You walk into the meeting composed and steady, even though you barely slept, your heart is racing, and your head is pounding. Everyone turns toward you, waiting for clarity, direction, expecting stability. The expectations of leaders are clear – command the room, absorb and manage tension, project confidence. It can start to feel like no one cares about you – or the toddler who was coughing half the night, the teenager melting down over a school deadline, the parent who called with another urgent medical question, or the early email about a project slipping off track.
In this article, we explore what happens when the role demands more than your system can give. Who takes care of you when you are strong on the outside but falling apart inside?
WHEN LEADERSHIP STRENGTHS ARE A WEAKNESS
Leadership rewards your strengths, yes, but it can also exploit them.
You take on more, absorb more, hold more… while life continues to happen outside the office. Babies are born, relationships start, or end, you lose people we love or get sick yourself. Yet – we show up, day in and day out – and are expected to perform at higher and higher levels. That is, until the role demands more than your system can biologically give.
It’s easy to forget that leaders are, at the end of the day, humans too. Why are more and more high achieving midlife leaders strong on the outside, but suppressing the extent to which they are exhausted and overwhelmed? In this post, we’ll explore what’s going on – and what leaders can do in a season of life that finds them struggling.
What is a High-Achiever?
Psychological research defines a high achiever as someone with a persistent drive for excellence, high internal standards, and strong goal orientation. It makes sense that those of us with these attributes rise to senior leadership levels in organizations – and that, in this context, these attributes are viewed as strengths.
What doesn’t get talked about or acknowledged, however, is that under chronic stress or increasing life load, each of these strengths can flip into a biological and psychological liability.
Where does ‘persistent drive for excellence’ tip into chronic overexertion and burnout?
Where does ‘high internal standards’ stop and ‘perfectionism’ begin? We have an entire article on the damage that can be done by perfectionism, and yet – leaders are rewarded for holding themselves to a standard that – let’s be honest – looks a lot like perfectionism.
When does strong goal orientation become a loss of identity and fear-fueled overperformance?
If you’ve built a life around being dependable, composed, and hyper-competent – leadership likely isn’t a role, it’s your identity. You’re the steady one. The go-to. The regulator for an entire team, or business. When you are the one that struggles to perform like you are used to performing, for whatever reason, it can be a disorienting, upsetting, and downright frightening experience. After all, if being a leader is who you are, it can feel like you’re losing yourself when this isn’t going as well as you planned.
THE DARK SIDE OF LEADERSHIP “STRENGTHS“
1. Persistent Drive for Excellence → Chronic Overexertion & Allostatic Overload
The persistant drive for excellence that is a hallmark trait of srong leaders is rooted in high achievement motivation (McClelland). This is a good thing in that it fuels mastery and resilience – until stress accumulates, that is.
The dark side:
That same drive can override your internal signals of fatigue, pushing your nervous system into chronic activation. You keep going long after your system needed recovery, gradually increasing allostatic load (McEwen). We explore what happens to your system when it carries a heavy allostatic load for too long in a separate article – but suffice to say, things start breaking down.
Result:
A leader who once thrived under pressure becomes a leader in survival mode, pushing harder, recovering less, and losing access to the mental clarity and physical stamina they were known for.
2. High Internal Standards → Perfectionism & Error Hypervigilance
Self-imposed standards are linked to conscientiousness and high performance.
But when they are consistently elevated, they activate the brain’s error-monitoring system.
The dark side:
High standards tip into self-oriented perfectionism (Hewitt & Flett), which heightens ERN (error-related negativity) and amygdala activation. Translation? Your brain treats mistakes like threats, small errors feel risky, and your anxiety spikes.
Result:
A leader who once delivered consistently high-quality work becomes a leader who second-guesses themselves, overcorrects, overprepares, and burns energy trying to prevent even the smallest mistake or oversight.
3. Strong Goal Orientation → Identity Fusion & Fear-Based Overperformance
High-achievers excel because they’re highly goal-directed and self-regulated.
The dark side:
Your identity becomes fused with competence. You are:
“the one who delivers.”
“who doesn’t drop balls.”
“who gets &$%^ done.”
This creates identity-threat activation (Dweck) when performance dips, even slightly. To compensate, you over function, avoid rest, and take on more than your system can biologically manage.
Result:
A leader who once moved decisively toward meaningful goals becomes a leader who over functions to protect their identity, taking on too much, delegating too little, and feeling threatened by any dip in performance.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The very traits that make high-achievers exceptional – drive, standards, and goal orientation – also make them uniquely vulnerable to chronic stress, perfectionism, and leadership burnout when life load increases.
Unfortunately, when that happens, what is seen and addressed at work is the downgrade in your performance – not the damage being done to your nervous and other human systems. Leadership development programs double down on reinforcing expectations, driving home that the strengths showing up consistently and translating into performance is what matters.
The challenge with this, if you are a leader “on the dark side” of these strengths, is that your biology has reached a breaking point and the issues aren’t actually with on the job performance. They are body and brain performance issues brought on by chronic stress and the dark side of the very traits that set you up to be an effective leader in the first place.
THE GOOD NEWS
The good news is that none of this is fixed or final.
Your biology isn’t broken, it’s signalling that the way you’ve been leading is no longer sustainable for the state of your system – today.
And that is something you can influence.
While you cannot eliminate the complexity of midlife, stop your kids from getting sick, or prevent your aging parents from needing support… you can change the way you lead yourself through those realities. You can learn to work with your nervous system instead of pushing against it. You can rebuild internal capacity in small, steady ways that leadership training rarely address.
This is the core philosophy of Forward in Focus:
Leadership begins with self-leadership.
Self-leadership begins with awareness.
And awareness creates the conditions for agency.
You don’t need to become a different leader, you need more support.
And that starts with you.
When you understand what your system is carrying, what drains you, what energizes you, and what is pushing you into survival mode – you can begin to make decisions that realign your life with your capacity. This isn’t about lowering standards or opting out, it’s about leading in a way that is sustainable, humane, and respectful of how high-achievers are wired and what your unique lived experience has been.
Small, consistent practices — the kind that cue safety, reduce internal load, and bring your prefrontal cortex back online — are the foundation of that shift. These micro-practices don’t just “feel good”; they create neurological conditions for clarity, emotional steadiness, and better decision-making. Over time, they rebuild the systems that stress has been eroding.
The first step is to understand:
- how heavy your internal load has become
- how much your energy levels fluctuate day to day
- whether your commitments exceed your current capacity
- if your nervous system is stuck in performance (or survival) mode
- and what small, strategic adjustments will restore stability
That is exactly what the Re-Anchored Reset was designed to help you uncover.
The Reset is a simple, research-informed self-assessment and recalibration tool that takes 5–10 minutes and helps you reconnect with your capacity IN THIS SEASON OF LIFE so you can make decisions that support the human inside the leader. It’s completely free to our first 100 subcribers and could be your first step to grounded, intentional, and sustainable leadership.
If you recognize yourself in this article – if you feel strong on the outside but stretched thin internally — I invite you to begin there.
Your system is giving you information.
Your job, as a leader, is to listen.
With love,
Angelina
