Divorced at 37, Start-Up Exec at 41: Life and Leadership Lessons

As a lifelong learner and a person who loves to share, I thought I’d write a blog this month to unpack parts of what has been a super challenging yet rewarding time in my life: divorce and its aftermath. Divorce is extremely unpleasant. I do not wish it on any family, yet it happens to over 50% of us. It’s our job to move through it, learn from it and grow—especially if there are kids caught in the mix. The three lessons that came through loud and clear from my own divorce experience are focus, empowered decision-making and letting it go.

I hope you can take something from my experience and the insights I’ve gained. It was hard work to get to this place of reflection and positivity—but well worth it.

Focus

If you are blessed like I have been to have children from your now-defunct marriage, you know that all is not lost. You have had an amazing, life-changing experience—one that (hopefully) has made you a better man or woman! My ex-wife and I agreed right from the outset of the divorce to make the healthy development of our children our singular goal, and this agreement allowed us to build a working relationship.

My beautiful kids aren’t the only good that came from my first marriage. In fact, through focusing on them, I learned valuable lessons about focused leadership. Because my ex-spouse and I had agreed to put our kids first, we had built-in priorities. During this emotionally charged period, we were able to make clear and thoughtful decisions about the most important subject between us: our children.

As a successful athlete and student, I have worked with many coaches and tutors on developing absolute focus to achieve results well above my expectations. Developing these goal-setting skills over 30 years provided the foundation to grow and flourish through the dissolution of my marriage. In Enlisted at 18, CEO at 30, I wrote about how a successful Austin start-up CEO and former Special Operations medic leveraged his combat training discipline for success in the business world. I may never have been to war, but I have been through a divorce, and I developed survival and leadership skills just the same. The goal-setting ability I developed during my divorce allowed me to maintain a healthy state of mind that made me effective at home and at work. I credit much of my professional and personal success to it.

Empowered Decision-Making

If you have kids, you know you have to make decisions related to them every day—even if you’re no longer married to their other parent. If you are not parenting in the same house and not experiencing the same inputs, it is very hard to insert yourself into decisions that require firsthand knowledge of the situation. At the same time, it is unproductive to get on the phone and explain all the variables that go into to making the day-to-day decisions you might otherwise make together in a non-divorced family unit.

Fortunately, my ex-wife and I were able to leverage our focus on our children to build a productive decision-making framework, which is critical when you’re trying to parent separately. This framework allowed us to put 100% trust in our agreed-upon decision-making process and not spend time questioning each other’s actions or motives. We were empowered to become more effective decision-makers.

Similarly, in business, if you can align your team around a decision-making framework, you can spend all of your energy moving forward, not distracted by the minutiae of each decision. During the first year of my divorce, I was asked to lead Dell’s consumer channel business in Latin America. Given the vast geographic and economic diversity of the assignment, I quickly put in place a decision-making framework for the leadership. With teams in ten countries, I had to empower leaders to make decisions for the business—they were in-market and had the best information to make the right decision, after all. As a result of this empowerment, my team achieved results beyond what we thought was possible.

Letting It Go

Divorce has positive and negative lifelong impacts on all members of the family unit, and it also teaches us our third leadership lesson: focus on what you can control and don’t spend mental energy on what you can’t. By focusing on your controllable inputs and outputs, you will be able to make much better decisions that lead to a much healthier state of mind. Once I was divorced, I was divorced. I did not spend time blaming others or hoping for a miracle. I was firmly focused on what I could control: building a successful life with my kids and succeeding at whatever goal I set for myself.

I recently led a team of mine through a three-day workshop entitled “Effectiveness and Who.” The core message of that workshop was that we need to manage our controllable resources. As each member of the team evaluated what he or she could and could not control, a sense of empowerment arose within him or her. The discussion among the team members became very productive, as each of them presented business plans that focused on what they could control—and not issues with some uncontrollable element. By focusing on what each of them could control instead of which outside forces were impacting them, members of this team were able to build strong bonds with each other and work better together. I was very proud.

If you have been divorced and are struggling to move forward, I hope this article gives you some tools to try. They have worked extremely well for me. I am fortunate to have created an amazing life with my new wife and our daughter, who has the best older brother and sister ever! By focusing on a healthy state of mind, empowering others and being open to learning every day, I am able to achieve happiness with my family and success in my career. See—divorce isn’t all bad.

What am I reading now?

Fiction – The Einstein Prophecy by Robert Masello

Non-Fiction – Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy by John Wood

What have I just finished reading?

Non-Fiction – Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Non-Fiction – Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood

Podcast that has really resonated with me lately:

“The Scariest Navy SEAL I’ve Ever Met…And What He Taught Me” by Tim Ferriss

“Meditation: Opening to the Sea of Presence” by Tara Brach