When “Good Enough” Becomes the Enemy of Your Greatest Work

 

There’s a particular trap that almost exclusively catches high achievers. It doesn’t catch the mediocre or the disengaged — they’re nowhere near it. It catches the capable, the accomplished, the ones who have built real expertise and a track record of results.

It goes like this: you get good at something. Genuinely good. People notice. Requests come in. You deliver. More requests come. You keep delivering. Over time, you become the person everyone turns to for that thing — which feels like success, because in many ways it is.

Until the day you realize that the thing everyone turns to you for is no longer the thing that lights you up.

You’re good at it. Maybe even great at it. But “good enough” and “great enough” have quietly become the ceiling of what you bring to work every day. And somewhere below that ceiling, your most interesting and generative work is still waiting.

The difference between competence and genius

I use the word Genius deliberately — not to mean exceptional intelligence, but to describe the particular quality of contribution that only you can make. The thinking, the perspective, the creative combination of experience and instinct and care that is specific to you and shows up when you’re doing work that genuinely engages you.

Competence is reproducible. Someone else can learn what you know and do what you do. Genius is not. It’s the fingerprint. And it tends to disappear when you’re spending your best energy on things that, while valuable, are keeping you from what you’re actually here to do.

The leaders I’ve worked with who have made this shift — from operating primarily from competence to operating more from Genius — describe it as going from performing their job to inhabiting it. The work feels different. They feel different. And the people around them notice.

What gets in the way

The most common obstacle isn’t lack of clarity about what your Genius is. Most people, when they slow down enough to look, have a pretty good sense of when they’re in it and when they’re not.

The obstacle is permission.

Permission to prioritize the work that only you can do over the work that simply needs to get done. Permission to say “this isn’t the best use of what I bring” — even when you’re good at it. Permission to disappoint the expectations that have accumulated around your competence.

That permission is harder to give yourself than it sounds. But it’s the threshold between a career that is impressive and a career that is alive.

A question worth sitting with

If you set aside everything you’re capable of doing — everything you’ve proven you can deliver — and asked instead: what kind of work makes me feel most like myself? What am I doing when time disappears and the effort doesn’t feel like effort?

That answer is a compass. It won’t tell you to blow up your career or abandon your responsibilities. But it will point you toward the territory where your greatest contribution lives.

And finding ways to spend even a little more time there — and a little less time on what merely keeps you busy — is one of the most important things a leader can do.

 

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If this resonates, The Real Leader Academy is designed exactly for this exploration — helping high-achieving leaders reconnect with what makes their leadership most powerful. → RealLeaderAcademy.com

 

 

 

 

What a Really Bad Day Taught Me About Leadership

I once arrived at a client meeting with coffee in my lap.

I was running late, reached for my coffee while pulling out of the driveway, misjudged the lid, and poured a generous amount of very hot coffee directly onto myself. I didn’t have time to go back inside and change. I arrived flustered, damp, and not exactly radiating executive presence.

In the parking lot, sitting in my car collecting myself before going in, I noticed something interesting: how much worse I was making it.

The coffee was a fact. The spill happened. Nothing about my narrative in that parking lot was going to change it. But what I was telling myself about it — what it meant, what it said about the kind of day I was going to have, what the client would think, whether I could possibly recover — was a story. And it was a story I was choosing to tell, even if it didn’t feel like a choice.

The story underneath the event

This is something I work on with leaders constantly, because it applies to everything. Not just spilled coffee but failed launches, difficult conversations, critical feedback, restructures, disappointments, and the hundred small indignities of a demanding professional life.

Every experience has two layers. The first is what actually happened — the fact, the event, the words that were said. The second is the meaning we assign to it. And while we often can’t control the first layer, we have extraordinary influence over the second.

The problem is that most of us don’t realize we’re operating in the second layer. We experience our interpretation of events as if it were the events themselves. The story feels like reality. And when the story is “this is a disaster” or “I can’t recover from this” or “this always happens to me,” the story shapes everything that comes after it.

What I did instead

In the parking lot, once I noticed what was happening, I tried something different. I asked: what’s actually true here?

What was true: I was late. I had spilled coffee. I was late. The client was waiting.

What was a story: that this meant the meeting was ruined before it started. That I was incompetent. That today was destined to be a disaster.

When I separated the fact from the story, something shifted. Not magically — I was still a little rattled. But I walked into that meeting present enough to actually be useful. And as it turned out, the client barely noticed I was late. What they noticed was that I was fully there when it mattered.

The leadership application

You don’t have to spill coffee to use this. You can use it the moment you notice that your reaction to something feels bigger than the thing itself. That’s usually a sign the story is running.

Ask: What is actually, factually true here? What am I adding to it? And what would be available to me if I set the story down for a moment?

The leaders I’ve worked with who navigate difficulty with the most grace aren’t the ones who don’t get rattled. They’re the ones who notice when they’re rattled — and choose, intentionally, what they do next.

That’s not a talent. It’s a practice. And it starts in the parking lot.

 

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I wrote more on navigating the stories that run our leadership in my book The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader.

 

 

 

How to Navigate Change Without Losing Yourself in the Process

 

Something I’ve noticed about the way most leaders navigate change: they try to power through it.

They treat uncertainty like an obstacle to overcome — something to be solved, managed, or outwaited. And the harder they push, the more exhausted and disoriented they become. Not because the change is too hard. But because they’re approaching it from the wrong place inside themselves.

There’s a version of you that can meet change, challenge, and uncertainty with something that looks a lot like courage and grace. I’ve seen it emerge in leaders who were convinced they didn’t have it. And I’ve watched the same leaders miss it entirely when they tried to force their way through.

The difference isn’t talent. It’s where they’re operating from.

Two ways of showing up

In my work with leaders, I talk about two distinct modes of operating. I call them the Puppet and the Genius.

The Puppet isn’t weak or lazy. In fact, it tends to show up most forcefully in the highest achievers — the ones with the most at stake, the most responsibility, the most pressure. The Puppet operates from fear, from the need to control outcomes, from the accumulated weight of every expectation and assumption about how things should go. When change hits, the Puppet tightens its grip. It defaults to what has always worked. It resists what it cannot predict.

The Genius is something different. It’s the part of you that can stay curious when everything is uncertain. That can ask “what is this situation asking of me?” instead of “how do I make this stop?” It’s the part that trusts your own capacity to navigate whatever comes — not because you have all the answers, but because you’ve stopped pretending you need them before you can move.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: the Genius doesn’t arrive when the change gets easier. It arrives when you stop fighting the change and start getting interested in it.

What this looks like in practice

A client of mine — a VP navigating a significant organizational restructure — came to me exhausted and furious. Everything she had built was being dismantled. Her team was scattered. Her role was unclear. She had a dozen reasons to be angry, and she was right about all of them.

But the anger wasn’t helping her lead. It was keeping her locked in Puppet mode — reactive, contracted, focused on what she was losing rather than what was possible.

What shifted things wasn’t a new strategy. It was a question: “What if this disruption is happening for you, not to you?”

Not as a platitude. As a genuine inquiry. What might this change be making room for? What has the old structure been preventing? What could you do now that you couldn’t before?

She sat with that for a long moment. And then something in her face changed. Not relief exactly. More like recognition.

“I’ve been so focused on what I’m losing,” she said, “I haven’t once asked what I might gain.”

The practice

When you’re in the middle of change that feels threatening, try this: notice which part of you is in the driver’s seat.

Is it the part that is contracted, defensive, focused on risk and loss and what might go wrong? That’s the Puppet. It means well. It’s trying to protect you. But it cannot lead you through what it cannot see.

Or is there a quieter part available — one that is curious, grounded, willing to not know yet? That’s the Genius. It doesn’t need the change to be resolved before it can show up. It shows up precisely because the change is unresolved.

Navigating change well doesn’t mean being unaffected by it. It means choosing, again and again, which part of yourself gets to respond.

 

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If this resonates, I explore the Puppet and the Genius at length in my book The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader.

 

 

 

Why Losing Your Passion at Work Is a Leadership Problem (Not a Personal One)

 

A third of your time on this planet is spent at work.

Let that land for a moment.

Not a third of your workday. A third of your life. Which means if your work feels like a grind – if you’re pushing through it, white-knuckling your way from one obligation to the next, surviving instead of thriving – that’s not just a professional inconvenience. That is the texture of a significant portion of your life.

I’m not going to pretend that work is always meant to feel blissful. Every meaningful endeavor has its hard days, its tedious stretches, its moments of doubt. That’s different from the slow erosion of passion that I see happening in so many high-achieving leaders.

And I want to make a case for why that erosion isn’t just a personal problem – a matter of attitude or perspective or self-care that you can fix with a long weekend. It is a leadership problem. And it has consequences that ripple far beyond you.

The cost you aren’t calculating

Here’s what most leaders don’t realize when they make peace with feeling depleted: the energy you bring to your work is not self-contained.

When you’re running on fumes, everyone around you feels it. Your direct reports feel it in how you show up in one-on-ones: the half-presence, the clipped responses, the sense that you’d rather be somewhere else. Your peers feel it in how you engage in meetings – whether you’re genuinely curious and generative, or just getting through the agenda. Your organization feels it in the quality of your thinking, your decisions, the kind of problems you’re willing to sit with.

Leadership is a transmission, not a transaction. What you carry inside yourself is what you transmit to the people around you. And a depleted leader, however accomplished and competent, transmits depletion.

I’ve seen this play out in organizations again and again. A team whose leader has lost their spark begins to lose theirs. The culture quietly dims. People start doing the minimum required to stay out of trouble rather than bringing their best. Nobody named it as a problem. Nobody pointed to the leader. But the source was there.

Why it happens to the best ones

Losing your passion at work doesn’t happen to lazy or uncommitted people. It happens to exactly the opposite kind of person.

It happens to the leaders who care deeply and have been pouring themselves out for so long that the well has run dry. The ones who made success their identity and then discovered that achieving it didn’t feel the way they expected. The ones who kept saying yes to things that didn’t align with who they really are, because they were so good at executing that the requests kept coming and they felt responsible for saying yes.

This is part of something I call the Curse of Competence. The better you are at something, the more of it you’re asked to do – whether or not it’s what lights you up.

Over time, you can find yourself at the top of a ladder that’s leaning against the wrong wall. Impressive by every external measure. Quietly lost on the inside.

What reigniting actually looks like

I want to be clear about what I’m not suggesting here. I’m not suggesting you quit your job, blow up your career, or make any dramatic external changes. In my experience, the most profound shifts happen from the inside out – in how you relate to what you’re doing before you change what you’re doing.

What I’ve seen work, again and again, is this: when leaders reconnect with why their work matters – not the metrics, not the deliverables, but the genuine human impact – something shifts. When they start bringing more of who they actually are to what they do, rather than the polished, managed version they’ve learned to present, something opens up.

There’s a part of every leader I’ve worked with that is wiser, more creative, and more energized than the version that shows up exhausted and going through the motions. And when that part gets activated – when you stop performing leadership and start being it – the effect on the people around you is immediate and unmistakable.

That’s not idealism. I’ve watched it happen in boardrooms, in hospitals, in classrooms, and in startup teams. It is available to you.

The question I’d ask you

If you set aside what you’re supposed to feel about your work – what you’ve decided is reasonable or realistic or acceptable for someone at your level – what is the honest answer to this question:

Does your work feed you? Or does it deplete you?

If the honest answer is the latter, that’s worth paying attention to. Not to spiral into crisis, but to get curious. Because the version of you that is genuinely energized, engaged, and lit up by what you do doesn’t just feel better – it leads better. It makes better decisions. It draws out the best in the people around it.

And the world needs that version of you more than it needs the depleted one.

 

If this landed for you, I explore the journey from depletion to what I call your Authentic Genius in my book The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader.

 

And if you’re ready for a more structured journey, The Real Leader Academy offers programs specifically designed to help high-achieving leaders reconnect with what makes their leadership most powerful — and most sustainable. → RealLeaderAcademy.com

 

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The Surprising Secret to Overcoming Inertia (It Has Nothing to Do with Willpower)

 

I want to tell you about something I discovered one morning while doing yoga in my cold house.

I’d been putting off my practice for days — weeks, if I’m honest. Every morning I’d wake up with good intentions, feel the temperature in the room, and decide that I’d start tomorrow. The conditions weren’t right. I needed to feel ready.

One morning I forced myself to get on the mat anyway.

I did a few slow, stiff movements. Everything felt hard. My body was resistant. My mind was making a compelling case that this was pointless. But I kept going. And somewhere in the middle of it, something shifted. My muscles warmed up. My breath deepened. The things that had felt impossible five minutes earlier started happening on their own.

The room hadn’t changed. The temperature was the same. The conditions were exactly as uninviting as they’d been when I’d been talking myself out of it for weeks.

I had changed.

And I thought: isn’t this always how it goes?

The physics of getting unstuck

There’s a principle in physics that states an object at rest tends to stay at rest — and an object in motion tends to stay in motion. We usually think of inertia as the problem (the thing keeping us stuck on the couch), but the same principle that keeps us still is the one that keeps us moving once we start.

The mistake most people make when they’re trying to overcome inertia is waiting for the right conditions before they begin. They’re waiting for clarity, or motivation, or the perfect moment, or enough time, or the right mood. They think that feeling ready is the prerequisite for starting.

It isn’t.

Readiness is a result of beginning. Not a condition for it.

What this looks like in real leadership

I work with executives who have important projects sitting in a drawer — things they know matter, things they genuinely want to do — that have been waiting for the right moment for months. Sometimes years.

The reason is rarely laziness. It’s usually that the project feels big, and starting feels risky, and not starting feels safer than starting badly.

But here’s what I’ve observed: the leaders who make the most meaningful progress are rarely the ones who waited until everything was perfectly aligned. They’re the ones who took a small, imperfect action and let that action create the momentum for the next one.

They got warm.

The question worth asking

When I’m stuck on something — a conversation I’ve been avoiding, a piece of work I keep circling around, a decision I can’t seem to make — I’ve learned to ask myself a different question than “What should I do?”

Instead, I ask: What’s the smallest action I could take right now that would get me into motion?

Not the perfect action. Not the complete action. Just the one that would move the needle from “still” to “in motion.”

Sometimes it’s writing one paragraph. Sometimes it’s making one phone call. Sometimes it’s simply opening the document and reading what’s there.

The moment you take that action, the game changes. Because now you’re in motion. And motion has its own momentum.

One small thing

Think about something you’ve been wanting to move forward on — a project, a conversation, a change you’ve been contemplating. You know the one.

Now ask yourself: what’s the smallest action I could take on it today? Not to finish it. Not to get it right. Just to get warm.

Then take that action. Before you read another article or have another meeting or check your phone again.

The environment won’t change. But you will.

 

I explore this idea, and the deeper patterns that keep high-achieving leaders stuck, in my book: The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader.

 

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Why Running on Autopilot Is Costing You More Than You Know

 

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with how many hours you’ve worked.

It’s the exhaustion of going through the motions. Of making it through your day – back-to-back meetings, decisions, emails, conversations – and arriving at the end of it feeling like you somehow weren’t really there for any of it.

If you’ve ever driven home and couldn’t remember a single thing about the drive, you know what I mean. Your body showed up. Your autopilot showed up. But you, the thoughtful, intentional, alive version of you, had checked out somewhere around 2 p.m.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I keep hearing some version of the same thing from leaders I work with:

“I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing. So why does it feel like I’m disappearing?”

That question deserves a real answer.

What autopilot actually costs you

We tend to talk about autopilot as a productivity problem…  you’re not getting things done, you’re procrastinating, you’re distracted. And sure, those things show up. But what I’ve observed, both in my own life and in working with executives for over thirty years, is that autopilot is really an identity problem.

When you’re running on autopilot, you’re not actually leading. You’re reacting. You’re executing. You’re managing the inbox of your life. But the deeper, more purposeful part of you – the part that has vision, that asks “why does this matter,” that can read a room and feel what’s really needed – that part goes quiet.

And here’s what makes it so insidious: it happens gradually enough that you don’t notice it happening. One day you look up and realize the last six months were a blur. That you can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely excited about a project. That your best ideas stopped coming.

That’s not a scheduling problem. That’s a signal.

The three signs your leadership is on autopilot

1) You’re doing more, but feeling less. You’re technically more productive than ever – more efficient, more organized, more responsive. But something feels flat. You finish things and feel relief instead of satisfaction. The work has stopped feeding you.

2) You’ve stopped asking the question underneath the question. Leaders operating from their fullest capacity are always curious. They’re asking not just what needs to get done, but why it matters, who is affected, and what’s really going on beneath the surface. When you’re on autopilot, you stop going below the surface. You take things at face value because you’re moving too fast to look deeper.

3) Your relationships feel transactional. Not because you don’t care – you do. But when you’re in autopilot mode, interactions become things to get through rather than opportunities to genuinely connect. People can feel the difference, even if they can’t name it.

What I know to be true

There’s a part of you that is wiser, more creative, and more capable than the version of you that shows up on autopilot. I call it your Genius. It’s not some idealized fantasy of who you could be under perfect conditions. It’s actually more available to you than your autopilot self – it just requires that you show up for it.

The good news is that breaking out of autopilot doesn’t require a sabbatical or a personality transplant. It usually begins with something much simpler: noticing that you’re on it.

That noticing is the first act of real leadership.

Something to sit with this week

What is one thing you keep meaning to get to, one piece of work that feels genuinely important to you, that has been getting pushed to tomorrow for longer than you’d like to admit?

Don’t answer that question in your head. Write it down. And notice how it feels to let it land.

That feeling is information. It’s your Genius, signaling.

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If this resonates and you want to go deeper, I wrote an entire book about the journey from autopilot to authentic leadership: The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader

 

How to Leverage a Cringe Worthy Moment

 

A step backward (even a cringe worthy moment) can be used to propel you forward – IF you know how to leverage it. This week’s video will show you how…

 

Here’s to your success!

Diane

How to Change a Habit That is Hurting You, Part 5

 

You’re committed to making a change, focused on what you’re moving toward, aware of the impact of your current behavior, and challenging the assumptions that have been driving you to it.

But there’s one last step that is crucial to your success.

Envision and practice a new way of doing things.

It is essential to substitute a new behavior for the old one so you can focus more on what you are moving toward than away from.

Chances are you already know what you’d like to do as an alternative. If not, you can ask yourself the question, “What would be a better way of handling situations that have been causing me trouble?”

When you ask a question, your subconscious mind gets busy finding the answer for you. 

You may learn by watching or seeking mentoring from people around you who are masterful in the areas you strive to improve in. You may find yourself drawn to articles, books, workshops or other resources that will help you. You might journal about it and find yourself writing about the answer.

Once you have an idea of what you’d like to do differently, it’s important to practice as often as you can, both physically and mentally. 

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

Action is how you bridge the gap between the future you envision and the state you find yourself in now. But you don’t have to wait until you have all the answers or the confidence of a master to begin. Any action that serves your goal will start building momentum and allow you to learn and make essential adjustments along the way.

Remember to be patient and kind with yourself as you learn a new behavior.

It will probably be somewhat uncomfortable or, at the very least, unnatural at first. You’ll likely not be very good at it right away. And you may find it tempting to simply revert to your old behavior as a result.

But stick with it. Since discomfort accompanies growth, it is an indicator of progress.

With consistent practice, it will get easier and come more naturally, until finally the new behavior is so ingrained that you won’t have to think about it all that much.

If an action doesn’t bring the desired result, you can ask yourself what you could have done differently. Use the experience as data to fine-tune your approach to be more aligned with your desired results.

The steps I’ve been sharing with you over these last few days are a small part of what I teach and coach executives to implement in The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed, a thirteen-week, seven-module virtual leadership development program designed to help business professionals like you maximize your performance, minimize stress and pressure and enjoy a more fulfilling life both on and off the job (and lead others to do the same). Message me for more information if you are interested.

How to Change a Habit That is Hurting You, Part 4

 

Sometimes when you can’t kick a habit that is hurting you, it’s because your behavior is linked to a limiting assumption or belief. It’s like pulling out a weed without removing its root.

Action follows thought and assumptions are thoughts that are like the strings on puppets, controlling their every move. When these assumptions are unexamined, they propel us to engage in actions without thinking.

But when you examine the assumptions linked to a behavior you want to change, you may find that though they are compelling, they are not very logical – and in some cases are downright erroneous.

An assumption that keeps people from taking bold action could be something like “I don’t have what it takes to do what I really want to do,” or “If I try and fail, I’ll be worse off than I am now.”

And an assumption that keeps people from delegating to/empowering others and truly leading might be “If I don’t do this myself, it’s not going to get done right (or at all).”

Assumptions like these get us into more trouble than they prevent and have us acting in ways that reinforce the assumption.

In the first case, if you assume that you can’t do something, you’ll act with hesitation (if at all), and your wavering will keep you from performing or lead you to make things much harder than they need to be. You may look to your lack of results as confirmation that your assumption was correct, but the real problem is the impact the assumption itself had on your ability to act with confidence.

In the second case, if you don’t believe others can handle something (or that you are better off doing it yourself), you’ll likely not properly set them up for success, build their confidence or remove obstacles that could keep them from achieving results. And when they are unable to execute properly, you’ll see their lack of success as data that confirms your initial assumption.

Identifying these assumptions can be tricky because they’re often so engrained we don’t even realize they’re operating.

But if you stop to reflect on what you believe about the situation, yourself, or others you can begin to become aware of them. And then you can change the thinking that perpetuates the habit you’re trying to rise above.

The steps I’ve been sharing with you over these last few days are a small part of what I teach and coach executives to implement in The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed, a thirteen-week, a seven-module virtual leadership development program designed to help business professionals like you maximize your performance, minimize stress and pressure and enjoy a more fulfilling life both on and off the job (and lead others to do the same). Message me if you are interested in learning more.

Next week, I’ll share the fifth and final step of How to Change a Habit That is Hurting You.

Here’s to your success!

How to Change a Habit That is Hurting You, Part 3

 

 

Did you know that what might feel like a step backward can dramatically enhance your forward progress? It’s true, but only if done right. Here’s how.

The third step to changing a habit that’s hurting you is to notice how often you engage in the behavior you want to change and what the impact is when you do.

That can be rather painful, because you already know what habits you want to change and how they are hurting you. Yet chances are that you’re still engaging in them more often than you’d like – almost as though you cannot help yourself.

But you’re simply observing the effect of being on autopilot.

Your habits become defaults that allow you to do things without a lot of thought or effort. That’s a good thing when a behavior serves you, like brushing your teeth or working out in the morning. But when those engrained habits lead you to regret your actions later, you have to slow things down so that you’re more conscious of what you’re doing and where it’s getting you.

The good news is that initially, you don’t have to recognize what are often knee jerk reactions in the moment. You can replay the events in your mind later and recognize that you were in the grip of an automatic response.

You can notice what triggered the behavior. And you can begin to envision strategies for interrupting the pattern, like taking a breath, stepping away for a moment, and getting realigned with your true intention and desire.

In addition to what led you to engage in a problematic habit, pay attention to how you felt afterward. Recognize how it impacted the rest of your day, or week. Become aware of how it may have affected people you care about and made you feel about yourself.

The more pain you associate with behavior you seek to rise above, the stronger your commitment will become to rise above it.

Taking time regularly to mentally review your actions will help you catch yourself engaging in old behaviors that aren’t serving you. You’ll find that over time, you’ll go from realizing it hours or days later to recognizing it moments after it happened, to catching yourself in the act, and eventually to keeping yourself from doing it at all.

The steps I’ve been sharing with you over these last few days are a small part of what I teach and coach executives to implement in The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed, a thirteen-week, seven-module virtual leadership development program designed to help business professionals like you maximize your performance, minimize stress and pressure and enjoy a more fulfilling life both on and off the job (and lead others to do the same).

This process can be applied in many areas of your life to integrate your best and worst experiences in ways that allow you to leverage what you learn – and become stronger as a result.

Next week I’ll cover step four of How to Change a Habit That is Hurting You.