359| Why Your Best Leaders Are Quietly Cracking (And What They Won't Tell You)

She sat at her desk last Tuesday and it was 4:45, looked at everything she did not get to and thought, this is not what I signed up for. Then she got up, went home, came back the next day and did it again. Maybe you know exactly what this looks like. Maybe this is where you are right now as a leader. Hi, I'm Tammy Imlay, and if you are excellent at what you do and your days are full of everyone else's work or responsibilities instead of your own, this episode is going to name something for you that's been happening and it gives you 2 things that you can do differently tomorrow. So, but before we get into this, I've got 2 things for you. One is, if you've ever ended a week wondering why everything felt heavier or harder than it should, I've built something for you. It's called the Friction Factor. It's free and it names exactly what is creating the drag in your leadership so so you can stop managing the symptoms and start addressing what's driving them. The link is in the show notes. The other thing is, is I'm getting— I have my, my camera on the side here, and I keep getting a glimpse and realizing that, um, you may look at— you can see, you can kind of see my hands because I talk with my hands a lot, and you may think like, what is on her hands? Is it dirty? No, my daughter. Um, when this episode drops, we will be in Greece, and before we left, she thought it was really important that we had matching henna tattoos on her hands. So I have mine still, and it's, um, it's actually really pretty. So that's what that is. It's not dirt, it's not— but I, I know that if I was watching this video and just saw like glimpses of that henna color, but you don't know it's henna on my— on someone's hand, I'd be like, what is that? So now you know. But let's get, let's get into it. So last week we talked about, we talked about what you bring to the room that no tool can replicate. Your judgment, your read on the room and situations, your nuanced experience. This week we're going to go somewhere most leadership content won't. We're going to go inside the experience of the leader who's been giving all of that, their experience, their judgment, their advice, giving that out and has not had much space to lead from it themselves. Themselves. So if that landed anywhere for you last week, stay with me this week because I want to give you a term today. Not a framework, not a system, just a name for something that a lot of leaders at your level are living right now and haven't had a language, haven't had the language for it. And as I was researching, I found this, I found this term a few months ago and I started, I started researching it because it came up over and over and I realized that many of the leaders that I work with have experienced this or are experiencing it. And then I realized that though I didn't know this term, this is what I experienced in working for a company a few years ago as well. It's called quiet cracking. And I want to be clear about what it is and what it's not, because once you hear it, you're going to recognize it either in yourself or in someone you lead. And in sometimes you may recognize it in both. So before we go, I want to define it. But before we define it, I want to ask you a few things. I want you to answer them honestly, not in your head like the way we do if we're half listening to a podcast and doing 3 other things. I want you to listen to it and just say yes or no to yourself, but think about it. So the first one: in the last 2 weeks, have you ended more days than not with your real work still sitting untouched on your list? Just a yes or no. When someone on your team comes to you with a question you know that they could answer themselves, do you answer it anyway because they're in front of you and because it's faster just to give them an answer? Is there a goal, something you genuinely want to build or move, that you have not touched in a month or longer? Not because you forgot, because there's been no space left in your day by the time you get there? And the last one, when you think about the leader you are at your very best, the one with real vision, the one who makes decisions that hold, the one who walks in the room and leads, does that version of you feel like someone you visit occasionally instead of someone that you are? And if you said yes, to any of these, this episode is for you. And if you know that someone is— you know someone who would be saying yes to these, please share this episode with them because this might be exactly what they need to hear and, and see that they're, they're not alone. But what I'm going— what I'm about to name is not a failure. It's not a failure. This is a signal, and it's been trying to get your attention for quite a while. Your team is capable, but they still won't move without you. And quiet cracking is not burnout. Burnout is loud. It announces itself. It shows up in exhaustion that sleep or a vacation doesn't fix, as cynicism, as the wall, right? Quiet cracky is different. You are not at the wall. You're still moving. You're still performing. You're still the one that everyone counts on. But something inside has shifted. You've been too busy to stop and name it. And you are not failing. You are functioning highly. And that's exactly what makes this so hard to catch. The things that you used to love, like what it looks like from the inside, you used to love these side conversations. They felt like trust building. They felt like culture. They felt like exactly the kind of leader you wanted to be. Now those same conversations feel like a drain you cannot explain. You love— you like these people and say you love them, people, your people. I mean, you may love your team, you, you at least like them, right? Sorry, side note, but you like these people, you invested in them, you chose your team, you know that they're capable, and you end every day having not done your work. Not because you were not working, because you were doing everyone else's thinking. So your list at 4:45 is still the same as it was at the— at 8:45, over and over and over. And you have real goals that you can clearly see. And these are not just goals that are pie-in-the-sky ones that you want. This is, this is what you were hired to do. So you have these real goals that you can see clearly, and you have not touched them in weeks. Not because you didn't want to, but because there's no space left. Because if you're open-door policy or because there's just everyone, these side conversations keep happening. You might recognize this in leaders around you too. The one on your team who used to bring energy into every meeting and now just executes. The one who stopped pushing back because he, you know, not because he agrees, but because he's running on maintenance. And the one who's delivering everything asked of her and seems fine from the outside. They are not fine. They are doing exactly what you are doing: functioning highly but quietly cracking. And the part that makes this so hard to say out loud is because you're not going to raise your hand because you don't look like you're struggling, and you don't want it to look like you're struggling. You don't want to admit that you're struggling. And in the same way, you're still working, you're still producing, you're still getting things done, but you're the one that others come to when things get hard. But who do you go to? You love this work. You chose it. You worked for it. You've earned this position. And admitting this costs you something that feels like ingratitude, like you're not built for the level that you did earn, or that you shouldn't be there when you know that you should. So you adjust. You absorb and you, you add it to the invisible if list and you keep moving. You've done everything right. That's exactly why you can't see it. Here's what I want to say to you if you've heard yourself in any of that. You're not cracking because something is wrong with you. You're cracking because something is right with you and has been running at full capacity for a long time without the foundation underneath it that would make it sustainable. You've done everything right. That's exactly why you can't see it. Quiet cracking is not a character flaw. It's a signal. It is the gap between who you are as a leader and what your current operating pattern is requiring of you. I'm gonna say that again. It's the gap between who you are as a leader and what your current operating pattern is requiring of you. So it's the difference between leading and maintaining and, um, leading and managing. And the fact that you can feel that gap is not a weakness. It's the kind of self-awareness that most leaders at your level have been trained to override, to just push through. Here's two things that you can do right now, either one or both of them, it's up to you. But the first thing I want you to do is I want you to name one thing on your list that is your work. Just one. Not maintenance, not other people's thinking, and not the administrating, but the goal that you came here to move. One of the priorities that you keep wanting to get to, and just a small, like a 30-minute task of it, just something. And put it on the top of tomorrow's list, not the bottom, the top. And put that time on your calendar, block it to just do that one thing. Again, 30 minutes, but do that before everything else. Starts. And then the next time someone comes to you with a question, that especially when you know that they can answer it themselves, ask them what they're thinking instead of answering it. Not as a technique, but because the answer is in them already and you know it. So give that a chance to come out, give them that space, and encourage them to answer it. And because when the signal changes, the behavior changes. No restructuring, no hard conversations, no delegation training. But the reason this matters to name is because it's not that you can fix it right now. It's so you can stop carrying it like it's something invisible. The things that we do not name, we manage. And managing something that you have not named is exhausting in a way that does not go away with a long weekend, does not go away with a, with a nap. It doesn't go away unless we understanding it. And naming it is the first move. It's not the only one, but it's the first one, and it's the one that you'll start to see that what changes need to be made. But I want, I want to call something forward. I want to, I want you to see what's possible, because picture ending a day where you did your work, not the maintenance, not the translating and calibrating and answering and managing, your work. The goals you came here to move, the vision that you've been holding on to, and the leader that you you are when you have space to be her. Because what becomes possible when that pattern shifts is the people on your team who love coming to you, they come with you, they come to you with options instead of questions. The side conversations feel like an investment again instead of a drain. And you get at the end of your list, to the end of the day and the end of your list, and there's still something left of you. Look at your day and look, look at the work you got done. You didn't work your way to this level to spend it being everyone else's answer. You got here to lead, to make a difference, because being a leader is part of what you're called to do. The version of you that walks in tomorrow and leads from that place is not a different leader. It is you with the right foundation underneath it. The leader's always been there. You just get to bring him or her out. You walk into Monday already decided and your team comes back with you with, comes back to you with answers instead of a lot of questions. And that's not a fantasy. That is what becomes possible when it gets addressed at the source instead of managed at the surface. And if you heard yourself anywhere in this episode, grab the Friction Factor. It names exactly what we talked about today so you can stop managing the symptoms and start addressing it. And again, it's free. Link's in the show notes. And I will see you next week. Before you go, if you have— if this episode has helped you, if you know someone who maybe they are quietly cracking and you know that this would help them, can you share it with one person? Not a mass sharing, but just one person at a time. That's how small shows like this grow. And this would mean a lot to me and to your friend you share it with. Also, if you have time, leave me a rating and review. Takes 30 seconds on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts, and it just helps the algorithm know that this episode is worth sharing. It also helps me see what is landing for you and what value you're getting. So I read all of them, and I appreciate those so much. Um, with that, see you next week. Bye for now.