The Word That Builds a Business Can Also Bury a Leader.

Last week, I talked about how my favorite word in business is a conjunction. And.

The word that refuses either/or. Corporate and independent. Brussels and the United States. Lead and advise and govern and coach. I built a practice on that word, and this month I celebrate three years of it.

This week, I want to be honest about the same word. Because the And has a shadow side, and 1,351 CEOs just described it.

What the data says

Vistage, the CEO coaching and peer advisory organization, released its Q2 2026 CEO Confidence Index this month, drawn from 1,351 leaders of small and midsize businesses. The confidence measure declined 3 points to 84.2. Nearly half of CEOs, 45%, say economic conditions have worsened compared to a year ago, a sharp reversal after quarters of improvement.

And yet the growth plans held. 64% still expect revenue growth in the year ahead. Half still plan to expand their workforce. As Vistage's Chief Research Officer Joe Galvin frames it, the present feels harder than the future looks.

But the finding that stopped me was not economic. 70% of CEOs report experiencing burnout at least occasionally. 28% say frequently or daily. Only 8% say never.

And one CEO in the report described the cause in a way no chart could. Working harder to stay on top of the market, and AI, and benefits, and wars, and tariffs, ending with a trailing "and, and, and."

I read this twice. Because it is my favorite word, turned against the leader.

The two Ands

Here is the conundrum, and it is a real one, the kind that resists formula and offers no answer that does not cost something.

The same conjunction lives two different lives.

There is the And you choose. The deliberate And. It expands who you are: this role and that capability, this market and that one, corporate depth and independent perspective. It is additive by design. Every And is a decision.

And there is the And that chooses you. The accumulative And. Tariffs did not replace AI adoption. Geopolitics did not replace the talent challenge. Each layer stacked on the last, and leaders absorbed all of it. Nothing was decided. Everything arrived.

Same word. Opposite experiences. And here is the uncomfortable truth: from the outside, the two are indistinguishable. Both look like a full calendar. Both look like range. Only the leader knows which And they are living, and by the time they are certain, the accumulative And has usually been running the business for months.

How to tell them apart

The difference between the two Ands is not workload. Plenty of leaders carry enormous loads and thrive. The difference is alignment.

The deliberate And points everything at the same destination. The accumulative And points everywhere at once.

The Vistage data shows exactly where that misalignment lives. Among the same CEOs, 89% say they can clearly express their competitive advantage. But fewer say their resources are actually aligned to their plan, and fewer still consistently measure progress against it. Leaders know who they are. The gap opens between knowing and aligning, and the report names what fills that gap: burned-out leaders default to managing rather than leading, protecting the business they have rather than building the one they want.

That is strategic drift, and it is not a strategy problem. It is a leadership sustainability problem.

And drift is expensive. It shows up as the decision deferred, the underperformer kept another two quarters, the successor never developed, the change announced but never landed. Every one of those has a cost attached, and it compounds quietly.

For you, that means the question is not how much you are carrying. It is whether what you carry points at the same destination your strategy does. When the leader and the role are aligned, when the senior team is aligned, when the people strategy points where the business is going, the And builds. When they are not, the very same And buries.

Choosing your And

Three years of building on this word has taught me one thing above the rest.

The And only stays deliberate if something holds it accountable. A plan it must serve. A room that asks hard questions. A partner with no agenda except alignment. The leaders in the Vistage data know this too. 85% invest in developing their leaders, and the most widely used approach is not a course or a program. It is peers.

No one holds the And alone. The ones who try are the 70%.

The mirror

So here is this week's question, for you and for anyone you lead.

List your Ands. The real list, every commitment, initiative, and obligation currently stacked on your desk. Then ask of each one: did I choose this, or did it arrive? And does it point where I am going, or merely at me?

If the second answers outnumber the first, you do not have a workload problem. You have an alignment problem, and those are solvable. It is precisely the work I do, as the advisor beside your decision and the coach beside your becoming.

Most leaders will not do this exercise. Not because it is hard, but because they suspect what the list will show. That suspicion is information.

Coaching question: Which of your Ands would you not choose again today, and what would it take to set it down?

If you are navigating that accumulation, or leading someone who is, the conversation is worth having.

📩 info@thehrsavant.com

Source and credit: Q2 2026 Vistage CEO Confidence Index, Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer, Vistage Worldwide. Full results at vistage.com/ceoindex.