“They asked me to hold everyone in a process of change, but I get home and I can’t even hold myself,” a manager confessed to me in full session. With a broken voice, he acknowledged that he slept just three hours, he took medication to relax, that gastritis did not give him truce and that, despite reading leadership manuals and resilience, he felt empty. He was in charge of more than one hundred people, but he was convinced that his team already perceived that it was he who was collapsing.
That portrait is not isolated. It is the silent loop of the 21st century: Rota people leading broken people. Talented, trained and committed professionals who, however, carry invisible wounds and end up leading from them.
The burnout, the rise and low towards the depression invested with hyperactivity, extreme uncertainty, are no longer an exception. It is the unofficial corporate language. Anxiety became ordinary currency. Emotional disconnection, a survival strategy. The hyperproductivityan existential vacuum costume. And the medication, which should be a punctual clinical resource, became a conversation of coffee between colleagues: who is more medicated to go to work. We do not talk about previous pathologies, but what the system produces in real time.
And in parallel, artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates the clock. It is not about fear that the machine replaces the human, but about a deeper fear: Who am I not produce what I know? How do I reinvent myself or enhance with AI?
Broken leadership errors
1. Leading from the wound
When a leader does not record his own pain, he projects it in the form of control, rigidity or hyperproductivity, among others. The team does not receive accompaniment, receives anxiety and pressure.
2. Believe that it reaches with makeup
Team Buildings, motivational phrases in Intranet, Integration breakfasts: all that serves, but does not heal. The symptom reappears because the root was not worked.
3. Use productivity as anesthesia
The obsession with metrics and kpis hides the essential: the void of purpose and emotional disconnection.
4. Flee from the symptom
Insomnia, irritability, irrational anger in a meeting: they are not personal failures, they are signs of the system. Ignore them only multiply the damage.
5. Dehumanize in the name of technology
The AI can be allied, but used as a shield, only increases the feeling of inadequacy and fear of “not enough” if it does not occur at the same rate as the machines.
A new paradigm: Crossover® leadership
In When work hurts development the concept of Crossover® leadership: A practice that integrates the psychological, the professional and the technological.
A crossover leader does not deny his pain or download it on his team: he works. He recognizes that their mental health and that of others are a strategic part of the business. And he understands that leading is not anesthetizing, but to sustain processes of transformation from consciousness and authenticity, achieving from the best version of each one, relationship hits that innovate more.
The change is not to train more soft skills or accumulate management certificates. He is first in a deep professional psycho development: reviewing mandates, healing wounds, looking straight ahead and daring to lead from a more authentic self and from there adding the rest, but which part of you is really leading?
What to do differently
- Listen to the symptom: The body speaks what culture is silent.
- Explore work pain itself not to project it in others.
- Allow evolving Leaving obsolete versions behind.
- Integrate technology Without dehumanizing.
- Practice psycho -emotional inclusion: Do not leave outside the one who feels.
- Understand What mental health and results are inseparable.
Broken leadership is not fixed with motivational speeches or bright metrics. He is healed with leaders who encourage them to work their own pain and transform it into collective learning.
We are broken, yes. But that fissure can also be the entrance to a new way of leading: more human, more conscious and, above all, more realand not vice versa how until today.
*Analía Tarasiewicz is a psychologist of work in the new era (@works.mejor) and author of when the work hurts by Method Tarasiewicz®
Source: Ambito
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
