Becoming the Board: Finding Possibility When Leadership Gets Challenging
Marc Engel | Issue 001: The Remembering | April 30th, 2025
I felt my jaw tighten as he cut me off for the third time.
"What we really need is a solution that scales immediately," he declared, dismissing my half-finished thought with a wave of his hand.
We were fifteen minutes into an executive networking event focused on sustainable technology. As someone with an improv background, I'd been looking forward to a collaborative brainstorming session where ideas could build and blend.
But this particular executive - let's call him John - had other plans. From the moment our group formed, he dominated every conversation. His analytical mind worked like a bulldozer, efficient but flattening everything in its path.
I watched as other group members gradually fell silent. I noticed my own contributions being reduced to occasional nods. My excitement had turned into resentment.
"He's the exact kind of leader I coach people not to be," I thought bitterly. "Talking over everyone, missing the creative possibilities, forcing his agenda..."
As our exercise approached its end, I realized I'd contributed almost nothing of value. I had shut down. My ideas remained unspoken. My energy had evaporated.
And then, mid-thought, I caught myself.
When Scarcity Thinking Hijacks Your Power
I almost smiled at the irony. Here I was, a coach who helps co-founders navigate challenging dynamics, and I had fallen into the oldest trap: scarcity thinking.
I had allowed one difficult interaction to drain my sense of possibility. I was seeing scarcity everywhere: in the meeting's value, in John’s personality, even in my own worth in the conversation.
In that moment of awareness, I made a deliberate choice to shift the lens.
What if, instead of seeing John as an obstacle, I viewed this entire interaction as a gift?
Becoming the Board: The Shift to Abundance
This moment reminded me of one of my favorite concepts from Ben Zander's "The Art of Possibility"—what he calls "becoming the board."
Instead of seeing yourself as just a piece on a chessboard moved by forces beyond your control, you become the entire board. You take responsibility not for controlling everything, but for how you engage with everything that appears.
Zander puts it beautifully: "The action in this graceful game is ongoing integration. One by one, you bring everything you have been resisting into the fold. You, as the board, make room for all the moves, for the captures of the knight and the sacrifice of your bishop, for your good driving and the accident, for your miserable childhood and the circumstances of your parent's lives, for your need and another's refusal. Why? Because this is what there is. It is the way things are."
When I shifted from seeing myself as a piece being blocked by John to seeing myself as the board where this interaction was taking place, everything changed. I moved from frustration to creation. From limitation to possibility.
The Ripple Effect of Abundance Thinking
This shift from scarcity to abundance isn't just a nice philosophy - it's practical leadership magic. It's about asking: how did this challenge get on the board that I am? How have I become the context for that to occur?
For me, this is what leadership - in essence - is about. It’s not about your position. It’s about the responsibility you take for yourself and your world.
The effects of such a shift rippled outward: inner peace, a smile replacing my frown, seeing how this experience would serve as a teaching moment in future conversations with leaders I work with. I could even approach John with an open question to help him identify what is probably a blind spot.
What had been personal frustration became a powerful possibility - all because of a simple shift in perspective.
What situation in your leadership journey might transform if you became the board rather than just a piece? What abundance might be hiding inside your current frustration?
The possibilities might surprise you. They certainly surprised me.
This essay was featured in Issue 001: The Remembering. Read the Full Publication
Marc Engel is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on helping creative professionals overcome barriers to authentic self-expression. You can follow him on Substack here.
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