When Leadership Gets Hard: What to Do When Everything Goes Sideways at Work

When Sarah got the text from her boss Derek asking her to come to their office, her stomach dropped.

She had a stinking suspicion that she knew what it was about, and she was worried and, honestly, annoyed.

Her boss had a habit of creating these triangulated messes. Staff would bring him a complaint, and instead of sending them back to deal with it directly with Sarah, making sure staff knew she had the authority, he'd tell the staff he'd "talk to her," and it made things so much more complicated than they needed to be, and Sarah felt like he'd undermined her.
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As she sat there fuming, Sarah rolled through the events of the last few days in her mind. She'd talked to Diane a couple of days ago about her behaviour at the staff meeting. She was always so negative and dropping sarcastic comments again and again. At one point, when Sarah had had enough, she called her on it. Sarah followed up with Diane afterward and was firm about the need for her behaviour to stop and for her to work on being more of a team player.

She knew Diane wasn't happy. She'd heard the ramblings from other staff, and her admin support whispered to her on her way in that Diane had been in Derek's office.

Sarah pushed herself away from her desk, knowing she may as well get it over with.

After meeting with her boss, Sarah felt deflated. She was questioning if she was cut out for this. Maybe leadership wasn't her thing. Was she too hard on people? Was she the problem? Had she been getting this whole leadership thing wrong?

She wasn't doing leadership wrong. Nobody had taught her how to do it right. She'd been handed a job description, told what meetings to attend and what forms to fill out, but nobody sat her down and taught her how to handle conflict, manage relationships or lead with emotional intelligence. That part she was supposed to figure out on her own.

I know that feeling. Not Sarah's exact situation, but that gut punch when something goes sideways at work and suddenly you're questioning everything. I spent 25 years in the nonprofit sector. I've had hard conversations with my boss. I've had staff go around me. I've sat in meetings wondering if I was the problem.

That's actually why I do this work. Because I've been where you are. And I know how alone it feels. And I don't want you to have to go through it alone.

If you've read this far, I suspect something is off for you at work.

Maybe your situation looks nothing like Sarah's. But I wonder if some of this sounds familiar.

• Your boss yelled at you in front of your team. You stood there, face burning, trying to hold it together while your staff watched. You made it through the rest of the day. But you haven't been able to shake it since.
• Or your performance review blindsided you. You thought things were going okay. Not perfect, but okay. And then you sat across from your supervisor and heard things about yourself you weren't expecting. Now you're replaying every conversation, every decision you've made in the last six months.
• Or a board member called with a staff complaint, and you're still replaying that conversation three days later. You've been trying to raise the bar. Hold people accountable. Do the right thing. And this is what you get for it.
• Or there's no single moment you can point to. Just a slow build. The tension that won't go away. The Sunday night dread. The mornings when you're already exhausted before you even walk through the door.

You don't have to be in a full-blown crisis for this to be hard. Sometimes it's just the weight of it all. The exhaustion, self-doubt or dread. And it sucks to feel that the real you, the one who is caring and capable and actually really good at this work, has gotten buried somewhere under all of it.

And you can't talk to anyone about it. Your staff can't know. Your board can't know. Your colleagues are caught up in their own stuff. So you just keep carrying it.
You're not falling apart. But you're closer to the edge than you'd like to admit.

I get it. I really do. And I'm not just saying that. I've been there!

So what do you do when you're in the middle of it?

Ask yourself this first: Are you actually stopping long enough to deal with it? Or are you just pushing through and hoping it gets better?

Pushing through doesn't work. Trust me, I tried that for years. What does work is having a process to follow because your brain can't think straight in the middle of a crisis. That's why I use The Infinite Leadership Loop with my clients. It gives you a framework to hold onto when everything feels out of control. And it starts with a pause.

When you are full of doubt, what you need to do is PAUSE. You literally need to stop.

Right now you're spinning. Your mind is going a million miles an hour, and none of it is helping. You're stuck in a negativity spiral, and if you don't interrupt it, it will keep you there.

Close your office door. Go for a walk. Take a deep breath. Something to stop the spiral in your mind and help you feel more grounded.

Then PONDER and process everything that is going on. Grab a journal and just start writing. Get it out of your head and onto paper. The anger. The hurt. The self-doubt. The stories you're making up about yourself. The beliefs that got triggered.

Don't try to fix it yet. Just notice what's there.

But pondering isn't just about processing the hard stuff. It's also about getting clear on where you want to land. So ask yourself: how do you want to feel on the other side of this? More composed? More in control? Like yourself again? What do you actually want to happen here?

Sarah did this the night after her meeting. She sat at her kitchen table with a cup of tea and just wrote. It didn't fix anything. But it slowed her down enough to actually think.

I used to do this too. When something blew up at work, my first instinct was to go, go, go. I'd try to fix it, manage it, push through it. It took me a long time to learn that stopping first actually gets you there faster.

Once you've slowed down enough to actually think, that's when the real pondering begins. This is also where you start to separate what actually happened from the story you're telling yourself about it. When we're spinning, we add a lot to the story in our heads. We turn one staff complaint into proof that we are a terrible leader. We turn one hard conversation into evidence that we don't belong in this role.

I've done this. More times than I'd like to admit. One minute, I think I'm doing okay, and the next, I see myself getting fired. My mind can do crazy things. And I see it in almost every leader I work with.

Sarah had to do that work too. She had to see that the actual situation, a staff member who didn't like being held accountable, was very different from the story she was telling herself, which was that she was the problem.

She wasn't the problem. Though she did have a role to play in what came next, and she needed help seeing that.

Once you're clearer on where you want to be, you can start thinking about how to get there, which is the PIVOT part of The Infinite Leadership Loop. This is where you start thinking about the thoughts, energy and actions you need to get to the vision you saw for what you want to happen.

For Sarah, that meant figuring out how to have a direct conversation with her staff member again about her actions, this time to make a difference and not have her staff go to her boss. Sarah also needed to address the pattern with her boss so it wouldn't keep happening.

With this plan in place, Sarah can PROCEED with courage and maybe even some vulnerability into that conversation with her PEOPLE, her staff and her boss.

​Sometimes it's enough to slow down, get clear on what you want to happen, create that plan and move forward on your own. But sometimes you can't get there alone. The spiral is too strong, the situation is too loaded, or you just need someone in your corner who gets it.

Sometimes You Need Someone in Your Corner

That's where I come in. I call it an SOS call.

Sarah booked one about a week after that meeting with her boss because she was still spinning. She was still lying in bed at night, playing the whole thing and questioning herself every time she said anything around her staff.

In one call, we got her out of her head, feeling more grounded and in control of her thoughts. We looked at what was really going on with her staff member, her boss and the dynamic she'd been navigating for months. Then we mapped out how she would handle the next conversation.

She didn't leave with all the answers, but she had more clarity, felt more hopeful and was confident she had a plan. And she felt like she had someone on her side. I know that feeling too. That was one of the greatest gifts I got from coaching when I was introduced to it as a floundering leader: not having to feel like I had to do it all alone with no one on my team.

If you'd like someone on your side for a conversation that makes you feel less alone and more supported, book a SOS call today.

These calls are for when something has hit the fan, and you need to talk it through with someone who gets nonprofit leadership. I lived it for 25 years. I know what it's like to lead in this sector, under these pressures and impossible expectations.

You bring the problem. We dig in together. You walk away with a clearer head and a next step.
It's $97.

It's for leaders who haven't worked with me before. I'm hoping it is a low-barrier way to get support right when you need it most. Because you shouldn't have to do leadership all alone!

I'm here to help. If you're in the middle of something right now, this is for you.

Book and SOS Call