This Week, I Experienced the Full Spectrum in Five Days
Some weeks, leadership breaks you open. This is one of those weeks.
This week, I experienced the full spectrum in five days.
It started with a gut punch. A public criticism of decisions our organization made, from someone who read the headline and skipped the story. Not someone trying to understand. Not someone offering a better path. Just someone swinging. Someone just looking for a fight.
Here's what nobody tells you about unfounded criticism: it doesn't hurt because it's true. It hurts because it's so utterly false that you can't even argue with it productively. Legitimate feedback, even hard feedback, gives you something to work with. You can learn from it. You can grow. But criticism launched from a misread headline, by someone who seems to want conflict more than clarity? That just takes the wind out of your sails.
And you still have to show up the next day.
You can't say what you want to say. You have to absorb it, evaluate it anyway, respond professionally, and somehow keep leading the people who are watching you for cues about whether the ground is still solid.
That's the weight most leaders carry quietly.
Then, at the end of the week, I got the news I'd been hoping and praying for an entire year.
A real answer. A resolved issue. One that had significant implications if it hadn't resolved the way it did.
If this news had come any other week, I would have been dancing in the streets.
Instead, I felt something I wasn't expecting: distance. The win was real. The relief was real. But I was so battered by the beginning of the week that I couldn't fully feel the ending.
We won. We should be celebrating. Instead, we just keep going.
I've been sitting with that this week. And I think there's something important here for every leader reading this.
Steadiness isn't the same as strength. But right now, it's enough.
There's a version of leadership that looks like always having the answer. Always bouncing back fast. Always turning the hard week into the inspiring story with the clear lesson and the three action steps.
That's not this week.
This week, I'm not writing with a grand solution or a practical next step. I'm writing because I know some of you are in a week just like mine. You got hit from a direction you didn't see coming. Or you got the news you prayed for, and you're too tired to feel it the way you thought you would.
And I want you to know: there are other leaders out there who are just showing up because that's what their team needs this week.
Not as a hero. Not as someone who has it all together. Just as the person who decided the team deserves a steady presence, even when everything inside feels anything but steady.
That's what I'm doing today.
Showing up.
One more thing.
The unfounded criticism will pass. I've seen it before. People who swing from a headline move on quickly because they were never really invested in the first place.
The good news, the thing I prayed for across an entire year, that one is staying. Even if I can't feel it fully today, it's real. It happened. And when the dust settles from this week, I think I'm going to be very grateful.
If you're in a hard week, hold on to that. Some wins don't feel like wins right away. Some relief takes a few days to land.
But it's still a win.
