When it started to feel like I needed boxing gloves to go to my quota meetings

I'm not a boxer.

But I was ready to pick a fight.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Another leadership meeting. Another conversation negotiating who in our leadership team was taking on what portion of our division’s goals. Yet another situation where my team was being pressured to take on an additional 30 Million in quota to cover the shortfall of another team. 

I felt my jaw clench. My voice got inappropriately loud. My hands slapped down on my notebook on the table.

And I had this wild thought: "I could flip this table right now."

(I didn't. But the impulse was real.)

That's when I knew something was deeply wrong.

Not with the meeting. With me.

Because leaders don't fantasize about flipping conference tables in quota meetings.

But managers who are pretending to lead? We absolutely do.

Here's what I realized in that moment:

I was no longer leading my team. I was managing their problems. I was no longer leading myself. I was managing my resentment. I was no longer leading with vision. I was just managing to survive.

And managing without actually leading will make you want to fight someone.

This is what happens when you're leading out of alignment:

You say yes when you mean no (and resent it). You take on everyone's problems (and feel indispensable and exhausted). You follow the "rules" of good leadership (and feel like you're wearing a costume). You sacrifice yourself for the team (and secretly hate what you gave up for it).

That's not leadership. That's martyrdom.

And eventually, martyrs get angry.

That meeting was my wake-up call.

I had two choices:

1. Keep managing my way through leadership and eventually explode (or quit, or burn out, or actually flip that table)
2. Figure out what leading, actually leading again, looked like for ME

Not for the leaders I admired. Not for the books I'd read. Not for what corporate culture told me good leaders do.

For me. In my design. With my energy. On my terms.

So I started asking different questions:

"How do I manage this better?" turned into "Am I supposed to be managing this at all?"

"How do I fit this into my schedule?" turned into "Does this align with my vision?"

"How do I make everyone happy?" turned into "What decision serves the mission?"

"How do I do more?" turned into "What can I do less of?"

And here's what I discovered:

Leadership isn't about managing more effectively. It's about leading more authentically.

When you're leading from your actual design, from your natural strengths, your unique perspective, your authentic authority, you don't want to flip tables.

You want to build them.

So here's my question for you:

Are you leading, or are you just managing really well?

Because there's a difference.

And if you can't tell the difference, your body will tell you.

It'll show up as:

1. Exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix
2. Resentment toward… everything
3. Decision fatigue that feels paralyzing
4. The impulse to burn it all down and start over

Burnout isn't a workload problem. It's an alignment issue.

You're not tired because you're doing too much. You're tired because you're doing it wrong.

(Wrong for YOU. Not wrong in general.)

I never did flip that table. But I did flip my entire approach to leadership.

And that made all the difference.

If you're white-knuckling your way through leadership, maybe it's time to stop managing your career and start leading it.

Just a thought from someone who almost picked a fight at a conference table.

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