There is an expectation that leaders are stable. That they absorb difficulty, maintain clarity, and project confidence regardless of what is happening internally. For founders and executives who are leading a team when you’re struggling, this expectation becomes a sustained performance, one with a cost that rarely gets named and almost never gets discussed at the level where it is most common.

They are fine in every meeting; they are focused in every conversation, and at some point, the gap between what they are showing and what they are carrying becomes its own kind of weight.

The performance of being fine

The performance is understandable. Teams need confidence from leadership. Uncertainty from the top travels fast and lands hard. But the performance also has a cost, and it tends to be paid in private, in the early mornings or the late evenings when the role can be set down for a moment.

The higher the role, the more sustained that performance tends to be, and the more sustained it is, the harder it becomes to step out of it, even in the moments and relationships where doing so would actually help.

What leading a team when you’re struggling actually looks like

It rarely looks like collapse. It looks like:

• Mild withdrawal from conversations you would normally lead.
• A slightly shorter tolerance for friction or difficult personalities
• Less energy for the creative and strategic parts of work
• Finding reasons to stay at the operational level because the strategic level requires more than you currently have to give

Most people around you will not name it. They may notice something is slightly different but will not say so. The isolation that comes from leading is real, and the isolation of leading whilst struggling is more so.

Why this needs to be talked about

The reason mental wellbeing is rarely discussed honestly at the leadership level is the same reason that struggling is so common at that level. The role selects for people who are good at managing their presentation. And the higher you go, the fewer people around you feel positioned to raise it with you directly.

This is not just an observation but a structural problem. In The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmondson documents how authority creates silence: the more senior the leader, the less likely those around them are to volunteer uncomfortable truths, including truths about the leader’s own state. 

The result is that the people who most need honest feedback are often the last to receive it, not because those around them don’t see it, but because the power dynamic makes initiating that conversation feel too risky. 

If you want to understand why that silence forms and what it costs, Edmondson’s work is the clearest account of it available. [Read more: Amy Edmondson — The Fearless Organization, Wiley]

When leaders do talk about it honestly, something useful happens. It gives permission to the people around them to be more honest about their own experience. It changes the culture of the leadership team from one where difficulty is managed privately to one where it can be named and supported. That shift is not weakness. It is infrastructure.

What you can actually do

The practical answer starts with identifying one or two people outside the business with whom you can be completely honest. A peer, a coach, someone who understands the environment but has no stake in your performance. That relationship is not a luxury. For many founders and executives, it is the difference between managing a difficult period and being managed by it.

The second thing is to build more margin into your schedule than you think you need. The instinct of leading a team when you’re struggling is to work harder, as though effort is the remedy. Usually it is not. The remedy is more often rest, perspective, and the kind of conversation that is hard to have unless you have made space for it.

That is the conversation the Unfiltered with Brij Thankey’s podcast and blog exist to make more normal, not the version of leadership that performs fine until it cannot, but the one that builds enough honesty into the environment to catch difficulty before it becomes a crisis.

Commonly Asked Questions

What does leading a team when you’re struggling actually look like? It looks rarely like a collapse and more often like a quiet contraction, with less presence in the conversations you would normally drive, lower tolerance for friction, and less energy for strategic thinking. The people around you may sense something has shifted but will rarely name it directly. That silence is part of what makes the experience so isolating.

Why do leaders rarely talk about struggling whilst leading a team? Because the role selects for people who are good at managing their presentation, and the culture around senior leadership rarely creates space for that conversation. The higher the role, the fewer people feel positioned to raise it, which means the leader is often the only person who can initiate it. Most don’t, because doing so feels like it contradicts what the role requires of them.

Does talking about personal struggle undermine a leader’s authority? The evidence suggests the opposite. Leaders who create space for honest conversation about difficulty, including their own, tend to build higher-trust teams and more psychologically safe cultures. The performance of being fine erodes trust over time because teams can sense the gap, even when they cannot name it. Honesty, used well, is a leadership tool, not a liability.

How do you maintain team confidence whilst going through a difficult period personally? By separating what you share from how you lead. You do not need to disclose everything to lead well through difficulty. What matters is that you are not so consumed by what you are carrying that your presence and judgement are consistently compromised. The practical safeguards, a coach, a peer, margin in the schedule are what make that separation possible. 

When should a founder or executive seek outside support? Before it feels urgent. The instinct is to wait until the difficulty is significant enough to justify the investment of time or money in support. By that point, the cost of not having sought it earlier is already high. A coaching relationship or peer group built during a stable period is far more useful than one started in a crisis, because the foundation of trust and honesty takes time to build.