The phantom load of leadership — the small blinking lights in your life that draw a quiet current, each one keeping just enough juice flowing to leap into action when needed. They also create an invisible drain on your energy that is more costly than you might realize.

There's a program running in the background of most human minds that whispers: just give me the steps and I can do anything. And its corollary: if you don't give me clear steps, you can't expect me to know what to do — or to get it "right." Business books, parenting books, leadership frameworks — they all feed this hunger. Break tasks into manageable pieces. Create clear pathways for those in your care. As truisms go, it's not wrong. It's just not always true … Steps don't guarantee ease. Sometimes they create more work, not less. I wish someone had put that in a book years ago!