The Leak

You already know which conversation is draining you.

Not the hard ones. Not the ones where someone pushed back and you held your ground. The other kind. The ones that happen at work, at home, in the group chat. The ones that end with the problem technically resolved and you somehow smaller than when you walked in.

You leave those conversations tired in a way sleep does not fix.

I was sitting with a leader I work with last week. She had done everything right. Three months into a real reset. Mornings blocked. Support hired. The schedule finally resembling something sustainable. On paper, her resources were better than they had been in years.

But by noon on most days, she was empty.

We were on the phone on a Wednesday and I asked her to walk me through the week so far. She did. And buried in the middle of Tuesday was a moment she almost missed. Her team member had been struggling with a deliverable. She had watched it for two days. And then she had stepped in and taken it back. Not because he was incapable. Not because the deadline was actually at risk. Because watching someone else do it slowly had become more uncomfortable than doing it herself.

She finished it that afternoon. Two hours she did not have.

That was the leak.

Yes, she was faster.
Yes, she was better at it.

But every time she stepped in, she remained the person who did it. The bottleneck. The one the work could not move without. She had built a team and then made herself indispensable to every task inside it.

She was not leading. She was doing their jobs and calling it high standards.

Saving people from their own discomfort is not a leadership strategy.

If you are over-giving, you have stopped leading.

Somewhere along the way, smoothing things over felt like the job. So you kept doing it. Every time you step in, you make two withdrawals at once. Your capacity goes down. Their growth stops. You stay stuck at the level you are trying to lead past.

You are meant to create clarity, set the vision, show your people the way forward. Not finish the deliverable. Not do the task faster. The moment you step back into the details you are plugging a hole with yourself.

And a leader who is the plug never has capacity left to build.

Capacity is not something you build once and then spend. Every time you take the task back you are paying an invisible tax. It shows up at noon on a Tuesday when you cannot figure out what is wrong with you.

Nothing is wrong with you. You have a leak.

Before the next moment you feel the pull to step in and take it back, pause ten seconds.

Here are three questions I ask myself before I step in and save my team.

What have you tried so far.

What else should be considered.

What do you think the next step should be.

No solving. No rescuing. No doing it for them. You stay in the seat and let them find their way to the answer. Sometimes they will surprise you. Sometimes they will need more time than you want to give them. Both are fine. Neither is yours to fix.

The pause is the work. Not the task. Not the outcome.

Where are you the bottleneck. Where are you more comfortable saving them than leading them?

Leadership that lasts,

Mandy

P.S. Chasing Enough comes out October 30. If this landed, the book goes deeper. Pre-order your copy here.