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If you’ve ever felt the immediate urge to jump in, fix the problem, and make everything better — this episode is for you.
In senior living leadership, the instinct to rescue is common. When someone comes to you overwhelmed or stressed, your body reacts before your brain does. Your chest tightens. Your heart races. You feel the pressure to act fast.
That reaction isn’t leadership instinct — it’s anxiety.
In this follow-up episode to The Questions That Build Leaders, Erin explores the skill underneath asking better questions: learning how to breathe through the anxiety of fixing, rescuing, and over-functioning.
This is a mentoring-style episode that teaches leaders how to pause, regulate their nervous system, and stay present long enough to help others think, grow, and solve problems for themselves — without guilt, shame, or withdrawal of support.
As Erin shares throughout the episode:
Every time you help someone solve their own problem, your influence grows.
🎧 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Why the urge to fix feels urgent — and why it’s often anxiety, not leadership
- How rescuing creates short-term relief but long-term dependence
- The simple one-breath pause that interrupts over-functioning
- How to respond instead of react when problems come to you
- Why fixing soothes the leader but doesn’t build confidence in others
- How asking questions actually multiplies support instead of withholding it
- The connection between calm leadership, influence, and capacity
- How to stop being the bottleneck and start building leaders
- Why leadership requires awareness more than urgency
🌱 Key Takeaway
You don’t have to fix everything to be a great leader.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is stay present in the discomfort long enough to let someone find their own answer. That pause — even one breath — is where confidence, ownership, and leadership capacity begin to grow.
📣 Resources & Next Steps
If this episode resonates with you, you may also enjoy:
🎧 The Questions That Build Leaders (previous episode)
💡 Erin also teaches these skills inside the 100% Leader Program, where leaders learn how to build capacity, confidence, and influence without burning out.
Details and links are available in the show notes.
🤝 Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
If this episode helped you:
- Share it with a leader who carries too much
- Listen to the previous episode as a companion
- Send Erin a message with your biggest takeaway
As always, aspire for more for you , knowing you’re already enough.
Learn more about the 100% Leader here
New ED's Playbook to Creating and IMpactful Community Cultrue
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30 mins