Don’t Wait for the Fire to Stop
You are waiting for the fires to go out.
They will not.
That is not a warning. That is the game.
Busy is not your problem. Busy is the identity you built around being the one who saves the day. Late nights. Fast answers. Another fire. Another proof that you are needed. And at home, the people who matter most are getting what is left.
Coaching is not another thing on the list. Coaching is the lever. It does not add weight. It takes the weight off the wrong shoulders—starting with yours.
Here is the question that changes the room:
What do you bring that, if you stopped bringing it, would not get done?
I sat with a nonprofit executive who was brilliant at raising money and building relationships. That was her gift. The mission needed that gift. She was spending 90 percent of her time in operations and personnel fires. Quiet weeks made her nervous. Firefighting had become who she was.
We named the gift. Then we pulled her off the machine. Weekends came back. Family came back. The organization got stronger—not because she worked harder, but because she finally did the work only she could do.
That is the move.
Not “when things calm down.”
Not “after this season.”
Now. While the home and the business are both paying the price.
The death spiral sounds noble: work more, sleep less, demand more. It is how good leaders drain the mission and the people they love.
Flip it. Make your well-being, your sleep, and your actual gift the priority—not the leftover. Your state changes. The team feels it. You stop handing out more tasks and start asking better questions.
The fires will keep coming. That is not the question.
The question is whether you will keep being the fire.
