The Book That Gave Me the Grace to Lead

There are books that teach you something new.

Then there are books that give you language for something you've been trying to understand about yourself for years.

Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters was the second kind for me.

I recommend this book all the time. To business owners. To leaders. To people moving into management. To people thinking about starting a business.

Honestly, if you regularly have to communicate with another human being at work, there's probably something in this book for you.

I really wish someone had handed it to me years ago. Because Rocket Fuel didn't simply teach me about leadership. It gave me permission to stop trying to be a kind of leader I wasn't.

Wait. What's a Visionary and an Integrator?

The basic premise of Rocket Fuel is that entrepreneurial businesses often have two very different kinds of leaders: the Visionary and the Integrator.

The Visionary tends to live in the big picture. Ideas. Possibilities. Relationships. Where the business could go next.

The Integrator makes it real.

They create clarity. They connect the pieces. They help establish accountability. They figure out how the people, priorities, processes, and ideas actually work together.

The magic isn't in deciding which one is "better."

It's understanding that they're different.

And when the right Visionary and Integrator learn how to work together, those differences can become an enormous advantage. That's the "Rocket Fuel" the book is talking about.

And reading about that dynamic made something click in my brain!

Oh. I'm an Integrator.

For a long time, I thought I was doing something wrong in leadership roles.

I have ADHD. I'm creative. I absolutely have Visionary tendencies. So somewhere along the way, I had picked up this idea that being a leader meant I was supposed to be the person with the answer.

• I needed the idea.

• I needed the direction.

• I needed to know what everyone should do next.
  

And holy shit, that's exhausting.

Then I read Rocket Fuel.

Eventually, I took the Crystallizer Assessment from Rocket Fuel.

My scores?

Visionary: 54

Integrator: 96

Well. That explained some things. The assessment looks at where your skills fall across the Visionary/Integrator spectrum rather than simply asking you to choose one label for yourself.

And seeing my results gave me something I didn't realize I needed:

Grace.

I Didn't Have to Be the Person With the Answer

This was the biggest shift for me.

I didn't have to bring 10,000 ideas to my Visionary.

My Visionary already had ideas.

PLENTY OF THEM.

My strength was somewhere else.

I am really freaking good at listening to all of those ideas and getting to the heart of what actually needs to happen.

• What are we really trying to accomplish?

• What needs to happen first?

• What happens if we don't do this?

• Is this actually the priority right now?

• Who needs to own it?

• What does done look like?

  
  

And this is a distinction that has become incredibly important in how I work:

I don't need to give the priority. I need to ask the questions that help us uncover the priority.

Then I can do what I do best.

Take the vision, put it through my tools and systems, identify what needs to happen and who needs to deploy it, and help keep everyone, including myself, on track.

And if something isn't working? Say so. That's leadership too.

Do You Know How Much Stress That Took Off My Brain?

A LOT.

I had spent so much energy believing that because I was a leader, I was also supposed to be generating the vision.

I needed more ideas. Better ideas. Bigger ideas.

Except that wasn't necessarily what the people I worked with needed from me.

Once I understood my role differently, I could stop competing with my Visionary's brain and start supporting it.

• I could listen.

• I could ask better questions.

• I could organize.

• I could translate.

• I could execute.

• I could help turn a giant pile of "WE SHOULD DO THIS!" into "Okay, here's what we're actually doing."

That changed how I thought about leadership. It also changed how I thought about learning.

Instead of constantly trying to fix the things I thought were wrong with me as a leader, I started paying more attention to how I naturally worked and looking for ways to strengthen those abilities.

• How do I organize my thoughts?

• How do I manage my brain?

• How do I ask better questions?

• How do I create systems that help me and everyone around me stay on track?

My education became more intentional because I understood what I was actually trying to get better at.

I Wish I'd Read This Before I Became a Manager

This is why I recommend Rocket Fuel much more broadly than I think people expect.

• Yes, read it if you own a business.

• Yes, read it if you're a CEO or founder.

• But also read it if you're moving into management.

• Read it if you're early in your career.

• Read it if you work for someone whose brain seems to operate at approximately 9,000 miles per hour.

• Read it if you're the person everyone seems to hand the messy pile to because they know you'll figure out what to do with it.

• Read it if you're leading people and can't figure out why the way someone else approaches work makes absolutely no sense to you.

Understanding how you naturally operate, and how that might differ from the people around you, is useful long before you have "CEO" in your title.

If I had read Rocket Fuel 15 years earlier, I think I would have tailored my education differently. More importantly, I would have given myself more grace and leaned into my natural abilities.

But Don't Let an Assessment Define You

This part matters. So listen up!

Your score on the Crystallizer Assessment does not define you.

• Neither does Myers-Briggs.

• Neither does DISC.

• Neither does Enneagram.

• Neither does whatever assessment we'll all be taking six months from now because someone on LinkedIn discovered it.

These things are tools.

• Use them to ask better questions about yourself.

• Use them to identify where you might naturally be strong.

• Use them to figure out what skills might be worth developing.

• Use them to help someone coach you more effectively.

But don't turn a score into a box you're no longer allowed to leave.

I'm an Integrator. I'm also creative. I have ADHD. I have Visionary tendencies. Sometimes I have the big idea. Sometimes I absolutely want to chase the shiny thing.

My 96 Integrator score didn't suddenly explain every part of my personality.

It gave me a framework that helped me understand myself better. That's very different.

Read the Book. THEN Take the Assessment.

This is the order I recommend.

First, read Rocket Fuel.

Let yourself start recognizing the dynamics in the book. Think about the people you've worked with. Think about the roles you've loved and the ones that drained the life out of you.

Then go take the Crystallizer Assessment.

Rocket Fuel's resource library includes the Crystallizer Assessment along with additional tools for understanding and strengthening the Visionary/Integrator relationship.

Take the Crystallizer Assessment and explore the free Rocket Fuel resources: https://rocketfueluniversity.com/resources/

And when you get your score, don't ask:

"What does this say I am?"

Ask:

"What can this teach me about how I work best?"

That question is much more useful.

And Yes, I Recommend This One on Audible

I consume a lot of books on audio, but Rocket Fuel is one I specifically recommend listening to.

There were so many moments when I hit rewind.

"Wait. Say that again."

Rewind. (Yes, I am that old that I say, rewind!)

Listen.

"Nope. One more time."

Rewind again.

Sometimes I needed to hear the authors explain something two or three times before it really solidified.

And because the supporting resources are available online, I didn't feel like I needed a physical book sitting in front of me to get value from it. I could listen, rewind when something punched me directly in the brain, and go find the tools and assessments online afterward.

Get Rocket Fuel here

The Leadership Lesson I Didn't Know I Needed

Rocket Fuel didn't magically make me a better leader because I learned a couple of new business terms.

It changed the expectations I had placed on myself. I stopped believing leadership required me to be the person with every answer. I stopped believing I needed to manufacture more ideas simply because I was sitting in a leadership seat. I started recognizing the value in what I was already naturally good at.

• Listen to the vision.

• Ask the questions.

• Find the priority.

• Figure out what actually needs to happen.

• Get the right people moving.

• Build the tools that keep us on track.

• And speak up when something isn't winning.

Turns out, I didn't need to become somebody else's version of a leader.

I needed to understand how I lead. I really wish I'd learned that 15 years earlier.

But I'm pretty damn grateful I learned it at all.