Leaders in our field are fighting an uphill battle. Navigating so many different contexts, personalities, traumas and emotions, leading youth-serving, education, nonprofit organizations can be so draining. I recently shared this article on social media: The Emotional Labor of Being a Leader . The idea in the article is basically that leadership has always required emotional labor and we need to support leaders so they can be better at their jobs.

I have to laugh out loud first. Like—seriously—we needed Harvard Business Review to tell us that leadership requires emotional labor!? Um. I think BEING HUMAN requires emotional labor. But maybe that’s the problem—how often do we remember that we as leaders are just that…human?

And, humans have limitations, sure. But we also have power. Feeling and being able to make sense of what we’re feeling is top of the list for me. I call it a felt sense of understanding.

As leaders, so much of our time and energy is devoted to proving that our work is essential. In youth-serving fields, because we do not follow the traditional school structure, we seek external validation through research, evaluation, publications by “experts” and approval by funders. We twist ourselves into pretzels “making the case” for our work.

But why? We already know in our core that our work is essential. We know it because we are doing the work and we feel the YES moments, the A-HA moments, the THIS-MAKES-A-DIFFERENCE moments.

Yes, it’s helpful to have the research to back up what we already know to be true. But we already know it to be true and to matter.

We know leadership requires emotional labor because we have been doing it. WE have been laboring. And, while it’s nice to get permission from external sources that we should “promote self-compassion from the top down”—we do not need that permission. These articles, research, “experts” work in service of us—the people, right here, doing the work.

To that end, I wanted to make something that validates and values some of the powers that you, leaders of youth-serving organizations have. I wanted to remind you that you don’t need to look outside yourself— you already have these powers. I also wanted to make sure you know that these are, in fact, superpowers. So, here you are 👇 3 Hidden Superpowers of Amazing Youth-Serving Organization Leaders, Like You. Click on the image, print it out, post it where you’ll see it when you need this reminder.