Lead With Intention™ · A Community for Leaders Who Mean It
The Leader Café Club ™
Where Intentional Leaders Come to Grow
Leader Learning Experiences™ · Cohort Conversations · Values-Based Leadership
Where Intentional Leaders Come to Grow
Leader Learning Experiences™ · Cohort Conversations · Values-Based Leadership
Welcome to Experience 5 — the final Leader Learning Experience™ before your Capstone Leader Declaration™.
You have done significant work to get here. You know something more clearly about your values, your capabilities, your differentiation, and your brand. Experience 5 asks the question that makes all of that matter: What is getting in your way?
Not the surface-level answer. The real barrier. The one you have been carrying so long you have stopped mentioning it — because you have grown so accustomed to its weight that you have begun to mistake it for your own.
The case this Experience centers is unusual: two leaders, one organization, one system — and a barrier that looks completely different depending on where you stand in it. Dominique Washington and Natalie Sutterberg face the same organizational challenge. And yet the barrier each one carries is not the same barrier — because they are not in the same position in the system.
After your Ensemble Session™, you will receive the Capstone Preparation Guide. Your Leader Declaration™ is next.
AI is creating new barriers for some leaders and removing old ones for others — and the distribution is not equitable. For leaders from underrepresented backgrounds, AI-assisted hiring, promotion, and evaluation tools often replicate existing biases rather than correcting them. For leaders in dominant positions, the same tools can amplify advantages that were already present. Experience 5 asks you to examine the barriers you carry — and also to ask honestly: What barriers does your position create for others?
| Core Competency | BRKR — Barrier-Breaking Energy · ADPT — Adaptive Leadership |
| Leadership Level | Emerging through Mid-Level · All levels welcome |
| Sector | All industries — tech, healthcare & financial services tensions featured |
| Session 1 — Solo Set™ | Individual reading + reflection · 45–60 minutes |
| Session 2 — Ensemble Session™ | Final LLE before Capstone · 45–60 minutes |
| Case Leaders | Dominique Washington & Natalie Sutterberg — Co-Founders, TechBridge Solutions |
The work of Experience 5 is both immediate and ongoing:
In the next 48 hours — name the barrier. Write it down specifically. Not a category, but the actual thing: 'I do not speak in large meetings because I believe my perspective will not be valued.' That level of specificity
In the next week — identify one moment where you moved toward the barrier instead of around it. What happened?
When observing other leaders — notice who is carrying barriers in silence. Notice who has barriers removed by the system that others must carry
Between now and your Leader Declaration™ — gather your five Leader Transformation Statements™. Read them in order. The arc of what shifted is the raw material for your Declaration
(The Capstone Preparation Guide arrives after your Ensemble Session™. Everything you need to write your Leader Declaration™ is already in what you have written.)
This is the final Experience before your Leader Declaration™. Before you read a single word — sit with this question: What is the barrier you have been carrying the longest? Not the one you talk about most easily. The one you have almost stopped mentioning because you have grown so accustomed to its weight that you have begun to mistake it for your own. Write one sentence. That sentence is part of your Capstone.
Pull up a chair. This story is waiting for you.
TechBridge Solutions was founded twice. The first time by Dominique Washington — a forty-three-year-old Black woman from Detroit who had spent seventeen years as a systems architect at three federal agencies, accumulated a security clearance most contractors spent years trying to obtain, and built a methodology for cybersecurity implementation in legacy government infrastructure that she had never written down because she assumed everyone in her field could see what she saw. They could not.
Dominique founded TechBridge in 2019 with seventy thousand dollars from her savings and a contract she had won by explaining to a federal procurement officer, over coffee, why their current database security approach was going to fail within eighteen months. She was right. The contract followed.
The second time TechBridge was restructured when Dominique brought Natalie Sutterberg on as co-leader in 2022. Natalie was thirty-eight, white, had spent a decade in enterprise software sales, and possessed a talent for translating technical complexity into procurement language that contracting officers could act on. The partnership changed TechBridge's growth trajectory. It also surfaced a question neither woman had been prepared to ask out loud.
TechBridge submitted a proposal for a significant federal cybersecurity contract. The technical approach was Dominique's. The proposal narrative was Natalie's. They had rehearsed the joint presentation twelve times. It went well by every visible measure.
Two weeks later, feedback came through an informal channel. The committee had been impressed by the technical depth. They had also noted that one evaluator had asked a colleague after the presentation: 'Who is actually running this company?'
Dominique asked which of them the question had been about. There was a pause. 'Dominique, I think you know the answer to that.'
She did know. She had known for years. She had simply hoped that founding the company, holding the technical expertise, and carrying the security clearance would eventually make the question irrelevant. They had not.
Dominique told Natalie about the call the same evening. Natalie's first response was anger. Not at Dominique, but at the system.
Dominique stopped her. 'I know. And I need you to hear something. Your outrage is real, and it's warranted. And it is also not the same thing as what I carry. You can be angry about this and then go home and not carry it. I cannot.'
That sentence changed the conversation. Natalie went quiet. Then she asked a question she had never asked before: 'What do you need from me — not as your business partner, but as someone who benefits from the same system that makes this happen to you?'
It was the right question. It was also the question Natalie had never thought to ask before that night — not because she was indifferent, but because the system that created the barrier for Dominique had also, for years, made the barrier invisible to Natalie.
Dominique and Natalie restructured how TechBridge presented itself in competitive contexts. Dominique led every technical presentation. Natalie handled procurement navigation and contract language. The roles were explicit, not implicit — and they were communicated clearly to clients before meetings began.
The restructuring did not solve the systemic problem. It worked around it. Dominique knew the difference. 'What we've done is figured out how to make the door open for us specifically. We haven't changed the door.'
Natalie asked: 'Is that enough?' Dominique said: 'For now, it has to be. But no. It's not enough.'
TechBridge won the federal contract on their next submission. Dominique was introduced as founder and CEO — by Natalie, at Natalie's insistence, before the technical presentation began.
Dominique and Natalie found each other across a system that was not built for either of them — though it disadvantaged them very differently. The question their story leaves with you: Are you carrying the door — or walking through it? And if you are walking through: who is still carrying it for you?
Take your time. Write before you edit. The reflection you refine before you read it is almost never the one that produces learning.
Dominique told Natalie: 'You can be angry about this and then go home and not carry it. I cannot.' What barriers in your professional life do you carry continuously — versus the ones you can set down when you leave the room? What does that difference tell you about the system?
Natalie asked: 'What do you need from me — not as your business partner, but as someone who benefits from the same system that makes this happen to you?' Who in your professional life has asked you that question — or needed you to ask it of them?
Dominique said: 'What we've done is figured out how to make the door open for us specifically. We haven't changed the door.' In your organization, when you have broken through a barrier — did you change the system, or work around it? What would changing the system have required?
The barrier Dominique carried was systemic. The barrier Natalie had to overcome was her own inability to see what the system was doing. Which of those barriers do you carry — and are you certain you know the answer?
This is your final Leader Learning Experience™ before your Capstone Declaration. What is the barrier you named in your Opening Pause — the one you have been carrying long enough to mistake for your own? Has this case changed how you see it?
What is the barrier you have been carrying so long you have stopped mentioning it? Describe it specifically — not as a category but as a lived experience. What has it cost you? What would it change about your leadership if you set it down — or walked through it — or named it out loud for the first time?
The goal of the Café Table is not agreement. It is the productive collision of honest perspectives from leaders who see the world differently. Stay in the discomfort. That is where the learning lives.
This is your final Café Table session before the Capstone. Bring everything. These prompts are not gentle — they are the ones that have been waiting since Experience 1 for you to be ready for them.
In your Café Table right now: who is carrying the door, and who is walking through it? You don't have to answer that question about each other. But you do have to answer it about yourself.
TechBridge learned to work around the system that disadvantaged Dominique. They did not change it. In your organization, when leaders break through barriers — are they changing systems or working around them? What would it take to change the system — and what prevents it?
Your Leader Declaration™ is next. What barrier — named or unnamed — has shaped your leadership more than you have acknowledged? This is the moment to name it. Not to resolve it. Just to name it clearly, so it can be part of what your Declaration honestly reflects.
This is not a summary of what you read. It is a declaration of what shifted. Write something true — even if it is uncomfortable. By Experience 6 you will have five statements that together form the architecture of your Leader Declaration™.
The barrier I have been carrying long enough to mistake it for my own is ___. What it has cost my leadership is ___. What I commit to doing differently — not around this barrier but through it — is ___.
These are not rules. They are practices — and the difference matters. Try them here. They will serve you in every meeting, every difficult conversation, and every leadership moment for the rest of your career.
Finish hearing someone completely before you begin forming your own response. You will be surprised what you hear when you are not busy composing — and how much more people share when they feel genuinely heard.
The case study gives you a safe starting place. But the real learning happens when you move from "the case leader should have..." to "I once..." The moment you share something from your own leadership experience — even something uncomfortable — the entire group gets smarter.
The most valuable contribution you can make in a peer learning group is a question that opens something up — not an answer that closes it down. "What do you mean by that?" and "Say more" are leadership moves, not filler phrases.
If you tend to speak first and often — practice waiting. If you tend to stay quiet — practice speaking earlier. Both are leadership development. Both will serve you long after this program ends.
The moments of discomfort in these conversations are not problems to be managed. They are the learning. Stay in them a little longer than feels comfortable. That is where the real development happens.
What is shared at the Café Table stays at the Café Table. Full stop. It is the structural requirement for honest conversation. Honor it every time, without exception.
Every practice in this section is transferable. Try listening to understand before responding in your next difficult team meeting. Ask a question instead of offering a solution when a colleague shares a frustration. Be the person who stays in the silence after a hard question rather than the one who fills it. These are not Café Table behaviors. They are leadership behaviors. The Café Table is just where you practice them.