Running on empty as a leader and putting on a mask at work to cover it up? Leaders at risk are the ones showing up, delivering and saying they are absolutely fine, but inside they are feeling absolutely exhausted.
The signs you’re running on empty as a leader are numerous, they can include disrupted sleep, physical tension, emotional irritability, and detachment from your team. Also, you will find you are slower in decision-making and you become more forgetful. Because leaders are conditioned to project competence at all times, these signs often go unnoticed until depletion becomes serious.
New research by Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) found that leaders are feeling stress at work more than ever. As leaders are finding that their roles have become more complex, 67% of study participants are experiencing work-related stress at least once a week.
All of this constant pressure can add up, so if you are looking fine on the outside and projecting a sense of calm and competence, nobody can know what is really going on inside of you, apart from you.
What’s the danger if you are one of these leaders? You won’t experience a dramatic collapse that will happen instantly, it’s a slow drain that you won’t actually notice until it’s gone too far.
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Running on Empty As A Leader: All The Signs You Need To Monitor
When you are functioning at work but are not thriving and enjoying your achievements, it’s time to take notice of what is really going on with you. In this article, I cover the physical, emotional, and cognitive signs you can look out for and what you can do to help yourself.
The Physical Signs
Because the body feels the impact first before the mind kicks into gear and realises what is going on. If you are running on empty as a leader, there are clear physical signs of leadership depletion that you can look out for.
1) Sleep
You will find it difficult to sleep when you go to bed, or you keep waking up in the early hours of the morning, overthinking decisions, and thinking of things you need to do at work. You can also experience the complete opposite, as you might manage to get lots of sleep but still wake up feeling completely exhausted.
2) Tension
You have tension in your jaw, shoulders, or both areas. You also develop headaches that become so normal you have stopped noticing that you are having them.
3) Illness
You start getting every bug that is going around, and it takes you longer to recover from illnesses, because your immune system is also running on empty.
The Emotional Signs
These signs can really start to feel uncomfortable for you, because they can also affect your team.
1) Irritability
You start snapping at little things that happen at work, even though they wouldn’t bother you normally. You also find that you have low tolerance for any noise or “unnecessary disruptions”.
2) Detachment
You are there at work, but are you really? You end up just going through the motions in your job and you are not really present in conversations. You don’t notice it at first, but over time it is hard to ignore.
3) Low Patience
When you have go to meetings you get nervous and over time they feel unbearable to you. Spending time with your colleagues or any people can start to feel draining. You simply want everybody to leave you alone.
The Cognitive Signs
These signs are the ones that frighten leaders the most because they can directly affect your performance at work.
1) Slower Thinking
When you have to think about something it all starts to feels heavy, especially when you have to make a key decision. It’s a big change, as in the past, you would make them very easily.
2) Forgetfulness
You start missing things in your role and it happens more than once. On top of this you also become very forgetful. As a result, you are having to write everything down to keep up.
3) Indecision
As discussed in the last article, you become very indecisive as you are stuck inside an “overthinking loop”. In this never-ending negative loop your indecision becomes worse as time goes on and you feel more depleted.
What You Can Do This Week
There is something very simple that you can do to help you. At the end of each day this week, conduct an honest self audit on yourself. Rate yourself from 1-10 on energy. Note: It’s not on your performance or output, but your personal energy. Just doing this and noticing the pattern is the first step to fixing it. Because you can’t fix what you have not named and recognised.
If several of these signs mean something to you right now, that’s information worth paying attention to. That’s exactly what the Check In With Sally is for, not to fix everything, but to name it clearly with someone who understands leadership from the inside. £85 for one focused hour. No long-term commitment.
One focused hour can shift a lot.
Sally Leslie is the founder of The Leslie Link. She speaks, runs workshops, and coaches leaders and senior professionals, helping them build the emotional intelligence, meditation practice, and resilience. She’s the author of Think Clearly. Lead Calmly. A Guide for Leaders Under Pressure. Based between Newcastle, UK and Mallorca, Spain. Sign up to her Calm Leadership newsletter.
