Are You ‘Too Intense’?

Sooner or later, a founder hears the same line from someone on their team:

"You're too intense."

If you've heard it, you know how confusing it can be. Intensity is part of who you are.

You care deeply, move quickly, and hold a high bar. So does the feedback mean you should become less driven?

Of course not.

What usually goes unsaid is the real source of the friction: how your intensity makes people feel.

Light vs. Heat

You can think about intensity like a light bulb.

A light bulb gives off energy in two forms: light and heat. Light is the part you want. Heat is mostly wasted. And if you touch a hot bulb, it burns.

The same goes for an intense founder. Your intensity comes out as either light or heat.

• Light is clarity: a clear direction, clear outcomes, and a clear bar for what good looks like.
• Heat is pressure: the heavy feeling that fills a room when you're visibly frustrated.

The skill is learning to turn your energy into light instead of heat. So how do you manage the heat?

The Emotional Thermostat

Most of the time, turning up the heat is a failed attempt to make people care more.

Somewhere underneath, you want your team to be disappointed, even a little angry about where the project is. Then you get to talk them down and play the good guy.

The old part of your brain says: "if I care more, they'll care more".

However, the more intense your emotions, the less intense your team pushes.

It's as if the room has an emotional thermostat, holding the temperature at an average. When you heat up, they cool down to balance it out.

If you want your team to really care, you need to learn how to bring your own temperature down.

How to Play It Intensely Cool

Coming in hot looks like this: you zero in on the biggest issue, you explain what's wrong with it, and speak louder and faster until they submit.

Coming in cool takes practice. Done well, it evokes passion on the other side of the table, where you actually want it.

Here are four steps to get there.

1. Always Start With Wins

This matters more than it sounds, and not only for the other person.

When you open with what's wrong, your brain struggles to find anything good. I learned this the hard way.

Every Friday, I close the week with a retrospective. After one brutal week, I skipped the "What went well?" question and went straight to "What didn't go well?" It was one of the most depressing meetings I've ever sat in, and we all left completely drained.

From then on, I've always started with the wins. Listing them out charges everyone up, so they've got the energy to face the failures.

2. Get Them to Recap the Desired Outcome

The emotion lives in the output, so it's often best to recap the desired outcomes before reviewing the work.

That way, the person can hold their own work up against the outcome themselves.

This is a coaching technique, and like all coaching techniques, they always go first. Ask them:

"What would a 10 out of 10 solution look like?"

If they haven't gone far enough, ask "What else?" Only after they've fully answered do you add what's missing from your view, and why it matters to you.

Once you both agree on what good looks like, the conversation stops being a competition over who's right, and becomes a collaboration i.e. how do we best achieve the desired outcome?

3. Ask Coaching Questions

Founders are notoriously impatient, and coaching questions can feel inefficient. It's worth considering why that is.

I believe there are two reasons.

• Most founders haven't asked enough of them to be great at it yet.
• It always feels faster to just hand over the answer.

If you want to transform heat into light, you need to get better at coaching others.

Open "what" and "how" questions not only get the other party to think for themselves, they also buy you a few seconds to choose your words with care.

When you say less and listen more, the words you do say carry more weight. What you lose in efficiency, you gain in effectiveness.

A few questions I come back to again and again:

• How would you score your current solution out of 10?
• What would it take to get that to a 9 or a 10?
• What's the real challenge here for you?
• What's the 80:20?
• What are your options?
• What's the right next step?

None of this means you withhold your ideas. The trick is simply to let them go first.

4. End Strong

Endings matter. People remember how something finished far more clearly than anything in the middle.

That's why I close every meeting I run with the same two questions:

1. What's your biggest takeaway from today?
2. What will you commit to this week to keep the momentum going?

These questions focus attention onto learning and the right next steps. These are ownership behaviours, and ownership is what you really wanted all along.

Intensity Is a Superpower

Every one of my most successful CEOs is intense, and their intensity is a feature, not a bug.

Most of them have come on too hot at times, and invest time in learning how to be cooler so they don't burn people. If you struggle with this, it's completely normal.

The next time someone on your team tells you you're too intense, don't reach for the dimmer switch.

Instead, apply these four steps to transform heat into light, and be more coach-like when the situation calls for it.

Related Reading:

• How to Use Positivity to Handle Tough Conversations
• Your Team's Feedback Won't Make You a Better CEO
• The Art of Not Taking Things Personally

Originally published on June 17th, 2026