Healing will get you to the next chapter

I've been reflecting a lot lately on toxic leadership and its outsized impact on our respective careers and professional confidence.

It comes in many flavors…

The absent leader who leaves you hanging with no direction, nor support on the most controversial and challenging projects.

The micro manager who questions and disregards your insights and expertise.

The boss who uses a sharp tongue to chastise your every minuscule misstep.

While intellectually, we can wrap some compassionate context around these traumatic professional experiences to realize – we did our best in tough situations, with difficult people – the pain of the shame can continue to live within us, holding us back from taking our next big career moves.

As someone who has spent time in and out of therapy for much of my life in order to navigate the multiple traumas of my own childhood, I’m often drawn to the concept of reparenting for my healing.

The idea that, in adulthood, you can work to give yourself the love, the language, the boundaries, the safety you didn’t get in your childhood.

So, when I continue to hear fear emerge when clients are thinking about a next career move…

And it stems back to the traumatic moments at the hands of managers who didn’t handle relationships with care, who broke their trust, who said the mean and hurtful words, or worse took action against them without saying anything at all, I wonder…

How can we 'relead' ourselves toward healing?

What did I need to hear from my leader in that moment where I made a mistake?

How would I want to be recognized for a crisis I managed that nobody else would take on?

What could my leader say or do to make me feel included, like I belong here?

While releading won’t erase the pain, it can help you practice another way with yourself so that you naturally begin to practice that new way with the people and teams that you lead. Like reparenting, it could be a way of breaking an unhealthy cycle.

Knowing this new way is available to you, can both help you get clear on all you’re capable of for a new gig and know what you WILL NOT tolerate for your own leader. If the role checks all of your boxes EXCEPT your boss is a total a-hole – it’s a no go. Move right along.

I’d love to hear what you think releading could look like for you as you continue to move forward in your own careers.