Coaching in Analogies #4: The 50-pound weight on your back
Last spring, I had a client who lamented the mess her organized life had become. She was suddenly juggling being the primary caregiver to two very young kids with her usual full-time work duties -- now done from home -- and trying to hold herself to pre-pandemic standards of productivity and responsiveness. The inner critic was driving her toward burnout.
American working moms are working longer hours, facing more burnout and suffering steeper career setbacks than they were in the before times. The working world in general seems even less oriented toward parents of young children.
The solutions are institutional and societal, but the burden is individual. My first step was to make sure my client knew she wasn’t the problem here. She couldn’t simply outwork it.
So I told her that her situation is like trying to run a race with a 50-pound weight on your back, and then wondering why you’re so much slower than the other runners. I know this because I’ve literally done it.
Some 6-½ years ago, my wife and I were signed up to run a fall 10K in DC. I’d done this race before and loved the flat course along the Potomac at Hains Point. Our babysitter became ill at the last moment, and most of the friends we would have asked were going to be in the race. So we brought our 5-year-old daughter along, and she joined us for the 6.2 miles. On my shoulders.
She disembarked to cross the finish line on her own two feet, but the rest of the time I was running for two. I finished that race 1,444th of 1,476 runners, probably 4 minutes a mile slower than my usual pace. My back and shoulders were sore for a couple of days, and we got a story for the ages. The next few races felt more like a sprint because I was 25 percent lighter!
My client emerged from our conversation wanting to give herself a little more grace and a little more space around what she was handling at the time. Neither of us knew it would go on for more than a year, of course.
I’ve been thinking about this client lately, along with everyone else in the working world. Caring for family members, navigating hiring freezes or layoffs, onboarding remotely, pushing through Zoom fatigue… these are all extra weights we’ve been carrying around. Maybe the burden feels almost normal after 14 months, or it isn’t noticeable all the time. It’s still there, though.
If you can grind out another mile or two, you won’t always have that weight on your back. You might be wearing different clothes and running on a different course. You might not be as fast as you were before you ran with the weight. Still, when you find yourself running without it, you’ll feel so much lighter, faster, even liberated.
That moment isn’t now, of course. But it’s coming. I know you’ll be ready.
Coaching prompts:
What weights am I preparing to lay down as we emerge from the pandemic?
What burdens are members of my team carrying?
How can I help them feel seen, heard and supported?