Feel It. Don't Carry It. (065)

Picture a team losing a World Cup final. The camera lingers on their faces as raw disappointment sets in, right as the roar of the crowd rolls in around them. If they could hear every voice in that stadium at once, it would be deafening.

I see a quieter version of that moment often in my corporate role and as a coach with clients. You lead teams. You hold hard conversations. You carry the weight of decisions that affect real people's lives, and you do it while everyone around you is watching how you handle it.

One of the scenarios that came up in recent coaching conversations: bringing a long employment relationship to an end after a difficult performance process. There is rarely an easy way through it.

It affects the person leaving. It affects you, the leader who invested time, energy and hope in helping them improve. It affects everyone supporting the process, especially when every word and decision is being closely examined.

When someone is distressed, their experience of events can become very different from yours.

A calm response may be read as coldness.

A boundary may feel like rejection.

A helpful intervention may be seen as having the wrong intention.

And sometimes, when a person is trying to make sense of a painful outcome, blame needs somewhere to land.

Many of you have sat with me and described exactly this.

You were trying to act with integrity.

You took the time to listen, offer support and follow a fair process.

And still, your intentions were questioned.

In moments like that, it's easy to get swept into the emotional current. You may feel the urge to defend yourself, prove your intentions or match the intensity coming at you.

Even when you stay composed in the room, you might replay it later.

Did I handle that well?

Could I have said something differently?

Was I too direct?

Was I not compassionate enough?

This is the exact edge we work at together: where empathy and boundaries have to hold at the same time.

Several of you are working on this right now: noticing more than someone's words. Marcia Reynolds calls it sensory awareness in her book Coach the Person, Not the Problem, and it's one of the first shifts I watch happen in coaching.

It's hearing the change in their voice.

Noticing the pause before they answer.

Sensing when their energy rises, retreats or hardens.

It's also noticing what's happening in your own body as the conversation unfolds.

Your shoulders tighten.

Your stomach contracts.

Your breathing gets shallower.

Your own emotions may even start to shift to match the person in front of you.

That sensitivity is what makes you good at this. It's what lets you recognise the disappointment beneath the anger, the fear beneath the defensiveness, the grief beneath the accusation.

But recognising someone's emotion doesn't mean agreeing with their interpretation of events. It doesn't mean removing a boundary that needs to stay in place. And it doesn't make you responsible for taking their pain away.

You can say:

“I hear how difficult this is for you.”

“I understand this isn't the outcome you wanted.”

“I can see you feel strongly about what's happened.”

And still stay clear about the decision, the process or the boundary that has to hold.

There are moments in leadership, and in life, when the role you're asked to play is the steady hand.

It can be confronting, even when you understand the system and have navigated it before. I've watched several of you walk into rooms like that this year, and stay standing.

Staying calm doesn't mean you're unaffected. It means you're regulating your own emotions so you don't add more heat to a situation that's already inflamed.

You can care deeply and still think clearly.

You can protect someone's dignity without abandoning accountability.

You can listen to an accusation without letting it define your character.

You can acknowledge someone's suffering without carrying it home in your body.

That isn't detachment. It's compassionate presence, and it's a skill, not a personality trait. Which means it can be built.

Many of the people I coach have spent years being the helper. You notice what others need. You feel the atmosphere in the room. You try to make things easier, calmer, more comfortable for everyone around you.

But without clear boundaries, empathy can quietly turn into emotional absorption. You move from:

“I understand that you're distressed.”

to:

“I am responsible for making your distress disappear.”

That shift is exhausting. It's what leads you to overexplain, overhelp, or compromise a boundary simply because holding it feels uncomfortable in the moment. If that pattern sounds familiar, you're not alone in it, and it's not a flaw. It's usually the sign of someone who has led with genuine care for a long time.

Brené Brown describes compassion as a practice grounded in shared humanity, not in seeing ourselves as the person who has to rescue or fix someone else.

Sometimes compassion means resisting the urge to switch on the light. It means sitting beside someone in a hard moment without denying what's happening or rushing to remove their discomfort.

You can be present without taking over.

You can listen without rescuing.

You can let someone experience their emotions without becoming responsible for the outcome of those emotions.

The work was never to become less sensitive. It's to become more grounded in the sensitivity you already have, so it fuels your leadership instead of draining it. That is what I get to watch happen in our sessions together, and it's the part of this work I find most rewarding.

1. Notice before you react. Pay attention to what's happening in the conversation and in your own body. A tight chest or a held breath may be the first sign you're being pulled into the other person's emotional experience.

2. Separate empathy from responsibility. You can understand someone's pain without absorbing it, fixing it, or accepting blame for everything they're feeling.

3. Hold boundaries with dignity. Compassion and accountability aren't opposites. A difficult message can still be delivered calmly, respectfully, and with care for the person receiving it.

Pain and distress will sometimes surround you. Your work isn't to deny them. It's not to carry them all, either.

Your work is to stay open, steady and grounded enough to respond without adding more pain to the moment.

Feel it.

Acknowledge it.

Respond with compassion.

Then release what was never yours to carry.

Let’s return to that team walking off the pitch. They couldn't quiet the crowd. They couldn't undo the loss. But watch what they still had a say over: how they stood, who they looked at, whether they let the noise become who they were in that moment.

That's the whole practice. Not making the roar disappear. Choosing how you stand inside it.

I see you doing this, week after week. Keep going.

Till next week,

Mary

P.S. If this resonates and you'd like a confidential sounding board to think through your next step, book your Executive Sounding Board session here.

P.P.S. Recently I sat for my ICF ACC credentialing exam. The credential requires at least 60 hours of coaching education and at least 100 hours of coaching practice outside that education. The program I enrolled in set the bar higher still, requiring 185 hours of coaching education, which meant more practice hours than the minimum. Thanks to you, my peers and my support circle, I had clocked 145 additional coaching hours by the time I sat the exam.

I'm delighted to share that I passed, and earned my ACC badge.