Hey Reader,

It’s a normal Tuesday afternoon. You’re at your desk, doing something you’ve done a hundred times before: reviewing a document, clearing a backlog of emails, working through something that needs finishing before the day ends. Nothing remarkable about it.

Without meaning to, you catch the tail end of a sentence.

“I’ll be leaving soon.”

It’s that one colleague who’s been talking about leaving for a long time now. They’ve mentioned it to you a few times. They want something more, something that feels like their own. But this time it sounds different. There’s a certainty in their voice you haven’t heard before, and you just know they mean it.

You hear them talking about their plans. They admit that not everything is figured out, but their decision is clear anyway.

You turn back to your screen and your mind starts racing.

I could go my own way, but what about the mortgage? The school fees? My pension? The life you’ve built that depends on the money coming in. It takes you less than a minute to arrive at the same conclusion you always do: I couldn’t. Not right now.

There are more senior leaders than you realize who are struggling with this. There’s a weight that comes from everything your role holds up. The house your family loves. The school your kids are settled in. The security you spent years building…for them, and for yourself. You can’t imagine pulling it out from under the people you love. And if you’re honest, you can’t fully imagine that for yourself either.

The weight is real, but I’ve found that most leaders significantly overestimate how much money they actually need to keep the life that matters to them.

If those thoughts have been coming back constantly, block out an hour this week and run the real numbers. Not the numbers your brain comes up with at 2am. The real ones: The mortgage. The school fees. Retirement contributions. Holidays and commitments that matter to you most. You’re looking for the baseline numbers you need to keep the life that’s important to you.

Most leaders who do this find the number is lower than what they’ve been carrying in their head. That doesn’t mean you have to reorganize your whole life the next day. But knowing the real number often takes off some of the weight you’ve been feeling. The cage you assumed was fixed turns out to have more room in it than you thought.

What do you think that number looks like? If you’ve never sat down and worked it out, this week might be the time to focus on it. Hit reply and let me know how it goes.

From one human to another,

There are five traps that keep leaders stuck. Which one is driving you?

• ​The Speed Trap – "If I slow down, I fall behind."
• ​The Identity Trap – "I am this role."
• ​The Title Trap – "I can't step down from this level."
• ​The Alignment Trap – "I'm excellent at something I don't believe in."
• ​The Metrics Trap – "If I can't measure it, it doesn't count."

Click the statement that feels most true. Each one takes you to a short guide to help you understand the trap and what to do about it.

Not sure? Take the quiz to find out which one fits you.

The human side of leadership is something I've built my keynote around. If that's a conversation you'd like to bring to your organization, you can find out more by clicking the banner below.