Aug 10, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min · 11 segments
Rich Reynolds is a licensed marriage and family therapist turned leadership coach, and he opens with a claim that reframes the whole episode: the reason a leader struggles in a boardroom is the same…
Dan KorusHost
Um, so, you know, throughout your career as a, you called it a systemic therapist, right? Um, What's that like? What's it like to be a systemic therapist? Is it hard?
The difference between marriage and family therapy and other psychology or mental health counseling or social work is the systemic piece where uh you're more rooted in family systems theory which is just a family applied system theory so the work i do as a therapist is not super visibly different right like i sit with clients we talk but the the difference is kind of having that systemic lens of seeing things through like what's happening for any individual is a product of the systems they're embedded in and so we're we're paying attention to like family of origin is the big one that is relevant to all the time you might be talking about your mom trope that you hear all the time about therapy but yeah so it's therapy just without that lens and there are people i don't do as much like i also do couples therapy there's some folks who do family therapy more i haven't done that as much but that's it as far as like what's hard and what's fun.
I super-duper love what happens in the room, like the act of therapy, the sitting with people, the talking about stuff that matters, getting a front-right seat to people's humanity and all the incredible resilience and wisdom that shows up in everyday lives of lots of just random people.
But the harder things, I mean, there's like the mundane stuff of like notes and all the paperwork you gotta do as a therapist, but probably from being more real, more vulnerable, the hardest thing is the emotional work.
The emotional work you have to do to be the kind of person who can sit with suffering all the time.
We go to school, we learn therapy models and things, but I don't think there's any uh, educational way.
It's just experiential to like sit with people who are going through it and learn how to not freak out.
And I think that's, um, I think that's what really courts over to leadership really well is I think leadership is the same problem, right? Leadership is, it's an incredibly emotionally fraught situation that you're in.
When everyone's counting on you to have answers, to provide direction and that emotional work of like looking inside and saying, okay, what, why am I freaking out right now? What we're planning to do to be more stable, to be more, to be more present.
Yeah, if I can, because it sounds like you're going to get these beautiful moments, both with the healing moments that people go through in the room, both with marriage and family therapy and with, you know, these leadership transformations.
And so I'm wondering, like, is it watching people have a breakthrough? Is it watching them, you know, kind of realize something about themselves that they didn't know? What is that? What are those moments? What does it look like?
Yeah, without getting lost in a bunch of storytelling, I think the biggest ones are the moments where people get to experience themselves differently.
Like, I thought I was this way, and now I'm having this moment where I just know that's not true.
Which often comes in the form of um kind of emotional breakthroughs like feeling something that hasn't been felt for a long time hasn't been allowed to be felt so someone who finally like feels anger that they've been carrying around for a long time or someone who finally acknowledges some grief or trauma um so those kinds of moments when people get to meet themselves a little more and see themselves and um and that's really beautiful um but then the Other favorite thing is when they come in and tell me stories about how their life is different because they have this breakthrough or because they see themselves differently now or because they keep feeling this one emotion.
And they come back and tell me stories about their lives and their relationships and their coaching client that just told me a story about this.
You know, like you had a conversation with someone on his team that shortcut months of what could have been kind of painful and dramatic and hard stuff.
Um, so, you know, throughout your career as a, you called it a systemic therapist, right? Um, What's that like? What's it like to be a systemic therapist? Is it hard?
The difference between marriage and family therapy and other psychology or mental health counseling or social work is the systemic piece where uh you're more rooted in family systems theory which is just a family applied system theory so the work i do as a therapist is not super visibly different right like i sit with clients we talk but the the difference is kind of having that systemic lens of seeing things through like what's happening for any individual is a product of the systems they're embedded in and so we're we're paying attention to like family of origin is the big one that is relevant to all the time you might be talking about your mom trope that you hear all the time about therapy but yeah so it's therapy just without that lens and there are people i don't do as much like i also do couples therapy there's some folks who do family therapy more i haven't done that as much but that's it as far as like what's hard and what's fun.
I super-duper love what happens in the room, like the act of therapy, the sitting with people, the talking about stuff that matters, getting a front-right seat to people's humanity and all the incredible resilience and wisdom that shows up in everyday lives of lots of just random people.
But the harder things, I mean, there's like the mundane stuff of like notes and all the paperwork you gotta do as a therapist, but probably from being more real, more vulnerable, the hardest thing is the emotional work.
The emotional work you have to do to be the kind of person who can sit with suffering all the time.
We go to school, we learn therapy models and things, but I don't think there's any uh, educational way.
It's just experiential to like sit with people who are going through it and learn how to not freak out.
And I think that's, um, I think that's what really courts over to leadership really well is I think leadership is the same problem, right? Leadership is, it's an incredibly emotionally fraught situation that you're in.
When everyone's counting on you to have answers, to provide direction and that emotional work of like looking inside and saying, okay, what, why am I freaking out right now? What we're planning to do to be more stable, to be more, to be more present.
Yeah, if I can, because it sounds like you're going to get these beautiful moments, both with the healing moments that people go through in the room, both with marriage and family therapy and with, you know, these leadership transformations.
And so I'm wondering, like, is it watching people have a breakthrough? Is it watching them, you know, kind of realize something about themselves that they didn't know? What is that? What are those moments? What does it look like?
Yeah, without getting lost in a bunch of storytelling, I think the biggest ones are the moments where people get to experience themselves differently.
Like, I thought I was this way, and now I'm having this moment where I just know that's not true.
Which often comes in the form of um kind of emotional breakthroughs like feeling something that hasn't been felt for a long time hasn't been allowed to be felt so someone who finally like feels anger that they've been carrying around for a long time or someone who finally acknowledges some grief or trauma um so those kinds of moments when people get to meet themselves a little more and see themselves and um and that's really beautiful um but then the Other favorite thing is when they come in and tell me stories about how their life is different because they have this breakthrough or because they see themselves differently now or because they keep feeling this one emotion.
And they come back and tell me stories about their lives and their relationships and their coaching client that just told me a story about this.
You know, like you had a conversation with someone on his team that shortcut months of what could have been kind of painful and dramatic and hard stuff.
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