Stop Performing, Start Leading
I spent years chasing a finish line that never seemed to arrive.
The title changed, the business card changed, the salary changed — but inside, I felt the same quiet ache. I thought that if I worked hard enough, polished long enough, achieved enough, then I would finally feel like I belonged.
But the truth was harder to admit: I wasn’t really leading. I was performing.
Performing leadership is when you walk into the room already calculating how your words will land. It’s the late-night email you send because you don’t want anyone to question your commitment. It’s the yes you give when your body is screaming no — because that’s what a “good leader” would do.
It looks strong on the outside, but it feels hollow on the inside.
The problem with performance is that it never satisfies. No matter how much you achieve, it demands more. The bar keeps moving, and the ache keeps growing.
That’s why I wrote Lead Like You Mean It.
This book isn’t a list of tricks to help you “look” like a better leader. It’s a compass for becoming one. I call it the Integration Compass, and it’s made up of four points:
Presence: Staying with yourself in the room, instead of managing yourself for others.
Power: Reclaiming authority as something you choose, not something you wait to be given.
Purpose: Uncaging purpose from legacy, sacrifice, and “shoulds” and grounding it in daily alignment.
Alignment: Returning, again and again, to wholeness instead of performance.
These four points aren’t abstract ideas. They’re daily practices. They’re the difference between saying yes out of guilt and saying yes because it’s aligned. Between collapsing into burnout and leading with joy and clarity. Between shrinking yourself to fit the role and rewriting the role to fit your truth.
And here’s the good news: you don’t have to wait until you “arrive” to lead like this. You can begin right now, exactly where you are.
Start by asking one simple question before your next decision:
👉 Am I leading from alignment, or am I performing for approval?
That question alone has stopped me mid-email, mid-meeting, even mid-sentence. It interrupts the old scripts and brings me back to myself. That’s what presence feels like: not perfect, not polished, but congruent.
Lead Like You Mean It is a book about remembering what leadership feels like when you stop performing and start living it. It’s about giving yourself permission to lead from your whole self — your clarity, your values, your joy — instead of the version the world told you was acceptable.
Because at the end of the day, leadership isn’t about what they think of you. It’s about who you choose to be, again and again, in the moments that matter.
And the moment you stop performing and start leading? That’s the moment you become the leader you were always meant to be.
Call to Action:
If this resonates with you, stay tuned. I’ll be sharing more from Lead Like You Mean It as we move toward launch. In the meantime, ask yourself this: Where am I performing, and where am I ready to lead like I mean it?