You Set the Tone

Leadership reflection moment… Have you ever walked into the room and brought whatever was heavy for you into the space? Perhaps you are beefed out with your partner, didn’t get enough sleep, or a board member is making a request that is not mission-aligned. You walk into the room or enter the Zoom call, and within minutes, everyone has adjusted. Not to a plan or an agenda but to the leader's energy. At that moment, the team is looking to you to determine "What's next". They're not just looking at your actions; they're looking at your energy. This moment happens in a lot of organizations, usually so fast that no one notices it.

Listen, if your energy seems rushed, people move faster. If your energy seems worried, people start scanning the room for what's wrong. If you treat the day like a series of fires to manage, the team starts treating it that way too.

You don't just respond to the culture in your organization. You, as the leader, are one of the primary forces creating it.

This is uncomfortable to sit with because it means that some of what we call "my team is always in reactive mode" is actually "my team has learned to be reactive by watching me." Not because they're incapable. Because urgency, like calm, is contagious. And speaking from my own experience, a lot of us have been spreading the wrong energy, not on purpose but out of habit. 

Here's what I've watched happen when a leader operates in constant firefighter mode: The team loses the ability to triage. When everything gets treated with the same intensity, nothing is actually urgent anymore. There's no signal, just noise. Staff starts escalating small things because they've never been shown how to tell the difference. Decisions that should be made at the team level get pushed up because the leader has modeled that she'll catch whatever falls. And slowly, the organization builds itself around her reactivity instead of around a shared understanding of what actually matters. 

That's a culture. It was built deliberately, even if unintentionally. Sometimes the culture is built even before you show up to lead. But that's another blog for another day ;). 

What's harder to admit, and I say this with real compassion because I've seen it up close and sometimes been the culprit in this scenario, is that firefighter mode often feels like leadership. There's something that feels like we are fulfilling our purpose in being needed, in solving things quickly, in being the one who shows up when it's hard. It can look like dedication to others and to ourselves. But if you sit with it honestly, there's a question worth asking: Is all this urgency actually moving things forward, or is it keeping me busy in ways that feel productive but aren't?

The work of changing isn't about slowing down when things are genuinely urgent. Real urgency deserves a real response. It's about becoming more deliberate about what gets your urgency and learning to let the rest breathe.

When you stop treating every problem like a five-alarm fire, something shifts in your team. They start to develop something they can't build when you're always in the way of the heat: judgment. The ability to read a situation, decide what it needs, and respond without immediately escalating it to you. That's not a small thing. That's organizational capacity. And it only grows when the leader models what a measured, clear-headed response actually looks like.

The tone you set isn't in your mission statement or your org chart. It's in how you respond to the unexpected email on a Tuesday afternoon. It's in whether you take a breath before answering or fire something back in three minutes. It's in the expression on your face when you walk into a meeting that's already running behind.

Your team is reading all of it. They always have been.

If this resonates with you, good. Not because something is wrong with you but because awareness is where change actually begins. The leaders I work with who make the biggest shifts aren't the ones who suddenly have fewer problems. They're the ones who stopped letting every problem set the temperature for everyone around them.

I had to learn this myself. The day I stopped treating every incoming concern like it required my immediate response, I didn't just feel more in control. I felt relief. Real, quiet relief. And slowly, my team started stepping into the space I had been filling for them.

This is often some of the first work I do with leaders, not systems, not strategy, but the tempo they've been setting without realizing it. I share this with ya’ll because I wish someone had named this for me. If it's resonating with you, try practicing interrupting this habit and see how it feels.

What's one way your urgency might be shaping your team's urgency, and is that the culture you're trying to build?

This is Part 2 of The Burn, a four-part series on the patterns that quietly lead leaders to burnout. New post every other week through July. Stay Tuned!