Many leaders carry too much. They carry too many decisions, too much emotional load, too much responsibility for work their team should be able to own, and too much pressure to keep everything moving.
They are the one people go to when something goes wrong. They are the one who steps in when things feel unclear. They are the one holding the standard, the deadline, the relationship, the performance issue, and often the emotional tone of the team as well.
On the surface, it looks like a workload problem.
But often, it is more than that.
It is a Leading Self problem.
If you are carrying too much right now, the question may not only be, Why is there so much to do?
It might be, How am I leading myself in ways that keep me holding too much?
In my executive coaching work, clients often come to me overwhelmed and overworked. The problem is that they think they have to be doers - always jumping into action and getting things done.
Yes, some roles are genuinely demanding. Some teams are underdeveloped. Some businesses move fast.
But many leaders also carry too much because of the way they are leading themselves.
When we are constantly in doing, it can be a distraction. It could be that we worry if we stop things will go wrong or that we won't look competent. In reality, we are distracting ourselves from ourselves.
The truth is to be an effective leader we need to be comfortable with understanding who we are being. Knowing who we really are, so that we can be true to our unique style of leading and working.
This is one of the reasons Leading Self matters so much. If you do not understand your own patterns, you will keep recreating the same problem. Different week, different people, same outcome: you still feel overloaded, your team still relies on you too much, and real ownership still does not stick.
Leading Self is not about becoming self-absorbed. It is not about endless introspection. And it is not about turning yourself into someone else.
Leading Self means being aware enough, disciplined enough, and honest enough to manage yourself well before trying to manage everyone else.
It means:
If you cannot lead yourself, your habits will lead you.
Your anxiety will shape your level of control.
Your discomfort will shape your decisions.
Your self-doubt will shape how much you trust others.
Your reactivity will shape the tone of your team.
This is why Leading Self is not separate from leading others. It is the foundation of it.
A lot of leaders assume self-leadership means becoming calmer, nicer, softer, or somehow more polished.
That is not the point.
The point is not to change who you are. The point is to become more skilful in how you lead with who you are.
Every leader has natural traits that can serve them well. Drive, confidence, care, decisiveness, independence, ambition, high standards - these can all be strengths.
But strengths do not stay strengths in every situation.
Drive can become impatience.
Confidence can become over-certainty.
Care can become rescuing.
High standards can become control.
Independence can become distance.
As leaders move into bigger roles, new teams, or more complexity, the traits that once made them successful can start creating friction. What worked in one environment may not work in another. What looked like strength in one role can become a weakness in the next if it is left unexamined.
Leading Self means noticing that shift. It means adapting your leadership style to suit the situation.
It means knowing when to lean into a natural strength, when to tone it down, and when it is starting to work against you.
That is not fake leadership. It is mature leadership.
Some leaders think they are self-aware because they know what they value, what they are good at, and what kind of leader they want to be.
That matters. But it is only half the job.
Leading Self also requires understanding how other people experience you.
You may see yourself as decisive, while others experience you as dismissive.
You may see yourself as supportive, while others experience you as intrusive.
You may see yourself as calm, while others experience you as distant.
This is where humility matters.
Leading Self requires a willingness to ask:
How am I coming across?
What effect am I having on the people around me?
What am I doing that builds trust?
What am I doing that makes people hold back, defer, or stay dependent?
What energy do I bring into the room?
You do not become a stronger leader by simply leading from your preferences and expecting everyone else to adjust. You become stronger by staying grounded in who you are while also being willing to meet people where they are.
And if you want to lead others well, you have to be willing to look at that gap honestly.
If you do not manage yourself, your patterns will manage you.
Your anxiety will shape your tone.
Your discomfort will shape your delegation.
Your fear will shape your control.
Your emotional triggers will shape the culture around you.
This is one of the reasons I find tools like the Enneagram so useful in leadership work. The Enneagram helps leaders understand the deeper motivations, fears, triggers, and protective strategies that drive their behaviour.
It helps explain why one leader becomes controlling under pressure, another withdraws, another over-helps, and another pushes harder when what is actually needed is more presence, patience, or humility.
The point is not to box people in.
The point is to help leaders understand the internal patterns that quietly run them, especially when things get hard.
Because once you can see the pattern, you have a chance to interrupt it.
And that is where leadership starts to change.
When leaders carry too much, there are usually patterns underneath it. These are the main ones that come up in my executive coaching work that we have to work through.
Many leaders say they want to delegate more. But often what they really want is for someone else to do the work while they still remain emotionally in control of it.
They want the relief of delegation without the uncertainty that comes with it.
So they stay too close. They check too often. They correct too quickly. They jump back in when things are not done exactly as they would do them.
The issue is not always lack of capability in the team. Often, it is the leader’s discomfort with trust. In experience, it's because a leader hasn't learnt to trust themselves.
Some leaders have built their sense of value around being the one who can hold everything together.
They are the fixer. The stabiliser. The rescuer. The one people rely on.
That can feel rewarding. It can even look like strong leadership from the outside.
But over time, it creates dependence. The leader becomes central to too much. Others hold back. Ownership weakens. And the leader becomes trapped by the very capability that once made them successful.
Pressure reveals patterns.
A leader may appear calm and empowering when things are steady. But under pressure, they may become more controlling, more reactive, more impatient, or more emotionally unavailable.
When that happens, the team learns to defer rather than lead. People escalate too quickly. They wait for the leader instead of thinking for themselves. And the leader ends up carrying even more.
Leading Self requires being able to tolerate discomfort. It means being willing to look within ourselves and how we can react and act differently.
It requires letting people struggle enough to learn. It requires holding boundaries. It requires not rescuing simply because you could. It requires naming what is not working rather than smoothing it over.
Many leaders carry too much because doing so feels easier than facing that discomfort.
But what feels easier in the short term often becomes heavier over time.
When a leader carries too much, the cost is not only personal.
Yes, the leader becomes tired, frustrated, and stretched too thin. Burnout is also a common issue.
But the impact goes much wider than that.
The team becomes dependent.
People stop building their own judgement because they know the leader will eventually step in. Accountability weakens because ownership is never fully transferred. Trust becomes distorted because the leader’s behaviour signals, even unintentionally, I do not fully trust you to hold this without me.
Strategic thinking disappears because the leader is constantly dragged back into operational noise.
And over time, the culture becomes reactive. Problems move upward instead of being handled well where they are. Emotional maturity decreases. Ownership becomes blurry. People wait to be led instead of stepping up with confidence.
This is why trust and accountability rise and fall together. When leaders struggle to trust, they often over-involve themselves. When they over-involve themselves, accountability in others becomes weaker.
Leading Self changes the way a leader shows up before it changes the way a team performs.
After all, everything start with us. We might think that people are doing the wrong think or not listening to us, but those behaviours give us insight into our behaviours and reactions.
It helps leaders notice when they are over-functioning. It helps them pause before reacting. It helps them recognise when control is being driven by anxiety rather than intention. It helps them become clearer about what is theirs to hold and what is not.
That changes everything.
When leaders strengthen their ability to lead themselves:
And as that happens, teams begin to change too.
Ownership grows.
Dependence reduces.
Trust strengthens.
The leader gets more space to think strategically instead of firefighting constantly.
But we can only change, when we are prepared to change from within.
This is where Leading Self becomes practical.
*** Start with a brutally honest self-reflection***
A simple place to start is with honest self-reflection. Before you try to change what you do, you need clarity on who you’re being under pressure.
To support this, I’ve created The Brutally Honest Leadership Reflection: 10 Questions that reveal the leader you’re really being – a free set of questions you can use to pause, reflect, and notice how you currently show up as a leader.
👉 Download it here: The Brutally Honest Leadership Reflection Questions
Ask yourself:
Notice:
Often, carrying too much is an avoidance strategy in disguise.
Ask:
Support is not doing everything for people.
Support is creating enough clarity, trust, and accountability for others to grow. It's about being a steady presence to allow people to work through problems on their own.
Letting go is about releasing the patterns that keep you over-involved, over-responsible, and overextended.
It means:
Letting go will feel uncomfortable.
You may feel slower. Less helpful. Even exposed.
But that discomfort is not a sign you are doing it wrong. It is a sign you are no longer over-functioning.
If you are carrying too much, the answer is not always better time management.
It's time to stop doing and start working out how you are being.
Because until a leader can manage their own patterns, the same problem will keep reappearing. They will still over-hold, over-function, overthink, or over-control. Their team will still hesitate. Ownership will still weaken. And they will still feel overloaded by work they should not need to carry.
Leading Self helps a leader become more grounded, more aware, and more intentional.
It helps them carry what is truly theirs with more clarity, and release what is not.
If you are carrying too much as a leader, it may not be because you need to work harder. It may be because something in how you are leading yourself needs to change.
That is the work I help leaders do.
I help leaders move from self-doubt, over-control, and overwhelm to self-leadership, empowered teams, and focused performance — so their teams perform without relying on them for everything.
If that sounds familiar, book a confidential conversation.