The Myth of Martyrdom

Lis­ten to the Arti­cle (5:05)

On a plane in a cri­sis, the flight atten­dan­t’s instruc­tions are always the same: put on your own oxy­gen mask before help­ing any­one else. Your first instinct is to leap into res­cue mode — to help the per­son next to you, your child, the elder­ly woman across the aisle. But with­out oxy­gen, you lose con­scious­ness in sec­onds. And then you’re of no use to anyone.

Lead­er­ship is exact­ly the same. But almost no one treats it that way.

I wrote Your Oxy­gen Mask First because the dom­i­nant nar­ra­tive about lead­er­ship is wrong. The pre­vail­ing mes­sage — embed­ded in cul­ture, rein­forced by peers, whis­pered in the small hours of exhaust­ed morn­ings — is that a good leader puts the busi­ness first. Sac­ri­fices first. Sleeps last. Has no per­son­al needs that matter.

I call this the myth of mar­tyr­dom. And it is slow­ly destroy­ing some of the best lead­ers I’ve ever met.

The Dichoto­my of Leadership

Lead­er­ship is the most exhil­a­rat­ing and most destruc­tive way to spend your life. On the upside: you build things you once only imag­ined. You push your per­son­al lim­its beyond what you thought pos­si­ble. You cre­ate mean­ing, income, impact, and rela­tion­ships that change the world around you.

On the dark side: lead­er­ship can crush peo­ple made of steel. The pres­sure is real. The lone­li­ness at the top is real. The weight of deci­sions that affect oth­er peo­ple’s liveli­hoods is real. There are moments — and most CEOs have them, even if they don’t talk about them — when you seri­ous­ly won­der if you have the stom­ach for it all.

The myth of mar­tyr­dom is what hap­pens when lead­ers respond to the dark side by dou­bling down on self-sac­ri­fice. By work­ing hard­er. Sleep­ing less. Neglect­ing health, rela­tion­ships, the things that restore them. They tell them­selves it’s tem­po­rary. It’s always tem­po­rary. And then it becomes permanent.

You’re Get­ting Squeezed Out

Most lead­ers see their world in two cat­e­gories: Work and Life. Life is every­thing out­side of work; fam­i­ly, friends, per­son­al inter­ests. And they spend years telling them­selves they’ll invest more in Life when the busi­ness set­tles down.

The busi­ness nev­er set­tles down.

What they’re miss­ing is a third cat­e­go­ry: Self. Not work. Not the peo­ple and caus­es you care about. Just you. The things you do because they replen­ish you — that make you stronger, sharp­er, more capa­ble of every­thing else.

In the tyran­ny of work and oblig­a­tions, Self gets squeezed out entire­ly. Lead­ers stop exer­cis­ing. Stop pur­su­ing per­son­al inter­ests. Stop tak­ing real vaca­tions. Stop being the full ver­sion of them­selves. And the result is a CEO who is tech­ni­cal­ly avail­able but increas­ing­ly hol­low, going through the motions of lead­er­ship with­out the ener­gy and clar­i­ty that makes lead­er­ship powerful.

Work-Self-Life Pas­sion

The alter­na­tive to work-life bal­ance — which, let’s be hon­est, is a love­ly idea that does­n’t work for peo­ple wired the way we are — is what I call work-self-life pas­sion.

Work-self-life pas­sion is about ful­ly expe­ri­enc­ing enthu­si­asm in all aspects of your life. It’s not bal­ance, it’s not equal thirds. For most dri­ven lead­ers, great­ness might be 60% work, 30% self, 10% life, or some oth­er weight­ing that reflects who you actu­al­ly are. The point is that you choose the ratio con­scious­ly, rather than default­ing to 95% work and won­der­ing why every­thing else feels hollow.

If you have 100 units of pas­sion to spend every week and you spend 99 of them at work, the peo­ple you love are get­ting the scraps. And so is the ver­sion of your­self that has the per­spec­tive and resilience to lead well.

Per­mis­sion to Put Your­self First

The most impor­tant thing I want to say to any CEO read­ing this is sim­ple: you have per­mis­sion to take care of your­self. Not as a lux­u­ry. Not when things calm down. As a non-nego­tiable pre­con­di­tion of being great at your job.

The lead­ers I’ve worked with who sus­tain extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance over decades — peo­ple like Angela San­ti­a­go at the Lit­tle Pota­to Com­pa­ny, Vishal Gup­ta at Ashi­ana Hous­ing — don’t just work hard. They invest relent­less­ly in their own ener­gy, their own resilience, their own capac­i­ty to keep show­ing up at a high lev­el. That invest­ment in self is not sep­a­rate from their busi­ness suc­cess. It is the foun­da­tion of it.

Put on your mask first. Not because it’s eas­i­er. Because it’s the only way to keep help­ing every­one else.

Chal­lenge:

What is the one thing you’ve stopped doing for your­self — exer­cise, a per­son­al inter­est, time with peo­ple you love — that you keep telling your­self you’ll get back to when things slow down? Sched­ule it this week. The busi­ness won’t fall apart. And you’ll be bet­ter at every oth­er thing on your list.

Addi­tion­al Resources

Arti­cles

• Stop Putting Out Fires. Start­ing Build­ing a Busi­ness That Doesn’t Need You To.
• If Not You, Who? The Own­er of Com­pa­ny Courage
• When Our Dri­ve Breaks Us: Lessons From Sleep Coun­try CEO, Gor­don Lownds

Growth CEO Interview

• Inter­view with Author and For­mer Sleep Coun­try Cana­da CEO, Gor­don Lownds
• Inter­view with David Greer: Fac­ing a Bru­tal Fact

Growth Case Studies

• The Lit­tle Pota­to Com­pa­ny: Lessons from a Nat­ur­al Entrepreneur
• Kem Krest: A Case Study of Resilience and Rebuilding 

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar