If You Are in a Leadership Position and Aren’t Using “Parts Work” Yet, You’re Behind

Let’s cut straight to the chase: if you’re in a leadership role and you haven’t heard of, learned, and begun using “parts work” yet, you’re behind the eight ball.

Leadership has changed. The command-and-control style that used to dominate boardrooms is dead. People don’t want to be managed like cogs in a machine – they want to be led like the complex, motivated, emotion-steered humans they are. If you don’t understand that, your leadership is already becoming irrelevant, and your people are likely feeling it.

What the Hell is “Parts Work”?

Parts work is a psychological framework rooted in something called Internal Family Systems (IFS), which was originally conceptualized for the world of psychotherapy, but has been rocking all kinds of industries in recent years. The concept is built on one powerful idea: people are not one-dimensional beings with a static personality. Every person (yourself included) is made up of different “parts” or sub-personalities that carry distinct emotions, beliefs, histories, motivations, fears, and roles.

Think about it:

• You’ve got a part that’s bold, confident and decisive – ready to dominate a presentation.
• Another part that keeps you awake at night and makes you second-guess every move, ruminating and worrying instead of letting your mind rest.
• And maybe a part that avoids conflict like the plague, preferring to keep the peace no matter the cost.
• If you’re anything like me, you may have a perfectionist part that struggles to let you feel at peace unless things are exactly as you want them to be.
• Or a defensive part that struggles to listen with an open mind when someone attempts to tell you how they feel or hold you accountable.

That’s all fairly normal stuff, but lends to dysfunction and issues within your team or organization if you don’t work to understand and integrate the parts perspective. So until you do, you’re leading on autopilot with an outdated operating system.

Why Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore It

Your employees or the people on the groups you lead are just as “multiple” as you are. That’s why two people can get the exact same feedback and react in totally different ways. One feels motivated, the other spirals into defensiveness or self-doubt. Most leaders shrug and chalk it up to “different personalities,” but it’s not that simplistic. What you’re seeing is different parts at work – parts shaped by unique experiences, beliefs, and fears.

A leader who gets this doesn’t just “manage people”- they know how to unlock people. They ask smarter questions, create psychological safety, and understand how to navigate when someone gets triggered. The result? Higher engagement, stronger trust, meaningful innovation, and better performance across the board.

And let’s be honest – leaders who can’t regulate their own triggers are a liability. Ever snapped at a colleague and immediately regretted it? That was a “part” hijacking you and dysregulating your nervous system. Leaders trained in parts work can spot that moment in real time, hit pause, and respond with clarity and curiosity instead of reactivity. That’s a massive competitive advantage.

And as we get familiar with the various parts (within ourselves as well as the people we lead), we will access creativity and high-performing new levels of our capabilities and organizational connection. As someone who has spent more than a decade specializing in parts work and witnessed hundreds of lives radically benefitted from it, I promise it will blow your damn mind.

This Isn’t Fluffy Self-Help – It’s the Real Shit

If you are interpreting this as “soft,” let me stop you. The U.S. military uses IFS parts work in resilience training. Universities are applying it in leadership programs. Corporations are bringing it into executive coaching. Millions of people worldwide are leveraging parts work to perform better, lead smarter, and live with less internal and interpersonal conflict.

And wanna hear something so cool? Most personal and professional development coaches aren’t trained in parts work. I am. I have been formal trained directly by the IFS Institute. Which means my clients don’t just get surface-level pep talks or second-hand parts-based education. They get a research-backed, empirically proven, internationally recognized framework that’s changing the future of leadership.

The Future of Leadership

The leaders of the future aren’t the loudest voices in the room – they’re the ones who understand human complexity and know how to lead with both precision and curiosity. If you’re not learning parts work, you’re already behind the curve. And in today’s business world, “behind” quickly turns into “obsolete.”

Ready to Catch Up?

If you’re serious about being the kind of leader people want to follow – not just tolerate – it’s time to learn parts work:

• Join my email list for leadership insights and practical tools on applying parts work. I’ll send you the first 3 chapters of More YourSELF for FREE when you sign up!
• Submit a coaching inquiry on the Contact Page at SaraJeanWaters.com to work with me one-on-one.
• Book me to facilitate a group workshop for your department or executive leadership team. It’s one of the most effective ways to embed this framework across an entire organization. My speaking and workshop facilitation inquiry form is also on my Contact page.

The future of leadership is already here. The only question is: are you going to catch up, or get left behind?