Resourcing Yourself First Makes You a Better Leader

We are regularly reminded on airplanes, “in the event of an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask first before you help others”. For those of us who define our own value by the quality of what we give to others, putting ourselves first can feel downright criminal. As a recovering self-sacrificer myself, I have been working for years to slowly and systematically build a practice for resourcing myself first that allows me to be more efficient, helpful and beneficial leader in all of my professional relationships.

What is radical about resourcing yourself first? Radical self-resourcing demands that you relentlessly do what it takes to ensure that you are showing up at your best – be it rested, calm, creative, flexible, brave – in order to be the best leader you can be in every situation. This can feel radical because it requires not only an understanding of what you actually need to be at your best, but that you step up and take responsibility for your time and your needs. This means that you need to stop blaming the structures and systems (ie. bosses, partners, reports, colleagues) that may seem like the source of your over-extension, and instead regularly take the time to get clear about what you need and move into action to meet those needs first.

In the corporate world, chronic self-sacrifice shows up as burnout. Burnout is costly, both to employees and employers. Not to mention that burned out employees are less productive, less collaborative and tend to make less than optimal decisions. Plus the resentment that tends to surface with burnout is toxic in the work environment. 

For years when I would hear staff mention the words “I’m overwhelmed” -a clear flag for imbalance- I would immediately drill in on the choices they were making, knowing that it was only a matter of time that steam rolling their own needs took a larger toll on the company. I would ask: “With limited time and resources, what matters most now? What are you saying yes to and what can you let go of? Who are you willing to disappoint and how will you let them know?

At a deep level, prioritizing ourselves in the face of demanding full schedules and very real concerns both inside and outside the workplace requires confronting long-held beliefs and scripts that keep us locked in old patterns of behavior. These patterns keep us running from task to task with a gas tank nearly on empty, gasping at the end of the day, often with a long simmering resentment and the nagging feeling we’re showing up as increasingly diminished versions of ourselves.

To begin training in the leadership skill of self-resourcing, the following tools below can be applied:

  1. Draw up a list of what happens when you show up resourced and when you show up ragged. What do you notice? Ask yourself what actions will lead you to being more resourced, and what will be the impact? Start a running document that tracks the habits and mindsets you know need to be in place for you to be at your best and commit to doing one each week. Imagine your perfect work week and get clear about what you will say no to. Write out the full schedule of an ideal week: What do your mornings look like? How many nights do you spend out? How much sleep do you get? Add details around self-care and descriptive adjectives, as well as time allotted for undesirable tasks. Then map what you will and won’t do over a real working two week period, determining 50% of the current activity you will deprioritize. Post this list somewhere you can see it every day.
  2. Make it real by telling others. Go back to your boss, your spouse, your direct reports and share: Here is what I can do, and here is what I can’t do. You may be surprised how supportive the people who depend on you are, or how reassured they will be when they see you prioritizing self-resourcing and/or the tasks for this time period. Determine the three conversations you’ll have and commit to having them by a certain date.

As we all navigate through these unprecedented times, I challenge you: Can you ensure you self-resource now so that you are ready for day-to-day challenges? And how might your professional life benefit as a result?

Give self-resourcing a try by implementing tiny, incremental shifts over time. When you start to resource yourself first, you will start to make microscopic shifts every day – a moment where you say no, where you pause before jumping in, where you let it be messy, where you take time to hold back and put your own oxygen mask on first.

Subscribe to Our
Newsletter

Stay up to date with new releases, features, how-tos, leadership tips, and more. (Don’t worry, we won’t flood your inbox or share your address.)
REQUEST A DEMO

We Develop The World's Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board offers virtual and scalable enterprise learning solutions that are flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. Powered by behavioral science and core leadership capabilities, our proven coaching methodology drives measurable business impact.

Niall MacGearailt

SVP of Finance
Niall MacGearailt leads Sounding Board’s finance division as the SVP of Finance and Operations. Niall earned a solid track record of improving P&L and operational expense management for leading companies such as Whirlpool, Logitech, Avaya and most recently Soraa, where he prepared the business for acquisition by leading hi-tech lighting company, Ecosense. In his role, he is responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Ron Buell

VP of Engineering
Ron Buell is the VP of Engineering at Sounding Board and an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management. Ron has led the development of highly scalable systems and applications across a variety of technologies for companies including OpenFeint (acquired by GREE), Rdio (acquired by Pandora), Lyris Technologies, and Lotus/IBM Software Group. In his role at Sounding Board, Buell is responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Tommy Perkins

SVP OF SALES, PARTNERSHIP & CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Tommy is at his best helping clients think through complex challenges in order to create a positive impact on their organizations. He thrives when interacting with others whether helping his team succeed or working with clients to build long-term partnerships. He has extensive experience consulting with organizations on driving their employee experience, guiding organizations through change, and working to ensure organizations are moving the needle when it comes to their results.

Most recently, Tommy was a Client Services Leader overseeing some of GP’s most prized accounts on a global level. His responsibilities included overall client growth strategy, retention, and satisfaction. He represented all of GP Strategies’ major business lines including leadership, coaching, and engagement, digital transformation, outsourced services, and technology implementation solutions.

Before GP Strategies, Tommy spent several years with TTEC Digital (formerly rogenSI) where he led the sales team,  eventually becoming the regional Learning & Performance practice leader for North America. While managing the P&L and sales team he also led the largest global relationship for the firm (Deloitte Globally). During his time at TTEC, he focused on delivering blended learning solutions that incorporate technology and hands-on training. Before TTEC Digital, he spent several years dedicated to strength-based leadership disrupting the business landscape regarding performance management and employee engagement with thought leader Marcus Buckingham at The Marcus Buckingham Company / TMBC (now ADP).

Tommy has had the privilege of working with some of the most well-known global brands in professional services, retail, technology, and healthcare including Deloitte, Facebook, Microsoft, Bank of America, Novartis, Gap Inc., lululemon, and Intel. Several projects he led for Deloitte were Global GNPS, New Partner Pivot, NextGen Partner Program Deloitte China, Present to Win, the RPM project on performance management, and Unconscious Bias.

Tommy holds a BS in Health Sciences from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Universidad del CEMA.

Drive hiring, retention, engagement, and DEI initiatives with Sounding Board’s leadership coaching solution

Sounding Board is the first leadership development platform that combines technology to scale with world-class coaches – empowering companies to solve urgent people-problems and gain a long-term talent advantage.

Join our coaching team

Our expert coaches combine top notch coaching, business acumen and organizational savvy to truly become your leadership “Sounding Board”. Sounding Board coaches are all industry certified and strongly vetted going through a 3 step qualification process and receiving ongoing supervision and development.

Lori Mazan

Co-Founder & CCO Sounding Board, Inc.
Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.
Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers. Inspired by these experiences, Lori joined with Christine to launch Sounding Board as a feedback-driven, cloud-based leadership coaching platform that could maintain best-in-class leadership coaching while lowering costs to make it affordable and scalable for leaders at every level of their careers.
Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

Christine Tao

Co-Founder & CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. As she began to manage larger teams and be responsible for growing revenues, it became clear that she needed a “sounding board” to coach her on the development of her leadership skills. That’s where her Sounding Board co-founder, Lori Mazan came on the scene. A seasoned executive coach focused on leadership development, Lori coached Christine on real-world leadership skills that had a direct impact on business outcomes. Based on her positive and impactful experience with leadership development, Christine was driven to make leadership development coaching accessible to people at all levels of the organization.
Christine advises several startups, is a budding angel investor and is also a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a foundation dedicated to investing in the success and sustainability of women entrepreneurs.
Prior to co-founding Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.