🧨 It’s Not Your Job to Fix Broken Leadership

How to Stop Over Functioning for Dysfunctional Bosses and Reclaim Your Weekend Peace

Section 1: When Leading Up Becomes Cleaning Up

Let’s start with the truth:
You are not the clean-up crew for chaos in the C-suite.

Too often, competent, mission-driven professionals—especially women—fall into the trap of trying to over-function when leadership is failing to lead. You fill in gaps, smooth over conflict, rewrite the sloppy memos, decode vague direction, and try to hold the team together with duct tape and positive thinking.

Here’s the kicker: while you’re doing all that unpaid emotional labor, the dysfunction gets rewarded—or worse, ignored.

This is not your purpose. It’s a survival pattern.

Section 2: The Warning Signs You're Absorbing Too Much

You may be over functioning for broken leadership if:

  • You’re exhausted, but still feel guilty when you unplug
  • You manage your boss’s emotions more than your own workload
  • You catch mistakes above your pay grade—and fix them without credit
  • You start sentences with “I just figured I’d take care of it…”
  • You feel like you can’t rest without everything falling apart

If any of these hit a nerve, pause. This isn’t ambition. It’s silent burnout.

Section 3: Why It’s Not Your Job (Even If You Care)

Being mission-driven doesn’t mean being martyr-driven.

Yes, you care. Yes, you’re capable. Yes, you could probably write a better policy or steer the ship yourself—but that’s not your job title. You were hired for your role, not to compensate for leadership’s blind spots.

When we internalize the failures of upper management, we unintentionally let them off the hook. Dysfunction gets normalized.
Your energy gets drained. The culture gets worse.

Section 4: SHIELD Strategy – Disengage and Redirect

This isn’t about giving up—it’s about strategic surrender.
You disengage from chaos so you can redirect toward clarity.

Try this:

✅ Set “leadership” boundaries:

“That falls outside my scope, but I’m happy to share ideas if leadership wants to address it.”

✅ Don’t absorb the emotion:
When they react poorly, don’t match it. Breathe. Delay your response. Follow up in writing.

✅ Get things in writing:
“Just to clarify the direction, I’m confirming…” (aka, document the mess without owning it)

✅ Focus on what’s within your SHIELD:
Your clarity, your calendar, your communication.

✅ Exit the emotional labor loop:

“I trust the leadership team to address that.” Period.

Redirect your brilliance to where it will actually create results—your goals, your growth, your peace.

Section 5: Permission to Breathe On Your Days Off

Take this in: You don’t have to earn your rest.

If you’ve been “holding it all together” at work all week, it’s no surprise you’re exhausted. But the work you didn’t do—like chasing a boss’s ego or fixing broken systems—doesn’t make you lazy. It makes you strategic.

You don’t need to run the company from the passenger seat.

On your days off, log off the guilt.
You don’t have to fix anything to be worthy of peace.

Section 6: Final Wisdom—You're Not the Problem

Broken systems create broken expectations.

If leadership refuses accountability, communication, or consistency—that’s not your failure.
It’s not your job to absorb it.
It’s your job to stay SHIELDed and steady until you decide what’s next.

Let them fumble their responsibilities.
You? You hold your boundary and your power.

Are you trying to Fix Broken Leadership?  Let's chat: https://calendly.com/theshieldsystem/welcome-call

 

 

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