.jpg)
The Reload with Sean Hansen
The Reload with Sean Hansen
Balancing the Burden: Empowering Leadership Through Trust and Teamwork - 207
Does the weight of leadership ever feel overwhelming? Today, we dissect the burdens and responsibilities that come with leading, both personally and professionally. Drawing insights from a compelling text message from an executive client, we delve into why leaders often carry a sense of heaviness, despite the fulfillment their roles can bring. Through definitions from Merriam-Webster, we explore the dual nature of strength and fatigue in carrying such burdens, and the inherent duty that leaders must face. This episode encourages you to reflect on your own burdens and offers a profound understanding of the complexities of leadership.
Ever feel like being the "responsible one" is more of a curse than a blessing? We'll reveal how gripping too tightly to this identity can stifle others' capabilities, creating stress and inefficiency within your team. Learn how to loosen this grip, recruit talent, and foster trust and teamwork to alleviate your own burdens. By confronting personal ego and opening space for others to contribute, leaders can achieve a healthier work-life balance and lead their organizations to success. Don't miss our actionable insights on empowering leadership through trust and teamwork, and transforming your leadership approach for a more effective and supportive environment.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Okay, welcome back. It's been a minute since I've recorded and in part, I guess I was a little burned out, but that is not your concern. Obviously, and more to the point, I'm really trying not to be some sort of content mill just because the algorithm lords want me to post at a certain frequency or intensity level. What I'm really hoping for is that these episodes actually are thought-provoking and that they do strike you, that they hit heavy and they hit hard not in a violent way, but in an impactful way. That they really make a difference for you or, at the very least, cause you to challenge the status quo that you are in. So there are breaks that I take because oftentimes I don't feel like I have anything really all that worthwhile to say Now.
Speaker 1:Recently, not too long ago, I ended up getting a text message from one of my executive clients and it said lots more change coming than anticipated. Heavy is the burden. And I thought, wow, okay, the real world strikes again and there's something in here that's interesting to me and hopefully to you as well. Now, of course, you know. If you're a regular subscriber to the show, you know where we're going next and of course, that is going to be the dictionary. Now, when we look up the definition of burden in good old Merriam-Webster, we see three relevant definitions, something that is carried First. Known use of that iteration was in the 12th century, in case anyone's curious. The second definition that seems relevant is duty or responsibility. And then the third definition for burden, which might hit home the hardest, is something oppressive or worrisome. So I want you to keep that text message in mind A lot more change coming than anticipated. Heavy is the burden.
Speaker 1:Now, the interesting thing for me about this, and part of the reason why I decided to make this show or this particular topic, is because so many of the leaders that I coach and I coach for the most part, vice president all the way up to C-suite and board members and things like that, although occasionally I will also work with entrepreneurs who maybe aren't at a place where they're currently giving themselves those kinds of titles. And then I also work with military, special operations, combat veterans, because psychometrically, those groups all tend to work with the same types of issues, the same types of problems. Now, so many of the leaders that I do work with state that being a leader is a core part of their identity and that they receive a great deal of fulfillment from being able to affect change in their organization. And you know, we're thinking about it critically. Many also seem to happen to enjoy the power that comes with being in charge as well. So if they're recognizing benefits that come with being in charge, why do so many leaders also feel a sense of burden?
Speaker 1:If we think about Shakespeare's line, heavy is the head that wears the crown. Why is that? I don't think he was being literal when he said that, although I guess many crowns probably were fairly heavy, especially the ones with all the jewels, but I digress. So why is there a sense of burden in leadership? Now, I think some of the obvious things that people would point to are well, you know, you've got a lot of stress, mm-hmm. True, undeniably true. Or well, you know, you've got a lot of stress. True, undeniably true. Or well, you know, there's a lot riding on your decision. Okay, that probably lends itself more towards that stress argument in the first place, which, but you know, maybe it's distinct and that's fine too and also equally true, but maybe, for the sake of argument, let's frame it in the context of the definitions that we looked at a second ago. So, if we think about that first definition something that is carried, a burden, that is something that is carried well, on the positive side of that, on the positive side of that, we need to be strong to carry a burden. And, yes, most of the clients men, women, etc. They would all agree that they like the idea of being strong, it's agreeable to them and it's definitely a compliment if somebody tells them that they are strong, and they will acknowledge that it gets tiring.
Speaker 1:Where is it that we are holding something for too long? Where is it that we feel that we are not able to put something down? To put something down, and as a brief further digression, I would argue that that element of this conversation can also be applied to really anything, whether you're in a position of leadership or not, whether it's something that is job related or whether it is something that is personal, and so often I attempt to make sure that we are understanding that these concepts are not isolated. They're not happening in a single silo. They're applicable across the board, but it's up to you to figure out where and how to apply the concepts. There has to be some extrapolation or, in some cases, interpolation about okay, what does this mean? What is the concept that I'm being offered here, and then how do I apply that to the circumstances that I'm facing? It may not look identical to what Sean happens to be talking about, but I think I can make use of it, and so it's a very important distinction I think to bear in mind. Is that, okay, yeah, these things are going to be universally applicable, but I have to engage brain and make it fit my circumstances. Now, additionally, if we look at the second definition here a duty or a responsibility.
Speaker 1:Now, for those who are new to the show, and since it's been a while since I've done an episode, part of the reason why I think going to the dictionary is so helpful, especially if you're able to look at the etymology of the word, is because our words form our conceptual understanding, and I apologize to my regular listeners and subscribers because you've heard this over and, over and over again. But hey, good messages can't be heard too often. So when we think about what definitions do for us, they create a conceptual relationship that helps us better understand. What does this mean? You know I'm not very good at mathematics, so you know I'm being vulnerable with you here, dear listener.
Speaker 1:But whenever I listen to people who are good with mathematics when they discuss certain concepts, I can go look it up, but I don't actually understand in working ways what the definition is telling me. Why would I use one concept versus another in order to achieve a certain end goal? But if we don't even understand the definition to begin with, then we have no hope whatsoever of navigating our way effectively to the better life that we want to live. So that's why, I think you know, so often I harp on definitions, and especially if we do have some insight into how humans, the humans who created the concept in the first place, how they related to that concept, where did it show up in their life? Because the story from somebody 700 years ago is really not all that different from our story today. You know one thing if you ever pick up Greek or Roman Stoicism, or really any or really any philosophical accounting or religious accounting from hundreds of years ago and if you really truly study it, you begin to recognize that again, the patterns are very similar.
Speaker 1:You had people hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, thinking that society was starting to move too fast, that technology was running away with their civilization. Now could we argue as modern humans? Could we argue that, well, we're doing it more so than ever before? Yeah, I guess you could. But the baseline understanding of wow, things are really speeding up and there's too much change, and I feel unsettled. Speeding up and there's too much change, and I feel unsettled. That baseline experience is the same whether you're living a couple thousand years ago or whether you're living today.
Speaker 1:So, going back to this notion of definitions, if we look at that second definition of duty or responsibility and we look at the clients that I tend to work with and if you are listening to the show, then you are probably like one of my clients Do they identify as a responsible person? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, and they love it. It offers them real satisfaction and, additionally, they like the trustworthiness that they enjoy in reputation, responsibilities, job offers, et cetera, et cetera, and for many it's become financially extremely lucrative to be a person of responsibility, and not just from a paycheck perspective, but also from the perspective of being trusted with other people's safety financial safety, physical safety who knows that they are someone who can lead this effort. You can put your trust and, more so, your faith in me. I will get us there. These are all just some of the broad concepts that really hit home with a lot of my clients. Concepts that really hit home with a lot of my clients, and part of that benefits package, if you will, is, I guess, the good feeling that comes when people trust you with their security. I think there's something very tribal and primal about that I've got your back and that you actually trust me with that.
Speaker 1:And then, on a wider level, a lot of the clients that I work with, they do want to affect some positive change in the world. Now, whether it's the world or just their world doesn't really matter to me, but for them, having risen through the ranks because of the sense of responsibility that they've taken and the trustworthiness that's been endowed upon them, I guess, by the others, they also get the benefit of being able to drive some of that change that they want to see Whether, again, that's sort of like inside the organization only, or whether that's inside of like inside the organization only, or whether that's inside and outside the organization doesn't really matter. But that's one of the benefits that comes with being this person of responsibility. And they also get tired, as with the above case, of about being strong to carry a burden. You feel like this is all there is.
Speaker 1:Is there nothing more to one's personality than being a responsible person? And from a more transactional perspective, oftentimes I work with a lot of operations types, people and the real sort of get stuff done types of folks. And in one of the assessments that I do and I've talked about this in past episodes there's a prompt that talks about feeling a constant weight on one's shoulders burden and as part of that they always max it out. There's a really strong sense that there's just constant weight and part of that, I believe. Well, based on the conversations I have with my clients, I know, is that okay? Yeah, like it's good to be a responsible person, it's going to be seen as a responsible person and trustworthy, et cetera, et cetera, and it would be really great if I wasn't the only responsible person. Where is it that?
Speaker 1:And this is something that I help clients of mine bring into reality in their world is they often have kind of been on this trajectory in their life where they were the responsible one. They were the ones that got things done. They were the ones making sure that things were not forgotten or overlooked. They were the ones often saving the day, and what's interesting about that is that they often end up incorporating that into their identity in such a strong way they really start to own it, and not just own it, but dominate it. They are actually stifling other people's ability to step up and be that same responsible, trustworthy, save the day kind of person, Because my client has put so much of their sense of self and their sense of self-worth into being that person that it's like no, no, no, no, this is my lane, you stay in your own lane, and so what's interesting there is that this identity issue backfires on them in a way, and they often end up surrounding themselves unconsciously.
Speaker 1:I don't know anyone yet that has done that intentionally, but they often surround themselves unconsciously with individuals that require a lot of hand-holding, because it's the client who's going to be the responsible one, and in order for me to be the responsible one, then you have to be the irresponsible one, and so what at first is sort of ego-stroking eventually becomes really, really burdensome and a real bottleneck, and so one of the things that we have to sort of gently untie is where the client has gripped too hard into this identity of being a responsible party and then has surrounded themselves with individuals that have confirmed that, oh gosh, you know I can't. I do have to be the one holding this all together, instead of bringing in more competent people that can also run the show, but that would also then serve as a bit of a threat to the client's ego of being the one that is going to save the day, that's going to hold everything together. So it's tricky and it requires a lot of trust between me and the client in order for us to really get that level of vulnerability and for the client themselves to be able to see internally and say, oh gosh, yeah, this is the thing I do, or at least the thing I have done, and I want to put it down because I'm serving, especially with my entrepreneur clients, who are the founders. I am serving as a bottleneck to the success of my organization, even though I say I don't want to do that. I am actually doing that because, from an unconscious ego perspective, I get a lot of ego stroking from being the save the day person, and then they have to start to begin to figure out okay, how do I reconcile potentially being less immediately indispensable, because I am attempting to build a deep bench of quality talent that can run this organization without me needing to be there every single day.
Speaker 1:And what might the benefits of that be? Oh, you can go on a vacation like a real one, like an actual no BS vacation. You know, like you don't call in to meetings while you're on vacation and you don't check your email wondering if things went sideways or if the company is burning down while you're in whatever place you're in. But no, actually feeling like, okay, yeah, they got it, I can take my hands off the steering wheel and it'll be okay. And I'm not just telling myself that, but I actually believe it. And therefore I can truly disconnect and decompress from all that pressure I have been carrying Huh, crazy and yet so worthwhile. Decompress from all that pressure I have been carrying Crazy and yet so worthwhile for those individuals who actually get themselves there.
Speaker 1:Many don't, many continue to indulge that egoic sense of self. And then they continue to get spun up in that pressure cycle and then thinking but I don't have anybody around me that can actually take the wheel. And it's like, yeah, because you won't let them or you won't recruit them in the first place. Or if you do recruit them then you micromanage them until they leave because they're pissed because they actually are quite talented and can run autonomously. So stop it. I'm trying to be a little humorous here, but so many of my clients have done these things that I know there are more of you out there and if you want help with that, reach out to me. We can talk, we can see if it's a good fit. But I digress again.
Speaker 1:Let's get onto that third definition. Something oppressive or burdensome, oh, jackpot, okay. So in that quote from my client from that text, lot more change coming than anticipated. Heavy is the burden Okay.
Speaker 1:So change scary in and of itself, even when we think it's going to be good for us, because we're going from a status quo that we know to who knows what. Is it really going to be good? We think it's going to be good. We've been told it's going to be good or forecasted that it's going to be good, but I don't know because it's in the future and the future is promised to no one. So change tends to be extremely difficult, even when it's supposed to be a positive change. Now, change that is anticipated tends to be more palatable for most people than change that is unanticipated. When you get more change coming than you anticipated, all of a sudden that lights up all kinds of alerts inside of the human neurocircuitry that says, oh God, was my forecast wrong? Was my ability to predict the future wrong? Ha ha ha. And then freak out starts to happen, because we would much rather be good at predicting that something bad is coming than to be caught flat-footed or unaware, even if something good came. Because then it says, oh crap, we don't know how to read our environment, and that is foundationally very scary for humans and any other creature. So it can be very overwhelming when we have too much change coming, when there are too many things all at once.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes and it is surprising the number of times that I do this with clients oftentimes the function that I serve is to ask them very rudimentary questions like okay, what's important? What's important in the next week? What's important in the next month, quarter, half year XYZ. Okay, well, why are XYZ important? What are X, y and Z connected to? That make them important? Why would your mind have settled on X, y and Z? And then they explain whatever they explained and then we deal with. Okay, now, based on that, what's the next thing that you need to do to get things done or to keep the ball rolling on what may be a more complex project? And it's a very, very rudimentary conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm not doing any sort of coach magic there. The magic, to the extent that it exists, is the fact that they are so overwhelmed by all the things on their dashboard or on their radar or whatever you know pick whatever metaphor you want that they have stopped to be able to see. And so the fact that they do have a standing session with me not weekly, but three times a month, it's the regular cadence and it's an opportunity for me to be an outside force that can say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes. Let's take a step back, breathe. Sometimes we do breathing exercises for the first several minutes of a session because they're so ramped up that they can't think straight, and it takes me and the experience that I have in observing people's behavior and tone and et cetera, et cetera, and to be able to say, okay, hey, I don't think we should jump into coaching just yet, because you're all over the place, you're rattled, so let's just breathe, let's just come back into the body. Instead of being forward out in the future amongst all the calamities that you're already anticipating, let's pull it back, let's get the breath going, let's get back into the body, recognize that we're right here right now. We're not in the future. We can talk about the future in a second and then to begin to see okay, now, let's, now that we're not so emotionally ramped up, let's think our way through.
Speaker 1:You got a lot of things on your radar dashboard, whatever. How much of that is noise? You got a lot of things on your radar dashboard, whatever. How much of that is noise? And where do we look to really gain appreciation for this signal that will help us see the direction that we should be going or that we want to be going?
Speaker 1:So there's a sense of overwhelm that ties us directly into this definition of something oppressive or burdensome, worrisome sorry, should have said worrisome there. So the other element of this is feeling trapped as well. When we feel trapped by a circumstance or a situation, we're much more likely to consider that it's oppressive and that it's worrisome. And again, feeling trapped is often a sense of not having the wherewithal, not having the information, not having who knows what, missing something, some sort of resource that would allow me to get out of this situation that feels painful for me. And what are the sources of pain?
Speaker 1:Well, on a basic physiological level, a lot of times my clients don't get a lot of sleep. And if you too have not gotten a lot of sleep at some point in your life, you know that that sucks at some point in your life, you know that that sucks. Additionally, my clients tend to travel a lot. They're always on a plane, sometimes it's a company plane, sometimes it's a whatever regular airline, or they're driving somewhere for hours. All the above, doing site visits, doing customer visits, board of directors meetings in this place or that place or whatever. And so then their sleep rhythms are off, their nutrition tends to be off, their workout cycles tend to be off, and sure I mean, there's ways to managing all that. But then that's another cognitive element, another checkbox that you have to figure out how to check.
Speaker 1:Did I do my workout this morning? Well, okay, I'm not at my gym this morning because I'm traveling. So, yeah, what's my body weight workout routine that I'm supposed to do in the morning? Okay, I'm also supposed to meditate, okay, but I was up late last night with customers and I woke. I slept in a little bit cause I was just up so late and, oh God, now my whole routine's. You know like. You get the idea here, right?
Speaker 1:So this notion that we can't bring adequate resources to bear to get our way out of the circumstance that we're facing and that we're feeling some sort of hurt On an emotional front they often are on the road so much that things at home are pretty rough, whether it's with their kids or their partner, or they feel guilty because they're putting their pet, their favorite pet, in some sort of daycare situation. They feel guilty about that. I mean, I've had people feel guilty about all kinds of things. There is no shortage of things that humans will feel guilty about. And then this notion that, oh my gosh, this will never end or change, which is interesting, because in the previous case we were talking about too much change and now we're talking about not enough change, right? So when something's painful for us, we want it to go away ideally on its own, without us having to get all nasty and in the trenches with it. But when we feel trapped, it's often connected to the sense that oh gosh, this is never going to end. Especially if we're having difficult customer relationships or vendor relationships, difficult relationships period, that can often feel like oh God, this is the only way it's ever going to be. That feels very trapping and then worrisome and oppressive.
Speaker 1:Another key ingredient here that has come up in a lot of the conversations that I've had with individuals is where they feel isolated and alone and the oppressiveness that comes with that. And I've commented on this in the past that typically my CEO clients feel this more so than really anybody else, and I think it's more just a matter of degree than kind. I would say most of my clients feel it to some degree because they're all in charge. But if you're the VP of a division, you often have other VPs that you can reach out to, that you trust, that are feeling your pain. The CEO you often have to reach out to other CEOs, but oftentimes the other CEOs that they know are customers or CEOs of vendors, so that doesn't really work out all that well or they're CEOs that they just know from the industry at large. And a lot of CEOs don't want to play those cards in too public a manner and for the most part they're not going to go to their board members and worry their board members or express worries to their board members, because they want to generally present an aura that they're running a tight ship and that everything's going to be okay, even if we're having a down year or even if we've had, you know, a couple down years.
Speaker 1:So that CEO spot tends to be pretty isolated and it often comes with narratives of I have to figure this out all by myself and potentially I can't trust anyone and that's a really, really terrible place to be. And if that is actually something that somebody says to me or shares with me, then we have to do some real digging there, some deep inner work, to try to figure out okay, is trust not trusting others? Is that a you thing or is that really truly a them thing? Or is it a you thing because you bring in people that you can't trust? Going back to the whole like ego stroking thing I talked about a few minutes back, because it often is well, I can't trust anyone to do X, or to take over while I'm gone, or to fill in the blank, and that actually is more manageable than just a blanket statement of I can't trust anyone. So we can then begin to say, okay, well, if you can't trust them to do X, y or Z. So we can then begin to say, okay, well, if you can't trust them to do X, y or Z, how do you either train them, coach them, replace them if necessary, how do we get that going on? Tangible process?
Speaker 1:What ends up coming to the foreground or bubbling up to the surface, is that whole egoic thing of, well, I want to be the one that's trustworthy. I'm like, ah, yeah, I mean, I get it, I sympathize and I also recognize that we kind of have to change some things if you want it to get better, if you don't want to be a total stress ball all the time. So hopefully this conversation is helpful If I were to put a couple last minutes of I don't know practical application on it. When we look at burden and we look at that last definition something oppressive or worrisome we have to really get clear about why it is that we feel oppressed or worried. What specifically is going on?
Speaker 1:What do we feel is threatened and more likely than not, you're going to start with some very superficial answers and you have to dig deeper than that if you really want to get to the root cause. Is that to say that the superficial reasons or causes that you've identified are not valid? No, they are valid and there's not either or and there's almost always something deeper inside of you, something that has to do with where you identify yourself as a certain kind of person. And how do you challenge that? How do you open up the floor to let other people dance on it, metaphorically, because the pressure that you're feeling, because you are the bottleneck and you are the one that feeling like, oh gosh, I have to do this all by myself. It is generally not true.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of talented people out there. Their vision of how to get to the finish line may not look exactly like yours, but I promise you you can have a very similar, if not damn near identical, finish line, even if people are going to take different routes to get to it, even if people are going to take different routes to get to it. But you have to be the one that confronts whatever inner demons. You have to open up that space and let people fill it. And if you really do have people that are low quality, who can't get the job done, either train them up, coach them up or replace them as a leader. That is actually your ultimate responsibility is to make sure that the organization thrives or the team thrives, and while I am all for the training and the coaching part of it, I recognize that sometimes somebody is a bad fit or an ineffective fit. Either they're an ineffective fit because their attitude is wrong and they refuse to change that, or they're an ineffective fit because their aptitude is simply not there, in which case do your best to determine that as quickly and fairly and effectively as you can and then make corrective action happen.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's been a while since I've done the outro part of this. Thank you for listening, and if you found any of this valuable, I would love it. If you would like subscribe, etc. Etc. Internet-y things, tap thumbs up, buttons and stars and whatever else, and then, more importantly, that you share it with somebody that you think would benefit, even if they don't want to hear the message, if you think that it would benefit them and if you think it would lead to an interesting conversation for the two of you, to either deepen your rapport or to get a better understanding of you know how it is that you might be holding yourselves back. Then fire it off Until next time. Take care of each other.
