The Hidden Pains Leaders Face and Why Leadership Isn’t as Cushy as You Think

This is the premium edition of Great Leadership. If you’ve been a free subscriber and like what you see, how about taking things up a notch? Get your hands on weekly videos like the one in this email, deep dives from yours truly and amazing guests, access to the full content archive, and the ability to message me directly (new feature!). You can likely get this covered as a professional development expense at work.

---

As a leader, your job is to absorb pain. Everyone, welcome to another episode of the Five Minute Leader. For all of you premium subscribers, thank you so much.

Today's video, and I can't remember where I heard this concept. It was either in a podcast or in an interview, something that

I came across over the past few months. Maybe it was even a guest on my podcast, but if I find who it is, I'll credit them after I remember where this concept came from. But I really love this idea that leaders absorb pain. Leaders absorb the pain of their people.

Now, I'm not talking about physical pain. I mean pain in the sense of stress, in the sense of anxiety, pain in the sense of having to make a difficult decision, having to be accountable. This is important because so many of us around the world look at leaders, we look at leadership, and we think it's this nice, cushy job, this wonderful position. Once you get into that leadership role, you've made it. But the truth is that the hardest job you can have is that of a leader.

And I've interviewed and worked with 1000s of leaders, probably over two to three thousand of them, most of them CEOs, whether it's interviewing them on my podcast, interviewing them for my books, speaking at their events, advising them, whatever it might be. Every single one of these leaders works harder than pretty much anybody I've ever met. They care more and do more than everybody else, which is a concept that Frank Blake, the former CEO of the Home Depot, shared with me.