Introduction
Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast, for those times when achieving everything is still not enough.
You know where every project stands. You know who’s behind, what’s due, and what might go wrong tomorrow. And yet, even on holiday, even at home in the evening, part of you is still on duty.
Most people put that down to the role. It comes with the territory, they say.
In this episode, we look at the difference between leadership and control, and why so much of that pressure comes from trying to keep hold of everything. We meet Helen, who took her first proper holiday in two years and came back more tired than when she left. And we look at the one question that shows which of your checks are there for the work, and which are there for you…
Key Themes
- Why you can never put it down
- Leadership and control feel exactly alike
- The holiday that left her more tired
- Who is that check really for
- Why control never reaches a finish line
Timestamps
- 0:00 Why you can never put it down
- 2:01 Leading without the job title
- 4:27 Helen’s fortnight away
- 6:11 What Helen was really checking for
- 7:14 What are you still checking
- 8:01 Holding the direction or every thread
- 10:42 Why control has no finish line
- 12:13 When the grip takes the credit
- 13:56 Looking at the grip differently
- 16:29 A question to take with you
If You Prefer Video
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If you plan hard enough, nothing can go wrong. That belief sits behind a pressure most leaders blame on the role. Here is where it comes from. (142 characters)
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Episode 037 – The Role and the Person
Did you decide who to be at work in your first fortnight, then never look again? Discover why early guesses in a role stick, and how to review them.
Episode 004 – Why Rest Feels So Uncomfortable
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Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. You know where every project stands. You know who’s behind, what’s due, and what might go wrong tomorrow. You have thought of everything. So why does it never feel as though you can put it down? Welcome to the Overachievers Podcast with Keith Blakemore-Noble, because success shouldn’t cost everything. Welcome back. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Overachievers Coach, and welcome to episode 38, Leading Without In the previous episode, The Role and the Person, we looked at the quick decisions that you make about who to be when you first step into a role. And we also looked at how rarely anyone goes back to check them.
At the end of that episode, I said we’d come on to leadership and control, and in particular, the pressure you put on yourself To keep hold of everything. And that’s where we are with this episode. The pressure I mean here, it’s a particular kind. It’s the kind you put on yourself, the kind nobody else can see, and the kind you probably think of as simply part of the job. Before we go any further, if you haven’t already, please do follow or subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to. That way, The next episode turns up exactly when it’s ready. So let’s start with something that might sound rather familiar. You’re in charge of something, a team, a department, a business, a project, or it could be a household, it could be a family diary, it could be a client relationship or a committee that would fall apart without you.
You don’t need a job title for any of this. If people rely on you to keep something running, you are leading it, whatever anyone else calls it. So you’re in charge of something and you stay close to it. You know where everything stands. There’s nothing wrong with that. Knowing what is going on is part of the job, and plenty of things do go wrong precisely because nobody was paying attention. But for a lot of capable people, staying close slowly turns into something else. You read every email you’re copied into just in case.
You keep a running list in your head of everything that could slip. You check the numbers last thing at night and you go over the plan one more time before bed. Nothing has changed since you last looked, but you just want to be sure. And hey, none of it feels like a choice. It feels like what a good leader does. It feels like responsibility. Which is exactly why it is so hard to see. Because underneath all of that diligence, something else is going on.
A steady, low-level pressure that never quite switches off. You might be in a meeting or at a dinner or lying awake. Part of you is still on duty, still holding the threads, still making sure that nothing can take you by surprise. Most people put that pressure down to the role. It comes with the territory, they say, and that’s simply what leading feels like. I would like to suggest something different. A good deal of that pressure comes from trying to keep a hold of everything. And keeping a hold of everything and leading— those are more separate than they feel.
To explain what I mean, let me introduce you to Helen. Helen ran operations for a mid-sized firm. Capable, respected, the person everyone turned to when something needs sorting. The person who hadn’t taken a holiday, a proper holiday, in 2 years. Eventually, Helen booked a fortnight away and she prepared for it the way she prepared for everything. She wrote a handover document, a 40-page handover document with every project, every supplier, every client. And a bit of history thrown in. For each one, she wrote what to do if it went wrong, and for most of them, what to do if that went wrong as well.
She briefed her deputy twice. She left her phone on, and she told herself she would check her inbox just once a day in the evening so she could relax the rest of the time. So every evening On a terrace somewhere nice and warm, Helen opened her laptop. Day 1, nothing that needed her. Day 2, nothing. Fast forward to day 5, a supplier query that her deputy had already handled and, Helen had to admit, had handled rather well. Day 8, nothing. Nothing went wrong.
Nobody needed her, not once in the entire fortnight. And when she came back from that lovely 2-week break, she was more tired than when she’d left. See, here’s the part that matters. Somewhere around day 10, sitting with a laptop open, She asked herself a simple question. What am I checking for? And the answer, the answer surprised her. The team didn’t need her. She’d made sure of that, which was the whole point of that 40-page handover document. The checking wasn’t about the team.
The checking was about something else entirely. If anything had slipped while she was away, she would have been the leader who wasn’t watching. Helen had handed over every task and every decision properly and carefully. The one thing she couldn’t hand over was the watching. And watching was where all the pressure lived. Let me put a question to you. When you are meant to be off on holiday or just at home in the evening, when you’re meant to be off, what are you still checking? Be honest and be specific. Give the real answer rather than the answer you’d like it to be.
The real answer. What are you still checking? The inbox? The numbers? The message thread? The plan? What is it you are still checking? And then a second question, a slightly harder question. Once you’ve identified what you’re checking, who is that check for? Keep your answer in mind because we’re going to come back to it. Before we do, there’s a distinction I’d like you to draw today, and that is the distinction between leadership and control. They get confused all the time, partly because from the inside they feel almost the same thing. Both feel like caring about the outcome. Both leadership and control feel like responsibility. And yes, from outside as well.
They can both look like a very organised leader doing a very good job. But they are holding different things. Leadership holds the direction— where this is going, what matters most, what good looks like, and what to prioritise when there’s a choice to make. That’s the part of the work that needs someone to hold it. Very often, that someone is you. Control That reaches for something bigger. It tries to hold every single thread, every task, every update, every possible way it could go wrong so that nothing can move without you knowing about it and nothing can ever catch you out. Plenty of good leaders keep a good close eye on a great deal of detail, so the amount tells you very little.
And what tells you something is what the detail is for. Which brings us back to the question a moment ago, who is the check for? If the work needs it, if something could go wrong without it, that’s leadership. You’re holding on to something that needs holding on to. However, If the work would be fine and you’d still feel you had to check, that, my friend, that is control. And what it’s protecting is you. It’s protecting you from being caught out, protecting you from being the one who missed it, protecting you from being the leader who wasn’t watching. And that’s the difference that Helen stumbled upon while she was on her terrace. Her leadership, that was the 40-page handover.
It set the direction, made sure everything was covered. Her control, that was in the laptop every single evening. And only one of those was doing anything for the work, and it wasn’t the one in her laptop. So why is the grip so hard to put down? Great question. Why is it so hard to put down, especially when, like Helen, you can see perfectly well that nothing actually needs you at that point? It is a good question. Here’s what I think is going on. Think about preparation. Proper preparation.
The kind that any good leader does. It has a finish line. You prepare until the work is ready. Then you stop. The plan is written, the people are briefed, you can put it down. Preparation comes to an end because it’s produced something and it’s produced something that can be finished. Control, on the other hand, that has no such finish line because what it’s really producing is a feeling, the feeling of being safe from being caught out, and that has very little to do with the work. Not only that, that feeling cannot be stored.
You can’t build up a reserve of it in the morning that carries you through to the evening. That feeling only lasts as long as you’re watching. The moment you stop, it starts to drain away and the pressure comes back. Which is exactly why Helen checked every single evening. Every check Brought her one evening of feeling safe. The next evening she needed another hit of that. There is a second part to this, and it’s the part that keeps the whole thing running. When nothing goes wrong, who gets the credit? The Grip does.
Every quiet day becomes evidence that the watching worked. Nothing slipped, so it must have been because you were keeping an eye on it. And so the case for watching gets stronger every time it turns out to have been unnecessary. Think about that for a moment. The less the watching is needed, the more convinced you become that you need it. That’s why this kind of pressure tends to grow rather than settle, and it’s why experienced leaders often feel more of it than people who are just starting out. They’ve got years of quiet days on the record and the grip has taken credit for every single one of them. None of this makes you a control freak, by the way, because control is usually a way of keeping yourself safe that once made a great deal of sense.
That control used to make sense once upon a time. Somewhere along the line Being caught out costs you something. Once is often enough. The trouble is, it keeps running long after it stopped being necessary, and you are the one paying for it. Every evening, on every terrace, and in every meeting where part of you is somewhere else. Hey, what are you going to do with this? I’m not going to suggest that you stop checking everything. For one thing, you wouldn’t even if I told you to, and for another, some of what you check does deserve checking. That’s leadership.
That’s, that’s you doing your job. What I’d suggest, however, is looking at that grip a little differently. Next time you find yourself checking something, just ask the question, who is this for? What is the purpose of this checking? Who’s the checking for? And you don’t have to act on the answer. Simply notice the answer. You’ll find some checks are for the work, and you can keep those knowingly. And you’ll find some checks are for you. Those, those are the ones that are carrying the pressure. Hmm.
And then there are the quiet days when a day goes by, nothing goes wrong. See if you can resist handing the credit straight to the watching. Ask yourself whether anything would have really gone wrong if you hadn’t been looking. Nothing went wrong while you were looking, just ask yourself, would anything have gone wrong if I wasn’t looking? Very often the work was fine because of how you’d set it up and the direction that you’d held long before you ever opened the laptop. Finally, I’d like you to notice where the pressure actually sits. Now, for most leaders, what wears them down is, is the watching, that low hum of being permanently On duty. That wears them down far more than the decisions themselves ever do, which is a shame because the decisions are often the part that you’re best at. The first step toward leading without pressure is a very small step.
It’s seeing which part of the grip is there for you. That alone tends to loosen it a little. Coming up in the next episode, Speaking with Authority, we’ll look at what separates authority from arrogance. And we’ll look at why so many capable people hold back from the first for fear of sounding like the second. That’s coming up in the next episode, Speak with Authority. For now, I’d like to leave you with this question. Think of the one thing that you check most often, the one thing that you would find hardest to leave alone. If whatever you were checking went wrong while you weren’t looking, what are you so afraid it would say about you? What exactly are you afraid that it would say about you? Hey, if any of today’s episode felt familiar, it would help a great deal if you leave a review or a rating on whatever platform you’re catching this.
Please do that. It really does help. Helps other people find the show, helps me know what really works for you, dear listener. And share it with someone who you think might recognise themselves in it. Oh yeah, and if you haven’t already, please do follow or subscribe so that you’re there for every episode. Once you finish with this episode, head over to KeithBN.link/TOP where you can find all of the episodes of the Overachievers Podcast. You’ll find this episode, you can find the show notes, along with some further resources to explore if you feel so inclined. That’s it for this episode.
I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Overachievers Coach, and I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
