Welcome to Leadership Insights! Each week, we curate transformative leadership insights and add our own expertise to help you lead with purpose and impact. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or an emerging leader, you’ll find actionable wisdom in every edition.
Happy Wednesday. Quick question before we get into it: what’s the thing on your desk right now that’s been almost done for too long?
A client sent me a deck last week. Forty-seven slides. She’d been working on it for three weeks. It was for a fifteen-minute update to her leadership team. When I asked what was holding her up, she said she wanted to make sure it was right. I asked her what ‘right’ looked like. She paused. ‘I don’t know. I just know it’s not there yet.’
She’d revised the executive summary nine times. Changed the font twice. Rebuilt two charts from scratch because the colors didn’t feel ‘strategic’ enough.
Meanwhile, three decisions were waiting on the data in that deck. Her team was stalled. A market window was narrowing. And she was polishing slide transitions.
That’s the thing about perfectionism at the senior level. It never looks like perfectionism. It looks like thoroughness. High standards. Attention to detail. But underneath, there’s usually something else running: if I keep refining, I don’t have to put it out there and find out if it’s enough.
The cost isn’t visible until you add it up. Decisions delayed. Teams waiting on you. Momentum bleeding out quietly. Not because you aren’t good enough, but because you keep raising the bar on ‘ready’ every time you get close.
This Week’s Post We Love
Martin Lindstrom is a Branding & Culture Expert and I loved this post. It sort of fits the perfectionism theme…am I right? This is a cute image but the post itself is valuable. I encourage you to check it out.
Podcast Spotlight
Worth 25 minutes this week: HBR’s IdeaCast recently sat down with clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen about what perfectionism actually looks like in high-performers. Her point that stopped me: it’s not about striving for perfection. It’s about never feeling like the work is enough to represent you. If you recognized yourself in the forty-seven-slide story above, this conversation will tell you why.
Book of the Week
Brown’s research on perfectionism isn’t what most people expect. She doesn’t just tell you to stop being a perfectionist. She examines the armor we build around vulnerability and why high achievers wear it the heaviest. If this week’s piece on perfectionism connected for you, this book provides the deeper framework for understanding why letting go of ‘perfect’ feels so risky and why it’s worth it.
An Article We Think You’ll Love
“How Leaders Can Reduce Decision Fatigue and Boost Team Performance” by: Breakfast Leadership Blog
This one surfaced while I was looking into why high-performing leaders hit walls that have nothing to do with skill. The article breaks down how the volume of daily decisions quietly erodes judgment and energy, even when each individual decision feels manageable. What makes it worth your time is the practical angle: it moves past the usual ‘delegate more’ advice and gets into the structural changes that actually protect cognitive bandwidth. If this week’s piece on perfectionism resonated, this connects directly to why the need to get everything right is so draining at the executive level.
From The CAREtoLead® Archives
Ever notice how one rude comment can change the entire mood of a room? This week’s archives post, we revisit, The Contagious Curse: How Rudeness in the Workplace Spreads Like a Flu—and why even small moments of disrespect can ripple through an entire team. The good news: leaders have more power than they think to stop the spread by modeling respect, addressing issues early, and reinforcing positive behavior. Take a quick read and ask yourself—what kind of culture are your daily interactions creating?
Closing Thoughts
The question worth sitting with isn’t whether your work is good enough. It’s what’s not happening while your making it perfect.
Thank you for being part of our leadership community. We’re dedicated to helping you lead with Clarity, Authenticity, Responsibility, and Engagement.
Until next week, keep raising the bar on your leadership journey.
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