On Saying How Tired You Are: A Conversation with Myself
As a leader, how do you balance the need to show confidence and model energetic engagement with the need to show vulnerability and human openness? For me, the struggle to strike that balance takes the form of an internal dialogue like this.
This is one of those conversations that tends to happen between two lobes of my brain – I’ll refer to them as Rick Brain 1 and Rick Brain 2. Here’s how this particular conversation goes; maybe it’s somewhat the same for you:
Rick Brain 1: It seems to me that when you accept a leadership position, at that point you waive the right to talk about how tired or how busy you are. Leaders who talk that way sound like they’re complaining about the difficulties of leadership, which is annoying to those who might wish they were in leadership positions, not to mention to those who secretly feel that they actually work harder than their leader does. So I need to be really careful not to do that.
Rick Brain 2: OK, but what about the importance of modeling vulnerability and work/life balance? You’re always talking about “defaulting to openness.” Why shouldn’t you trying to show your humanness and vulnerability? Could it be that you’re really just worried your team will think less of you if they can see there are limits to your energy and bandwidth?
Rick Brain 1: If I’m being completely honest, I do like the fact that people seem to think I have unlimited energy. I don’t mind having that kind of reputation. But I don’t think that’s what my real concern is. I genuinely recognize the privileged position I inhabit, and I don’t want anyone to think I don’t appreciate and recognize that privilege. And I really don’t want anyone to think that I have illusions about being more fully employed than they are.
Rick Brain 2: But if a leader isn’t willing to express openly his feelings of overwhelm or fatigue, isn’t he sending a message to his team that they’d better not complain about feeling that way either? If you always put up a happy, energized front, are you sending the message “If I can do my big, important job without complaining, surely you all can do your smaller, less important jobs without complaining”?