Took a little hiatus from the blogosphere this year. Not sure if this is a return in earnest or just a punctuation mark amidst the pause; time will tell.
I’ve never really considered burn-out to be the reason that I left a job in February 2020 but with the benefit of 12mths and a fair bit of therapy between then and now, I would say I probably wasn’t far off. I’d only been in the role for 4 months so the idea that one could burn out so soon seemed impossible, but I had become paralysed in a classic case of “triangulation”. I had three female bosses who all had wildly different ideas of what my role should be, how I should be performing it and who I should be answering to. Bouncing between these three steely, powerful women I became completely untethered from my own values and quickly lost sight of all the qualities I try to live by in the workplace.
I began to doubt my abilities, to try and second-guess what they wanted, I built bigger, more impressive spreadsheets with ever more elaborate formulas and formatting! I tried so desperately to impress the people I worked with that I must have came across so inauthentic - in hindsight it seems surprising that there was a total lack of trust between us. I put in longer and longer hours at the expense of all that I knew to be important to sustain my wellbeing and performance.
In the end, it took someone else to point out that no matter how hard I tried, it was going to be impossible to please them all and that satisfying any of them would be nigh on impossible since they were clearly not in agreement. We had no goals or objectives by which my performance could be measured and yet they were all measuring me against a different set of standards.
In the last 12 months, I have been testing the water as a freelancer with varying degrees of success. The last year has been full of unpredictable twists and turns, none greater than the discovery that I am expecting a baby in early September. Facing motherhood with the irregularity and uncertainty of a regular salary on the back of a year of unemployment and a relocation from London to Wiltshire is no dream start but it took a lightbulb moment this week to realise there was at least one part of my world which is within my control.
My therapist pointed out that professionally, I was arguably no better off today as I was a year ago under the immense pressure of these three steely women. My current boss has as high, if not higher standards, is as punishing, unforgiving and relentless as they were. The irony is that I am working for the toughest manager I have ever had while writing research papers and articles about what exemplary leadership looks like.
I could wax on at length about what kind of manager I aspire to be and yet here I am, manager of one, berating myself for taking time off, obliterating any boundaries that I know to be important for my wellbeing, punishing myself for not doing more, better. It took a lightbulb moment to realise the extent of my compassion fatigue and lack of self-awareness. But it also made me wonder how many other business founders, freelancers, self-employed and sole-traders find themselves working for their worst ever boss on leaving traditional employment? I can’t be alone in complaining about the management of my own enterprise, am open to tips...who's got the manifesto for "Being your own Best Boss"?!
