Ep 33 | Leading When You’re the Only One Who Believes

What do you do when you’re leading something… and it feels like you’re the only one who believes it will work?

In this episode of Amazing Life Breakthrough, Steve goes deeper into the leadership lessons behind a real-world story—what happens after you accept responsibility, when resistance shows up, support fades, and doubt starts creeping in.

Because leadership isn’t just about having a plan.
 It’s about what happens under pressure.

In This Episode

•  Why tone is transferable—and how it shapes the entire room 
•  The difference between builders, observers, and underminers
•  Why some people only show up after success is obvious 
•  How to lead when you don’t have full clarity (the “fog and the mountain”) 
•  What to do when resistance starts to feel personal 
•  How to find and lead your true team

Key Insight

Leadership isn’t proven when everyone agrees with you.

It’s proven when you:

•  Set the tone 
•  Keep moving 
•  And build momentum before belief is popular 

The Leadership Framework

If you’re leading into headwinds right now, try this:

1. Audit your tone – What are people actually feeling from you? 
2. Name the mountain – What does success look like? 
3. Define the next 100 feet – What’s the next step? 
4. Find your builders – Who believes before it’s obvious? 
5. Manage the thermostat – Don’t let resistance set the culture 

Listener Challenge

Think of one area where you’re leading right now.

Then:

•  Write one sentence that sets your tone 
•  Identify your next “100 feet” 
•  Reach out to one builder and invite them in 

Closing Thought

Some people will only believe once success is visible.

But real leadership?
 It starts before the crowd shows up.

If this episode resonated, follow or subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next. And if you know someone leading through resistance right now, this is one worth sharing.

Amazing Life Breakthrough — Helping you Live Life to the Fullest.

Also — one more quick thing — if you'd like to support the Podcast, you can do that at AmazingLifeBreakthrough.com — your support keeps this going and is deeply appreciated. 
Thank You.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hey there, this is Steve Klein again. And I want to ask you, have you ever taken on something where you could feel the room leaning against you? Nobody has to say this won't work. You can just sense it. The polite distance, the cautious silence, the little comments that sound harmless, but they carry that same message. Good luck. You're gonna need it. And if you're honest, sometimes the room isn't even the hardest part. Sometimes the hardest part is you trying to lead while a small part of you is thinking, I'm not sure this is going to work either. If you listened on Tuesday, you may remember I shared a story from a season when I was a software engineer asked to step in as an interim project manager. And at the same time, I was chairing our employee activities committee. The CEO asked me to lead a massive change, move our annual Christmas party in-house for a building of over a thousand employees, no spouses, no alcohol, and no single space large enough to hold everyone. I started off with the wrong tone, basically apologizing for the change, and support fell apart. Half my committee quit, leaders distanced themselves, meetings got ugly, and then the CEO said something to me that changed everything. Steve, you can figure this out. And the leader sets the tone. I shifted from apology to possibility, the team rallied, we got creative, and the event became a huge success. Today I want to go deeper, but not by replaying the whole story. Today is about what was happening underneath it. The leadership dynamics you can't always see while you're in the middle of it. The moments that tell you who's really with you. The reality that some people will doubt you until it's safe to believe, and the practical steps you can take when you're leading into headwinds and you're not sure what to do next. Welcome to Amazing Life Breakthrough. I'm Steve Klein. And if you're in a season where you're carrying responsibility, trying to build something, trying to lead people, trying to be steady, this episode is for you. And if this ever brings you value, I'll let you know at the end how you can support the podcast. Now, let's start with the sentence that changed the whole project for me. And that sentence is the leader sets the tone. At first I thought that meant something simple, like be positive, smile, be upbeat. But that's not what it meant. It meant this tone is transferable. Tone becomes emotional permission. When a leader speaks with apology, the room hears permission to resist. When a leader speaks with dread, the room hears permission to disengage. When a leader speaks with belief, the room hears permission to rally. And this is where leadership gets real because tone is not just what you say. Tone is what you believe out loud. Tone is what you emphasize. Tone is what you expect. Tone is the emotional frame you put around a difficult reality. In my story, I thought I was being kind when I acknowledged everything people were losing by moving the party in house. I thought I was being empathetic. But what I was actually doing was setting the emotional thermostat to disappointment. And people behaved exactly the way you would think disappointed people would behave. They withheld support, they criticized, they distanced themselves, they quit. Here's a hard leadership truth. People don't follow plans, they follow confidence, not arrogance, not bravado. Confidence as in, I can see a way forward and I'm willing to go first. And sometimes, especially early, you have to go first before anyone claps. That's the lonely part of leadership. But it's also the defining part. Now, let me give you a picture that has helped me more than almost anything when I'm leading through uncertainty. It's the fog and the mountain. Sometimes leadership feels like driving in thick fog at night. You can't see the whole road. You can't see the turns three miles ahead, you can't see the full plan. You can see about a hundred feet, but you still know you're heading toward the mountain. You still know the general direction. You still know what good looks like. You still know what you're trying to create. And leadership is the willingness to keep moving forward 100 feet at a time while holding the mountain in your mind. So if you're listening right now and you feel unsure, here's a practical question that immediately clarifies the next step. What's the mountain and what's the next hundred feet? The mountain is the desired outcome. The next hundred feet is the next actionable step. Leaders get stuck when they demand perfect visibility, when they won't move until the fog clears. But the fog often doesn't clear until you move. Now let's talk about why leading into headwinds is so emotionally draining, because headwinds are not just resistance to the project. Headwinds are resistance to your identity. When people doubt what you're leading, they often intentionally or unintentionally make you doubt who you are. You start questioning your competency, your credibility, your right to be in the role. You feel like you're marching against a windstorm and everyone is staring like, why are you even doing this? And this is why the CEO's other line mattered so much to me. You can figure this out. He didn't hand me the whole map. He handed me belief. He basically said, You're not crazy, you're capable, you don't have to know everything yet, just keep moving. And that's a gift leaders need sometimes. Someone who can see the mountain in you when you're tired. But here's the thing, not everyone will do that. And that's where the team dynamic becomes the next leadership lesson. Because in that season I learned something I didn't want to learn, but I needed to. Not everyone is your team. Some people are doers, the builders. They show up early. They don't need perfect certainty. They'll carry chairs before the crowd arrives. They'll offer ideas instead of complaints. They'll help you problem solve instead of only pointing out what's wrong. Some people are observers. They're not against you, but they're cautious. They wait and see. They don't commit until it looks safe. They're watching to see if you're serious, if you're steady, if there's momentum. And some people are underminers. Sometimes they're obvious, sometimes they're subtle, but they create drag. They question publicly, they distance themselves strategically. They don't bring solutions, they bring skepticism. And one of the most important leadership moves you can make is deciding who gets close to the steering wheel. That doesn't mean you become harsh. It doesn't mean you become arrogant. It means you become wise. Because if you keep trying to convert underminers into builders, you'll exhaust yourself and stall the project. Here's the key you don't need everyone to believe. You need enough builders to create momentum. Because momentum changes the rooms. In my story, half the committee quit. And if you've ever had that happen, people leaving, people bailing, people checking out, it can feel like a verdict. Like the universe is saying, see, this isn't going to work. But it isn't always a verdict. Sometimes it's a sorting. Sometimes it reveals who is with you when belief is required. And when my tone shifted, when I stopped apologizing and started envisioning what could be created, my builders appeared. HR stepped in. Another leader stepped in. Volunteers rallied. The project got hands on the bumper again. And that leads to another powerful truth. Your vibe attracts your tribe. Not in a magical sense, but rather practically. When your tone is vision, builders recognize it. They feel permission to join. When your tone is apology, builders often don't join because they sense you don't even want them there. Now I want to talk about the part when people rallied behind me and the party I was leading in real time, but only after they were seeing that it was becoming a huge success. Because this is one of the strangest experiences in leadership. And almost everyone has a story like this once they've led something that matters. When you're building, it's quiet. When you're struggling, it's lonely. When you're uncertain, it feels like you're carrying the whole thing. And then when it works, when it succeeds, suddenly people appear. Suddenly there's interest. Suddenly the same leaders who were too busy to help want to know how they can support. Sometimes it's genuine, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's both. But it happens. Success has gravity, and success can create a second wave of attention. People latching on, wanting their name near it. If you're a newer leader, that moment can mess with your head. Because you might think, wait, where were you when we were in the hard part? Or you might think, maybe I shouldn't feel annoyed. Maybe I should just be grateful. And the truth is you can hold both. Here's how to handle it with maturity without becoming cynical. Keep your heart generous and your memory clear. Share credit. Absolutely. But share credit with accuracy. Honor the people who built it when it wasn't popular because those are your core. Those are your trusted professionals, and those are the ones who showed you who they were before the applause. And this matters because leadership isn't just about winning, it's about building trust. And one of the fastest ways to erode trust is to rewrite history to make late supporters feel comfortable. You don't have to shame anyone, you don't have to call anyone out. You simply don't distort reality. You say thank you and you keep moving. And you privately remember who pushed with you when the wind was in your face. Now I also went over in that story on Tuesday's episode something that was deeply meaningful to me, and that was the applause from the project managers the next day. That moment matters for a reason people don't always see. It wasn't just applause for a party, it was applause for leadership under pressure. Because in a workplace, project managers know what it means to face constraints. They know what it means to have stakeholders complain. They know what it means to have limited resources and a hard deadline. And when they heard someone say, Do we have a recent example of a project done really well? And someone shouted out the Christmas party that Steve did yesterday, those PMs weren't applauding decorations. They were applauding what they recognized. You let a messy emotional high stakes change through resistance and delivered a result. In other words, they applauded competence and courage. And that's important because sometimes leaders need a different kind of validation, not praise from the crowd who enjoyed the outcome, validation from peers who understand the process. The crowd applauds the moment while peers applaud the leadership. And if you're leading right now and you're not getting applause, I want you to hear something. Applause is not the measurement of leadership. It's just a side effect sometimes. The real measurement is whether you did the next right thing in the fog, whether you held the tone steady, whether you found your builders, whether you kept moving. So now you are probably saying, okay, Steve, I'm in a headwind right now. What do I actually do? Here's a simple leadership path you can apply to almost anything, whether you're leading a team at work, leading a family season, leading a volunteer project, or leading yourself through a hard chapter. First, audit your tone. Not your to-do list, not your strategy, your tone. Ask, what tone am I setting? Is it apology? Is it dread? Is it defensiveness? Is it resentment? Is it uncertainty disguised as being realistic? Or is it vision? Is it possibility? Is it steadiness? Is it courage? If you don't like your tone, you can reset it today. You don't need permission. Second, name the mountain. Get clear in one sentence. What does success look like? Not perfection, not a fantasy, just a clear outcome. Third, define the next hundred feet. One step, one decision, one conversation, one email, one meeting. Leaders don't get traction by solving the whole future today. They get traction by taking the next hundred feet. Fourth, recruit your builders, not a crowd. Not everyone, just a few. Three to five builders can change everything. And when you invite them, don't pitch like you're begging, invite like you're leading. We're doing this. Here's why it matters. Here's what I need. Are you in? Fifth, stop letting underminers set the culture. This is subtle, but it's huge. When an underminer speaks, leadership doesn't always need to argue. Leadership needs to redirect. A few examples sound like this. Thanks for naming the risk. Here's the direction we're going. Or thanks for the concern. Here's what we're doing next. You're not silencing people, you're preventing drag from becoming the thermostat. Then finally, when success comes, anchor your leadership in gratitude, not ego. Success can tempt you to perform, but mature leadership stays grounded. You share credit. You honor your core. You don't become bitter at late attachment. You just become wiser. Because here's what I want you to take away today. Sometimes the greatest obstacle at the beginning isn't the system or the people or the constraints. Sometimes it's the leader's own tone. And the moment you adjust that, everything begins to shift. People don't suddenly become perfect, but you become clearer. You become steadier. You become someone others can borrow belief from. So here's your listener challenge today. Think of one area where you're leading into headwinds right now. Then do three things. Write one sentence that sets the tone you want to lead with. Something like, we're going to figure this out, or this can be better than we think, or here's what's possible. Then write your next hundred feet, one practical step you will take in the next 24 hours, and finally name one builder. One person who has shown you they believe before it's popular, reach out. Invite them into the next step. Because leadership isn't proven when the room agrees with you. Leadership is proven when you choose the tone and you keep moving until the vision becomes real. Well, that wraps up another episode of Amazing Life Breakthrough. If this episode meant something to you and you feel led to support the podcast, you can do that at AmazingLifebreakthrough.com or through the link in the description. Your support helps keep these messages going and reaching the people who need to hear them. Thanks for spending this time with me. And remember, as always, to live life to the fullest.