People Leadership is Hard
You’re burned out and you’re still hustling. You’re overworked and overwhelmed. Your body aches from being hunched over your laptop, rigid to withstand the stress. You carry the thoughts not only of yourself but of your team and your organization. You are balancing between doing the work - because the work just has to get done in a lean organization - and being present for your people.
You are expected to not just be a manager, but be a leader, coach, therapist, teacher at work, and also have roles to play at home. Being present as a partner, parent, a child, a friend.
And it’s HARD. You were never taught skills on how to lead people. You may have been given “management training” (aka been taught about the anti-harrassment policy, how to follow the law when hiring/firing, learned your organization’s DEI policy). But the skills to navigate leading people, especially when the job has shifted to coaching and navigating emotional agility? The skills to lead from a human-centered place of resting and of being enough? You are likely still struggling with managing yourself in that area.
And then COVID hit.
And you’re figuring out how to stay connected in a remote environment, removed from peers and models on how to navigate this change. You have spent a year under the sheer energetic stress of COVID, social disruption, social isolation, remote work, home schooling… and you’re even more exhausted than when you started. If you had felt like an imposter before, 2020 took that feeling and ramped it up exponentially. There’s a responsibility in being a people leader than you can’t really fathom until you are in it.
There’s an opportunity here to ride this wave and try a different path.
This year forced us to get quiet, listen, and realize how disconnected we are from our bodies and our emotions.
The year forced the need to rest.
We had to lead from our hearts to navigate the last year, which was likely very uncomfortable.
And yet the pace of work is relentless. What if there was a safe place to grow as a leader and to connect to a like-minded community?
To learn the skills that you never had time to learn?
To regenerate your body and reanimate your heart and soul?
To sit in vulnerability with yourself so you can be vulnerable with your team?
To leave the hustle behind, rest for a moment, and come out the other side stronger?
