You Can’t Achieve Your Way Out of Perfection

When will we realise that our socialised culture was not devised to bring joy into our lives? As leaders, we’re constantly marketed into consumption and production—achieve more, produce more, as if hitting that next target or closing that next deal is the ultimate measure of our worth. But this mindset is a trap. We chase perfection through metrics and KPIs, yet no matter how many successes we accumulate, the ego is never satisfied. As soon as one need is met, another takes its place—a new product to launch, a bigger market to capture, or a more aggressive growth goal.

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Consider the CEO who, despite leading a company through unprecedented growth, still feels unfulfilled, constantly chasing the next milestone. Or the executive who’s built a personal brand as a high achiever, yet struggles with a sense of internal emptiness. These leaders may appear successful externally, but inside, they’re exhausted from a never-ending pursuit of perfection.

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I’m tired—genuinely tired—of seeing talented, high-performing individuals not realise their own worth, their innate worth. Who you are is already perfect at a deep level. You don’t need to ‘do’ anything more to be loved or valued. You are love in action.

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What Does This Have to Do with Leadership? Everything.

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How you feel about yourself is directly projected onto your team and your organisation. Leaders often create patterns that, on the surface, appear to drive success—competition, constant hustle, performance pressure. Yet dig a little deeper, and you’ll find a culture of burnout, where collaboration is sacrificed for individual wins, and team members are more focused on their own survival than the company’s collective mission.

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Take a moment to reflect on that executive meeting where subtle competition over credit and influence stifled genuine collaboration. Or the performance review where a team member, despite hitting their goals, expressed feelings of not being "good enough." These dynamics are often a mirror of the leader’s own inner struggles with worth and perfection.

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We are meant to collaborate and empower one another, not compete for validation. As a senior leader, this requires an internal shift. It’s about checking in with yourself first. Where does your judgement of yourself or others show up in your leadership? What does it say about how you lead your team? How can you create an environment where your people feel valued as they are, not just for what they do?

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Leadership Goes Beyond Metrics

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We have all sorts of labels for this—psychological safety, vulnerability, "above the line" thinking. These are useful frameworks, but at the end of the day, they are just packaged concepts. What I really want to ask is: when will you love yourself enough to lead from a place of inner worth, rather than outward achievement?

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Imagine the ripple effect this could have. A senior leader who embraces their worth beyond their accomplishments models self-compassion, encouraging their team to bring their whole selves to work, unburdened by the relentless drive for perfection. This is where innovation thrives, where teams are free to collaborate without fear, and where true, sustainable success is born.

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That’s it for today. What arises in you as you read this?

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