Stress, Dumping, and Exceptional Leadership

7 Steps to Getting Out of Negative Autopilot

On vacation, I watched the Bob Marley movie about his journey through the violent political conflicts of 1970s Jamaica. (Spoiler alert) His soccer game with friends was ended by a hailstorm of bullets meant to intimidate him out of hosting a peace concert. As he rode home in the car with his two young boys, they asked him about the shooting and danger. “Don’t you worry about it,” he said light-heartedly, tickling them playfully and singing, “Don’t worry about a thing…” I had always considered Bob Marley songs a delusional, cannabis-induced optimism - I hadn’t realized the violent political context behind his optimistic, spiritual messages. I hadn’t realized his courage, strength, and leadership. As the movie progressed, the violence escalated, and his wife and best friend were shot and nearly killed. In the movie, you can see him under extreme stress, but he holds it, considers it, and, interestingly, doesn’t dump it on his wife, kids, or bandmates often.  He stood out to me as a strong leader - his groundedness grounding others and leading the way towards a vision of peace.

I reflected on some of my wins and missteps as a leader. As a top executive, there are many times of extreme pressure - audacious growth goals, slowing growth, economic downturns, layoffs, acquisitions, missing forecast, beating forecast but not by enough to prevent stock slides, employee issues related to alcoholism, drugs, and sexual harassment. All that, and the constant threat that you, yourself, could get fired or laid off. Leading through these and more are heavy weights for a leader to bear, and in mid-life, it could be mixed with personal weights like dying parents, sick children, divorce, or other big issues. Though these problems aren’t immediately life-threatening like Bob Marley’s, they feel life-threatening emotionally. 

I have had trouble in some of these extreme situations and have been guilty of “dumping,” sharing too much of my stress with my team, friends, or family.

Buffering Your Team

I had a boss at one difficult company who did an AMAZING job of not dumping and buffering me from other dumpers. The CEO and C-Suite were very harsh, and the CMO provided little to no buffer to her directs or broader team. Difficult feedback, politics, and economic troubles came straight at my boss. But somehow, he gave the team under him a pretty safe and encouraging space to do some of the best work of our lives. He caught a lot of s**t and didn’t let it roll downhill. Many people at this company were deeply unhappy, but I flourished in my little corner of the world - growing in skill, maturity, and perspective from this “non-dumping” leader.

I was reminded of a book my dad touted called Happiness Is a Serious Problem. Its main thesis is that we have a moral duty to those around us to be happy; we must do our own work to find meaning and happiness so we don’t intrude on other’s lives but instead contribute positively to them. Anyone can be unhappy; it is easy and requires no effort. Happiness, on the other hand, takes work, especially in such a difficult world of suffering. We have a moral duty to do this work and be better supporters at work and at home. At the time, I thought it was a trite concept, but as the years go by, I see it as profound.

How to Avoid Dumping

As I thought through my vision of dumping less, I reflected on the components of my best boss ever and some of my own learnings:

1.  Get Physically Functional—To avoid dumping, one must take care of the foundations of health—get enough sleep, good food, regular exercise, and meaningful connections to others. Without these basics in place, there aren’t reserves to have self-discipline and intentionality to avoid auto-pilot dumping. This can be especially difficult amidst intense schedules, lots of travel, and time-sensitive project pushes.

2. See a Broader Perspective— My amazing boss did not define all of his self-worth by his role in this organization, so he wasn’t at the whipping whim of criticism. He had enough of a life, interests, love, and friendships outside of work to not be crushed by the negative tidal waves of our company, so he had reserves to protect us. While at times, I found him cynical, some of his cynicism protected him from taking the politics and threats too seriously. He saw things as ebbing and flowing.

3. Be Less Self-Centered— My best boss ever derived a lot of joy from growing the people on his team. He wasn’t just focused on his achievement and success— a more selfish outlook that could have led him to “dump” for his own well-being over protecting us. He taught, challenged, and encouraged many of us to really improve and raise our game. And we did.

4. Be Excellent Within Your Sphere of Control— He wasn’t an “easy” boss. He had a high bar of excellence to do great work for our high-bar of excellence CEO. My boss did excellent work and expected the same of his team. His work was well-researched, insightful, and proactive. He was extremely responsive to the requests of our CEO and CMO. Criticism and bad things could arise, but we had done our best with what was in our control.

5. Find safe people, times, or ways to dump— Sometimes, we really need to process hard things to work through the emotions or counter plans. While widespread dumping can be unproductive, finding an advisor, coach, therapist, or colleague who can help you organize your thoughts, feelings, and proper response is invaluable. The right advisor can provide you with insights from other companies and help you see different perspectives to consider different action plans. Finding this person was much preferable to dumping on my husband when he had neither the experience nor the context to give me actionable advice. Finding the person you can trust and using them appropriately can be important and helpful. But not anyone willy-nilly that crosses your path at the wrong time. I’m also a huge fan of journaling as a way to productively organize my thoughts and feelings before spraying them all over the world.

6. Be Intentional and Present— One of my biggest “dumping” violations is “quick response / not thinking.” Often, I’m tired, hot and hungry, it’s been a long day, I have a lot on my mind when an email, text, or sharp words come at me, and I respond quickly, automatically (and sometimes poorly). The “no dumping” commitment requires a lot of self-constraint over autopilot.

7. See the Longest Term Perspective— some Buddhists meditate on their death every day to remember how they want to live today. A month after my mom and aunt died, I had a series of really hard breaks at work, including a massive budget cut and a top employee leaving unexpectedly. What usually would have rocked my world was a blip on my emotional meter - writing two obituaries had given me the perspective that this wasn’t a very big deal - my budget was cut, work would be harder, but it was not going to feature in anyone’s eventual obituary. It would all be okay. Stepping way back makes the problems I would otherwise dump seem very small.

In the past, I’ve thought of work and personal life as separate spheres, but increasingly, I see them as different types of challenges for the same core values I wish to cultivate: gratitude, perspective, presence, self-discipline, and connection. Who knew Bob Marley would trigger this life insight again?

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our mind…

Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.

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