What I'm Sitting With

I have played piano for almost my entire life, to varying degrees. I was never a concert pianist, although I did one time accompany a friend while she sang (aside: I was probably over-confident in my offer, but she did great anyway). I have vague memories of a piano teacher named Gregg who dismissed me from his practice. The way I remember it, he made some comment after a lesson about how much I must have practiced. My dad admitted that I hadn’t practiced at all. There was some disagreement about practice philosophy, and my lessons stopped. (It’s also possible that he could tell I hadn’t practiced and didn’t want to waste either of our time).

I think about that moment now as an early experience of power, though I wouldn’t have named it that way then—between child and adult, between teacher and student, between someone deciding what was worth their time and someone else learning what that meant. Ouch. But also, I have to admire the boundary demonstrated there.

I started and stopped with piano a few more times between that moment and high school, when I stopped my piano lessons altogether, but I’ve enjoyed learning new pieces on my own. At some point, I bought a book of Clementi sonatas and learned the first several on my own. At this point, I think I’ve been playing them for about 25 years. There’s a muscle memory that comes with the pieces and a comfort in the progression of the pages. When I’m feeling restless or aimless, I am comforted by their familiarity and the challenge of brushing the rust off of my practice.

And so it was with great surprise that I found myself curious about what the pieces actually sounded like. And with even greater surprise, on the very first page, I realized I had been misplaying a measure. There is a version of me that might have felt inadequate or ashamed from this error that I’ve been carrying with me for decades. But this week, I was genuinely delighted.

I replayed the first page several times and found my mind at war with my hands when I came to that measure. My fingers wanted to stay in charge. My mind forced me to slow down. And in that moment, I realized how much of my playing had been on auto-pilot. If I hadn’t stopped to ask, I’d still be playing it incorrectly and none the wiser.

On the second page, I found another mistake, and was equally delighted. It’s not that the way I had been playing sounded wrong or was tripping me up, but there was something about finding the correct way—pressure-testing my ability to rewrite a decades-old habit—that felt like reclaiming something small but meaningful. I think that was at the root of my feeling of delight.

It made me think of how often we assume something about someone we’ve known for a long time. We get so used to their patterns of thinking that we stop paying attention. And then, in conversation, we have the opportunity to learn something new. Even more so for ourselves. We get so used to our own ways of thinking that it takes intentional effort to stay curious and open to something new.

Leadership is much the same way. I attended a conference this week and went in with minimal expectations. I was a little bit grumpy that I overslept, a little bit frustrated at the commute in the rain and my very strange arranged parking situation. And there was an opportunity to coast on auto-pilot when it came time to talk about a leadership challenge. But I chose the other path—to open myself to the possibility of learning something new about myself.

What I realized is that while I see myself as a leader, I don’t love the idea of titles, power differentials, or a de facto followership. I tend to resist the kind of “power over” that often comes with titles. I want to live in the space of empowering others to be their favorite versions of themselves, to be a thought partner, to be in community.

And yet, titles and power dynamics still exist. They shape expectations, access, and voice—whether I like it or not. There is a part of me that wants influence without authority, and another part that recognizes that authority is already present. That tension is real.

Which brings me to the thing I’ve really been sitting with. Power is all around us. But we’re often most shaped by it in the moments we’re least aware of it.

In my piano playing, it looked like muscle memory taking over for decades. In relationships, it can look like assumptions we stop questioning. In leadership, it can look like roles and titles defining what feels possible—for us and for others.

And none of it is inherently wrong. My version of that sonata still sounded fine. My leadership instincts still “work.” But there is something powerful about interrupting the pattern long enough to ask: Is this still how I want to play this? By asking that, power transforms from authority or hierarchy into authorship.

Riverdrop Coaching News + Offerings

In the parenting world, there’s a phenomenon called “Maycember”—a stretch where the weeks in May and early June fill quickly with concerts, school events, spirit days, and end-of-year everything. In the coaching world, we celebrate International Coaching Week in mid-May. And in the Yocum household, we’re in the middle of a pretty major home project that has us a bit displaced.

All of that, together, has me practicing something I often work on with clients: noticing what isn’t essential and choosing to set it down.

In that spirit, I’ll be skipping a May Executive Forum and focusing instead on preparing for my talk at DisruptHR Baltimore on May 28. If you’d like to join, you can register here.

I do want to hear from you, though. As I look ahead to future forums, what topics are feeling loudest for you right now—in leadership or in life—that you’d want space to explore? Your input in this form is greatly appreciated.

Coaching Compass

(You can hit reply if you want to unpack it—I read every message—or you can set up a time to connect with me here.)