When Leadership Burns You Out

I discovered that I was a lousy manager at Microsoft because that's not how I started. When I managed teams in software engineering, they often told me that I was the best boss ever. I cared for them, I coached them. Those were great years. And then I was managing leadership development, executive development for the company. Things were going great until the first day back from parental leave. I'm putting on lipstick for the first time and my assistant Lori calls, frantic. Where are you? Steve expects you in 30 minutes. She's reading me the memo I'm supposed to discuss with Steve Ballmer, the CEO of the company, as I hit warp speed on my way to work. And that set the pace and tone with inbox overflowing demands from high level executives. Infant at home, no sleep, no peace, no patience. We've all been there from time to time, and for me, I morphed from caring and nurturing as a boss to snippy and short. I barked out orders. I thought I was being efficient when I would leave all ten fingers on the keyboard and look over my shoulder and indicate to people, what is it? I'm really busy. You're less important than me. Spit it out and get away. And the worst part of me thinking I was efficient, me thinking I was killing it, it.