The Hardest Problems Are the Job

Last week I was on a call with one of our consulting clients, and before I even asked how she was doing, I could tell.

The first syllable gave it away.

Her energy was rushed. A little wound tight. The kind of vibe you give off after a morning of back-to-back calls and the realization there's several more waiting.

I asked what was going on and she walked me through the list.

Client issues. Team stuff. Money concerns. Personal life bleeding into work. And a deep desire to not have a calendar that looks like a game of Tetris designed by someone who actively hates rest.

By the time she finished, she paused and said something along the lines of, “I just feel like I’m constantly putting out fires.”

I smiled, because that sentence is practically a job description.

There’s a moment every leader hits where they look around at the pile of problems in front of them and think, Surely this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

As if one day you wake up, open your laptop, and everything is quiet.

No team messages. No issues. No decisions waiting for you. Just a peaceful inbox and a business that magically runs itself.

That moment never comes. And eventually you realize this isn’t a phase you outgrow.

When I told her that, I didn’t say it to discourage her. I said it to orient her.

As a leader, your job is to solve problems.

The higher you sit in an organization, the fewer pleasant problems you deal with and the more complicated ones land on your desk. By the time something reaches you, it’s usually because no one else could or should handle it.

That’s not a design flaw. That’s the design.

When you’re at the top, there’s no buffer between you and reality. The hardest problems make their way to you because that’s where responsibility sits.

Over time, you come to accept that. You even start to anticipate it.

And then, when things are quiet, you get concerned.

It’s a little like when a house goes too quiet. If you’ve ever been around kids, you know calm doesn’t mean peace. It usually means something is being engineered just out of sight.

Leaders develop the same nervous system. Silence doesn’t relax you. It makes you curious. Because you understand that smooth stretches are temporary and issues eventually surface.

Most of the exhaustion leaders experience don’t come from the volume of problems. It comes from the belief that one day there shouldn’t be this many.

Problem-solving isn’t a phase you outgrow.

It’s the work you sign up to do when you choose to lead.

Once you accept that, you stop fighting the role and start building systems that can actually hold the weight of it.