For many driven leaders, the 40s don't bring the stability they expected. Instead, they bring a relentless squeeze from every direction, what we call the Midlife Squeeze. It's a silent crisis that happens when escalating responsibilities collide with your shrinking personal bandwidth. Ironically, it hits hardest at the very moment corporate high-achievers are supposed to be at their peak.
Ray Dalio captured this perfectly when he called it the most destructive crisis, because the pressure forces a stark choice: "You either break, or break through."
If you're fighting a war on multiple fronts—caring for ageing parents while funding your kids' college education, chasing peak performance metrics while trying to stay healthy, keeping up with the latest longevity trends while barely keeping yourself together—you're living the Midlife Squeeze.
Here's how to fight back against burnout:
1. Practice Transcendental Meditation (20 minutes, twice daily)
The mechanics are simple:
- Sit comfortably and close your eyes
- Repeat a word or mantra softly in your mind (silently, not aloud)
- Do this for 20 minutes in the morning and evening
- The key? Don't force yourself to clear your mind; let it happen naturally
One executive described it as "hitting the reset button on my brain. Everything became clearer."
2. Master the 80/20 Revolution
Morning Clarity (5 minutes)
Start each day by asking yourself:
- What's the 20% of effort that will yield 80% of the results?
- What's the one thing that, if left undone today, will cause the most damage?
- Which tasks drain my energy but offer little value?
The Ruthless Cut
Divide all your tasks into three categories:
- Must Do Myself (10%)
- Delegate (30%)
- Kill It (60%)
Here's the truth: most people fear cutting tasks because they think it makes them look lazy. But ruthless prioritisation is actually the definition of focus. As Hunn Wai shared on the Wild & Wise Podcast about applying the 80/20 rule, sometimes doing less makes you more proactive, not less.
Energy Audit
Ask yourself honestly:
- Who gives me energy? See them more often.
- Who drains my life force? Reduce contact.
- What activities recharge me? Do them more.
- What activities exhaust me? Find a way to stop them.
3. Build a Life-Saving Feedback Loop
Create regular check-ins with yourself:
- Weekly (Every Sunday): What did I achieve? What went wrong? What did I learn?
- Monthly (Every 30 Days): Am I still moving toward my main goals? What needs adjusting? How's my overall progress?
- Quarterly (Every 3 Months): Is my life heading in the right direction fundamentally? Does anything need a major change? Do I need to reinvent something?
The Midlife Squeeze is the hardest period, but it also holds the most potential. Especially when you leverage your innate talents. Tools like CliftonStrengths can help you identify your unique personal operating system across 34 themes. When you lead with your natural strengths, overwhelming tasks become manageable challenges. You find efficiency, resilience, and energy.
Here's what's at stake:
If you manage this period well, the next decade will be your Golden Years; you'll have experience, energy, and wisdom working in harmony.
If you don't, you risk staying stuck in the same exhausting cycle for another 20 to 30 years.
The choice is yours: Break or Breakthrough?
If this resonates with you, be sure to subscribe to this website for more insights on maximising your strengths through every season of life. And if you know someone navigating a season of change who could use a little clarity, please share this with them.
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How Can We Build Leadership Skills & Mindset?
As mentioned in the previous article, “What is Leadership Mindset? Can Good Leaders Really Be Made?”, a leadership mindset is a way of thinking that benefits both executives and people in the organisation.
Here are the methods that can be used to build leadership skills & mindset within the team.
5 Ways to Enhance Team Leadership Skills
- Build Self-leadership: Create opportunities for team members to evaluate themselves through workshops, activities, or questionnaires so that each person can learn and understand their own weaknesses and strengths better.
- Build Trust through intelligent task delegation and challenging goal-setting: This stimulates the team to want to develop and work to their full potential. Give autonomy in work without micromanaging, but provide support when the team needs it. This method helps everyone on the team have ownership of their work and feel more comfortable working.
- Create an open communication culture: Create opportunities for the team to talk, exchange ideas, and give feedback to each other, and actually use the feedback received to improve work processes or management.
- Create Vision: Help the team see the big picture by setting clear goals and expectations, so they have a broader perspective and don't just focus solely on completing tasks.
- Recognise Progress: This could be in the form of praise or small rewards so that team members know that the work they do is meaningful and contributes to moving the organisation forward.
4 Common Leadership Mind Traps
Being aware of these common "mind traps" is the first step to overcoming them.
- "I'm not good enough." This trap prevents people from taking initiative, making decisions, and getting things done. It's paralysing because it puts you in a passive position, waiting for someone else to make the first move rather than stepping up for yourself.
- "I'm not smart enough." One of the most prevalent traps among leaders today is the fear of looking stupid or being wrong. This leads to playing it safe, avoiding risks and keeping opinions to yourself. The result? Decisions based on what others think rather than on your own judgment and expertise.
- "I'm not strong enough." Leaders who fall into this trap become afraid to challenge the status quo, anticipating pushback from others who are comfortable with how things have always been done. They worry they can't handle the emotional discomfort or fear of being labelled as "pushy" or "difficult."
- "Failure makes me/us look bad." The fear of failure reflecting poorly on ourselves can prevent us from the uncomfortable but valuable task of understanding what went wrong and why. Rather than seeing failure as a learning opportunity, many people choose to move on quickly, missing the chance for growth.
Moving Forward
If your team feels stuck or if you're carrying too much on your shoulders, it's a sign that your leadership approach needs to evolve. The good news? You don't need a fancy title to start thinking like a senior leader. You just need to focus on cultivating your authentic strengths.
It's time to step up and lead like you, but better.
Ready to identify your leadership strengths and blind spots? Take our leadership quiz to discover your unique style: https://www.wildnwise.co/leadership-strengths-quiz
What is a Leadership Mindset? Can Good Leaders Really Be Made?
"Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work" - Vince Lombardi
Broadly, a leadership mindset refers to the way of thinking necessary to be a good leader. For someone to become a good leader, they need to be more than just competent at their work; they must also possess well-rounded thinking and skills.
Why Leadership Mindset Matters
Leadership mindset isn't just important for executives or team leaders. ‘It's something that benefits team members as well. ’
As a leader, a leadership mindset enables you to see your team's weaknesses, strengths, and potential. It allows you to delegate work intelligently, match people to the right tasks, and guide your team toward their goals.
As a team member, a leadership mindset helps you work to your full capacity, understand team dynamics, and motivates you to develop and improve yourself.
Building a leadership mindset within your team isn't about making everyone compete to be a leader. It's about empowering every team member, which elevates performance and strengthens teamwork.
Characteristics of Leadership Mindset
Having a leadership mindset means possessing a set of skills and working methods that not only drive the organisation forward but also value and inspire team members.
The key characteristics of leadership:
1. Self-Awareness
A leadership mindset isn't just about leading team members. It's about understanding your own weaknesses and strengths to perform your leadership role at its best. We can think of self-awareness as looking in a mirror and evaluating yourself in various areas, such as planning, communication, or collaboration with others.
2. Visionary Perspective
A good leader creates a clear vision for the team and helps motivate the team to achieve goals together. Having vision doesn't just mean moving the team forward, which also includes being aware of and prepared to handle problems or changes that may arise.
However, having vision should go hand in hand with solution-oriented problem-solving that focuses on finding effective solutions rather than dwelling on problems.
3. Trust
Trust is a crucial characteristic of a leadership mindset because good leaders create opportunities for team members to work at full capacity. That is, believing in the potential of and trusting team members. When you, as a leader, have trust in your team members and are ready to support them when they need it, team members will also trust you as their leader.
4. Effective Communication
One skill of a good leader is effective communication. We know well that communication is the heart of smooth operations. Effective organisational communication isn't about holding frequent meetings. It's about creating an open space for everyone on the team to have opportunities to talk, update, and exchange ideas. Good organisational communication happens when leaders understand its importance and care about building a strong communication culture.
5. Leading by Example
Another important characteristic of a leadership mindset is understanding your role as a leader to your team members. Leaders set standards that directly impact their followers.
For example, if a leader doesn't care about being on time for meetings, team members might question why they should be on time. Therefore, leading by example is an essential leadership skill.
Leaders must be not just 'good at work,' but fundamentally 'good with people.'
The journey to developing a robust leadership mindset starts with understanding where you are today.
Curious about your leadership style? Take the quiz to discover your leadership strengths: https://www.wildnwise.co/leadership-strengths-quiz
The HR Advantage: Unlocking Team Power Through Strengths
HR leaders are always seeking strategies to boost engagement and cohesion. Instead of constantly trying to fix weaknesses, the new proven strategy is simple: double down on strengths.
High-impact workshops using the CliftonStrengths framework aren't just typical team building or survey sessions; they are a powerful tool for unlocking actionable insights that benefit the entire organisation.
Instant Connection, Deeper Insights
The key to a successful corporate workshop lies in the facilitator’s ability to connect. When a leader brings a genuine passion for people development, they can instantly bond with a diverse team. This skill is critical because it creates the safe space needed for participants to truly share and for the facilitator to draw out "valuable insights" that might otherwise remain hidden.
The Mindset Shift That Transforms Teams
The Strengths framework provides a crucial mindset shift, especially for teams under pressure or going through change. It moves the focus away from personal lack and onto collective power.
As one participant noted, the shift is about learning to "leverage on others' strengths instead of focusing on what I lack and how to be more like others."
This awareness is invaluable:
- It cuts through complexity: Teams learn "what we each can contribute to the table."
- It drives cohesion: Understanding individual strengths and behaviours helps teams "collaborate more effectively."
- It provides clarity: The session helps groups "re-focus, know one another better and work better together."
From Awareness to Action
The real value for HR is the immediate, practical application. These workshops quickly transform individual self-awareness into a strong team strategy.
They give managers the exact roadmap needed to make intentional decisions about delegating tasks and leading projects. By incorporating the language of strengths into the culture, HR ensures that the initial assessment becomes a continuous strategy for talent maximisation.
Focusing on what people do best isn't just a morale booster; it's the most direct path to improving organisational performance.