#4: Leadership Is An Inside Job

We examine the competency trap, the willpower trap, and how survival mode quietly drains leaders who are “good at it” but no longer alive in it. We share how to pivot toward alignment, use pull motivation, and build sustainable leadership from the inside out.

Some Key Points:

• why competence can mask misalignment
• the learning curve before genuine enjoyment
• external skills vs internal identity in leadership
• the limits of willpower and push motivation
• ambition without alignment equals burnout
• survival mode, stimulants and self-abandonment
• moving to pull motivation and aligned tactics
• trading certainty for self-trust
• three reflection prompts for your 2.0 self

Enjoy!

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Transcript

Stuck In What You’re Good At

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And for me, that really kept me stuck in a cycle of doing something I really didn't enjoy doing just because I was good at the thing. And the thought of me starting something new and honestly sucking at something again was terrifying for me. So instead of being willing to look like a fool and start something new, something that may be more energizing, more aligned with who I am, more exciting, I was just taking the safe route and I was doing the thing that I've always done because I felt more confident at that thing. And this is a double-edged sword here because it's hard to enjoy something that you're not good at, right? So I think that there's always gonna be this initial learning curve, especially if you're moving into a leadership position or if you've never led people before, there's always gonna be this learning curve of going from the person who's really good at doing stuff into the person who's good at getting other people to do stuff. So no matter what, there's gonna be a time horizon of discomfort and this feeling of imposter syndrome a little bit. And that's true with anything that you change in your life. So I think that there's always gonna be a certain amount of pain that comes along with change. And when you become competent at something, so when you develop a baseline understanding of how to do something well, that's when you can really start gauging, okay, well, am I enjoying it? So you have to get good at it. In my perspective, maybe this isn't always true, but from my experience, I feel like you have to get good at something first before you can really determine if you enjoy it or not. Um, because if you don't give yourself the opportunity to suck at something, then you're robbing yourself of the future enjoyment of that thing. Uh so for me, yeah, I had a fear of incompetency because I so much of my identity was tied to my performance at my job and my performance in life. And so the idea of doing something that I sucked at was terrifying. And because of that, I kept doing something that I was good at, but I didn't enjoy. And that's why it wasn't sustainable. Because if you don't enjoy something, it's not fulfilling. If it's not fulfilling, then it's very much so rooted in having to use willpower alone and not um feeling pulled to do the thing. So uh even recently for me, I uh even found this to be true in my own business. Uh so I started my business, Build Your Power Coaching, with the idea that I wanted to help people who are burning out and exhausted and were externally successful but just feeling dead inside and internally miserable. And the the work that really lights me up is the identity work. So it's helping people peel back the layers of their psyche and um the personality that they've had to create to survive a certain season of their lives. I really help them with um looking at, okay, well, are these patterns that you're engaging in a reflection of who you really are, or are they things that you've had to learn to survive? And that stuff just sets me on fire. I feel energy just talking about it. And along the way, I started to realize that people that's really deep and that's hard for a lot of people to start with. And so I started to focus more on the practical side because I was working with a lot of leaders and a lot of business owners. I saw that there's also a skill gap that people had that was contributing to them feeling like work was consuming their life and feeling like they had to sacrifice their own well-being. And so I started to focus a lot on the practical skill gap. So, you know, how do you get out of the day-to-day operations of the business? How do you hold people accountable to things? How do you have hard conversations? How do you enforce consequences? How do you ask people what you want? How do you set boundaries? Things like that. And the problem was that's in some ways the easier thing to sell, right? And I had to gain a ton of competency on those practical skills because of how many leadership positions I was thrown into in my corporate career. I was constantly thrown into positions I wasn't ready for. And so I was, again, I have a lot of background and leadership. So I over-corrected on my business. And I went from calling myself, I don't know, I've called myself like five different things in my business, like burnout prevention coach. And there's one point where I was calling myself a fractional chief wellness officer, whatever that means, um, identity coach, and then business coach and business consultant. And yeah, it what was happening was I was essentially I overcorrected from the doing the inner work, the stuff I really loved. And I think the stuff that people truly need to just focusing on the practical side of the business, so the systems, the processes. And here's the thing like I made a good amount of money doing that. However, I just was dreading working with clients. Like I really truly wasn't enjoying it. I was doing it solely because it gave me a sense of financial security. And yeah, it was helping people, but it wasn't the work that I truly came here to do. And I'm still in the middle of yeah, pivoting out of that because what I've learned is is sustainable leadership comes from two dimensions. One is external, so it's the structure, it's the skills, it's the systems. So you you gotta have a certain amount of competency and know how to lead practically in order to have sustainable leadership. So that's one element of it. But then there's also the internal factors. So it's it's um it's your personal patterns of behavior, it's your sense of self, it's your awareness, it's your um ability to prioritize your personal well-being outside of your responsibilities. And so I would say that that's probably 80% of what sustains people as leaders. I think 20% is the practical skills, which is what people mostly focus on. 80% I would say is the identity. It's the um belief systems that you have about yourself, it's the patterns of behavior that you've adopted, it's your habits, it's your routine, it's your, yeah, it's your fuel and your motivation to why you're doing a thing. And so, yeah, I'm essentially at this place in my business and in my life where I refuse to water myself down for the sake of what I think will sell better or for what is easier for people to digest and stomach. Um, and and that's just my personal experience with that. All that to say, just because you're competent at something, just because you're good at something, does not mean you have to necessarily keep doing it, um, especially if it's not lighting you up. Because if it doesn't light you up and you don't enjoy it, then it's a means to an end anyway. You're you're gonna end up burning the candle at both ends, continuing to do something just because you feel like it's something you should be doing. And leadership if if what what is causing you to be a leader is doing things that you feel like you just should do, then you're gonna burn out. Because leadership is hard in general, and doing it from a place of shoulds is not gonna be the way that you're able you're gonna be able to show up for people sustainably. So that's the competency trap is essentially competency doesn't guarantee fulfillment, but incompetency guarantees burnout. So a lot of us default to getting good at the thing, even when the thing is killing us. And again, most leadership content focuses on the external skills of delegation, accountability, training, communication, and those things matter, but they're not what makes a leader. A leader is someone who knows what they value and has the courage to act from them despite their circumstances. Leadership is an inside game more than an outside one. And now I want to transition into what I call the willpower trap and what I also call limited leadership. So a lot of people who lead, or people just let's just call everybody's a leader in their own right. So I want to make sure I drive that point home. Everybody is a leader of their own life, and whether we're a good leader or a bad leader is defined by essentially what motivation we use to lead. Because a bad leader, from my perspective, if we want to label it as bad, is a leader that cannot sustain leading. A good leader is somebody who can sustain leading for an extended period of time. And one of the fuels that we tend to use as leaders that is very temporary and finite is willpower. Willpower is what is called push motivation, it's finite. So essentially, you can use it to get to the top, but you can't use it to stay there. So willpower is very much so pushing a rock up the hill. We can get it done, but it's exhausting. It's super draining. And at first, when you are trying to learn something new, I think that willpower is required to some extent. I think that discipline and willpower go hand in hand. Discipline is essentially how much willpower do you have to do the thing that you don't want to do, but you have to do, which is an important skill. However, it's finite. We can't just rely on willpower alone to do things. Um, so when you lead from willpower alone, I call this limited leadership. So when you're leading from your head, when you're leading from your shirt, shoulds, you're leading from a place of when you're driven by yeah, things that are just external, like just external motivation, it's very much so limiting as a leader. Um, it comes from effort, discipline, and sheer force. And then it works until it doesn't. And this is speaking from personal experience because for me, it led to burnout and addiction to stimulants and feeling dead inside. I kept, in my old career, kept taking on more and more responsibility because I felt like I had to, because I defined my worth through my job title and how many people I was managing, as opposed to do I feel alive when I'm doing stuff? And to artificialize that feeling of life force and aliveness, I would take stimulants. I would, I would override my body telling me, hey, you're not getting energy for this because you're not doing something in a way that's in alignment with your values. I would, I would use drugs to bypass that. So for me, my addiction and my workaholism was very much so me trying to force a certain amount of willpower that fundamentally I did not have. And on top of that, I had a lot of shame and guilt around that because I learned in the Marine Corps your willpower is your identity. Your willpower is your worth. And so many people believe that even if they aren't consciously aware of it. I mean, one of the biggest things that I help people with in general is helping them realize that their burnout is because they feel like they have to use push motivation to operate in every area of their life. Instead of using it as a tool, they rely on it as their primary fuel source. And that's just it it's just not sustainable, right? So um we gotta really be careful about that from my perspective. Because, like, here's the thing willpower and ambition go hand in hand. So, ambition, there's nothing wrong with ambition, but the thing is, ambition without alignment equals burnout. I'm gonna say that again because it's so important. Ambition without alignment, meaning willpower without doing stuff with our in alignment with our values equals burnout. So, action, if it does not reinforce our true value system, equals burnout. Because what happens is we have to rely on willpower because we're not able to draw from our authentic energy and life force. So, of course, we're gonna burn out. So, again, ambition without alignment equals burnout. Skill matters, skills matter, structure matters, but if they're not rooted in something sustainable, if they're not fueled by what actually lights you up, you're just white knuckling your way through a life that you don't want. And um, I know I'm probably speaking to somebody's soul right now, and um I'll just say good. Because you need to hear this. The reason why you cannot force yourself to do the things that you think you want to do, it's because those things are not truly what you want. Your mind thinks you want it, but your heart knows you don't. And so if you feel like you are trudging through mud every single day to do the basic things that are in alignment with your responsibilities, then that probably means that the things that you're trying to force yourself to do are not in alignment with what you truly want to do. And that is such a hard thing to stomach. I I know for me, when I started to burn out for my career, I did everything I possibly could to ignore it. I did everything I possibly could to suppress it. I butchered my nervous system. I was taking 800 milligrams of caffeine a day for people who don't really know what that is. That's like nine or ten cups of coffee, along with twice the amount of max recommended dosage for Adderall and Bivants. Like it was just, I was doing everything I could to force myself. And I'm telling you, eventually it just stops working. And it wasn't because I wasn't disciplined enough, it wasn't because I wasn't strong enough or powerful enough or um good enough, it's because I wasn't listening. It's because I wasn't being me and I wasn't doing the stuff I was meant to do. So, and then that leads me to what I want to talk about next, which is which is survival mode. So when you rely on just willpower alone, that is you living in survival. Um, push motivation is survival mode. It's when you're grinding, managing, forcing yourself to show up for the work that drains you because you're good at it, because it pays well, because it's the smart thing to do, it's the logical thing to do. But survival mode isn't sustainable, and it's definitely not leadership. One of the hardest realizations I've been having recently is if you're operating in survival mode, then you might get some quick wins. You might be able to just scrape by, but you will not actualize your potential. Um your identity is rooted in survival. You can't solve the problem with the same energy that created the problem. Like we cannot stop burning out by continuing to do the things that burned us out to begin with. We cannot outgrow the version of our lives that we're in now with the same identity that created the version of our life that we're in now. And and fundamentally, when I say leadership is an inside job, the only way that we can get ourselves out of the circumstances that is keeping us stuck and burning us out is by changing who we are from the inside out. It means changing our sense of self, it means changing our beliefs about ourselves, it means changing our patterns of behavior, it means we start showing up differently before our reality changes. We start being somebody different before we see proof that that's what we should do. This is the number one misconception around people that I help. And the number one misconception I have, thinking that if I do more, that it's gonna equate to more happiness and more fulfillment. When in reality, that was just making me burn out faster. So again, leadership's an inside job. Survival mode comes from using willpower alone as your prime source of motivation, and it's not sustainable. So, how do we shift it? I've talked a lot about the problem. I've talked about a lot about how using willpower alone to fuel us as leaders limits us. It leads to us living in survival mode. So just not being able to fully relax, feeling like we always got to be doing something, operating in what I call microwave energy, which is may get results quicker, but it doesn't taste that good, doesn't feel that good, as opposed to crockpot energy, which takes longer, but it has more nutrients, it's more nourishing, it tastes better. So that's how we know that we're in survival mode is essentially if you're if you think everything is urgent 24-7, that's that's what survival mode is. So, how do we shift it? It's understanding that sustainable leadership isn't only about willpower, it's also about alignment. It's leading from your value system. It's what I call pull motivation. And Tony Robbins talks a lot about this. Um, it's doing work that lights you up, not just work you're capable of. Um, so fulfillment is what makes fuel sustainable. You can't run a business, a team, or a life on just discipline alone. It's impossible. It's impossible. But when you're aligned, the work still requires effort, but it doesn't drain your soul. So this is what it means to stop surviving and start living. So, give you a very practical example of this there's a lot of different ways to um get people to want to buy your stuff as a business owner. And one of the ways that you could get people to do that is cold calling. So it's calling 100 people a day, right? Just looking up directories and and using AI to tell you, hey, like how many business owners are in my area? Uh, can you list the top rated business owners in my area and then give me their information? It's not that hard to get people's phone numbers and emails. So you could go and you could call a bunch of people that don't know you and you can try to sell your stuff. And technically that could work. And I've tried that before, but to me, it felt very inauthentic, it felt icky, it felt draining. And it wasn't because I wasn't good at it. I mean, I learned how to cold call in my old career. Even when I was successfully maybe getting one or two clients from it, it just didn't feel that good. So I could have interpreted that as I'm just not good enough. And I could have tried to push harder. I could have put my head down and been like, you know what, I just need to put my head down and grind and not pay attention to the fact that this is draining my energy. And if I would have done that, I would have burned out and I wouldn't have been able to do anything. So instead of interpreting my feeling drained as that, me not being good enough, I interpreted it as a signal to pivot and do something a little different. It's like, okay, well, the fact is I still need to connect with people. How do I do that in a way that feels more aligned to me? And so I started to connect a lot with my community. I started to um seek out different referral networks and see if I could do things from a more relational perspective, do things from a more um, yeah, like a more connective perspective. And I started to do that and it felt way better for me. I started to build actual true relationships. I started to get to know people. And did it take longer? Yeah. Like it's it's it's taken a lot longer than it would if you tried to cold call somebody and sell them right on the spot, right? But it it's felt more fulfilling and more sustainable for me. And I'm still learning how to do that properly. I mean, one of the characteristics of burnout, I think, is disconnection from others. So I was very good at like being transactional with people. I was really good at making the quick sale or driving results, but I wasn't super good at being vulnerable and building authentic relationships and connections with others. That that's something I'm still. Still working on. So, um, but that to say, my problem was, hey, I need to generate more clients, and there was a solution that was in alignment with my values, and there's a solution that wasn't. And because I stopped trying to fight what my body was telling me and what my energy was telling me, I actually started to see results doing it in a way that was enjoying for me. And then even more so, now it's like, huh, like you know what else I really enjoy? Speaking to crowds. I love, I love speaking, I love showing, sharing my story, inspiring people. So then, sort of instead of investing in a bunch of fancy marketing and funnels and stuff like that to try to compete with everybody on social media, I just started to focus on doing talks in my in my area and doing talks for free and talk to people about burnout and sustainable leadership. And turns out like people really got value from it and people wanted to work with me because of the fact that I just showed up authentically and I pulled them in as opposed to try to insert my ego-driven desires onto others. So that's just an example of this. Um, but yeah, so when you're aligned, the work still requires effort, but it doesn't drain your soul. This is what it means, again, to stop surviving and start living. So now poses the question of why don't we do this? Why don't we act? Um, even when people know their values, a lot of times they don't act on it. Why does that happen? And when I say other people, I'm guilty of this too. So even when we know what our values are, why do we still hold ourselves back? I think a lot of it's external pressure. So the pressure to do what's predictable and what everybody else is doing. I've felt this a ton as a business owner. And you may resonate with this if you're an owner or a leader, but I need to scale to seven figures. I should be building a team, I have to be visible on LinkedIn and posting every single day. I need to systemize everything so the business runs without me. So that's one reason is external pressure. Everybody tells you you should do it a certain way. So you try to fall in line because as humans, we want to feel included and we want to feel like we're a part of the tribe. So yeah, it's one of the ways we try to do that, is we try to fit in, which is just like kills our fulfillment a lot of times. And two is fear of conflict. So, you know, maybe it's what if people don't like the real version of what I'm building? I know for me, this has been so true. If I'm being so vulnerable with you guys, there's a part of me that still believes, and I'm I'm God, I'm getting rid of this now. There's a part of me that still believes that people don't want to buy what I have to sell. People won't benefit from what I do. Even when I've seen proof that that's not the case, there's still a part of me that thinks it's too woo-hoo. It's not like, Brennan, who would hire you to do inner work within their organizations, Brennan? Like what business owner, what leader, what person would just hire you to help them become a more authentic version of themselves, to help them stop sacrificing their well-being? Like people don't care. And so I I've had to fight this myself. Yeah, what if people don't like the real version of what you're building? So, and so that's that's one instance. It's like, what happens if I go all in on the thing I truly believe in that's against the status quo and I fail? Oof. It's a harsh reality. So if you try to water it down, then you can just tell yourself, hey, like, well, I wasn't all in anyway. So not going all in on the thing that we believe in is typically fear masquerading as strategy. We think it's like logical and strategic to not do the thing that truly lights us up and the thing that we truly believe in because deep down we fear that other people won't accept us if we do the thing we actually want to do. And this is me talking directly to myself right now, and hopefully I'm speaking to somebody listening to this. Um, another one is an addiction to certainty. So I think that we've learned to really value certainty. Our mind and our ego love certainty, it loves being able to predict things. I mean, our mind is built to predict patterns, um, which is a way to keep ourselves safe. And I think that's a super useful tool. And for a lot of people, it can be to their own detriment. Uh, for me specifically, you know, as you guys know, if you're an entrepreneurship, uh, it's not super certain or predictable. You know, it's different from working a nine to five job to where you know you're gonna get a certain paycheck. And a lot of people tolerate jobs that they hate because of that certainty. They uh they allow the stability and certainty of making sure they know they're gonna get paid, knowing that they can survive, to kill their dreams. Certainty is the drug that we take to justify killing our dreams. A lot of us would rather be certain and know what's gonna happen next, even though it's killing us, as opposed to being uncertain and not know what's gonna happen next, and live a life that's really whole and fulfilling. And uh I really want to stand for taking the path of uncertainty because we can choose to not value certainty, because if we choose not to value certainty, then what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna actually have to build trust in ourselves. And this is this is the part that I wish somebody would have told me, and and this is what's so important to leadership is in order for us to fully lead ourselves in our lives, we have to know how to trust ourselves. Trusting ourselves fully is what allows us to deal with uncertainty. If we don't trust our ability to adapt and overcome and get through whatever obstacles get in our way, and if we don't trust that the thing we're doing is truly in alignment with the things that we want to do, then we will allow our circumstances and we will allow uncertainty and fear to keep us small. So that's another reason addiction to certainty, and then fear, shame, and guilt. So, again, in my business recently, I uh felt the pressure to pivot to just business coaching because it was the safe route. It was like a practical need, people could understand it easy. So I was like, Yeah, I'll do this, and and people will pay good money for this. And it did. And then you know what happens? I kept trying to force myself to um just do that thing, and all the strategies that I used to try to get clients stopped working. Thanks, God. Yeah, all the things that I used to do that would work to get clients stopped working, and I was really confused and I was drained, I didn't know what was happening. And it's not because I was doing anything wrong, it's because I wasn't doing the stuff that I was meant to be doing, and it wasn't truly lighting me up. So this may all sound really repetitive, but I just I just want to help drive this point home. You don't have to value certainty, you can choose to value trust in yourself more than you value certainty in the external world, and I think that that's the true key to freedom and liberation. Certainty is freedom, certainty is fear disguised as freedom. We think that knowing what's gonna happen next is what makes us truly free. When I don't believe that's true. I think the the real freedom is knowing that you don't have to know what's gonna happen next. Real freedom is not knowing what's gonna happen next and trusting it's gonna work out anyway. So I want to ground this into something practical for you guys. If you're listening to this and it's resonating with you, how can you become a better leader? How can you become the 2.0 version of you? Here's some practical advice. Leadership isn't about becoming some idealized version of yourself, it's about letting out the 2.0 version of you that's already inside you, but you've been too afraid or too busy or too logical to let out. Okay, so it's not the version of you that you think you're supposed to be. It's the version of you know that knows what matters and has the courage to act from it. So the version of you that knows their value, trusts themselves, and is super focused on bringing out the things that light you up, super focused on doing the things that light you up. That is who you are as a leader. That is the true leadership in you. Um so here's some things that you can ask yourself to really get clear on who the 2.0 version of yourself is. One is what would you do if you weren't trying to prove you're competent? So if you weren't trying to prove your worth to others, what would you do instead? That's the first question. Two is what kind of work lights you up, even if it's harder to explain or sell, even if it's not logical? And then three, what would you stop doing if you trusted yourself more? So, in order for you to start revealing who the leader is inside of you, you can ask yourself those three questions. What would you do if you weren't trying to prove you're competent? What kind of work lights you up, even if it's harder to do or explain or sell? And then what would you stop doing if you trusted yourself more? Key principles to go by as you're figuring this out. One is you don't wait for permission. You don't wait until it's safe. You need to start acting as that version of yourself now. And then leadership is an inside job. The external skills matter, but only if they're in service of something real, something aligned, something that doesn't cost you your soul. Leadership requires sacrifice, but it does not require sacrificing yourself. Because fundamentally, that is not leadership, that is self-abandonment. If you have to sacrifice your own well-being to lead others, that is not leadership, that is self-abandonment. To close this, here's the question I want to leave you with. What version of you have you been too afraid to let out? Sit with that and don't rush past it. Because that version of you, the extra next level of leadership. If you guys enjoyed this episode, I would love if you left me a review. Uh please subscribe. Uh, if you're listening to this on YouTube, watching this on YouTube, please follow along. If you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple Podcast. And I'll talk to you guys next time.