Leading Without Losing Yourself

I've spent a lot of years building things. Businesses, churches, nonprofits, teams. One thing I've noticed is how easily the thing you're responsible for can start taking up more space in your life than you ever intended.

It rarely happens all at once. You get busy, something needs your attention, and you deal with it. Then another problem comes along. Before long, being available for everything starts to feel normal. I've certainly had seasons like that.

There was always a good reason to keep going. A decision needed to be made, someone needed help and an email couldn't wait, or at least I convinced myself it couldn't.

You tell yourself things will settle down after the next project, the next hire or the next problem gets sorted out. Then you get there and discover something else has taken its place. I think leaders can live like that for years without realizing how much of themselves they've handed over to what they're building.

Here's something I've had to admit to myself over the years. Being needed feels good.

There's satisfaction in being the person people trust when something goes wrong. You know the history. You've probably solved a similar problem before. Stepping in can be quicker than explaining everything to somebody else and hoping they handle it properly. I've done that plenty of times.

The trouble comes when it becomes a habit. People learn that AJ will sort it out, so they bring it to AJ. I step in because I know I can fix it, and pretty soon I've created the very situation I'm frustrated about.

That's one of those leadership lessons I wish I'd learned earlier.

At some point, I had to ask whether I was really the only person who could handle certain things, or whether I'd simply become used to being the person who handled them. I didn't always like the answer.

There's also an identity tied up in all of this. If you've spent years being the person with the answers, letting someone else take responsibility can feel strange. Who am I if everyone doesn't need me? I think that's a question more leaders should sit with.

Leadership does require sacrifice. I've never believed we can build anything worthwhile without giving something of ourselves to it.

There have been late nights in my life. I've missed things I wish I hadn't missed. I've carried problems home in my head even when I technically left them at the office. Some of that comes with responsibility. But sacrifice can become such a normal part of life that we stop asking what we're sacrificing.

Maybe you haven't had dinner with your family without checking your phone in weeks. Perhaps you keep saying you'll exercise again once work calms down. A friendship you once valued has slowly become a birthday message and the occasional promise that the two of you really should get together. None of those things seems particularly serious on its own. That's probably why they're so easy to ignore.

A business problem demands an answer today. Your health usually doesn't. Your marriage doesn't send a calendar notification telling you that you've been distracted for six months. The quieter parts of life can wait patiently while we deal with everything that feels urgent. They don't wait forever!

I care deeply about the things I've built and the work I'm still doing. I'm proud of plenty of it. I've also lived long enough to know that roles change.

Businesses change, organizations change and children grow up. The thing that seemed enormously important ten years ago may barely cross your mind today. That makes me think differently about how much of myself I attach to any one role.

I've met people who struggle to answer a very simple question once you take their work away from the conversation: What do you enjoy? It's surprising how difficult that can become.

We get so used to producing, solving and achieving that doing something simply because we enjoy it can almost feel wasteful. An afternoon with no productive outcome feels strange. Sitting with someone without checking the time takes practice. I don't think that's a healthy way to spend a life.

For years, I thought boundaries were mostly about stopping other people from taking too much of my time. I'm not sure other people were always the main problem.

Nobody has to force me to answer one more email. I can volunteer for something before anybody asks. Give me a problem I know how to solve and there's a decent chance I'll start thinking about it even if it belongs to somebody else. I've become more aware of that as I've gotten older. So now I think about boundaries a little differently. I need them partly because there are things in my life I don't want to accidentally give away. Time with my family is one of them. My health matters too. So does my faith, and having enough quiet in my life to actually think rather than simply react to whatever happens next. Those things need space. I've learned that if I don't make room for them deliberately, work will happily fill every available inch.

One of the uncomfortable questions I've asked myself is whether the people closest to me have occasionally received whatever energy was left after everybody else got the best of me. Clients got my attention, teams got my problem-solving and organizations got my energy. Then I'd come home tired and somehow expect the people I loved to understand that I was doing all of this because I cared about them.

I had good intentions. I'm not convinced good intentions make much difference to the person sitting across the table wishing you'd put your phone down. That's a lesson leadership books don't always spend much time on. We talk about what kind of leader people experience at work. I think it matters what kind of person our family experiences when we get home. So what does it mean to lead without losing yourself?

I don't have a perfect formula for this. I'm still working it out. For me, part of it has been learning that I don't have to carry everything simply because I can. Someone else can solve a problem. They might even solve it differently than I would, and the world somehow keeps turning.

It also means paying attention to the parts of my life that don't shout for attention.

A conversation with someone I love matters even when nothing gets accomplished. Rest has value before I reach exhaustion. There are things worth protecting even though they'll never appear on a financial statement or a list of achievements. I've become much more interested in those things.

I still want to build. I still have goals. There are people I want to help and work I believe matters. I just don't want to reach the end of another successful season, look around and realize I wasn't really there for much of it. Maybe that's the question I'm left with: Can I give my best to what I'm building without giving it all of me? I'm starting to think good leadership requires learning how.