Your alarm shouts. As soon as you open your eyes, you see your phone lit up with emails. There’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, and you feel it immediately when you wake up every morning. Employees rely on you. Clients rely on you. The organization’s success relies on you. The pressure and stressors are relentless.
But you push forward.
Why?
You do it because you are driven by purpose—and because your organization’s mission is worth fighting for every single day.
The second your alarm goes off, you have a routine to follow. You know it’s important to start the day on yourself. You exercise, meditate, read, eat breakfast, spend time with your family. You try to avoid diving straight into those blaring emails—the firefighting can wait, and you know better than to start your day with others’ emergencies. Instead, you prioritize. You delegate. You are an entrepreneur at heart, and you like executing, like getting the work done. But you have a great team you can rely on, and you know how liberating it is to free yourself from the day-to-day. Plus, it allows you to focus on what you do best: steering the ship.
Problem solving is a team sport, but you are the captain of the team. You hold great responsibility for everything (and everyone) in your organization. Even things you cannot control. Anything can happen on any day, and you have to be prepared. A poor decision from someone on your team—you own it. But you get to own the successes, too. When you get those wins, the ones that come from you and your teams making good decisions—that reflects on your leadership. Your name is the one that goes on the press release, after all.
Each time you get a win, you’re reminded of how the growth and stability of your business relies on you developing people, teams, and external partnerships. The people you rely on are your greatest assets—so you spend countless hours connecting with them, working through issues, coaching them, and participating in team meetings. Seeing your teams grow and evolve is rewarding; you get to see them function independently, eventually making more of those decisions without you.
You got to the top by working hard, focusing hard, persevering through struggles, and taking risks. So stepping back out of the weeds can be hard for you at times. At the end of the day, you try to reflect on your wins and prioritize the rest of the week. If you spent the day on urgent matters, you try to set aside more time tomorrow for the important stuff: goals, people, partnerships, revenue.
You know as soon as your alarm blares again, you’ll have another barrage of emails, another to-do list with competing priorities. But tomorrow is a new day, with a new chance to fire up your team, to prove why you’ve gotten as far as you have.
It’s going to be a great one.