You wake up (sometimes in the middle of the night) and the first thing you do is check your email for a crisis.

Your calendar is packed full of meetings. Sometimes, your most important work has to happen at lunch or after 5 pm.

Your 1:1 meetings with your team aren’t “right.” Either you’re too soft or too stern. You want to lead with empathy but don’t know how. Ultimately, you need to deliver high-quality products on time - or it’s your head.

Your to-do list just keeps growing. You never seem to get ahead of it. Forget about getting through your email. There’s a constant pressure in your chest that never seems to find relief.

Your daily emotional state is a blend of overwhelm, exhaustion, and frustration (mostly with yourself). You feel like you’re smarter and better than this. Why can’t you put the pieces together?

Your team is often thrown under the bus. You’re doing the things to move the needle but the team isn’t “gelling.”

Your star team member resigned. You have a brilliant jerk on your team who steals the show.

Your teams are not delivering on time and at the right level of quality. The engineering leaders don’t know how to communicate the technical reasons you’re delayed, so the non-technical teams think your delays are unjustified.

You’re interested in DEI and you think it’s important but you have no structure to follow, and with your current level of overwhelm, it gets heaped into the “someday soon” pile.