The zoom meeting with a few of my junior team members started out just fine. As fine as it can be when you are on Zoom meeting number 11th (or was it 12th?) of the day. Then it happened. Three of my four kids burst into my home office, excited to show me an art project. I struggled and failed to hit mute. My wife had interrupted my previous meeting not 20 minutes earlier, so I was admittedly already on edge. As I yelled at them to get out and quiet down, all in front of my understandably horrified employee, I couldn’t help thinking to myself: Am I being a terrible dad or a terrible business leader? In that moment, it felt like I was failing at both.
Business leadership is hard in the best of times. But right now might be the toughest time to run, and especially to launch, a successful company.