Why Do I Feel Like I Have to Carry It All?

Leadership can sometimes feel lonely.

But is loneliness simply part of leadership, or could it be connected to the stories we carry about what leadership requires? 

In this first solo episode of The Pause Before You Lead, Heather explores the beliefs that kept her constantly connected to work, even while on vacation, and how those same patterns continue to show up in the leaders she coaches today.

Rather than focusing on time management or delegation, this conversation invites a deeper reflection:

What if the greatest weight leaders carry isn’t their workload, but the stories they’ve come to believe about responsibility, availability, and what it means to be a good leader?

As you listen, consider this question:

What am I carrying that may no longer be mine to carry?

Whether you’re leading a team, a business, or an organization, this episode offers an invitation to pause, reflect, and start writing a different story. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, I'm Heather Haig and welcome to the Pause Before You Lead podcast. Alicia is taking a well-deserved few weeks away. So I thought this would be a good time to do a short solo series around some of the leadership questions that I've been asking and for us to explore them together. As always, this is an invitation not just to find answers, but to take a pause just for a moment to see what we might be missing. Lately I've been thinking a lot about leadership and loneliness. I remember being told many times in my career that, you know, the more you moved up the corporate ladder, the lonelier you'd become. And it's an interesting concept. I mean, I I don't disagree with it. I think what I'm curious about is to say, what are the causes? Is there just one cause? Is it just because you get more isolated, you know, in a hierarchical structure, there aren't as many people in that in that leadership position. Certainly when I was looking at starting my own business, I heard many people tell me how lonely I would be. And so, you know, those stories start to become truths that we believe are just the way it is, and we potentially don't challenge that thinking. So I've been really exploring that the last couple of weeks, especially in these summer months, as I'm reminded of old models that I used to have or beliefs that I used to carry. And so I'm just going to invite you to be thinking about for yourself what shows up for you when you think about what you might be carrying in your own leadership. And if you experience loneliness, what might be the source? So let's spend some time together. Let's slow things down and have a conversation. It's interesting when I think about my old summers when I was in corporate. I remember taking vacation. And I remember the first time I took a two-week vacation. And during that time, I truly believed that it was my responsibility to continue to check in at work and make sure everything was running smoothly. And what's interesting as I look back on that is I it really wasn't about whether or not I trusted my team members. I 100% trusted my team members to be able to do what they were responsible for. What it was was a belief, actually, that I was holding on to. And I remember hearing it a few different sort of internal messages. I don't know, you might have a voice or two that you notice within yourself that speaks things, but some of the things that I remember hearing were, you know, uh, that other leaders uh were always online. And so therefore I needed to be. So the models that I'd look to who inspired me, who I wanted to emulate, seemed to always be on. And so I felt that I needed to too. Um I also remember if a ball gets dropped, I'll get blamed. No, I don't recall there being any evidence specifically to reinforce this belief, but this was something that I was carrying at the time. And it caused me when I was on vacation to continue to do work and never really unplug. And the third thing is sort of that driver part of part of myself, which is, you know, you're it just being a high performer, you need to always be on. And so that one was maybe a little bit less about leadership, but it was definitely a driving force that kept me feeling like I could never truly unplug. And when I'm talking with leaders today, they come to me sometimes using very similar language that reminds me of that period of time. Because uh, one of the things that they tell me, especially at this time of year, is I want to make sure I can take a real vacation. And, you know, as we explore what is a real vacation, we start to unpack where not just the responsibilities and the workload, and certainly there are those things, but I think where my curiosity lies is more in the what are the underlying beliefs that reinforce that we can't truly unplug, that there's some sense of risk or some sense of worry or some sense of something that just drives us forward to continue to check in, to continue to just carry the load of all of that. And, you know, I think that vacation is kind of the time that maybe we start to see how much we're carrying in a different light, because day-to-day in work, leaders are carrying tons of things, not just the responsibilities of the performance of the team, but also, you know, carrying the weight of the emotional well-being of the team, potentially carrying the weight of, you know, if you know that there's a member of your team that's struggling personally, carrying the weight and responsibility of that. So sometimes there's things happening in the upline, and you're carrying the weight and responsibility of that too. So there's lots of things that leaders carry that contribute to that sense of loneliness. And coming back to the beliefs underneath are how much of this do I really need to carry? How much of this is actually my responsibility or something I need to own, versus a story that I've been carrying that perhaps perpetuates this belief system. So as you start to unpack some of that, at least in my own experience as I was unpacking some of that, just noticing no one asked me to be on on vacation. And maybe I'll just say that one more time because it hit me hard. No one asked me to take on that responsibility. My own belief system that said that's what leaders do created that demand upon myself. And it was only once I started to be able to unravel some of the underlying beliefs, driving that, that I could see clearly no one else was putting that expectation on me. And in fact, my continuing to check in and make sure everything was okay while I was on vacation was driving some downstream impacts as well. So the first part is really in the noticing of by behaviors, the way that I was operating and checking in and doing work on vacation to then say, well, what's the source of that and getting underneath that and exploring that. And once those items start to come into view and we see them with a little more clarity, we can start to maybe consider changing some of the the narrative, some of the story that that we've been holding dearly. And certainly that's for me, whenever I start to find myself falling back into old patterns, it's that opportunity to say, is there an old story that's resurfaced that I have on repeat that I want to lay that sucker out and just explore it and unpack with it a little bit. So the impact on me is the feeling of pressure, the feeling of never being able to kind of just shut off. And when I can't shut off, I'm not fully present. So the impact in the people around me, those that I love the most, was not being fully accessible to them, available to them, having distractions happening in my mind, things that I was responsible for, even though I was supposed to be dedicating that time to myself and to my family. The other impact, and maybe this is the one that we as leaders don't always see, is when we communicate to the team, I'm taking two weeks off, I'm gonna unplug, I'm not gonna be checking in. And then, you know, at least 24 hours in, I'd do the first check-in because I was getting nervous and stressed and carrying a lot of responsibility that no one had placed on me. And certainly no one that I was working with would necessarily say it overtly, but it does send a message when you communicate an intention to take a real vacation, a real break, a real separation, a real stepping back. And then you don't do it, it does potentially communicate to your team that you don't see them as capable, that you don't believe they can run the business while you're away, that you doubt their ability to solve problems. And none of that may be true, by the way, but just by my operating in that way, by my checking in, the individuals that I'm checking in with have the possibility of feeling like she doesn't think that I can do this. Right? She doesn't trust there could be the potential feeling of a micromanaging in that moment. And I believed myself to in no way be a micromanager. But it's interesting to observe how something as seemingly innocent as I just want to check in and make sure everything's going okay, can send a message to the team that says she doesn't think everything's going okay or she wouldn't be checking in. So all of these expectations that were operating within me were impacting me, they were impacting my family, and they were impacting the team in unintentional ways. And so, you know, it's interesting when we talk about the potential loneliness. How much are we carrying that we we don't own or don't need to own? And what would happen if we worked on unraveling the beliefs that are causing the behavior? Because I think that there's a lot of times where there's stories we've created and it's been through our own experiences, it's been through messaging that we have received, it's maybe even been observing other leaders and absorbing that that's the way we need to operate. When you do take that first real vacation and everything goes just fine without you, uh the the other potential thing that can surface in that moment is, do they really need me? And the answer is yes. It's do they need you in the way that you've believed people need you? And I think that that's probably a conversation for another day. But it does leave us on an interesting and curious note to say that maybe through breaking down old definitions of the weight that leaders carry and the responsibility that keeps us tied to our work and taking everything on, maybe in writing in a new story around that, there's an opportunity to be valuable to the team, be valuable to the organization in different ways than we previously believed. So something to reflect on and think about between now and our next conversation. Thank you for joining the pause before you lead. And we uh would love you to pass this along to anyone that you think could uh take value from this conversation and subscribe so you get all of our new episodes when they're released. Have a wonderful week and don't forget to pause before you lead. See you next time.