You’re taking care of everyone. And you’re wondering who takes care of you.

Here’s the full clean version — both “actually”s gone, the connective softened, and the intelligence list unstacked. Everything else stays as you approved it.

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You’re taking care of everyone. And you’re wondering who takes care of you.

I want to talk about something I’ve watched come up among leaders over and over.

I read something once, along the lines of a leader saying, I’m always taking care of everything and everyone, but who takes care of me? I don’t get to just let go and process and regulate. I don’t have someone doing for me what I do for everybody else.

If you’ve ever felt that, you’re not alone, and it keeps happening no matter how many tools and resources are out there. I want to talk about a way out of it. But it starts with recognizing how a leader gets to that point in the first place, that place of overwhelm, feeling disconnected, losing the passion for everything they do.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that leaders confuse standards and principles with expectations. So I want to walk through the difference, not to say one is good and the other is bad, but to recognize when each one serves us.

What standards and principles are

Standards and principles are the way we perceive life. They’re our guiding norms — our ethics, our belief systems, the things that matter to us.

For example, if someone says, being on time is really important to me, that’s a standard, a principle they hold.

And I’ll tell you, as a Latina, that’s an admirable one, because I grew up in a culture where being late was kind of the norm. So much so that I remember event organizers intentionally putting a start time on the invitation that was an hour or two before they actually wanted people to arrive, because they knew no one would show up on time otherwise.

I’m not taking pride in that or knocking it. I’m using it to show you something: what’s a standard for one person isn’t necessarily a standard for another. And I’ve come to value being on time myself, so I can name it as one of my principles. But the point holds. Being clear on what’s a standard for me doesn’t mean it’s a standard for someone else.

So the question becomes, how do I make an agreement with myself? These are the things that matter to me. I don’t have to neglect them or set them aside for anyone. As long as I’m not holding the belief that other people have to share them too.

Because the moment I do, it becomes an expectation. Hold that thought, I’ll come back to it.

What an expectation is

Expectations happen in our lives, especially as leaders. If you work for an organization, run your own business, supervise people, even in parenting, you know there are roles that the people you lead have to commit to and make happen.

Say you hire someone. That’s the agreement. This is the role, this is the position, this is what’s expected of you. Because when you handle these tasks, it helps the organization, it helps the business grow.

So expectations aren’t the problem. There’s nothing wrong with them. The trouble starts the moment they get tangled up with your standards and values.

Because if you know a role has certain expectations, then it shouldn’t matter how the person gets there or how they think about it, as long as they deliver the results. But what I see leaders struggle with is wanting people to do it the way they would do it. That’s the moment a personal standard gets entangled with an expectation, and they’re two completely different things.

It can also show up like this. Say a leader feels the person they hired isn’t meeting the expectations of the role. Of course they’ll have that conversation and set clear limits — hey, this was our agreement. But watch how standards and principles get pulled back in. We don’t want that person to get upset. We don’t want them to have any emotional reaction. We don’t want them thinking a certain way about us.

That’s when boundaries go porous and weak. That’s the leader who wants to be everyone’s friend because they can’t stand the thought of an employee being upset with them.

It can also go the other way. The leader who’s too rigid, because they don’t trust opening up to the empathetic part, the part that understands the other person. What if I soften and this person cries? Will I feel uncomfortable? So I’d rather keep my distance. This is just how it is, I don’t care.

Where the balance lives

The balance comes when we bring empathy into it. When you get clear on what your standards and principles are, and, separately, what the organization’s standards and principles are, because those are two different things.

When you’re clear on both, and you understand that your personal boundaries and principles don’t have to be shared by anyone else, something opens up. It doesn’t mean you neglect them or stop standing firm on what matters to you. It means you don’t force them onto someone else.

So when a hard conversation has to happen, the kind that feels uncomfortable or full of conflict, you can walk into it deeply connected to what matters to you, while also understanding that the other person may or may not share it. And that’s okay. That’s exactly what makes room for empathy.

You can be fully empathetic with someone and still be firm about your boundaries and what’s expected of them. Those two things live together.

And when that happens, you become freer with your own emotions, because you’re no longer carrying the other person’s. There’s no need to be overwhelmed or stressed by that underlying sense that you have to hold everything. Because if that’s how you’ve been feeling, it’s a sign that your expectations and your standards have gotten blurred and tangled, and you’re taking on more than you need to. Emotionally. At a nervous system level.

Why this matters more now

In an era where AI is going to take over so much of the practical work, what leaders will be left with is the human side. Emotional intelligence, social intelligence, collaboration, empathy. How do we connect to that human part, and make it work for both ends? A more collaborative approach.

So I’ll leave you with this to sit with. The way you feel at the end of your day, the way you feel every morning when you wake up, says a lot about what’s going on with your perspective, your standards, your principles, and your expectations.

We tend to normalize our day-to-day and treat anxiety and overwhelm as just part of the deal. It doesn’t have to be that way.

So ask yourself: what are my standards? What matters to me personally, and in my work? And am I holding an unrealistic expectation that others see, feel, and move through the world exactly the way I do?

When you get clear on that, things get lighter. Easier. And you don’t have to give up anything that matters to you.

So what are you willing to reflect on? And how is this going to change the way you lead, day to day?

— Roselyn Pérez Casiano