Dear Reader,

When I was in corporate, I confused a lot of my stress responses with being “good at leadership.”

I thought being highly responsive meant I was supportive.
I thought over-preparing meant I was responsible.
I thought anticipating everyone’s needs meant I was strategic.

In reality, a decent amount of it was just my nervous system masquerading as professionalism.

Some examples:

➡️ Responding to messages immediately because I didn’t want anyone to think I was dropping the ball

➡️ Rehearsing difficult conversations 47 times before having them

➡️ Feeling physically uncomfortable when there were unread emails

➡️ Saying yes before checking whether I actually had the bandwidth

➡️ Believing “being helpful” and “being valuable” were the same thing

And look, some of these behaviors can absolutely be useful at times.

But when they become constant, they stop you from leading and start turning you into the bottleneck.

One of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve had (and now coach leaders through regularly) is this:

Sustainable leadership can look deceptively simple (maybe it starts with not sending emails marked "‼️high importance").

It’s the leader who pauses before responding.
Who doesn’t absorb every fire as their personal responsibility.
Who lets other people figure things out sometimes.
Who can tolerate a little discomfort without immediately trying to resolve it.

That doesn’t mean caring less.

It means not treating urgency, overfunctioning, and hypervigilance as leadership competencies.

Anyway, if you’ve ever answered a Slack while brushing your teeth because your brain said “this feels important”…

…you’re not alone.

With ease, Tracy

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