Your Team Shouldn't Have to Carry Your Fear

There were times in my career when I put more pressure on my team than the business actually required. That’s something I had to acknowledge about my own leadership. I cared about our results, but I hadn’t separated that responsibility from my own need to feel secure. When we were doing well, I felt like I was moving forward. When performance slipped, it could feel like I was losing much more than progress toward a goal.

I knew what it was like to lose a job and watch everything else follow. During one period of unemployment, I lost my apartment and my car. Those experiences stayed with me when I got back to work, and they stayed with me as I moved into leadership. Having a better position didn’t mean I stopped worrying about going backward.

The problem was that I could bring that worry into a situation that didn’t call for it. A missed goal needed attention. In my mind, it could become evidence that the stability I’d worked for was starting to slip. I was reacting to the result and everything I associated with it at the same time.

My team couldn’t separate those things for me. They were receiving the pressure I put on them.

I think that can be difficult to recognize when you take pride in working hard. I had reasons for being driven. I had a family to provide for, and I wanted to keep growing. There was nothing wrong with taking those responsibilities seriously. But I could use those reasons to avoid looking closely at how I was leading. Wanting a good outcome didn’t mean every response I had was useful.

I had to ask myself why a change in performance could change how I felt about myself so quickly. I was still the same person. I still had the experience and ability I’d built. There was a result that needed work, but I was treating it as if it could undo all of that.

That affected how much room I had to listen. If I was already reading a setback as a threat, I could become more focused on getting the numbers back up than understanding what had happened. Pushing harder felt like taking action. It didn’t necessarily mean I’d identified what needed to change.

Learning to separate those things helped me take feedback and address problems without making them so personal. I could own a missed goal without deciding it said everything about my capability. I could hold somebody accountable without needing that conversation to settle my own frustration too.

I don’t want to make that sound like I reached a point where pressure stopped affecting me. The responsibility was still there. The difference was understanding that my reaction also needed attention. I couldn’t assume that because I felt urgency, everybody else needed to feel the same amount of it.

When I write about this, I’m looking at something I had to change in myself. My history helps me understand why stability mattered so much to me. It also helps me see how I could make work feel less stable for other people while trying so hard to protect my own position.

That’s the part I have to own as a leader. My team had responsibilities to meet, and I had a responsibility to be clear about what I was asking of them and why. The fact that I was afraid of losing ground didn’t make additional pressure necessary.