Work rhythms shift. Routines are disrupted. And in this climate, some change can feel personal. Leaders aren’t just navigating shifting job roles and fewer resources, they’re navigating the emotional toll that comes with it. This year too, many people are dealing with more than usual seasonal changes.
Some are navigating redundancies, restructures, or the ripple effects of an uncertain political and economic landscape.
According to ONS data, over 270,000 payrolled employees have lost their jobs in the past 12 months, with 109,000 of these job losses occurring between April and May alone. At the same time, DEI initiatives are also being scaled back. In the UK, nearly 40% of senior leaders believe some DEI measures should be rolled back, and several high-profile organisations have already reduced DEI resourcing or paused initiatives.
When budgets tighten and headcount fall, the challenge isn’t just operational - it’s emotional. It can feel like a lot, and in times like this, it’s easy to fall into one of the biggest myths of change:
You can drop everything else while you deal with change.
Unfortunately, most of us can’t.
You’re still leading teams, managing households, and showing up for others. You can’t stop every part of your life just because one part is shifting, whether that shift is happening to you, around you, or within you.
At Firefly, we work with senior leaders and organisations to help them navigate these changes. We support them to lead with clarity when workloads shift, pressure hits, and tough choices have to be made. Our experience is that without a clear method for prioritising responsibilities, leaders can experience decision fatigue, where even simple decisions feel overwhelming.
Instead, you have to work out what you can carry, what you can delegate, and what you can consciously let go of - at least for now.
Which balls are crystal and which are rubber.
One of the practical ways to navigate this is a simple metaphor we often return to at Firefly, and one that features in our CEO Kirsty Maynor’s book, Untangled:
“Mark which responsibilities are rubber balls, meaning they’ll bounce if they get dropped. And then mark the ones that are crystal and will shatter if they hit the ground.”
The key isn’t to juggle perfectly, it’s to know which balls you can let drop at any particular time.
Take some time to write down your responsibilities - leading your team, getting the groceries, picking your kids up from school, walking your dog, etc - then ask yourself:
Which of these are crystal and will break if dropped?
Which of these are rubber and will bounce back?
Letting go of the guilt.
There’s one thing that often gets in the way of this theory: guilt.
Guilt for not replying to your emails fast enough, guilt for not showing up full of energy, guilt for delegating a task to someone else.
But dropping something that won’t break isn’t a failure - it’s leadership. We can’t (and shouldn’t) try to do it all.
Our CEO, Kirsty, experienced this first-hand recently. After months of caring for a terminally ill family member, recovering from surgery, and trying to keep everything else moving, she realised something had to give. So she pressed pause. Not on everything, but on the parts that could wait. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was a conscious one, grounded in clarity about what matters most at that moment.
Emotional steadiness isn’t about staying positive at all costs; it’s about recognising your limits, getting clear on your priorities, and choosing where to focus your energy. And sometimes, that means letting other things wait.
Giving yourself permission.
In seasons of change, the most powerful thing you can do is give yourself permission. Permission to pause, permission to delegate, permission to reprioritise. Because change doesn’t just require action, it also requires space.
As you navigate the summer months with families at home, quieter offices, shifting workloads and bigger political changes at play, we’ll leave you with this:
You don’t have to hold it all. You just have to hold what matters most.