Happy New Year!
One of the unintended (yet life-changing) benefits of being a leadership and mental performance coach is that I am confronted with myself every single day.
And there are days when I am less than enthused about what I uncover.
What I mean is this. If you’re going to walk with others on their leadership journey, you can’t simply use your past frame of reference as the only optic. It’s far too narrow.
The experiences I had as an infantry officer or FBI agent are, at a minimum, five years old. I remember a lot of stuff about leading people, but my experiences are just that.
MY experiences.
Not the gold standard. Far from it.
Anything meaningful I learned came from what I got wrong, not flawless execution.
As time has passed there are many things I find that I wish I could do over.
And it is in reading and studying and working with others (and my own coach) that I end up undergoing my own deep work.
Instead of just remembering the “what” (which becomes more blurred with time), I am forced to confront the “why.”
Case in point – why did I believe that as a leader I had to carry everything alone?
Sure, I had deputies and executive officers and assistants who helped me run the show. I knew how to delegate and recognized early on that the secret to great teams is allowing your selfless teammates the opportunities to use their skills, their experiences, their personality, etc to do what they do best.
And they did.
But when things didn’t work out as planned, deep down I carried it all in my pack. And I never emptied out that pack nor laid it down. Over time, that pack got heavy.
I didn’t have to, but I did.
Why?
If I had to hazard a guess, it probably started with the first time I heard “a leader is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do.”
I bought it. Hook, line, and sinker.
I preached it. I owned it. I truly believed it.
And now? I realize the mistake I made.
At its core, that statement is about accountability.
Someone (ie the leader) has to be accountable. Leaders create conditions, provide clarity, and mold the culture. They own the outcomes and accept responsibility even when others fail.
But nothing in that quote says a leader has to carry everything alone, is not allowed to ask for help, must absorb every burden personally, or that their worth is measured by how much they can endure.
My mistake was in how I translated it internally.
An inspirational, aspirational, well-intentioned mantra.
Turned into a lie.
“If I’m responsible for everything…
Then I should be able to handle everything.
If something is hard, that’s on me.
If I need help, I’ve failed.
If I rest, I’m weak.
If I unload, I’m burdening others.”
Self-reliance masquerading as responsibility.
The lie is confusing ownership with self-reliance.
And on the cost analysis spreadsheet, that lie cost me a lot.
· Isolation – it’s all on me and asking for help wasn’t on the menu.
· Emotional exhaustion – no place to unload.
· Quiet resentment.
· Burnout framed as “personal failure.”
Does any of that sound familiar? I’d venture a guess that those who see leadership as a sacred responsibility are the most vulnerable to this distortion.
How did I not see that for so long?
Think about it. We talk about training and educating our teams and giving them responsibility and authority. We divest ourselves of control and put it where it belongs, in the hands of the people actually doing the work.
Clearly, they have as much impact on the end result as anyone else, including the leader.
And I know that! I’ve lived it! So why did I carry a load that was never meant for me?
No wonder I ran out of gas. I took a true principle and turned it into something that slowly crushed me.
Self-reliance masquerades as responsibility, but it quietly burdens leaders from the inside out.
That belief didn’t make me strong in the right way; it made me carry a pack that wasn’t needed for my journey.
And even though my rational mind understands the concept (and in some ways probably did back then), I picked it up and never put it down.
If you’re a leader who has a habit of stuffing your pack with non-essentials, this might be worth sitting with.
If responsibility has turned into isolation and if admitting this isn’t easy seems difficult, I invite you to reach out. I’m all ears.
Dan
Founder, Leader First Coaching