Being a clown at work is sometimes the best way to keep teams stress levels at bay and not let the relationships rot away after years of building trust and openness. It’s not always about needing to laugh. I think people are generally more open when you avoid taking things too literally and maintain a relaxed, adaptable attitude.

As someone who is now in a very high position, or “spot”, to influence a lot of decisions, with many of my peers commending my work and ethic, I can say this: you can only push teams to a certain point. Without the self-awareness of how much pressure to apply, your teams could break. Always be aware that the people who move the business for you are human beings. Obvious? Yes. Does it need to be said? Yes. But why? Well, here’s the thing. Not many people in management have self-awareness when making decisions. Some just see it as a black and white decision-making where if boss angry, then go get angry at your team.

Here’s the other thing to always keep in mind: the commitment per person on the job may vary from 20% to 50%, but never beyond 70% in my opinion. Each person can at times be just a complex ticking bomb where they might explode if you push too hard. At times, it might not even be that the person isn’t good enough, but that there’s a life out there that the person has to resolve.

Why should anyone care if the worker is down? Well, because replacing said coworkers can, most of the time, be the worst possible thing to happen. In my opinion, if you don’t take consideration of your bottom-line you have absolutely no reason to be managing people. You might as well just call quits, and let other people handle things. If said coworkers are identified as persons who time over time have pushed through the hardest deliveries or tasks and you cannot in any way be aware of that. Then yes, you have no business anywhere in management.

I’m sure that there’s many companies out there where a person in management couldn’t care less about the bottom-line. Those people exist, they love pushing people to the max in hopes they can ascend and get into that executive position and be the most soul-sucking prick in the whole company.

And that’s just how high-turnover becomes a thing in the industry. People who shouldn’t be in management positions somehow keep failing upwards, and these people don’t really have the skills most of the time to even analyze the situation.

Now, going back to this topic, I hope by now you understand why it is incredibly exhausting to ensure that each person has some of your attention, and understand why I need to go at the pace they are currently outputting.

Why do I know this? Because I’ve made a lot of mistakes. A lot of things written here might sound like common sense. But as you’ve heard the saying, common sense isn’t so common. Thankfully, most of my mistakes haven’t been on nuclear levels of bad. We all have been there: We lose our patience, the deadline is near, and our teams are completely stuck focusing on the wrong things.

I’ve gotten angry. I’ve snapped back in meetings. I’ve done my fair share of beating myself up after the day is over and all the tension is at normal levels. I’m not perfect in any way, and if I expect my people to be “perfectly handling things” then hell, you need to start being more self-aware of your actions.

There are coworkers I don’t like to work with, but that’s always going to happen. Not everyone is in sync with whatever mission we are on. Sometimes you stumble upon the slowest coworker ever just to realize that they are paralyzed to make a decision. And you can tell right away that sometimes there’s an struggle to make a decision. That’s when you roll up your sleeves and just engage with: “let’s take a step back and see what’s happening here”.

At times, you barely have time to do any of your tasks. That will 100% exacerbate your tension. You are once again near the deadline and while you notice that you have solved all your teams issues, it turns out that you are so behind schedule that stress starts spiking like crazy.

And that’s the part where I point back and say: “you need to be more self-aware”. Engage with your manager, management team, any person who can help you get the conversation going. You need to tell them they need to start delegating some of your tasks to others because you are barely making it. And there’s no shame in that. Think about it for a second: You want to keep producing a level of quality that your clients are happy with. You cannot do that while you are all burnt out, or doing training sessions, or endless knowledge transfers. It just doesn’t work.

I don’t consider myself a good leader. I’ve had coworkers say I’m a “rockstar”, “incredibly talented”, and “mission-driven”. And I see all the things that I do and reflect on them: “I shouldn’t have done that.”, or “I should have handled this better.”, or “I’m not going to make it I’m too burnt out at the moment.\”.

Compliments are my kryptonite at times. I hate them, because it makes me realize at times that I’m not doing a good job. Even though that defies the very definition of a compliment.

On the lines of mental health, we should be more than happy to accept the compliments. There should be no reason to think less of your capabilities. If your coworkers are saying all the compliments to you. Take it. I know I have a hard time doing so, but we need to make peace with the fact that we aren’t perfect. The world keeps moving regardless of any bad decision made.

One of the hardest things to do is at times keeping upper management in their place. Sometimes what we relay to upper management, not by us, is in conflict of what they are seeing, or have received feedback from the clients that things aren’t working after shipping.

To fix processes in a business is like boxing at times. You need to keep throwing your jabs until they realize 2 + 2 = 4 and there’s a moment of truth for both sides where you just say why things aren’t working and why the current process is broken.

People at a higher level not only have it easy. The way they handle things is so incredibly naive or black and white to the point that it is detrimental to the mission. That executive person at the higher level might be the biggest dumbfuck you’ve ever met. Excuse me for my French, but they do exist. There’s a lot of dead-weight at the top. Making the fostering of trust and collaboration the hardest.

And here’s the fun part. You have to keep carrying that circus of a dead-weight whenever you go while keeping your teams’ mental health as a priority and making do with what’s available.

In conclusion, I’ve gone bald so many times that my body has forgotten how to grow hair back. Is what I would love to use as an excuse for being a baldy. Things get tough, you just gotta keep on keeping on going.