The Myth of Either/Or: Why You Don’t Have to Choose Between Heart and Ambition
How many times have you been asked—explicitly or silently—to choose? Be respected or be liked. Be strategic or be soulful. Show strength or show kindness.
The myth of either/or runs deep. It whispers that leadership is a binary game and your belonging depends on picking the “right” side. But here’s the truth: the choice is false.
The Trap of False Choices
I was sitting in a conference room with a group of leaders, the kind of meeting where strategy and vision were supposed to be the focus. But the real conversation wasn’t about vision at all—it was about performance.
“Do you want to be taken seriously,” someone asked me, “or do you want to be liked?”
The question landed like a trap. Heart or ambition. Authority or authenticity. Strategy or spirit.
The truth is, I had already been choosing for years. When I softened my words to sound palatable, I chose likability over clarity. When I swallowed my instincts to follow the louder voices, I chose ambition over alignment. Every time I split myself into compartments—the “professional me” and the “real me”—I was living inside the myth that success required sacrifice of the self.
That’s the lie of either/or. It keeps us hustling for worth, shaving down our edges to fit the mold. And I believed it, until I didn’t.
Because the moment I stopped choosing between heart and ambition, I found something bigger: integration. Not either/or. Both/and. That’s when leadership started to feel like mine again.
The False Choices We Inherit
From the earliest moments we learn what it means to “lead,” most of us are handed a binary. A rigid system of opposites:
You can be powerful, or you can be kind.
You can be respected, or you can be warm.
You can be strategic, or you can be spiritual.
You can lead, or you can feel.
These rules are rarely spoken outright. They’re absorbed.
They show up in the silence after you speak with emotion. In the label “too passionate.” In the performance review that praises your competence but warns you to “watch your tone.” In the way you’re called a “natural leader”—but only if you don’t challenge what’s comfortable.
And the rules aren’t neutral. They’re written into the culture. A man who raises his voice in a meeting is passionate; a woman who does the same is “too emotional.” A father who leaves work early is responsible; a mother who does the same is “less committed.” The same behavior reads as strength for one person and weakness for another, depending on which box the culture has placed them in.
Research confirms what so many of us have felt in our bones. Studies on the likeability–competence tradeoff show that women leaders are judged on a double bind: lean into competence and you’re respected but less liked; lean into warmth and you’re liked but considered less capable. Either/or. Approval or authority. Rarely both. A 2021 McKinsey & LeanIn study found that women leaders are far more likely than men to have their judgment questioned, their tone policed, or their ideas dismissed until repeated by someone else. The message is clear: fit the binary, or pay the price.
And the cost is cumulative. It doesn’t just shape how we feel inside—it shapes who gets promoted, who gets mentored, and whose voices carry weight in the room. The either/or trap isn’t personal failure. It’s systemic design. A design that keeps wholeness out of reach and rewards fracture.
The Emotional Cost of Splitting
At first, the split is subtle. You soften your voice in meetings. You override your gut in favor of what sounds “data-driven.” You polish your answers until they’re technically correct but emotionally absent. You tell yourself you’re just being strategic. Just adjusting. Just leading smart.
But over time, the adjustments stop feeling optional. They become default. You lose track of your unfiltered voice. You stop asking what you really think. You equate your worth with how well you can contort yourself to fit the room.
The cost is real. Anxiety. Exhaustion. A hollow kind of success that shines on the outside but erodes on the inside.
The body feels it first: a jaw that aches from clenching, shoulders that never drop, a nervous system on permanent alert. The mind follows: second-guessing every email, replaying every word in a meeting, editing yourself until your voice no longer sounds like your own. And then the spirit: the slow, corrosive shame that whispers maybe you really are “too much.”
Splitting may win you a seat at the table, but the price of admission is often your wholeness. And if the table requires that cost, you have to ask: What exactly am I being invited into?
The Compass Out of the Binary
If the myth of either/or is the trap, the Integration Compass is the way out.
Where either/or tells us to choose between presence or power, clarity or compassion, strategy or soul, the Compass reminds us that integration is not only possible but practical. Each quadrant—Presence, Power, Purpose, Alignment—offers a simple practice that interrupts fracture in real time.
Presence (Reset): Before you edit yourself out of the moment, pause for one breath. Ask: Am I speaking from clarity or fear?
Power (Root): When proving feels safer than truth, press your feet into the floor. Remember: I am already grounded.
Purpose (Filter): When urgency eats your day, ask: Did I choose urgency, or did I choose what matters?
Alignment (Check): Each week, claim one decision made from wholeness. Build that record.
The Compass doesn’t erase bias or silence every critic. But it gives you a way not to fracture yourself in response to it. It’s not about being flawless. It’s about remembering who you are, again and again, in rooms that would rather you forget.
Real-Life Glimpses of Integration
Integration isn’t abstract. It shows up in small, tangible moments:
Saying no to a project that drains you, without apology.
Admitting “I don’t know yet” from a grounded place, instead of performing certainty.
Speaking a hard truth and walking away steady, not spiraling.
Protecting your bandwidth for what matters most—even if it disappoints someone else.
Each of these is a micro act of courage. And each one creates ripple effects.
Because integration isn’t only personal. It’s contagious. When you stop fracturing yourself, others feel permission to show up whole too. Your steadiness slows the room down. Your refusal to abandon yourself models a new way forward. Your ability to hold both clarity and compassion creates space for conversations that fractured leadership could never hold.
Closing Call-to-Action
You don’t have to choose between being respected and being real. Between ambition and heart. Leadership isn’t about splitting yourself in two—it’s about integrating the fullness of who you are.
So here’s my invitation: Where in your leadership are you still playing by the myth of either/or? And what would change if you chose both?