How to Build Leadership Capacity So Pressure Stops Running You

If leadership feels heavier than it used to—if you can’t slow down, can’t say no, and feel like everything depends on you—this episode is for you.

In this solo episode, Erin Thompson explores why capable leaders burn out not because they lack skill or commitment, but because responsibility has outgrown preparation. She introduces the concept of The Wing-It Window—the messy middle where leaders are expected to perform while they’re still learning—and explains why confidence isn’t the solution.

Capacity is.

You’ll learn what leadership capacity actually is, why comparison quietly drains it, and how unexamined expectations keep leaders stuck in over-functioning and reactivity. Erin walks listeners through a powerful 4-step capacity awareness framework that helps leaders regain clarity, control, and confidence—without burning out or white-knuckling their role.

This episode is especially relevant for leaders in senior living, healthcare, operations, sales, and clinical roles who are carrying constant pressure from teams, families, ownership, or corporate expectations.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why leadership breakdowns don’t come from lack of competence—but lack of capacity
• The difference between capacity, confidence, and competence
• How the Wing-It Window shows up in leadership (and why it’s normal)
• Why alignment restores what comparison has taken away
• The 4 questions that reveal what’s actually running your leadership under pressure
• How survival behaviors and competing commitments quietly limit growth
• Why capacity grows through awareness and acceptance, not hustle
• How to regain clarity and control without changing everything at once

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Transcript

1:05

I'm Erin with the Aspire for More with Erin podcast. We're gonna talk about building capacity today, and I'm gonna start off with a story. We're gonna start off as to why capacity is so important and the ways that it holds you back. So let me tell you about a little fishing story. An old man. Saw a boy fishing and went over to see how he was doing. The boy had already caught two small fish, but as the old man was walking over, the boy landed a huge, let's call it bass, right? A big fish. If you're from my neck of the woods, maybe we would say it was a big old red snapper. That's a beauty. So the old man. And the boy said, thank you, and unhooked the fish and threw it back in the water. And the old man was shocked. He was like, oh my gosh, why did you do that? Because obviously that was a good meal. And the boy said, my frying pan is only nine inches wide. Now, if you're not a fisherman. Maybe you don't get it, but this boy had a big fish, an opportunity to make a lot of meals out of one fish, but because he only had one nine inch frying pan, he threw five meals away because he couldn't cook the whole fish. That's what capacity is. The capacity is the frying pan and the fish is the potential. That's us. we are the fish, we have the potential. And the frying pan is the circumstances that we're in. That doesn't allow us to reach our potential. This is why we're talking about building capacity in the messy middle and the hard stuff, because I'll say it, sometimes we get in our own way of success. I know I have. If you've been listening long enough, you know. So in this episode, which I hope to make it short, sweet, compact, meaningful. If you can't say no, if you feel like you can't drop anything without everything or something breaking, we're gonna build your capacity today. We're gonna become aware of your capacity today because it doesn't mean when we feel like we can't move on or we're holding on to too many things, it doesn't mean that we're failing. It just means we can't grab what's ours. Because we're holding on to everything else. And when that happens, when we over-function quietly and we react faster versus responding, or we lose the clarity, we lose alignment because we're trying to be strong for everyone else but ourselves. our capacity shrinks. And some of us are in that window that I like to call the wing it window, and we think that we just need more confidence or we need people to trust us, or we need this, or we need that. But really those aren't the solutions. It's the capacity that's the solutions. Because capacity doesn't equal confidence. Competence doesn't equal capacity. Capacity is what we can hold and still be successful. So if you are a leader inside healthcare, senior living, home health, hospice, sales, operations, clinical leaders, adult day, it doesn't matter. This episode is for you if you are struggling, if you're trying to wing it, if you're in the wing it window, if you're new, if you're five years in, if you're 10 years in, this is for you. I'm gonna teach you a strategy that I use to become aware what capacity is, and when you get to the end, you're going to feel more confident, more aware, and more prepared, which is the goal. So here we go. Our breakdowns, our leadership breakdowns don't come from our lack of competency, our lack of skill. Really, I feel like they come from leaders being expected to perform while we're still learning. Right? Having the pressure of having to do everything and still not exactly know what to do. And so we react instead of respond. We cave into pressure because of pressure, we. We'll sacrifice and short circuit ourselves because the outcome needs to happen quickly versus taking a little bit longer in order to really understand the process. That's what the wing it window is. It's when our responsibility will exceed our preparation. It's almost like we cannot be more successful on the outside than we are on the inside. So we have to be able to prepare internally for the success that we want externally, and that's gonna require growth and the expansion of our capacity. So if you're in a new role, if you're having higher expectations, if you don't have as many practices or experiences in certain scenarios where you are running so fast, you don't take the time to think or reflect. You are hurting your capacity, or your capacity isn't as big as it needs to be, and that's normal. So give yourself some grace. That's important. We're gonna normalize that bit. Okay? Capacity does not equal confidence and sometimes it doesn't even equal experience capacity Will shrink because we don't spend enough time to understand where we are and to honor it and to ask for help, and we're trying to do it all. You're not gonna have a lot of capacity and you're not gonna have a lot of confidence. You can see the most confident person walking down the street, but that doesn't mean that they have the capacity to handle what you have or what you can do. And you don't even have a fifth. Of their confidence. Leadership capacity is not how capable you are. It's how much pressure, ambiguity, and responsibility that you can hold while you're still learning. And I believe it's the story we tell ourselves. It's the meaning we place on things. It's how we get in our own way. That literally will make us crack under the pressure of ambiguity, responsibility, and increasing demands. Capacity equals infrastructure. What are my processes to solve this problem? What is my process when I find myself replaying the same cycle in my mind? What do I need to do to plug in to reset? Am I even aware of when that needs to happen? Pressure doesn't always destroy leaders, but pressure with low capacity will destroy leaders. That's why having that capacity meter in your mind, I'm feeling too much pressure. I'm trying to hold onto too many things. I can't handle more this. These are all signals for you and you need to become aware of them. You're not necessarily lacking confidence. You're cracking under pressure because your frying pan is only nine inches, but you could buy more frying pans, right? You need to have more than one frying pan. You need to have people who can help you with the job. That's important to remember. You don't wanna catch a big fish and throw it back because your frying pan is too small. You want to be able to say, I can buy five more frying pans. I can cut the fish up and put it in multiple frying pans. One of my favorite sayings is alignment will restore what comparison has taken away. When we compare ourselves to people, our confidence, our willingness. Our worth, our value can be taken away because comparison will drain capacity. Look, I had a 64 apartment memory care community and I was compared to communities that had 20 memory care apartments. 25, 30, 35, 64 is a lot, folks, it's a lot of residence, and those apartments were 270 square feet. If you're gonna compare me to a 30 apartment memory care, there's no comparison, and it's going to drain my willingness to experiment, to try new things. It's gonna drain my willingness to, to see the possibilities because I'm being compared to somebody else who doesn't have as many associates that I have to deal with. Who, who takes longer to fill it because it's 64 versus 25. Right. But when I realize that my community is 64 apartments at 270 square feet, it takes a special type of family to look at that apartment and say, I want that. And if I get five people to move in in a month and they're aligned to what we offer, all of a sudden I restore my own authority. I gain the confidence that I need and I realize that I had more capacity, more control than I thought. When alignment can give you back your authority, give you back your purpose, give you back proof and the possibilities, then that authority can restore clarity in who you are. But comparison will make you reactive. Because you're trying to defend yourself. You're trying to prove something that takes away your capacity, but alignment to who you are, to your community, to your strengths, to your values, that will keep you steady. That will bring you influence family members who understand the disease process of dementia, who understand that you're moving into this community to be a part of the community, not to get lost in a room. Those family members are actually better to have at my community because they get it versus other family members who don't get it and can cause friction because expectations are not clear. They're not aligned. And once you get that alignment and once it's restored, one of the most powerful things beside authority and beside clarity is that we can actually see what's running us, what is truly running, what's the fuel inside of our motor that's running us, driving our decision making, driving the way we respond or react, driving. the ability to keep going without taking a break. And that's what these next four action steps are. These questions. It's the capacity awareness framework. It's what, what I to call, what's really driving us. So I'm gonna ask you some questions. What is a goal that you want? Or maybe that your home office or regulatory body or corporate office is asking you, not necessarily a KPI like a hundred percent, or, how many tour did you have? How many calls? What are those percentages? But a real leadership intention that feels hard to live into. A few examples, I wanna stop being the one to make all the decisions.'cause if I'm the one making all the decisions and solving the problems, I become the bottleneck to my community. I have to be there in order for things to happen, which means that I can't take any time off. I can't get sick, my kids can't get sick. I can't be a caregiver to a family member if I have to be there for anything to move forward. I am a bottleneck, and that's not good. Or I want to say no without guilt. These are all leadership goals. I did this with, a group of people this week, and some of them were financial freedom, bringing in program training in equipping people, program directors for my company, wanting my upper administration to trust me. And more confidence. These are goals. I'm sure the more confidence or to financial freedom is going to be hitting a goal, a metric for somebody else. But for me or for them, it was a leadership shift. Okay, so now that we have our goal, what are we working, what are we doing to work against it? You can ask yourself, what am I doing to work it against it? And what am I doing to work with it? But working against it is what's holding our capacity back again, if you wanna take the fish and the frying pan, the boy who was fishing, wanted to catch fish and he caught fish, small fish, and he caught big fish, but he couldn't keep the big fish because his frying pan. Was only nine inches. So what was working against him? One nine inch frying pan and not understanding that he could go buy two more or hello, a bigger frying pan, right? These are behaviors, these are limitations that he puts on him. These are thought processes. These are stories that he tells himself that is holding him back from rejoicing. it's a survival strategy for him. It is something that he believes. So what are you doing to work against the goal that you want of being confident to being financially free or to be trusted more by the higher ups? Are you not communicative enough? Do you not talk about the outcomes? Are you waiting for them to say something instead of you leading the conversation? Are you avoiding hard conversations? Are you over functioning? Are you choosing speed to just get it over with over clarity, because those will break up and destroy capacity. So now that we've stated the goal, we're identifying. What am I doing that's working against me achieving this goal? Let's talk about what we're protecting. Question number three is, what is the competing commitment? What are we doing? What are we protecting? If we're wanting to be training and educating, empowering other people, but we're still the one making the decisions, which is the behavior that's working against it. What is the competing commitment? Everybody expects me to answer those questions. If I don't answer those questions and it's wrong. What's gonna happen? I'm gonna get in trouble. I like to be the one that everybody can count on. I wanna be needed. I wanna be seen as competent. What we protect, honestly, is usually what is guiding us. What we protect is what's keeping us stuck. So the boy could have been protecting his financial status. I don't wanna buy a bigger pan. I don't wanna buy multiple pans. I'll just throw the fish back. But again, he's limiting his dinners. And in the long run, shorting himself because one investment of a bigger pan can bring him multiple dinners, he can catch bigger fish. The competing commitment is, I don't believe I'm capable. I don't believe I can't afford, I don't believe I'm gonna catch bigger fish consistently. Or maybe the competing commitment is I don't want to fail. So therefore I won't speak. I'll just be told what to do and if I, but if you wanna build trust with people and be trusted by the upper administration, you have to prove that you know what's going on, communicate it and show proof of it. That's trust. If you wanna be confident, you have to show up and be willing to fail in order to learn. Because failure isn't all that bad if you take away lessons from it. But if you can't be vulnerable to fail, then you can't fail enough to win. And that's important. Question number four, the big assumption, this is the big deal. If I don't do this, then what? If I don't solve all the questions, then I won't be needed. And they'll hire somebody else. They'll get rid of me. If I don't throw the fish back, I'll just watch the fish die, right? If I want financial freedom, but yet I keep buying the things that keep me stuck and in debt if I don't have the nice things. I won't be seen and I won't feel enough. It's this big assumption. It's the meaning that we place on things. It's the meaning that we place on the things that happen to us that will keep us from expanding our capacity because we're scared. These big assumptions aren't necessarily truths. They're the stories that we tell ourselves during the pressure to protect ourselves. I have done this. I have done this. I probably am currently doing this, but I have done this so much in my life, but I realized the story that I tell myself literally will drive me crazy or it will drive me forward. But the story that I tell other people about a circumstance is how they will think about the circumstance. So if you're trying to protect yourself from failing and being too vulnerable and being embarrassed, it's because of the meaning that you're placing on it. But if forward, I'm closer to the goal that I'm trying to get. And so I'm thankful for the opportunity to try and I'm gonna try it again because I think I can get closer. It's the same thing. People may be laughing at you or maybe talking about you, but when they see you get back up and they see you try again, they're not gonna laugh as loud the second time. And then you see, they see you get back up and then they try again. They're not gonna laugh so hard the third time because now they're gonna be impressed by you and each time you get back up. if I don't get back up, then I'm never gonna be successful. I'm just gonna stay where I am. That's an assumption that serves you, not an assumption that harms you. When we see this, clearly, when we as a leader, as a mother, as a father, as a sibling, as a child of someone, when we see this clearly, we understand that this is what expands our capacity. This awareness is what expands. Our capacity, not because the pressure changes, because it doesn't, because we still want a hundred percent occupancy. We still wanna hire NOI. We still wanna make more money. It's because the awareness and the grace that comes with awareness replaces the self-judgment because it's really not about other people and what they say. It's about what you say to yourself. Take that to the bank folks. So why does this change everything? why does this awareness change everything? Because your capacity grows in direct proportion to your acceptance of reality, and in inverse or opposite proportion to unexamined expectations, your expectations in your life truly. Or what builds resentment or what keeps you stuck? I expected to be excellent at this the first time. I expected when I made a course that a lot of people would wanna buy it. That didn't exactly happen that way. Right? I expected when I put all that time and energy into something that people would, would come and would want it. I thought when I found coaching, everybody would want coaching. things don't happen that. But my capacity would have stopped when I had to work hard to build listeners to this podcast or buyers for a course because it didn't happen. But I didn't examine my own expectations. But I can accept the reality of I want my impact to be meaningful. And however long it takes is however long it takes. And as long as I'm enjoying doing it, I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna grow. And my acceptance of that reality. It makes me happy. It gives me clarity, and when I have clarity about the situation, I feel more in control. When you have clarity, when your families have clarity, when your prospects have clarity, when when your team has clarity, everyone has more control because they know what to expect, but when they don't know what to expect, chaos can happen because expectations weren't communicated clearly or They were not examined and communicated at all. So the awareness of this, the acceptance of the reality, and being willing to look at the expectations helps create better decisions. Really, what we all need is a real firm understanding of our boundaries, which is our own conditions of success. Less emotional reactivity, which. Is always better for everybody. There's a lot of emotional reactivity inside of healthcare and a stronger leadership presence, which I will tell you your presence is more important than anything else. This is the kind of stuff that I really talk about on my one-on-one coaching and inside the a hundred percent leader, because every leader I talk to that wanna talk to me and wanna help me walk them through decision making and, and, and gain some kind of clarity, this is what we need. This is what I did not have. I didn't necessarily need more tools, more policies and procedures, all of that I really just needed. A safe space to reflect, to think, to grow. I didn't have that and I didn't know I needed it, honestly. And that's why I have this podcast and I do these webinars and I have this coaching practice because really when you intentionally set out to find your growth environment, your safe space to really talk about the things that you probably wouldn't talk about with anybody else, you decide I'm gonna get out of my own way. And I'm gonna make that happen. And there's a lot of grace when you realize I don't have to change everything. I just have to become aware of it. When I become aware that I'm throwing the fish back because my frying pan is only nine inches, when I could just buy a bigger frying pan or more frying pans, you realize, my God, I've been in my own way. This entire time. So you're not always failing, you're not always struggling. Sometimes you're just winging it while you're in the messy middle developing, and you build your capacity truly when you can tolerate the discomfort long enough to see the rewards of the struggle. Leadership Parenthood relationship doesn't always require certainty from us, but it does require a certain level of a capacity to handle the chaos that happens in life. Okay, so find alignment so it can restore what the comparison. Whether it be social media, whether it be monthly calls, whether it be our own comparison that we have going on, that it can restore what comparison has took away, which is the awareness of our strengths, the awareness of what we do, what we have succeeded in. The awareness of just how important and valuable you are. cause the more you expand your capacity, the more. Pressure you can handle and the higher that you're gonna rise it truly, capacity truly gives you room to meet you at your potential. And potential is a word that gives us all hope, and not everyone gets to meet it. But you can. So find yourself a space, a time or something to grow and reflect and make your capacity a priority. And if you loved this episode, shoot me a message. I would love to know, share it, like, and subscribe this podcast so it reaches more people. And I would love to meet you one day. So maybe a coaching call, a hundred percent leader program. Or follow me on LinkedIn. I just appreciate your time. I appreciate you being here, and I hope that you take those four questions. What is my goal, my leadership shift? What am I doing that's working with it or against it, or is my competing commitment and what is the big assumption? What am I trying to protect and why? Why am I trying to protect that? What is the big assumption? What I found out in my life was the more that I protect myself, the further away from being vulnerable and pliable and willing to grow, I was, and that's a powerful lesson to learn and apply in your life when I'm willing to fail forward in order to get closer to the goal. Thank you for listening and as always for you. Aspire for more, knowing that you are already enough. Okay.