When My LinkedIn Live Failed š£
- Sarah Gruneisen
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
And Four Humans Did the Real Work Instead š„š
Tonight, I messed up.
My LinkedIn Live wouldnāt integrate natively.
Not seamless.
Not plug-and-play.
Not the smooth, professional flow I had imagined.
I duplicated events.
Deleted them.
Recreated them.
Tried Streamyard. Restream. Back again.
Clock ticking.
Nervous system rising.
šššš
And then I did something simple:
I stopped trying to perform.
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I told the community:
Spark is merging into the Fire tonight.
No LinkedIn Live.
Just us.
Four humans on Zoom.
Robin calling in from New Zealand.
Phylicia navigating tech glitches.
Sanne showing up steady.
And me.
And what unfolded was far more powerful than any polished broadcast.
The Reading That Set the Tone
We started with Spark.
A random page from The Leadership Leap: Now Without Crash Landings. Page 461 :-)
No curated theme.
No dramatic headline.
I flipped a few pages back to include the complete section which spoke about ripple effects and elephants.
About how leadership is rarely the grand gesture.
Itās the small intervention.
The quiet sentence.
The choice to name, or not name, what everyone feels.
And thatās when Robin asked:
āHow do you bring the elephant into the light in a productive way?ā
Not explosively.
Productively.
Sanne followed:
āHow do you address something everyone dances around ā¦ especially when youāre temporary and donāt know the history?ā
Phylicia added:
āHow do you speak what isnāt said out loud?ā
And suddenly the reading wasnāt theory.
It was alive.
Conversation CafƩ: Where Leadership Gets Personal
We shifted into Conversation CafƩ.
One minute each.
No interruptions.
Cyclic.
Something happens when you structure space that way.
Nervous systems slow down.
Patterns reveal themselves.
Surface questions deepen.
At first, it was practical:
Name the elephant clearly.
Stay observational, not judgmental.
Ask:
āWhat are we missing?ā
Invite perspectives.
Be transparent about action.
Ignoring elephants doesnāt shrink them.
It feeds them.
Addressing them signals:
Your voice matters here.
But that was just the beginning.
Influence Without Authority
The room moved into a harder layer.
What if you donāt hold the title?
What if youāre temporary?
What if speaking up means inheriting responsibility that isnāt yours?
We talked about influence without authority.
About bridging.
About aligning on shared goals before pushing content.
About understanding what āpositiveā means to each person ā¦ because itās not universal.
And this truth landed:
You control your approach.
You do not control the outcome.
Thatās leadership maturity.
My Dragon: The Unheard One
Then it became personal.
I shared something I donāt often speak about publicly.
Before adoption, I felt invisible.
After adoption, I often felt others believed they knew me better than I knew myself.
That does something to a child.
It wires the nervous system.
In adulthood, when my autonomy feels pressured, I can get louder.
Faster.
Defensive.
Because somewhere inside, I learned:
You get one chance to speak.
Take it.
A therapist once explained something that shifted everything for me:
People who havenāt felt seen often become louder to secure space.
That wasnāt ego.
It was protection.
My dragon wasnāt dominance.
It was survival.
And my growth?
Doing the opposite of what my instinct wanted.
Instead of pushing harder, I slow down.
Instead of overpowering, I create space.
Instead of forcing conclusions, I ask smaller questions.
Less force.
More influence.
That shift changed my leadership more than any framework ever could.
Sanne: The Hider
Sanne shared the opposite dragon.
She didnāt want to be seen.
Where my system learned to amplify, hers learned to withdraw.
She hid while others pushed her to present more, show more, speak more.
Her shift wasnāt about softening.
It was about allowing visibility.
Allowing others to see in her what she saw in them.
Recognition flowing both directions.
Different dragon.
Same root.
Protection.
Robin: The Misunderstood One
Robin named something many leaders carry quietly.
What happens when your words are twisted?
When your intent is misinterpreted?
When trying harder only deepens misunderstanding?
You get quieter.
Not because you lack clarity.
Because self-protection kicks in.
Misinterpretation creates withdrawal.
Withdrawal creates silence.
Silence shapes culture.
That one hit the room hard.
Phylicia: Tension Before Explosion
Phylicia brought precision to the conversation.
How do you address tension before it becomes behavior?
Do you name it in the group?
Do you take it one-on-one?
How do you avoid creating shame?
We explored:
If it belongs to the group ā address it in the group.
If it belongs to one person ā address it later.
Pause and discern: now or later?
And something important surfaced:
Bringing everything into private conversations can create shadow cultures.
But public naming without care can create defensiveness.
Discernment is leadership.
The Toxic Triangle
Then we went even deeper.
Sometimes the elephant isnāt just awkward.
Sometimes it sits inside a toxic triangle:
Destructive behavior.
Followers who tolerate or benefit.
An environment that enables it.
In that system, addressing the elephant is political.
Not every environment wants truth.
And not every elephant-raiser is healthy either.
Sometimes ābrutal honestyā is aggression.
Sometimes silence is fear.
Maturity matters.
Self-awareness matters.
Dragons unexamined become destruction.
Dragons integrated become leadership.
Micro-Interventions: The Ripple Strategy
After depth, something beautifully simple crystallized.
Less is more.
āIām sensing tension, am I the only one?ā
āWhatās the biggest concern right now?ā
āCan we pause?ā
Small sentences.
Massive impact.
Robin captured it perfectly in the checkout:
Small positive questions can change the entire direction of a meeting.
Ripples.
Not waves.
The Closing Reflections
At the end, we each reflected.
What stood out:
š„ Addressing elephants is context-driven.
š„ Safety determines strategy.
š„ Influence doesnāt require authority.
š„ Dragons distort behavior, but theyāre protective.
š„ You donāt need to fix everything.
š„ Small moves matter.
And then something unexpected happened.
We evaluated the format.
Spark + Fire together?
Or separate?
Sanne said she loved them together.
Phylicia preferred one hour, contained and focused.
Robin appreciated the interactive depth.
And I realized something quietly:
The āmistakeā created a better architecture. Thatās evolution!
When Spark and Fire are separate, the energy resets.
When theyāre merged, the reading softens us.
The CafƩ deepens us.
The reflections integrate us.
One arc.
One container.
One hour.
The Real Lesson
I thought the story would be about tech failure and massive frustration ā¦ maybe even a lecture about usability and product centricity.
It wasnāt.
It was about leadership in real time.
Improvised.
Imperfect.
Alive.
You donāt need perfect production to create impact.
You need presence.
Courage.
And the willingness to name whatās happening.
Even when whatās happening is:
āThis didnāt go as planned.ā
Especially then.
Next Tuesday, Spark + Fire remain merged.
Not because I designed it perfectly.
But because the room co-created something wiser.
And that might be the most honest leadership lesson of all. š„šš
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