the next day.
