The Outdated Pattern That’s Costing You
Stress, Overwhelm & Looming Deadlines
When pressures intensify, it’s easy to fall into old patterns that fuel burnout.
Academics, educators and healthcare professionals have long been learned to do more with less.
Budgets fluctuate. Teams shrink. You may not have all the support you need. Yet deadlines, patients and deliverables keep coming. You learn how to power through. You give a little more, until conditions change.
It’s an approach that can become a default practice. You may not even see it…but you feel it.
On Sunday nights.
At 3AM.
When you’re compelled to check email once more at…11 PM.
Burnout becomes the new normal. Minor accidents and missteps – falls, forgotten appointments, coffee spilled on your laptop or worse – are more routine frustrations.
You fuel yourself on coffee and adrenaline to get through the day. It’s a buzzing energy that helps you feel productive. But a crash is coming.
Your patience is thin.
Resentment lingers.
Your simple replies to colleagues or family have an edge.
You’re doing what you know to get by. It’s temporary.
But every day you overgive and double-down, you’re deepening the depletion. Your decision-making and creativity are compromised. Like a debtor leaning on credit, your account is overdrawn.
Worse yet, you’re taxing your health. Shelves of research document the harmful impact of elevated stress levels over time.
That overgiving, self-sacrificing, “grind through it” mentality is outdated. It equates volume with value: I produce therefore I’m successful.
Yet, truly successful leaders – those who navigate teams through uncertainty with strong emotional intelligence – aren’t grinding. They’re not living on coffee and adrenaline.
They practice sustainable leadership: Using frameworks and approaches that enable them to lead with focused intention. They choose to project calm and confidence even when faced with uncertainty.
This protects relationships, helps them listen and communicate with intention. As Ryan Holiday notes in The Obstacle is the Way, sustained leaders alsosee what others don’t (p.18).
Their ability stay rooted and clear-eyed can help others better moderate in the moment, as well. By the nature of their roles and influence, leader emotions can have outsized impacts on teams and organizations. If you’ve ever worked for a leader with a temper you know this well.
As did, John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple.
Sculley arguably practice sustainable leadership opposite Steve Jobs’ highly reactive (albeit visionary) style.
As he describedin an interview: “[Steve] could drive everybody crazy because he was so demanding.” Sculley was often called to mediate conflicts when Jobs’ frustration with designers and engineers boiled over.
His strategy? “We would go for a walk and talk it out.”
Rather than be hooked by Jobs’ anger, Sculley entered these interactions with focused calm.
This helped him listen more closely, “an advantage” by his own description. Sculley may not be as famous, but his sustainable leadership played as critical a part as Jobs’ inspiration in elevating Apple to success.
What else enables sustainable leadership?
Recognize your energy as an asset — one that’s finite and manageable. This calls for thoughtfulness over reaction. Practice patience with yourselfand aim for incremental steps that supplement energy.
Ground your perspective – When depleted, we readily see threats and negatives. If you’re facing a tough decision or interaction build in buffer time to check yourself. Consider: “What am I assuming? What am I not seeing? What else could be true?”
Protect time for reflection — This can be tough, but it builds self-awareness and prevents repeated missteps. Schedule it at the end of the day or week. Let your wisdom and insights guide drive results (not reactive activity).
When you stop equating overwork with proving value, you can grow impact as a leader.
You’re not burning energy in reactivity or overdrawning into burnout. Instead, you’re leading from a place of focus and intentionality others can see.
Leadership that can counter the chaos of volatile times.
