Why Is It So Hard for Leaders to Let Go?

Why is it so hard for leaders to let go?

It’s often not for a lack of desire. You want to let go. You intend to let go.

And yet, somehow you keep holding on.

What makes letting go so difficult when you genuinely want to do it? And what might be happening beneath the surface that keeps pulling you back toward the work? 

In this solo episode of The Pause Before You Lead, Heather explores what can keep leaders holding on, even as their role, their team, and what’s needed from their leadership continues to evolve.

What might you discover if you look beyond the work itself?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, I'm Heather Haig, and welcome to the Pause Before You Lead podcast. Alicia is away taking a well-deserved few weeks break. And during this time, I'm putting together a four-part solo episode series. And this is part three of four episodes, where we'll explore some leadership questions I've been pondering. And as always, I invite you to come not looking to find the answers, but more to take a pause to explore and discover what we might not be seeing. So join me in this conversation. The question this week that I've been thinking about is why is it so hard for leaders to let it go? It's interesting because I think that when it comes to letting go, it's certainly not for a lack of desire. Not only is a desire, but an intention to let go. So the the curious question really exists around what makes it so hard? Because if we want to let go, if we intend to let go, what keeps us holding on to things? And in a number of conversations that I've been having recently, what I've started to notice is it's less about delegation and more about what's happening within us that keeps us holding tightly to things. And I notice in myself when I'm not letting go of something, it's interesting because I've I think I've talked before about my desire to be expert and some of the drivers that were created over time for the expert within me to feel like I need all the answers and I need to be the go-to person for, you know, the expertise in whatever the area is that I was I was leading in. And I held leadership roles in a variety of work. And so, you know, each time I'd want to go really deep to gain that expertise. But it's actually in this case, what I've discovered as exploring the why, why is it hard to let go? The other strong driver, if you will, is this need to achieve. And not everyone comes to leadership along the same path, but most of the leaders that I work with have evolved into leadership. So it's come from holding roles where the doing was the thing that was valued. The action, the getting stuff done, that was where the validation and recognition came from when I'm like, I'm a doer, I get stuff done. I remember very vividly being told by leaders that they like to give me things that no one else had completed before, right? So in all those roles leading up to leadership, I was consistently validated for getting stuff done. What's important about this is less about the action, but perhaps it's more about how I see myself as a result of that action. And I think that this is the unpacking part. This is the part that says, isn't that interesting? Because when I got validated for being the doer for getting this stuff done, what started to form was a definition of self that I brought to my work. And I see this with leaders too. And each leader might have a different story that led them to the definition. But what's causing the holding on is not, do I want other people to do this work? That's clear. And it's not, have I clarified what I need to let go of? Because, and sometimes certainly that's that's a piece of exploration. Like you may come to the conversation and say, I know I need to delegate, but I don't know what I need to delegate. And that's a completely different, we'll we'll explore that at another time. Because clarity, of course, is at the foundation of knowing what stuff is I want to own, what stuff would be best suited with others. So going through that process, it needs to happen at the outset. But once we start to get underneath what's getting in the way, what tends to show up is stories. And by that I mean people start to talk about the reasons that they do the things that they do and the reason that uh they like doing those things and what's causing them to keep holding on to them. And it's not because they're best at it, it's that there's an association with that action or that thing that they're wanting to let go that keeps them holding on. What I've uncovered in my own journey of being the doer and getting validated as the doer is that in stepping into leadership, part of my old story of being the doer is an identity that I'm having trouble letting go of. Yeah. So it's I really liked being called the doer. I thrived in it. And in many of my roles in my career, I would actively pursue the next thing that I could do to keep validating the doer label and the and the fact that people saw me as someone who would get stuff done. So when I moved into leadership and I my role shifted, and I didn't need to be the doer in the same way. I still needed to do things, but the things that I had been validated for as the doer started to shift. And I was being sought after to think more strategically, to see big picture, to talk less about the weeds and the details and more about what's the vision for the work, what's the vision for the business, what's the vision for the team, what's the vision for the organization? And I found that hard because where I experienced value and where I felt I received recognition was in the doing, those things I used to do before. And when you move into leadership, I think one of the things that's hardest about redefining what your value is is to let go of an old identity that has defined you for a period of time. It had defined me for a lot of my career. And so it can be dangerous for us to start to try and seek out those old patterns while we're in leadership. I mean, sometimes that can be where micromanaging can show up, or we're taking on things that don't actually fit under our umbrella of responsibility and in that leadership role or in our team's role, because we're just seeking the doing, doing, doing still with that old identity. This then requires us to say, what's the new identity I want to create? What's the new identity I'm stepping into? How do I see myself in this new lens that allows me to let go of the things that I'm holding on to? So it isn't actually necessarily letting go of the tasks as much as it's letting go of an old identity that's no longer serving us in the new role that we're in, in the leadership role, or in even as even if you've been a leader the whole time as your leadership evolves, the new identity you need to be for the leader that you are, for the team you're leading now, transforms over time. And sometimes we're carrying old identities into that new opportunity, into that new team, into that new role, uh, into the evolving leadership that's required of us to be more agile, to be more flexible, to even sit in the unknowing, right? So if the identity is an achiever identity, if the identity is an expert identity, how do we release those old identities to allow us to move forward? And so the letting go is less about the task or the thing. It's more about what am I holding dear in my identity, how I define myself, how I believe I add value in the world so that I can lead in the way that my team and my stakeholders need me to lead from here. So that really is the question. What am I holding on to in my identity that's preventing me from letting go? Something to reflect on and take away as we leave this conversation today. So as we close, do share this conversation with someone that you feel could benefit from letting go. Make sure to subscribe so that you get notifications when we release new episodes each week. And don't forget to pause before you lead. Until next time.