Lee Povey and Steve Mellor are leadership coaches and hosts of The Founders Catalyst, a podcast dedicated to helping founders, executives, and rising leaders navigate the complexities of personal and professional growth. With decades of combined experience in elite sports, executive coaching, and team development, Lee and Steve offer real-world insights, sharp coaching tools, and thought-provoking conversations for the modern leader.

📝 Episode Summary:

In this milestone 20th episode of The Founders Catalyst, hosts Steve Mellor and Lee Povey dive deep into the power and necessity of emotional regulation for leaders. Building on themes from the previous episode about ego, this conversation explores how unregulated emotions can derail communication, relationships, and business outcomes, and how curiosity, awareness, and conscious choice can lead to more effective leadership.

Lee and Steve share personal stories, coaching insights, and practical tools that help leaders move from reactivity to responsibility. You’ll learn how our evolutionary psychology wires us to react, and how you can rewire those instinctual responses to lead with clarity, compassion, and confidence.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Emotional regulation is a leadership superpower, it's not about suppressing emotion, but understanding and channeling it.
• The fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response is hardwired, but not destiny, you can reprogram your reaction.
• Understand your triggers: texts like “We need to talk” often prompt fear or assumption, but rarely mean what we expect.
• Replacing assumption with curiosity is critical for clear communication and relational trust.
• Leaders must recognize both internal (self-awareness) and external (others’ behavior) influences on emotional responses.
• Emotional regulation is best practiced in community, not in isolation, vulnerability builds trust.
• Coaching provides a powerful container for developing this regulation and improving team dynamics.

Resources & Mentions:

• Lee Povey Coaching
• Steve Mellor – Growth Ready Coaching
• Above and Below the Line model – The Conscious Leadership Group

Thank you for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our podcast. Stay tuned for more insights and discussions to help you thrive in both your personal and professional life.

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