What I’ve Come to See About the Leaders Running on Empty

 

A while back, I wrote about what it takes to become real — the question at the center of The Pinocchio Principle. The distance between how capable a leader appears and how alive they actually feel.

Since then, I’ve been sitting with that question in a slightly different way.

Because in the intervening years, I’ve watched the pattern deepen. The leaders I coach are more accomplished than ever. And more depleted than ever. They’ve read the books. Been through the workshops. Listened to the podcasts. They know what good leadership looks like. And yet they arrive at coaching sessions with the same quiet exhaustion I have been watching for three decades.

Something is running them. And it is not the workload.

I made a video about what that something is — what I’ve come to see beneath the surface of the leaders I work with, and beneath the surface of my own life during the years I was living out the same pattern.

The video is about sixteen minutes long, and it lays out the whole picture: the invisible modus operandi that runs us underneath our conscious awareness, the false beliefs most of us would never consciously choose but are living by anyway, the five movements that make change actually possible, and — most importantly — the picture of what becomes available when you stop running on the wrong fuel and start running on the right one.

I’ve also put all of it down in a manifesto. It’s called The Real Leader Revolution, and it’s meant to be read slowly. You can download it free at RealLeaderRevolution.com.

Why I’m writing this now

I share the video and the manifesto because they feel like the fullest expression yet of the work I’ve been building for thirty years. The Pinocchio Principle named the question. This new work is my current answer.

Not because I have finished figuring it out — I haven’t. But because I’ve watched enough leaders make this shift that I know it is possible. And I know the map exists.

If you have felt yourself running on empty, and no amount of rest is quite fixing it — this is for you.

If you have wondered why what used to work isn’t working anymore, and no framework or strategy seems to reach whatever the actual problem is — this is for you.

If you have started to suspect that the more you’re looking for is buried beneath the very habits and beliefs that got you here — this is for you.

Watch the video. Read the manifesto. Sit with it.

And if any of it lands, I’d love to hear from you.

Diane

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