8 Playing president

Not every entrepreneur agrees on what it means to play the role of president within our companies, but every one of us has had to wrestle with the concept. At business conferences, people talk about how to integrate that role with our personal lives. Do you ever wonder how that can even be possible? Can you really be your authentic self in all parts of your life? And which self, which role, is the authentic one anyway? The leader of a values-driven business ultimately has decision-making power that nobody else in the company has, so this role is fundamentally different from most of the other roles we play in our lives, whether it be spouse, partner, friend, board member, volunteer, parent, or child.

This chapter is about learning how to bring the values of collaboration, respect, and diversity into that leadership role. Lisa reminds us not to compare our insides with everyone else’s outsides. Margot describes the changes that happened over time in her role as president and how, even today, her role as a “legend” still impacts her life. Joe talks about times when the stress of owning a company felt overwhelming and he was tempted to work for someone else so that he wouldn’t have to handle all the responsibility. Marie reminds us that the role of president is intricately woven with the mission of our organizations. Carol describes the internal disconnect that can happen when you are struggling in your business and personal life but you have to project the image of a successful businessperson to the outside world. Finally, Tom talks frankly about how the pressure of his role brought him to the brink of burnout and what he did to bring himself back.

Comparing Your Insides with Other People’s Outsides

LISA

The strange phenomenon of owning a company was that my authentic self was much different from the role I played as president. Playing president was odd for me because I was a very private person. I never wanted to talk about my personal life at work. I was in a long-term relationship, but none of my customers, distributors, or suppliers knew that. Some of my employees eventually knew, but my partner never came to the bakery. I also had to be much more outgoing than I usually am, much more engaged in what people had to say. Had I not headed a company, I would have spent a lot less time with people. I would have been off in a corner reading more. I would have unplugged the phone. You can’t do that if you are president. You feel a lot of pressure to be friendly. Employees look to you to be in a good mood, and if you aren’t, it’s upsetting to everyone.

When you are president, you are not really considered a person; you represent power. You have the power to change lives dramatically since forty to fifty hours of your employees’ time is spent in the workplace. Tiny decisions you make affect their lives. In a way, you can’t really have an equal and healthy relationship with them. When employees came into my office, I could feel that they were not speaking with me, Lisa Lorimer; they were speaking to a character, my role. Sometimes they would come at me in a combative way, and I knew they would never do that if they remembered I was a human being. Somewhere along the way you have to acknowledge that you don’t have an equal relationship.

The struggle is that whenever you are out of your house, whether in the office or not, you may feel like you have to continue playing the role. You have to walk down the street in a bubble like a celebrity (but on a smaller scale). Because of this, sometimes you may cross the line and forget that you have an authentic self. This happened to a fellow CEO whose company was struggling. She was serving on a board, and she felt she had nothing to say, no advice to give, because her company wasn’t doing well. She forgot that she had a voice separate from her company.

Because we have to play this role both in our companies and in our communities, a disconnect often happens between what is going on inside us and what we are projecting to the world. Our outsides don’t necessarily match our insides. It may look as though we are doing well on the outside—we are profitable, we are selling like mad, we can’t keep up with the amount of orders, we smile and nod and look superconfident— but inside we are feeling stressed and panicked.

This point was driven home to me when I was at a retreat center at one of the Social Venture Institutes in Hollyhock, British Columbia. These institutes bring together seasoned entrepreneurs with second- and third-stage company leaders so they can do case studies and have blocks of time together for problem solving and skill building. One of the best parts of the event is in the evening, after dinner, when a leader of a larger company tells his or her story in all its messy glory. It used to be known by the war metaphor “Tales from the Trenches,” but it is now called “True Confessions.” It involves telling the whole story, not the public-relations-approved story—no holds barred, no commercials allowed.

I met a man at this event who allowed me to understand the facades we put up as business leaders. As CEO of an interesting food company, he was trying to raise money for growth capital, and he had told his story during one of the sessions. I asked him to take a walk with me because I wanted to know more about what he was doing. While we were on the trail, I quizzed him about his sales, his distribution, how many employees he had, what his production facility was like, how he sourced his raw material, and what his margins were. He was in a classic phase of growing his company. I knew that behind his story, a lot of other things were probably happening. I imagined his sales were increasing and quickly gobbling up all his cash. He’d most likely outgrown his long-term staff and his communication systems. He probably needed more structure. And all the while he was having to present a solid image to the public so he could raise the money he needed to create a stronger internal team to attract more customers. When he finished telling me about his business, I shook my head and laughed: “Your life absolutely sucks right now. I remember being that size. It is so hard. You are growing so fast, nothing works like it used to, and the outside world thinks everything is going great because you have to put a game face on all the time. Yuck.” Before I had finished talking, the man burst into tears.

We are all trying to act like everything is fine on the outside even if it’s not. As CEO or president, you have to act like that. But that means we never really know that other business leaders are going through exactly the same things we are. A few years ago, I attended the three-year Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School. At that time, I was CEO of the largest woman-owned manufacturing company in Vermont, one of the top ten fastest growing businesses in the state. I was being sought out for my advice on legislative issues, hosting business groups, giving graduation speeches, and serving on boards, yet I hadn’t cashed a full paycheck for months. My role was a cloak that I put on. My class had 156 students from all over the world. We were all owners and presidents of $10 million to $100 million dollar companies. On the third day of class, while we were doing a case study, our professor looked at us and asked, “So are you done being intimidated by everyone else in the class yet?” We all laughed. Then we paused. Then we laughed again even louder. It sank in that each of us was as intimidated by the others as they were of us. We were all business owners who had to say, “Great! I’m doing great!” even if things were going horribly.

In order to attract investors and employees, a company needs to project the image of success. Success breeds success. On a more personal level, the only place you can get a positive performance review when you are the owner of a private company is from the world. You know all the bad stuff, but you don’t want to spread it around; you want what is good about you to be reflected in the eyes of the world and this can be stressful.

Every part of you is affected by that stress when you are president of the company. Not only do problems occupy the mind; they occupy the body. It wasn’t until I sold my company that I understood how much my body had been affected by what went on. When I was no longer president, I heard about something big that happened at Vermont Bread Company, and for the first time, I couldn’t feel the news. The problem occupied my mind only. I saw it as an interesting business challenge. As president, whenever I got bad news in my company, I felt my face turn red and my ears go hot. I felt the news go through me like fire. This was true especially when it was a big piece of information, like when an employee cut off the top of his finger on my equipment. I was standing on my deck at home when I got the call, and a strong feeling coursed through my body. Then I fainted.

Issues like this wreaked such havoc on my body that I had a heck of a time falling asleep at night. My trick during these difficult times was to become quite good at hitting a softball. I had read somewhere about an experiment done with athletes. One group practiced their particular skill regularly on the field and another group used only visualization. The group that used visualization actually performed equal to or better than the other group. So every night as I was trying to fall asleep, I spent hours visualizing hitting a softball. (I became a good hitter for my league team during the next season!) When I had batting practice at night while I fell asleep, I also started to realize a really important fact about my role as president: I couldn’t do it alone.

As president, I needed people to talk to. My original business partner had left, and our thirteen-year conversation had left with him. Bringing my problems home wasn’t an option because, though my family could love me and be empathetic, they couldn’t really help me. Usually I just dumped my problems in an imaginary urn before I went in the front door at night and tried to leave them all behind. At work, I was head hon-cho and supposedly had everything under control, so I couldn’t talk to anyone there. Where was I supposed to get support? I tried Rotary and the chamber of commerce and immediately ran home again. That’s when I decided to set up my first advisory board. I chose strong people who could stand up to me, and I brought them together three to four times a year. I would get a room at the Putney Inn, and we would meet for discussion and dinner. It was such a gift to have a place to cry, plan, and try new ideas. When I outgrew the first group, I put my Business-Owner Queen’s crown on again and fired them nicely and brought in a new group. Those boards got me through the good times and the bad—and had fun doing it.

It is helpful to have an advisory board, but even so, trying to project a positive image to the world and pretend that everything is going well can be difficult, and over the long haul that stress can get very hard to handle. Not only can it be stressful for the business owner, but it can also be stressful to the people around her. We all know about the stress of dealing with difficult people: the customer who calls with threats to cut off your sales, the talented employee who acts out in the workplace, the vendor who overpromises and underperforms. I had years of experience and various strategies for effectively addressing these difficult people. What I wasn’t prepared for was when that person with the bad attitude at work—in my company, on my payroll—was me.

I had been running Vermont Bread Company for most of my adult life. We strived to incorporate our values into the workplace—respect and fairness, quality and integrity—and we always managed with an open door, but a year and a half before I stepped down as president, I shut that open door. I was cranky, short-tempered, miserable, unsmiling, and exhausted. I was stressed out from trying to play the role of president. Finally, I had to stop.

Of course, we all get burned out, stressed, and overwhelmed at various times in our lives, and we don’t always have to step down, but we do have to look at our power roles, including where we might be abusing them and where we are toxic. It is a good idea to communicate with someone who can help. Hiding from something doesn’t make it go away. After fessing up to feeling stressed and overwhelmed, we can begin to figure out how to take care of ourselves. Each of us is playing a role—it’s part and parcel of what it means to grow a company. You can never know what is behind a role, so never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. And never forget your authentic self: feed her, water her, and take care of her.

On Being the Servant and the Master

MARGOT

For me, the title “president” was only a word on the incorporation papers when I started out. When only three people were working for Birkenstock, we were all in it together, and I didn’t feel like I was playing a role. I didn’t have time to think about it because work needed to be done—the phone needed to be answered, letters had to go out, and shoes had to be packed. I was involved with every part of the business, from getting the word out to getting the product out. Later, I realized I had to leave much of the daily nitty-gritty to others and concentrate on building the company. That’s when the role of president started. The employees pushed me into it. They had expectations and notions of what it meant to be president.

By the time the company grew to two hundred employees, a lot of hierarchies had built up. Supervisors weren’t supposed to talk to people who were twice removed from their positions because the managers might feel the supervisors were going behind their backs. This didn’t happen consciously; people were just playing their roles within the fabric of the company. I didn’t really honor “rules” like this, but I never felt I was getting to know the true person when I spoke to an employee. Certain natural barriers existed between us. Employees wanted to put on a good front. They did this unintentionally as part of the innate relationship between employees and employers. No president can undo this; we just have to live with it. It’s not really right to be friends with the people who work for you. It’s more empowering to acknowledge that a power differential exists than to ignore it. Employees feel the same way—they wouldn’t want to tell you all their intimate life stories. You can be close, but you can’t be friends.

As president of a large company, I felt I had to put a smile on my face in the morning even if I was concerned about the company. If I smiled, the company would smile. I had to be out there, thinking on my feet. If someone were to come to me with a question or problem, my natural tendency would be to take time to digest the information, go back to the person later, and say what I think. But as president, I was expected to have an immediate answer for everything. I also had to be somewhat more verbal than I might be normally. I enjoyed being a bit of an extrovert while I was doing it, but I noticed that when I got home, I didn’t want to talk anymore. I wanted to balance my workday by doing physical activities that involved moving my hands. I wanted to change the energy and work on tasks that could be completed immediately, like ironing.

It can be difficult for a president to find people to talk to about what is really going on. I actually had only one woman within the company whom I could talk to. She was one of the first employees hired, and she had grown up with the company. I could talk openly to her because she knew everything that had happened since the company’s inception. I also completed two executive education programs at Stanford University, and those gave me a certain amount of community in terms of learning that I wasn’t alone in what I was dealing with. The first course was a two-week program for executives of smaller companies. The following year I took a marketing course. They were wonderful. There was a feeling of “Hey, we’re in this boat, too. You’re not that strange.” We had some great professors, especially one business psychology professor who was a great morale booster. His advice helped me deal with whatever came up at Birkenstock.

For about eight years, I also belonged to a group of ten or so local business owners. That was my version of an advisory board. We met once a month. For the first half of the day a speaker would talk on a certain subject. During the second half of the day, we talked about our businesses. Each person had a few minutes to discuss what was going on. The business owners were very down to earth. If a person was going through a crisis, we would have a lot of discussion around that. But I noticed that even there, I filtered whatever I said. It would have been far more helpful if I had been with a group of fellow travelers who were also on the vision-driven business road. (I didn’t know about Social Venture Network at that time.)

Except for these few outlets, I kept most everything in, and I balanced it with activities at home. Nobody really knew if we were going through hard times except the folks who wrote the checks. Then we started bringing in consultants to do team building and dialog training, and we began to implement ideas about open-book management. That was a really positive experience. Not everybody has that spirit of “Hey, this is my company, too, and I’m committed to it whether or not I get a bonus or a profit-sharing plan.” But the training was definitely positive overall, and I continued it until I left.

During that time we had some not-so-good years, and I realized that it was healthier for me and my employees to have transparency in times of trouble. Whatever was happening would have been in the air anyway. Everyone would have known something was wrong, but no one would have known what, and that is scarier than handling the truth. There was a sense of relief in knowing that even though the situation could get pretty ugly, I was being honest and my employees knew where they stood. They had the choice to act accordingly. They knew I would continue to tell them the truth even if it was tough. That helped support morale. I still carried the whole burden of what was happening on my shoulders, but other people knew about it, and even if the burden and responsibility were mine something shifted. I didn’t have to worry about keeping secrets from people, I wasn’t pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes, and no PR lies were floating around to add a level of guilt. Overall, after the open-book management style was implemented, I felt more congruent, more honest, and more consistent.

Through all this, what always pulled me through was that I didn’t focus on owning the company and being president; I focused on my passion for the product. During our ups and downs, I saw my job as being the missionary for it, and I would do everything necessary, everything possible, to make the product successful. By being a “servant” to the product, I grew into the “master” role, and I got used to having power. It felt natural. It was familiar and expected. How much this power originated from being the owner of the place became apparent to me only after I sold my company.

Three years after I sold the company, I was still chairman of the board. A conflict developed with our supplier in Germany, and I had a definite idea of how it should be handled. I advocated my point fervently. The rest of the board members were opposed to it. Finally, one member turned to me and said coldly, “Remember, you don’t own this place anymore.” There went my power—what a shock!

After I recovered, I realized she was right. I was no longer in charge. I had been president for a long time. Playing the role had been important for the success of the business, for the people connected to it, and, yes, even for myself. It had helped me tap into the strength and courage I had inside me. Still, when I was starting out, I had wished I could be “just me,” and when this board member spoke to me the way she did, I realized I was allowed to bow out of the role. Or I thought I could. The truth is, this role-playing still continues years later. I have been built up into a legend. When people learn that I am the founder of Birkenstock USA, they ooh and aah about it. For the sake of the company, I still keep up appearances. It is amazing to me.

Staying Out of the Middle

JOE, CREATIVE MACHINES

I think a lot of stress occurs if the whole business is centered around the business owner. So, some of my decisions in the business are based on trying to get the pressure off me so I don’t have to play the role of president all the time and make every single decision. For instance, I decided to hire Paula, our bookkeeper, because I didn’t want everything centered around me. Or, at least on the surface, it wouldn’t appear to be centered on me. Now that she is on board, she is the one who keeps records of employee vacations and time off. Even though I make all the decisions, she sets policy. It gives me some distance from that area because she is the mouthpiece.

When it comes to human resource decisions, including paid holidays, family leave, and so on, I would rather not make all the little decisions. This is both because I don’t have the time and because I don’t want to risk making arbitrary decisions based more on my personal preferences than on fair and rational thinking. The largest employer in Tucson is the University of Arizona, and all its policies are published online. In a state where laws are skewed in favor of the employer, the UA is relatively liberal and closer to my own values. Our policy has become “Whatever the UA does or nicer.” An HR lawyer might tell me this policy is wrong, but it has worked for years. Now when employees ask me, “Are we going to take Martin Luther King Jr. Day off?” I don’t have to get into a big political discussion that might be fraught with minefields.

Staying out of the middle is also one of the reasons we decided to do health care like we do it. With our size company, our insurance agent advised us not to do a group plan—every person should have an individual plan, and the company would reimburse the cost. Individual plans are quite good, and though group rates are good at first, as time goes on they rise, and once you’ve given up an individual plan to a group plan you can’t go back. I also didn’t want the stress of being in the middle of my employees’ health problems. Now if they’re having trouble with a claim, they talk to their insurance agent and not to me. If we had a group plan, I’d either have to get in the middle or I’d have to hire a human resources person to get in the middle because whenever you have a group “something,” someone has to get in the middle—and in a small company, it’s usually the owner.

Being the boss can be difficult. Not only do you have to make these kinds of decisions, but you also have to put on a brave public front and give the impression that there’s a greater degree of order and purpose than there really is. Sometimes when we’re late with our exhibits, when museums want to wait until the last minute to commit money or to commit to a particular job, when they want something unique and they want to control costs and they want to control the process and I think that getting the exhibits in on time is going to take a miracle, I just want to curl up in the corner and cry. But I can’t. I have to put on a good face for my employees. It’s part of a day’s work. Playing roles is what we do in life all the time. But it’s not the role that keeps me going; it’s my employees. The fear of having to fire people or not being able to pay them is part of what makes me not want to throw in the towel during difficult times. If I quit, I would feel like I wasn’t living up to a promise I made to them, which isn’t entirely true. I should have the courage to fire people, but I don’t want to have to.

Culturally, we have the need to succeed or, at least, the need not to fail. A while back I recognized that I felt as if I would be a personal failure if my business folded. A lot of people who have started businesses have a really personal relationship with their companies. Their sense of self is wrapped up in how well the business does. In some ways a business failure feels like a referendum on them. That’s the more personal drive that makes people want to stay in the role of president. It might even be stronger than the company’s mission.

I remember when I was able to work long hours, before I had a family. I was out running late at night and trying to make a certain decision that had to be made. Part of me just wanted to give up and say, “This is just too much pressure. I didn’t want to get into this. I wanted to do this as a fun thing.” The prospect of dissolving my own business and finding someplace nice and safe to work was appealing. The reasons piled up on both sides, and finally one little thing tipped the balance in favor of sticking with my own company: my father. I thought about how he had wanted to have his own company and didn’t, partly because I came along. And I thought about what Jung said—how the unlived lives of our parents are what most deeply affects us—and I knew I had to see it through. I could have dropped out, quit playing president, and gotten another job with a museum like I had before I started my own company, but the thought of my father never having a chance to do what I was doing pushed me through. It was helpful to realize I was living a life that someone else only dreamed about, and it made the pressure of playing president worth it to me.

Weaving the Role with the Mission

MARIE, MS. FOUNDATION AND THE WHITE HOUSE PROJECT

When the Ms. Foundation started, I felt like I was acting on be half of the women in this country, and I didn’t worry about how I went about doing that. I found that when it came to getting funding, what mattered was not the content of what got funded or the value of it but what was known about it, what was out there. Perception was much more important than content when it came to money. I remember taking that in and realizing “You know, Marie, whether you like it or not, this is the world.” I put on a good front so that people would fund the organization. Even if we were in the hole and we were not doing very well, I didn’t let on because I knew image was very important. I didn’t hear any ethical voice telling me I was doing wrong. I had very few times when I felt immoral about it. If I had said to people, “The Ms. Foundation is flat out of luck, broke, and dead,” then they would have said, “Let it die,” and the women of this country needed to think this was a big foundation. They needed hope and inspiration every day. So I knew I’d better get out there and do whatever I could to make it a big foundation. And I did.

I never felt like an imposter; I just felt like I was doing what I needed to do on behalf of our mission, and if this meant putting on a good front until we were strong, so be it. When I was growing up, I watched my working-class poor mother do the same. She knew how to present herself to the world in order to move up in social rank, to the middle class, so that her kids could have more in life and get more out of the world. She was able to get out of the strictures of her class by knowing how to dress. It didn’t matter to her that this was a thin value for the world to judge her by. She wanted to get ahead, so she played by society’s rules and dressed accordingly. I therefore understood that if you wanted to get to the next place, you had to look the part. Now I wear makeup and nice clothes because doing so reminds me that I can always make everything okay in the world if I think about how I present myself. Even after I became successful, my mother would remind me that dressing the part is important. After half of my relationship life, when I started to live with a woman, I called my mother—who came out of working-class, biblical values—and said, “I lived the first half of my life with men. I am going to live the second half of life with a woman. I found a woman I love.” My mother asked me, “Does she know how to dress?” That was her response. She knew that how you present yourself can be a way to survive, and thrive, in the world.

I had a great mentor named Harvey Jenkins who taught me the same thing. He had a crew cut and looked pretty straight-laced, and he said to me, “Marie, you know the world doesn’t really expect you to conform, not this country anyway. People just expect you to look like you are conforming.” He was a radical man with radical ideas about the roots of change, and he was able to transcend societal norms and get things done because he didn’t look like a rebel or a trouble starter.

The trouble with playing the role of a successful person who is representing a thriving organization is that you don’t necessarily get rewarded for your work. Because I have to look a certain way and act sunny and positive in order to do my job, people think everything comes easily to me. One of my key advisers believed my work was effortless. She actually hated that things weren’t more difficult. She would say, “Marie is so smart, she can just get money—it’s so easy for her.” There’s a need for people to believe that you must be succeeding because you have good luck. God, I wish! There may be a few people in the world who are attractive and a lot comes to them, but most of us are just working every day. The truth is, I can be up at 4:30 a.m. and work until whatever time at night, and when I am out on the road people think I have a lot of energy, even if I am exhausted, because I put my game face on. The reason they think the work isn’t difficult for me is that the organization was started by big names, and people think I already have a lot of resources. I don’t want to be a martyr and say, “I work so hard,” but I do want people to know the truth. When someone says your job is easy and doesn’t take a lot of effort, it is like being seen inauthentically and not having your hard work acknowledged. It is important to be valued. The lie is letting each other believe that the job comes easily to some of us, which makes others say, “Why doesn’t it come easily to me?” There’s the opposite side of this, too. I’ve met many women of wealth who have to act like they don’t have any money so they can be in the world. They come to board meetings wearing blue jeans. We all have to figure out how to present ourselves.

Because my presentation is so important in my work, I always have to make sure I haven’t crossed the line into being only a persona. I have to ask myself, “Are you lying, or are you representing something you believe in?” The latter is a vision. Your product or organization should be your vision. I don’t think I’ve ever told people something that I didn’t truly believe, but if I feel like I am on the edge of doing that, I need to ask for help. I have to have people around me whom I can tell the truth to. I need to make sure I get moral, spiritual, and colle-gial support. If I have people I can confide in, I can feel whole every day. When we talk about our roles aloud, we remember that everyone is in some way dealing with her persona versus her core. There is no authentic self. We are integrating all parts of ourselves and figuring out which part we should show.

When the Authentic Self Is Troubled: To Share or Not to Share

CAROL, PUTNEY PASTA

I feel like I’ve grown into my role as president. It didn’t come naturally, and I don’t think it does for many people. As time went on, I became comfortable and confident with my role, yet the one thing that could be difficult was the feeling of transparency. I wanted to keep an open door, but it wasn’t always appropriate to share everything with my employees.

As a socially responsible business owner, I felt like I had to protect my staff, and sometimes that meant not telling them the whole truth. For instance, my marriage fell apart during the time I owned the company. I hid that from the staff for a long time because my husband and I had started the business together. The story of our company was a couple’s story: We had started with hot dogs and changed to pasta, and together we were Mr. and Mrs. Pasta. He had worked in the business for ten years. He stopped doing much in the last few years, and I made excuses for him. I think it was to protect him from whatever the staff might have felt about him. It’s a small company, and everybody sees what everybody else does, so the staff knew my husband wasn’t as active in the business as he had been. Plus, I wanted the staff to feel like the family was still together. They would ask me how Jon was doing, and I would say he had some health issues but that he was doing well, “Everything is fine.” Until that point, we were an open-door company. It was part of our mission. I had always been very honest with my staff. But this time I felt it might be better to keep the issue private.

Another time I was not completely honest in my role as president was when the low-carb trend hit. It is difficult to be honest during stressful times. I had trouble keeping an open door. When manufacturing companies are in trouble, they try to keep the sales force going. They try to keep their employees’ spirits up, hoping each month they can hang on, even if it’s for only a few more months. In a values-driven company, it is important to tell the truth, but part of the problem with telling the truth is that if you are a supplier and word gets out that you are having trouble, the retailers might back out. They are at risk, too, and they want to make sure they can depend on you; if not, they need to look for a different supplier. If they feel like you are a sinking ship, chances are you are a sinking ship. On a personal level, it is important to protect your pride and dignity. When a situation changes, you might not feel you can share it publicly so you internalize it.

When things are going badly and you are president, you also wonder if people can separate you from your company. Even if your company is failing, it doesn’t mean you are a failure, but it’s difficult to know whether other people realize that. I remember being at a board meeting for a local independent food store that was in deep financial trouble. I could relate to what was going on, and as I was making suggestions for some really tough decisions, I couldn’t help thinking, “If people knew how badly my business is doing, would they still think that I knew what I was doing? If my business fails, how can I give them guidance for their business?” In reality, because of my own problems, I could better see what other troubled businesses were going through, but if they knew what was happening with me, I wondered if they would trust me.

I’ve been in the community for thirty years, and because I owned a business, it might have looked like I was successful and had a lot of money. It didn’t matter what the business was doing; that’s the perception. After a while, I felt like I was in a play, and I had to continue in the role of a successful business-person. We all adapt to that role in different ways.

Approaching Burnout

TOM, NORTHEAST DELTA DENTAL

Playing president is a lot of pressure, and about two and a half years ago I realized I was headed toward total burnout. One day I looked at my life and realized, “Oh, my God, I am going to be a disaster if I don’t get some help.” I felt like I was in my own movie, racing from one meeting to the next, feeling that if I missed anything I would crash and burn. I was not really enjoying anything. Life had become a series of checking items off my list. I’d go to my son’s soccer game, then I’d go straight to a Red Cross board meeting, and then I’d head back to the office for a teleconference. I was running myself ragged, and I was also trying to be a mentor for people internally. I was hurting my employees and my family because I had very little energy left for them. All my systems were maxed out. My life had become the ultimate rat race. No one would have known it because I didn’t suddenly stop showing up; I still made it to every meeting and event. But I was dragging myself home at midnight, totally exhausted, and then I would have the minimum amount of sleep and wake up at 5:00 a.m. to do it all over again.

When I realized I was headed for burnout, I hired a team of resource people. I had gained somewhere between fifteen and thirty pounds, so first I hired a personal trainer. I also hired a presentation consultant. Because I am an introvert, giving speeches was really stressful, and I needed help in that department. Then I found a massage therapist. I hired a family coach because we had four teenagers, including twin boys, and we needed some guidance. Basically, I hired eight or nine people. They were speaking from the level of spirit and soul. These folks all had really beautiful wisdom. They asked me some deep questions about the meaning of my day-to-day life. They helped me take an honest look at my life to see what was really going on. And they all told me the same thing: I had to trim back in order to be healthy.

The whole process of getting healthy again was a year-long struggle. I was on so many boards and also trying to run my company (which is actually four companies and four different boards), so I was spending a tremendous amount of time at night and in the morning at board meetings. My presentation consultant had the great idea of using my calendar as a landscape. She looked at it and said, “Is this how you want the landscape of your life to look?” We looked at which boards I could drop off of as my term limits came up. It’s very difficult for me to say no. I always want to say yes to any reasonable or unreasonable request that an organization offers me. It felt good in the short term to say yes, but it was hurting me in the long run. So my consultant encouraged me to say yes only to customer requests to speak about oral health or to something I was passionate about, like 5K road races or the Red Sox. With those parameters I was able to start saying no, and I trimmed back on quite a few external commitments. It hurt internally at first, but I’ve gotten better at realizing I am saying no for the right reasons. Saying no also means taking time out for myself. When I get a massage, I drive out to Keene, where my cell phone doesn’t work, so even on the way there, I can decompress. During the ninety-minute session, I don’t have to talk; I can just sleep or relax. That has helped me tremendously to rejuvenate.

Before I got to a place of burnout, my resources for dealing with my company were more traditional. I was involved with a network of CEOs, and if I had a business problem, I could discuss it with them. They weren’t my bosses or my subordinates, so I could talk openly about business issues. They might be running companies in completely different industries, so they were able to give fresh insights on the nuts and bolts of business plans and expertise on issues like technical and personnel problems. But this was a somewhat superficial outlet because the CEOs focused only on business. I didn’t feel comfortable saying, “Hey, guys, I’m about to become a basket case.” I am still involved with them, but they aren’t nearly as helpful as my more spiritual advisers. In terms of where I am going personally and where I think the success of the company is, it lies with this new group, this new team I’m involved with.

I used to joke that I had gone from being a totally low-maintenance person to being a person who needs nine people to help me through life. Then the suggestion was made that I shouldn’t talk about accessing resources in such a self-deprecating way. If I am setting an example and trying to get others to know it is okay to get help, I shouldn’t use self-deprecating language because people might not know if I am joking or not. One of the things I’m doing a better job of now is explaining to my employees that it’s okay to ask for help. I’m very free about telling people I use a presentation consultant. I’ve offered her services to a number of our employees who make speeches. People know it’s okay to step away from the office for an hour or so to let off some steam. I try to demonstrate that myself. Now we have a beautiful fitness center next door with a trainer available, and several running groups run during the day. I am trying to get the message across about the importance of asking for help, setting boundaries, taking time out, and caring for ourselves. And I am trying to do it without attaching a stigma to it.

What We Learned

In these stories, our values-driven entrepreneurs described the challenges of juggling a lot of balls while playing their roles as president. They had to tell the truth, stay true to their missions, project success to the outside world, keep smiles on their faces, and try to take care of their stress levels at the same time—not any easy task! We can learn from each other how to keep all those balls in the air. It starts with acknowledging your own story about playing the role of president. Which aspects are easy, and where is it more difficult? Can you see yourself and your role clearly? And where can you get the help you need? Here are some ideas:

Try not to compare your insides with everyone else’s out-sides. Remember that no matter how someone looks, he is probably working just as hard as you are and feeling just as scared and anxiety ridden. Focus on your own truth rather than imagining someone else’s.

Reach out to another entrepreneur and tell her the truth. Internalizing stress just makes it bigger. If you can find someone to talk to and be yourself with, you might be able to alleviate some of the stress that arises from trying to keep a smile on your face and acting like everything is great.

Do something physical. A lot of CEOs do something at the end of the day to check out, like drink a glass of wine or something stronger, but this doesn’t necessarily take care of the body. You can try tai chi, running, tennis, yoga, or workouts at a gym. Put these activities on your calendar. If you schedule time to take care of yourself, your employees might be more apt to follow suit.

Enroll in an executive education program for CEOs. It can be almost impossible to find someone in your family or your workplace who understands the pressures of playing president. When you join an executive education program, not only will you see that other CEOs are going through some of the same issues that you are, but you can also gain skills and tools for dealing with some of the major problems that arise when you are president. You might also find mentors that can help you.

Recognize the signs of approaching burnout and get the help you need. Get a massage, hire a coach, make a therapy appointment, find a personal trainer, or take an art class! Somehow you have to find something that fits into your day. This may seem counterintuitive, but by taking the time, you actually make the time. You will sleep better and work more effectively, and your people will be happier because you are happier. Start with your own mental health, and then you will be on the road to having a healthy company. You must have this conviction to get help or it won’t carry to your employees. If you can learn to take care of you, your business will be positively affected.

Form that advisory board early and use it often.

These suggestions have been gleaned from stories we heard from our entrepreneurs. Use the ones that work for who you are, and leave the rest for another day or pass them on to a fellow CEO who might be finding it difficult to integrate his own role as president with who he is in his core.

PRACTICAL TIP

Part A: Find a Way to Make Yourself Take the First Step.

Take your head out of the sand or pick yourself up off the floor, dust yourself off, and take just one step forward. If you can find a way to take that first step, you’ll find that the next ones are easier.

Part B: Know When Not Acting Is the Correct Action.

A lot of problems can be solved by taking the counterintuitive step of not making a decision when things are most stressful, customers are screaming, and your key staff is pushing hard for something to happen. This is not a recommendation for putting your head in the sand and not dealing with issues—it’s just that sometimes a delay will allow the problem to shift, give you time to get more information, or let everyone calm down until a simple solution can be seen.

PRACTICAL TIP

Do Something Tangible

As our companies grow many entrepreneurs find their work becomes less and less tangible. It can help to garden or paint or build something or clear brush—something physical that you can point to to say, “I did that to day.”

PRACTICAL TIP

Volunteer for a Local Nonprofit

Find a cause you care about that is completely different from your everyday work and volunteer for an hour. Try something you have never done before: serve food at a homeless shelter, stuff envelopes for a year-end fund-raising drive, bake cookies for a school bake sale, or do whatever sounds different and useful. Remember, though, do this in balance. Don’t overdo it and don’t overcommit your time.