“I really didn’t get much done today.”
“I’ve been in meetings for 8 straight hours.”
“I block time off for myself, but never get to use it.”
Have you thought or said anything like this recently? I’ve noticed this come up often from leaders: a subtle and minimizing downplay of the work they do as a leader. A nagging guilt they feel when they spend even 1 hour in strategic thinking instead of “producing” something tangible.
Perhaps you feel you “didn’t get much done today”, but what about the 4 hours you spent helping align your team on priority?
Maybe you spent 8 straight hours in meetings, where they might not feel like “work” – but what about the role you played in asking questions and drawing out intelligence and contribution from everyone in those rooms?
Or how about the regular “time block” that you know is what you need, but it seems something is always scheduled over it, or you give it away – but you remember that one time months ago when you had that two-time-block-win-streak and were able to think through how to work with some tension in your team that had them gridlocked.
This notorious downplay and public minimizing of your valuable work as a leader is costing you more than you think. Your team loses direction, their strengths aren’t leveraged, and the dots stay disconnected. If you only value the work you do to create or produce an immediately graded output, you might be missing the tremendous impact you can have by leading. The thinking, the aligning, the intentional development of people – that work doesn’t come with an immediate grade. But it’s the work that your team feels when you do it, and feels when you don’t.
Unfortunately, downplaying your leadership work isn’t humility. It’s a habit that builds up over time. And like most habits, it runs quietly in the background until you choose to notice it.
Here’s a small experiment for this week: every time you catch yourself saying “I didn’t get much done today” or “I was just in meetings all day”, try to pause. Ask yourself: “Was I leading?“
If the answer is yes, then you did your job, the most important one. And it might be time to start practicing talking about it that way, to yourself and to others.
If you’ve caught yourself in the notorious downplay lately, send me a note, I’d love to hear what you noticed.
Here are a few resources that I’ve found interesting and have been sharing with clients:
1 // There’s power in immediacy. Especially in the time you take for yourself as a leader. (5 min read)
2 // The surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense. (44 min video)
3 // The paradox of behavior change, with a suggestion at the end. (5 min read)
