You can only give what you have. If you have six slices of bread and you need one to feed yourself, you have five to give. That is simple enough when we are talking about bread.

It gets a lot less simple when we are talking about energy, presence, patience, emotional capacity. You cannot see how many slices you have left. You cannot see when you are handing over the one you needed for yourself. And because you cannot see it, you keep giving. Until one day there is nothing left, and you have no idea how you got there.

In my experience, this is what actually wears vendor PMs down. Not the workload. Not the complexity. Not even the politics. It is how much of themselves they unknowingly hand over to the work. The emotional weight they carry on top of what the job already demands.

Conditional giving

There is a difference between giving freely and giving with an expectation attached. The second one is what I call conditional giving, and most of the time it happens without awareness.

You give to the job. You go above and beyond. You take on extra, you absorb pressure, you stay late, you carry things that are not strictly yours to carry. And underneath all of that, often without you realizing it, there is an expectation. That this effort will be seen. That someone will recognize what you are putting in. That appreciation, a promotion, a word of acknowledgment, something will come back.

This hits hardest when you have a need for outside recognition. And as I wrote about earlier on approval and ego, many of us do. You give to the job to be recognized and appreciated and keep giving because that outside satisfaction never really satisfies. It cannot. You only get genuine satisfaction once you give it to yourself.

So the giving continues. And the return does not come. Or it comes but it does not land the way you needed it to. And rather than pulling back, you give more. It feels like the right move. If my effort was not enough, I need to give more effort. But the mechanism is broken. You are trying to fill a need from a source that cannot fill it.

How the frustration builds

When the reward does not come, something shifts. You start to give more, expecting it will be sufficient. When it does not happen the way you expected, frustration builds. You start to blame the outside world for what you are not giving yourself.

This builds slowly. Over weeks and months. Your willingness to participate in the give-and-take of project life decreases. Something that you would have absorbed willingly six months ago, a last-minute request, an extra task, now feels like an imposition. Your flexibility drops. The feeling of "this is not fair" rises and rises.

The clearest sign, and the one most visible to others, is that your tolerance for how the outside world treats you decreases. The requests have not changed. The stakeholders have not changed. Your capacity to absorb them has.

That might sound almost too simple. But it is worth taking seriously. If you are honest with yourself and notice that things are bothering you now that did not bother you six months ago, that is worth paying attention to.

Where the snap goes

This builds up to a point where one can snap. And the snapping is typically related to a specific situation, one you could objectively argue is not favorable. But the reaction is disproportionate to what actually happened.

Snapping almost never goes where the frustration actually lives. It goes where it feels safe to release. Which typically means downward in the hierarchy. Towards your team. You lash out at a team member. Not because they deserve that intensity, but because the accumulated weight of months of unmet expectations has found an exit.

That damages trust with the team. Not just with this one member. This is talked about. It hurts the safety feeling of the team and you will likely see them become on guard. They hold back and avoid taking chances. That hurts the quality and pace of delivery. Which means even less positive feedback coming your way. And the cycle accelerates.

Recovery

When the damage is done, it is done. But in life we all make mistakes. The question is what you do next.
Once you have enough clarity to see that your snap was entirely about you, nothing to do with the other person, you are in a position to recover. And I mean entirely. Not "partly me, partly them." The trigger may have been real. A genuine mistake. But the intensity was yours.

You will need to address it with the person first. A sincere apology making very clear that your emotions were purely yours and nothing but that, and that you apologize for how you treated them. This is where it gets difficult for most people. You have to stay away from what caused the trigger. Do not justify your behavior by indicating that their mistake warranted it. Not as a tactic. Because you genuinely feel that you cannot treat another person the way you did, regardless of what prompted it. The moment you add "but you did miss that deadline," the apology becomes conditional. And conditional apologies do not repair trust.

After that, you can choose to address it with the team. Be transparent about what caused this and the conversation you had with the team member. Express that you can imagine how it has affected team behavior, safety, and morale. And that you hope the team can move forward together.
People will appreciate this. One conversation opens the door. What comes after it either confirms or undoes it.

Prevention

Recovery is necessary when the cycle has run its course. Prevention is about recognizing the pattern before it gets there. And that, again, is about emotional clarity.

It requires that you are able to sense that you are off. And that you can be specific about what emotions you are feeling and what triggered them. Such that you can trace back what is happening. When you recognize it for what it is, the need for external recognition, you can take ownership of the situation again.
The intervention is self-appreciation. And I realize that can sound like a greeting card. But I mean something quite specific.

Take a step back and realize that, regardless of project status, your intent is pure, your focus is on doing what it takes to create success and you are all in. That you deserve that pat on the shoulders from yourself. Even if you are off in what you are giving. Just you being you is sufficient reason for self-appreciation. You have to muster it. It is not a quick mental exercise. It is real work.

Often it helps to talk about this outside the work context. To explain the situation to an objective listener and realize that if the roles were reversed you would naturally conclude that the self-appreciation is well deserved. Chances are you will quickly see that you are being harder on yourself than you would ever be on someone else.

Addressing the gap from a settled place

At the same time, there may be a legitimate gap. From a position of true self-appreciation, you may experience that the external appreciation for your work is genuinely not in line with what you deliver. And from that settled place, you can choose to address it.

But you need to be clear with yourself first. You can measure your readiness by a simple test: can you address the topic without any expectation or need to be seen or heard? So regardless of whether the other person is denying or recognizing your claim, you are OK with the outcome. Because you have already given yourself the recognition.

If you can pass that test, the conversation becomes an act of self-care. The energy behind it is completely different from the same conversation driven by unmet need. One is a mature professional exchange. The other is a plea for validation. And people sense the difference immediately.

If you cannot pass the test, the conversation is premature. The need will leak through, and the outcome is unlikely to satisfy regardless of what the other person says. Do the self-recognition work first. Then address the external gap from a place where you are already whole.

That is what sustainable leadership looks like in this work. Not performing strength while your reserves are empty. Knowing what you need to sustain yourself, giving yourself that first, and then giving from a place that does not deplete. You have to sustain yourself if you want to have something of value to offer. Continuously.