The Thinking Trap That Burns Out High-Performing Leaders And How to Break It

SPEAKER_00: Hey there, I'm Jill Griffin, the host of the Career Refresh. And today we are talking about thinking traps that burn out high-performing leaders and what to do about it. So I find that senior leaders who are under pressure, they're maybe overfunctioning, they're stressed, and they're heading towards burnout. And it happens because there's a lot of pressure.

They're doing more of what made them successful. And then the trap is now they're stuck in that doing more. And it quickly becomes a loop. So let's dig in and then we'll also talk about some things you can do to stop this overfunctioning cycle.

All right. First, high performers, right? You default under stress to this level of overfunctioning. The pressure starts to rise, you start to think harder, you take on more, you think more things are in your control, and you often take on all this work.

You may also be taking on work of your peers or something isn't done, and it's just easier if you do it. It may be people that report to you that you're also functioning and you're taking on their work. It also could look like people are coming to you with challenges that they haven't really spent much time in thinking through. They're just coming to you and saying, like, what should I do about this?

versus an alternative suggestion that I always tell people to coach their team up on is, you know what, think through some of the options and then bring that to me. Like do some of the pre-thinking and then we can stretch and figure out which is the idea forward. So when you're seeing that this overfunctioning works until at a certain point it doesn't, because you're you start to notice if you pause that you're spending more time thinking about the problem than you are on the solution.

And I think that's a big takeaway here. If you're spending more time in the energy of the problem than the solution, you know you're probably overfunctioning and you're leading towards a thought trap that's gonna probably send you to stress, exhaustion, and or burnout. So that rationalization loop where you're spending time in the history of the problem. I was talking with a client the other day, and I have permission to share this, where he was talking about a scenario at work and he was telling me so much about the colleague that he's having this challenge with, and so much defending their stance and like, well, they're gonna think this, and here's how they behave.

And it was kind of becoming funny after a while because I felt like that guy was in the session with us because I knew more about him than my client's actual take on the problem. So when you find yourself in that, you're shifting from defending the problem's permanence, and that tells you that you're in this overexplaining and you're much more fluent at explaining the problem than thinking through uh the solutions that you might employ to get yourself out of that. So your sentences start to become longer, the caveats start to multiply, and there's just not clear thinking you're in this stress response.

It's this is what happens. So, like we're we're talking about like typical behavior, letting you know that you're not alone. We all do this. Lord knows I have done this before until I learned how to get myself out of it.

Um, it is more common at the senior level because the stakes are higher, the pressure's more, the problems probably are more complex. And I'm gonna also say that there's a tolerance at the senior level for the uncertainty. I mean, no one wants to be on the uncertainty, but you have a tolerance because, well, this is kind of just the job. I have to navigate through the gray, I have to figure out the uncertainty.

Also, more people are probably watching you and you're in this overanalysis. When you're under pressure, the overfunctioning leader is in every meeting, they're across every decision. They're the first to respond, they're the last to leave. What it may look like for you on the inside is some thought loop of if I step back, things are gonna fall apart.

Um, you know what? I'm the one who sees the gaps before other people get there. They don't see them, I'm gonna have to fill them. On the outside of the problem, I'd offer you finding a pause and saying to yourself, you know what, what does this need to look like?

What does delegation look like at this? Who do I need to trust in order to delegate? And maybe don't put a name to it, but put a type of personality. Like I need to trust someone who's really good with uh data analysis.

Okay, now I have uh a solution to go look for. Who in the team is really good with data analysis, right? Thinking about ways that it doesn't have to depend actually on you. Because outside of that problem, when you're asking for if this doesn't depend on me, what's stopping this from moving forward?

If, well, if I'm out of it, is there anything else that's stopping this from moving forward? Again, you start to get much more concrete with the questions you're asking yourself versus being in that thought loop. The next way I see it is that there's a highly stressed person who doesn't turn it off. So work is following you home on nights, on weekends, you're sleeping with it, you're inside the problem.

Listen, there are times in which we're all going to have to work extra hours or more hours than we want to. There are times in which we're going to have to work nights and weekends, fine. But is it the default? Is it the day that you finish early is like rare?

Be checking in with yourself on this because this is where, again, you may be overfunctioning. And if it's a challenge within your organization, then that's an there's plenty of episodes on what to do about that of how to approach your organization to think about how we're rebuilding our system and processes to have a different level of systems thinking. If there's too much right now, if you're thinking, you know what, I just I just have to do this right now, there's too much going on, I just need to get on top of this and I can push this off to next quarter.

If you're in that, you're inside the problem and just saying, I gotta deal with this now and to push it off, fine. I get it. Sometimes there are really hard deliverables in front of you. But I'd offer you to get outside the problem and think, you know what, what am I holding on to right now that I shouldn't be?

Is there something here that can be delegated? What needs to be true right now in order for me to put this down? And then I'd also suggest that you ask yourself, what is this costing you? There was a time in which I uh I had a stress fracture in my foot from running streets of Manhattan, you know, doing jogging along the path.

And I had a stress fracture in my foot, and I actually needed to have surgery to get that fixed. But I kept putting it off because there was an upcoming big presentation that I felt like I had to be at. Now, listen, I was part of the team, but there were options there. Instead of walking around and continuing to try to figure out, well, I guess I'll get a wheelchair at the airport because I'm not going to be able to walk.

I was all in that. I kept putting it off versus pausing and saying, let's look at what the facts here. This meeting has to happen. Does this meeting have to happen now?

I mean, honestly, it probably could have been pushed, but we didn't do that. Um, but probably could have and said, you know, or Jill won't be able to come. It probably would have been okay. Now, I understand that there might have been some fear of missing out on my part of like, oh, if I'm not there, is there a reputation risk?

Maybe. But at the same time, what's better for me? To have the foot surgery or to continue to prolong it and go to a meeting? Do I want to be in an environment?

Do I want to be contributing to an environment where I'm putting off surgery on my foot so that I can go to a meeting? What message am I sending my peers and my team? Right. So these are the kinds of things that you really want to think about.

What's the cost to you? And then decide based on that, how can we think about this challenge and see this situation differently? Who could step in? Asking yourself what's actually in my control right now is a better question than asking yourself a why-based question.

When you ask yourself, like, God, why is this so hard? Why is it going to be this way? There's a powerlessness to those questions versus saying, what actually has to happen right now in order for this to move forward in the most strategic way possible. It's a different energy to the questions.

So to step outside this overfunctioning loop and to create space for thinking differently, a couple of things I'm going to suggest that you do. One is name what you can actually control. When you are overfunctioning, everything starts to feel enormous and you were in this enormous thought loop. So finding a way to actually figure out what we are solving for, I would suggest you strip it back to what is referred to as first principles.

This is a thinking, problem-solving method where it breaks down complex issues into their most basic, most functional truths, right? The ones that you absolutely know to be true and build up from there. So in the example that I just gave around my foot surgery, well, what absolutely had to happen was I needed foot surgery. What also had to happen was this meeting.

When they both need to happen was a second question, right? So a first principle would be stripping it down to what is the base level of things that needed to be true. Second, is I want you to separate your inspiration and your brainstorming from logistics. When you're under stress, the brain is going to collapse both the brainstorming and the feasibility of the tactics into one exhausting, very circular process where you're feeling like everything gets stress tested at the same time.

It just again is going to really tap your energy and zap your energy. And you're not going to have a chance to really breathe and think through it. So I'm going to ask you to separate them. Generate the ideas, generate the brainstorming.

Each time your brain wants to get into logistics, thank you for sharing. We're going to put it in the parking lot. So things like cost, timing, permission, the who, all of that, they're going to get their turn. You're going to think through it.

But they don't necessarily need to be at the table when we're brainstorming our solutions. Figure out the logistics second. Because that code switching being in possibility, that's the brainstorm. But then having to solve the tactical problem, again, your brain ping-ponging around is not an efficient use of your brain's power.

We even know from task switching, when you're going from doing thinking or strategic type work and then you're dropping into emails or, you know, responding in Teams or your Slack channel, we also know that every time you code switch like that and go back and forth, you lose about 20 to 25 minutes of brain power. So it's why all of a sudden you feel like you're not getting anything done or you feel exhausted by it. Next, I'm going to tell you to ask yourself different questions.

Try to eliminate the why questions to others and to yourself. Things like, why is this so hard? Why can't we figure it out? They're not helpful questions because you're just going to stay in the loop of why is it so hard?

Because why can't we figure it out? Right? It's not a helpful question. Switching those questions to what would easy look like?

What would this look like if it was simple? What's one thing that I could do to move this forward? What would I tell a peer in this situation? There's a tighter action around those words that you can actually solve versus the why questions that keep you spinning.

Asking yourself really helps you solve from a place where you're solution-oriented and you can start to be thinking through what's the viable option. And when you're stepping out of those why's questions, you'd be surprised at how much the change of what needs to happen becomes visible to you. So underneath this, all this overfunctioning, this stress, this burnout at the strangers at the senior levels, you know, it's often signs of someone who cares deeply and holds high standards and just hasn't found the off-ramp yet to know how to find a different pattern and how to use a new pattern to serve them.

And leaders who move through this pressure, the pressure of everything fastest are usually the ones who notice soonest that they're in the thought trap and they're in the spinning. And nothing has gone wrong if you're in the spinning. It's getting yourself out of the spinning and pausing and moving away from those why questions and going to how or what questions that your brain then actually then starts to say, okay, let me start to answer this. So when you're thinking through this, maybe the first question you'd ask yourself is what's the first question I'd ask myself if I stepped out of this problem for five minutes?

And literally stopping the cycle of the spin. All right, friends, if any of this landed, here's what I point you to do next. Getting clear on your leadership identity, who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to show up is the foundation that I find makes everything easier to navigate. It keeps you from spinning, it breaks that cycle because you get clear on your why.

It becomes a decision-making filter. You know how you're going to show up because those become core principles or core values of how you operate within your leadership identity. Doing that work is really one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself in addition to managing your mind. And if you're in a season where this type of high pressure is really feeling overwhelming and the clarity starts to feel low, that's the work.

And that's the work I do. So I would love to work with you and be your coach. You can come find me at Griffin Method. You can also email me at hello at GilGriffin Coaching.

Find the pause this week. Find that pause. Ask yourself different questions and always, always, always be kind. I'll see you soon.