Put your own oxygen mask on first. Then help the person next to you.
We hear that line so often on airplanes that it barely registers anymore. But watch Season 2 of Ted Lasso and it stops being a safety announcement and starts being a leadership diagnosis.
Season 1 Ted is all appreciative energy. He walks into a room that doesn't want him and refuses to see what's broken, he only sees what's strong. It works. It's magnetic. And can we just talk about how much that "be a goldfish" mindset is basically Appreciative Inquiry in a bucket hat?
But Season 2 is where that same strength starts to crack, and it's such an important lesson for anyone leading people. Ted keeps pouring his positivity outward, individualized attention for Roy, for Sam, for practically everyone… except Nate. Nate never gets that same specific, seen kind of recognition, and the resentment that builds in him doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes out of being the one person left out of Ted's appreciative lens.
Here's the thing I keep coming back to: servant leadership isn't "be nice to everyone in the same way." It's seeing each person's specific need for recognition. Ted was serving the team as a concept while missing Nate as a person. That gap is where the damage happens.
And meanwhile, Ted is falling apart. The panic attacks. The refusal to deal with his own stuff until therapy finally forces the issue. He's been so busy handing out positivity to everyone else that he never turned it inward and looked honestly at his own strengths and his own wounds.
That's the oxygen mask problem exactly. Ted was trying to help an entire locker room breathe while he himself was gasping. And the version of leadership that looks generous from the outside can actually be running on empty, which eventually shows up as blind spots, favoritism, and burnout.
So the lesson I'm sitting with from Season 2: a leader who won't examine his own gaps can't fully serve anyone else's. Appreciative Inquiry applied unevenly doesn't stay appreciative, it becomes favoritism. And self-awareness isn't the soft, optional part of leadership. It's the prerequisite.
Season 3 is where Ted finally starts to get this right, and honestly, that arc might be my favorite of the three. Coming soon.
Where have you seen this play out, a leader (maybe even yourself) so focused on lifting others up that they forgot to check on their own oxygen?