When does leadership stop being hard and start becoming harmful?

In this solo episode of Leading Well with Steph Edusei, Steph explores what happens when leadership gets heavy, drawing on periods in her own career when she was still functioning, still making decisions and still getting things done, but was struggling far more than she recognised at the time.

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Steph reflects on particularly difficult periods while working at Healthwatch and earlier in the NHS, when responsibility, long hours, personal pressures and her own determination to keep going became too much. She considers how easy it can be for capable people to mistake the ability to cope for evidence that they should simply keep coping.

The episode explores some of the patterns Steph carried between roles: the need to deliver, taking responsibility for things that were not entirely hers and being the person others relied upon. These qualities had helped her throughout her career, but without boundaries they could also become liabilities.

Steph considers the difference between leadership being hard and becoming harmful, and the familiar promise of “after this”: after this deadline, after this project, after this difficult period, then I will rest. But leadership rarely runs out of things that need doing.

This is not an argument that leadership should always feel easy. Responsibility will sometimes be uncomfortable and demanding. It is an invitation to notice when continuing to function is no longer the same as being well, to question what we are carrying, and to recognise that how leaders treat themselves also teaches other people what is expected of them.

In this episode, Steph explores:

• Why capable people can mistake coping for evidence that they should keep taking on more
• How burnout can sometimes look surprisingly productive from the outside
• What happens when our identity becomes tangled up with being capable and reliable
• Why strengths without boundaries can become liabilities
• The difference between leadership being hard and becoming harmful
• How “after this” can become a way of postponing rest indefinitely
• Why looking after ourselves as leaders also has a cultural impact
• What we might need to stop carrying rather than simply become better at carrying

Leading Well is a podcast for people who want to lead with clarity, care and integrity, without losing themselves in the process.

Leading Well - leadership support: https://www.stephedusei.co.uk/leading-well

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