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   Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 1:31 AM
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Wed 7/1 — The executive who kept a charger for everyone (over-functioning)

The most capable executive I ever worked with kept a spare charger for everyone else on her floor. She remembered every birthday. She caught the errors three levels down. She was the person the whole system leaned on, and she never once let it show that the weight was too much. From the outside, it looked like exceptional leadership. In many ways it was. But underneath, she was running a pattern she had learned long before she ever held a title: if I stay ahead of every problem, nothing falls apart and no one gets hurt. That pattern made her indispensable. It was also quietly costing her her health, her judgment, and the parts of leadership that only work when a person is rested. Over three decades in healthcare and federal leadership, I watched some version of this in nearly every high performer I worked with. We call it dedication, but often, it is over-functioning...and the difference matters, because one is sustainable and the other has a shelf life. If you are the person your whole team leans on, here is a question worth sitting with: What would actually fall apart if you stopped catching it first?