Let's Think About It Podcast

Episode 61: The Hidden Reason Leaders Burn Out

• Morice Mabry • Season 2 • Episode 61

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Episode Summary

Leadership is performance—but most leaders are doing it without a locker room. In this raw solo episode, Coach Mo reveals the overlooked reason so many high performers hit burnout: they’re carrying emotional weight with no place to reset, reflect, or get held accountable. Drawing from his experience as a college football player, Coach Mo explains why leaders need more than motivation—they need reps. The Inner Arena was built for this. If you’re tired of leading solo, this episode is your wake-up call.

Key Takeaways

  • Burnout Is Isolation, Not Just Overwork
    Leaders are burning out because they lack a space to reset and get real—what athletes call the locker room.
  • Accountability Requires a Team
    Without peers to challenge you, the inner critic grows louder—and so does self-doubt and disengagement.
  • Reps, Not Theory
    You can’t outread burnout. Leadership transformation requires mental reps: pause, breathe, visualize, act.
  • The Inner Arena = The Locker Room
    A modern-day locker room for leaders to train, reset, and be held accountable without judgment.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the let's Think About it podcast. I'm your host, coach Mo, and today I'm going to talk about something that just sparked my mind over the weekend the locker room and I'm going to touch on leadership. You don't have a locker room and this had me, like, really thinking, like when I used to play sports. I play college football, uc Davis, and one of the aspects that I enjoyed the most about playing college football was the locker room and that was this sacred, sacred space where athletes get together and we hold each other accountable. We are open with each other and we just have this safe space to drop the armor and get real, hold each other accountable, do what we say we're going to do and go as one. I was thinking about that this over the weekend and I was like, damn, there's no locker room for leadership, right? So think about it as leaders showing up day in and day out to get the performance, to show up, to perform at a high level, meet quotas, meet deadlines, reach sales quotas the whole nine and we're taught to go go More often than not. We're showing up to be there for everyone else. We're holding it together. We're the rock of the team, we're leading the team, but without a locker room. Where do you have the opportunity to really share where you're leaking energy from? Where do you have the opportunity to lower your guards, to open up and share where you're struggling at and not be judged behind it? That's what I used to do in the locker room. The locker room is like this bond that you have with others. That's going through something very similar on the team as we're trying to move in one direction as a whole In leadership. Yeah, we're trying to move teams forward, but we don't have that sacred space to discuss our challenges. That's the issue.

Speaker 1:

So, as leaders, we show up carrying other people's baggage and working diligently to mask it. To mask it, and as we mask it, we continuously leak energy, and that's hard. It's really hard because here's what we're carrying. One we're carrying the personnel drama that we're dealing with, the people that we're supervising. We're carrying their drama. We're dealing with their attendance, their performance, their team goals, their results. All of that's on our shoulders. And then there's our leadership, senior management, expectations and goals and results that they want on us, and the policy changes, the bureaucracy, the shifts all of these things is coming from upper management down, and here. You're in that middle zone, right, you have to manage that. And then you have to show up to protect your team, but then, at the same time, hold them accountable.

Speaker 1:

And let's face it, sometimes that shit is hard, it's very hard, and you find yourself in this position that you're carrying it solo. Yes, some of us do have coaches that we work with, but majority leaders don't do that. We just carry it. We carry it for the team because that's how we're built to carry it. And so, over time, over time, we start to lose our mojo, we start to lose our purpose. Why are we carrying this? What am I doing? Losing the swag, as I talked about in previous recordings. We start to lose that. So what do you do? You put on this mask and you just press forward, because that's how you're taught to grind and eventually things will get better. But what if it doesn't get better? Then what? Burnout, that's what. And I'm not here to try to motivate you, I'm not here to try to teach you a theory. I'm just being real. Let's think about it.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking back when I was an athlete and playing sports, going through the summer in preparation for the football season In Davis, california, where it gets up to as hot as 110, 12, 13, 14 degrees, and you got to train and prepare your body for the long football season. Doing that shit solo was hard. It was really hard In the heat, working out, going to the gym, hitting the weights, conditioning, all of that. Hold on you trying to do that by yourself. There's no one there to hold you accountable but yourself, and if you're trying to hold yourself accountable, you let yourself off the hook more often than not. You let yourself off the hook more often than not.

Speaker 1:

So in the locker room it was a group of us, it was a team of us, right? There's usually in college sports, there's about 75 kids on the football team and the football team is broken into units, and so I was on a defensive back unit. So it was about 25 of us and the DB unit defensive back DB unit. We held each other accountable because we wanted to make sure that we came into camp in shape, ready to go. We held each other accountable for every rep, for every rep of bench presses, squats, sprints, laps, you name it. That's what the locker room was for. We had opportunities to just share about each other, drop the armor off and just get to know each other, what we like, what we dislike, and all of that. And so thinking about that, damn, that was great because I had guys in my corner who protected me and helped me train to be the best version of myself on the football field.

Speaker 1:

But then you get into the professional world. What happened to the locker room? Where is the locker room? Where is your locker room? Where is your locker room? Where's my locker room? I'll tell you where my locker room is. It's the inner arena and that's something that I'm creating. But let's talk about the locker room. Where do you go when you're stuck and you're afraid to approach a difficult conversation with an employee? Do you hold on to that fear until it goes away? Who's in your corner to hold you accountable, to make sure that you're having that conversation? Obviously, some of us have coaches, which is a phenomenal thing, phenomenal which is a phenomenal thing, phenomenal.

Speaker 1:

But what if you could have a group of individuals from all walks of life that share the same locker room that you share, that's going through the similar struggles that you may be encountering, and you take reps on how to fix those situations. You learn how to reset in real time to condition your leadership. What if that existed? How would you show up as a leader then? So think about that.

Speaker 1:

A lot of us leaders were burnt out. Let's call it for what it is. We burnt out with all the demands that's coming from the top, the demands that's coming from the staffs that we oversee. Hell, let's call it what it is. Let's just say you're a professional and you're not even leading nobody. All the demands that comes in your role. Right? How are you balancing that out? How are you staying disciplined To get your reps in? What is a rep? Mental rep, mental reset, reps, the pause. Breathe and visualize what output that you want, what outcome that you want. That's a reset. How often do we do that? How often do we do that? But if we have a locker room where we train to do that and we have teammates that hold us accountable in doing that, it get out of our own way. See, that's powerful.

Speaker 1:

And see, we carry this mask day in and day out. As we carry this mask, the inner critic gets louder and louder. Let's picture your voice that's telling you this narrative to play small every single time. That's the inner critic. And see, we trust our voice. We trust that voice that we hear, because it sounds like us. When you're alone, it's different than when you're alongside your peers who are dealing with similar things that you're going through.

Speaker 1:

You feel as though it's not going to work Not for me and there's this fear that's present, that's just hanging over your head and you don't know what to do. You don't know how to call it out. Then shame comes into play, because you're supposed to be the one in charge. What do you look like? Asking someone for help? You're supposed to be the one to have it together for help. You're supposed to be the one to have it together. See, that's the inner critic masked in your voice. And you believe that shit you do. But in the locker room we call that shit out. We call it out and we see it. My teammate wouldn't be afraid out and we see it. My teammate wouldn't be afraid to tell me in my face Mo, you need to step your game up. You need to X, y, z. You didn't do this and this. You're doing the drills half-assed. What's going on? Let's talk this shit out. That's what you get in the locker room.

Speaker 1:

So in our leadership roles, our professional roles, we're going at it solo. We're going at it the best way that we think we can. And we attend trainings, we attend seminars and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and you walk out. You walk away excited, happy, I'm going to apply this tool. You even take all of these notes and guess what happens? The notes stay in the notepad, the books stay on the shelves because, while in theory it sounds like this can help your situation, but somewhere in your head the inner critic is telling you it doesn't work because your situation is different and you believe that voice. And so guess what happens? Nothing happens.

Speaker 1:

You mention your goals, of what you're trying to achieve, and we rally around your goals and hold you accountable to it and call you out when you're slipping. See, that's how you reach those new heights, those new levels through accountability. We help you tame that punk ass inner critic and we simmer it down. We change the narrative in your voice that you hear in your head. This isn't therapy. This isn't therapeutic. This is just real rep-driven conditioning on leadership, just like you would do on a football field, just like you would do on a basketball court, just like you would do on a baseball field. It's rep-driven, baby. That's how you get there. But then, when it comes to leadership, we're not rep-driven. We're making it up as we go. We're writing, we're reacting, we're just reacting and as different initiatives come down, we react. We forget to respond because we're reacting, react, react, react. Nah, we got to be rep-driven. That's what I'm teaching Rep-driven how do we train our minds to?

Speaker 1:

To pause, to breathe, to visualize and take action during the fight? During the fight, how do we do that? That's what's missing in our leadership development. We're not doing that. Getting our swag back, self-awareness why? Power, action, alignment and grit Swag. What are we doing to train for swag? That's what's missing in leadership. I get it. I'm that leader too that show up. I want to be there for my team. I want to be there, I want to give them mentorship, I want to give them ideas, I want to help them grow to the fullest.

Speaker 1:

But then when they're not learning the way that you expect them to learn or want them to learn, or they're not following your instructions to the T, it's heartbreaking, it's draining, because now you got to go back and you got to fix it. They should know this. And then in that process in itself is draining. And then guess who carries it? We do as leaders, we carry that, and the more we carry, the more we start to get burned out, the more we start to disengage with our own purpose of why we're doing this. At least we think we know why we're doing this, but the energy that we're showing up with is different.

Speaker 1:

It's deflating, it's demoralizing, because you're at it, alone, solo, no locker room to talk to, and the people that you want to talk to you don't trust them to talk to you, to talk. If I tell't trust them to talk to you, to talk. If I tell them what I'm actually going through, they're going to judge me a certain way, and if they judge me a certain way, I'm not going to be viewed as a credible leader. You know what? Nah, I'm not going to say anything about what I'm dealing with, or I'm not going to bring this up, because they already got enough stuff on their plate. I'm not going to bother them, I'll just figure it out. Guess what? You never figure it out. You just continue to carry it and you continue to sink and sink. So then, what do you do? I'm going to find another job? Cool, you find another job, but notice, when you go to the other job, the pattern repeats itself. That's because you don't have a locker room, and that's what I'm creating with the inner arena.

Speaker 1:

There's a locker room. I'm not trying to recruit you, don't get it twisted. I'm just speaking facts. I'm speaking from the mindset of an athlete that's applying it in a leadership space, because most teams that perform at the highest level, their locker room is intact. They have a locker room.

Speaker 1:

And, man, we're doing so much in leadership independently. Where's your locker room? And that's where I'm coming from. Not to knock anything that anybody is doing, but if you're carrying so much for so many other people, where's your locker room? Who's uplifting you? Who's holding you accountable? Who's calling you out on your BS that you bring to the table? Because we all bring some form of BS that we're trying to camouflage across ourselves, but our locker room can call us on it and hold us accountable, and that's it. When you have that space, it elevates you. It elevates you as a person, as an athlete, as a leader.

Speaker 1:

The locker room yes, let's bring that back and that's what I'm doing with the inner arena. No fluff, no therapy, just real talk, real shit and all training, rep driven conditioning for leadership. That's the inner arena and it's not open yet, but you want in and this is powerful. That's being with what's being created a freaking locker room for leaders to take off the armor and get rep driven and then put back on the armor and go back into the field and come back and be held accountable and have people that really care about your success. Call your BS out when they see it. Now, how powerful is that? That's the inner arena. Trust me on this. You want to ride with me? Ride with your boy, I love it.

Speaker 1:

Leadership we need a locker room in this space because we carry a lot for so many. Think about the policies, the changes, the environment, leadership dynamics, personnel dynamics, return on investments, business sales marketing, sales marketing, all of it, all of it. A lot of us are responsible for certain results and we carry that because we care, we're passionate. But, man, when you are around your teammates in the locker room who actually celebrate you and hold you to your greatness, that's power, that's purpose, that's drive, and I'm excited for this concept and this was the thought that just literally came in my head about the locker room, and I was already building the inner arena, but I really connected me this weekend.

Speaker 1:

The inner arena is the locker room. I'm inviting you into the locker room. If you want in, just DM me Inner Arena. Instagram that's Coach Mo Coaching. Send me a direct message Inner Arena. Hit me on LinkedIn. Direct message me. Direct message me at Maurice Mabry, inner Arena, and I will lock you in for when we are going to release, you will be the first one to receive all the important information about the Inner Arena. So there it is, thank you.