What to do when you turn into an apathetic leader.
a (sort of) meditation on cutting yourself a break and carrying on.
Some days I don’t want to be a leader. Days when I would score my own professional leadership a three out of ten and feel fine about it. When I don’t care about mentoring. When I don’t care if I’m seen as inspirational. When I don’t really care if I left the place better than I found it. Those days I’m mostly hoping my mental and emotional (and sometimes physical) absence won’t be noticed. Maybe everyone will think I was mostly absent because I was so very busy. Maybe no one will figure out I was essentially hiding in my office. Hopefully no one will realize I ran a personal errand before I got to the office and am planning to leave early, with a somewhat harried look on my face, disguising that I’m going to do another errand on my way to the gym.
An occasional day like this is fine. It often rises out of a bad night’s sleep, or three, something unsettling going on in my personal life, or too much stress at work and I simply need a day or two to rebalance. I rarely take a “mental health” day, but I know leaders who do. It’s a perfectly viable option. I believe there’s value to being (somewhat) available even if I’m not being inspiring or super productive, although it’s important not to fool myself about the quality of my…
