Leadership Mindset: Limiting Beliefs, Self-Awareness, and Better Decisions with Steve Barton
Summary
In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Steve Barton, executive coach, author, and creator of The Game of Ten®, an awareness-based framework designed to help leaders and high performers operate with greater clarity, confidence, and intention.
Steve brings more than four decades of real-world business experience, including growing his family’s florist business from roughly $200,000 to more than $2 million in revenue. That experience shaped a perspective on leadership that challenges a common assumption: when a problem becomes more complicated, the answer is not always to think harder.
Sometimes the thinking itself is part of the problem.
Gary and Steve explore how limiting beliefs, past experiences, self-doubt, and emotional reactions can quietly influence the decisions leaders make today. Steve explains his distinction between what he calls The Game of Ten and “the game often played,” where leaders operate from old patterns without necessarily realizing it.
The conversation gets practical when they examine what happens after a difficult customer interaction. If one frustrating conversation affects how you show up for the next client, employee, or decision, the issue is no longer simply personal. It becomes a leadership and business issue.
Steve also explains why he believes awareness creates space between an experience and our response, how leaders can better recognize the thoughts that are limiting them, and why intuition can play an important role alongside experience and analytical thinking.
This episode is ultimately about developing a stronger leadership mindset: becoming more aware of what you are carrying into a decision, recognizing when old assumptions are influencing new situations, and learning to respond to what is actually happening in front of you.
For founders, owners, executives, and managers, the challenge is simple:
Are your thoughts helping you lead better, or are they quietly limiting how you show up?
What You’ll Learn
- Why Steve believes resilience and letting go of ego were critical lessons from decades of running a business
- What The Game of Ten® is and how it differs from what Steve calls “the game often played”
- How limiting beliefs and past experiences can influence present-day leadership decisions
- Why self-awareness matters when leaders are under pressure
- How overthinking can interfere with clarity and confidence
- The role Steve believes intuition should play alongside rational analysis
- How to prevent one difficult customer or employee interaction from affecting the next conversation
- Why leaders should pay closer attention to the thoughts they repeatedly tell themselves
- How beliefs such as “I’m not a good leader” or “I’m not good at this” can become self-imposed barriers
- Why Steve believes healthy boundaries are an important part of leadership
- What leaders can learn by questioning the assumptions they carry into their work
- Why disagreeing with a boss can reveal a great deal about the quality of leadership inside an organization
Chapters
0:00 Open
0:56 Introduction
2:48 What three decades running a family business taught Steve
3:13 What the Game of Ten is and why it is different
4:05 The Game OFTEN Played and running on autopilot
5:34 60,000 thoughts a day and why most come from the past
8:16 Steve’s definition of awareness
9:55 Why thinking harder makes the problem worse
12:43 The six phrases, demonstrated live
21:48 Thinking versus knowing
22:26 Where intuition comes from in experienced operators
24:45 The levels of awareness and the gap we fill
28:18 Forgiving a person versus letting go of the thought
30:16 One thing a founder can start doing this week
32:16 Limiting beliefs at work
37:04 Does It Hold Water?
38:50 Chip Shots
45:57 Where to find Steve Barton
Book Recommendation
A Course in Miracles
Steve identifies A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman as one of the books that has most influenced his thinking and personal development.
Steve Barton’s Book
The Father, The Son, The Aha Moment!
Steve co-authored the book with his son, exploring parenting, relationships, awareness, and breaking long-standing patterns.
Connect with Steve Barton
Website: https://www.stevebartoncoaching.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coach-steve-barton/
The Father, The Son, and the Aha Moment: https://thegameof10.com/
Connect with Gary Marra
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/
Schooley Mitchell: https://www.schooleymitchell.com/gmarra
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast
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ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS
Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast built around a simple idea: client focus is not just a service philosophy. It is a growth strategy.
Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership behavior, relationship building, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, entrepreneurs, advisors, and business leaders about how stronger relationships, better leadership, and disciplined execution create trust, retention, referrals, and sustainable growth.
ABOUT GARY MARRA
Gary Marra is a business advisor, customer experience leader, Strategic Partner with Schooley Mitchell, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on experience in financial services, client management, operations, entrepreneurship, and cross-functional leadership, Gary brings a practical business lens to the connection between customer relationships and growth.
His perspective is grounded in a simple principle: strong businesses are built by creating value, earning trust, strengthening relationships, and executing consistently.
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