Episode 295: Who Takes Care of the Leader? with Melissa Doman

Leadership comes with expectations. Be steady. Be available. Support your people. Make the difficult decisions. Carry the pressure.

But what happens when the person everyone looks to for support needs support too?

In this episode of Leaning Into Leadership, Darrin sits down with organizational psychologist, former therapist, and author Melissa Doman for an honest and practical conversation about leadership mental health, communication, emotional intelligence, and what sustainable leadership actually looks like.

Melissa challenges the idea that leaders should simply absorb the pressure that comes with the role. Instead, she argues that organizations need to humanize leaders and give them permission to communicate their needs, acknowledge their capacity, and access the same resources they are expected to provide for everyone else.

Darrin and Melissa explore the popular idea that “leaders eat last” and why servant leadership can become unhealthy when leaders interpret service as sacrificing themselves for everyone around them. Sustainable leadership requires leaders to care for others and manage their own emotional and cognitive capacity.

The conversation gets incredibly practical as Melissa introduces the idea of communicating capacity — being able to tell your team honestly where you are and what you can realistically handle. If you're operating at 30 or 40 percent on a particular day, your team doesn't need you to pretend you're at 100. They need clarity about what they can expect from you.

Darrin and Melissa also discuss:

Why emotional intelligence, communication, and constructive conflict should be considered core professional developmentWhy policies and procedures aren't enough if people haven't learned how to communicate effectivelyThe danger of practicing servant leadership to your own detrimentHow leaders can give team members permission to speak up when something seems differentWhy curiosity is more productive than immediately judging a leader's behaviorHow to communicate your capacity without using it as an excuse for poor performanceThe difference between mission-critical priorities and manufactured emergenciesStephen Covey's circles of control, influence, and concernCreating personal mental well-being non-negotiables that actually work for youWhy leadership peer-support networks should exist inside organizationsThe importance of leaders modeling the use of the resources they encourage their employees to useWhy leadership can become incredibly lonely — and why leaders need other leaders who understand what it means to “sit in the chair”

Melissa also shares insights from her book Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health, along with the upcoming Wiley re-release of Yes, You Can Talk About Mental Health at Work: Here's Why (and How to Do It Really Well).

And because this is Leaning Into Leadership, the conversation somehow also includes salsa dancing, inflatable Velociraptors, ABBA…and the first-ever Chewbacca impression in podcast history. Well, at least in this podcast's history.

About Melissa DomanMelissa Doman is an organizational psychologist, former therapist, author, speaker, and consultant who teaches organizations, leaders, and employees the practical skills needed to talk about mental health, communication, and team dynamics at work. Her clients range from global organizations to professional sports teams, mid-sized companies, and small businesses around the world.

Her latest book, Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health, explores the often-overlooked emotional and cognitive realities of leadership and challenges organizations to include leaders in conversations and systems designed to support workplace mental health.