As a performance psychologist who’s spent years inside so-called “high-performance” cultures, I’ve seen more than my share of posturing. Places that trumpet their performance street cred but don’t even get the basics right. (Hot tip: yelling the words high performance at your people doesn’t make it true.)
I’ve seen money used as a blunt-force object to drive outcomes. Coaches using shame and fear to drive athletes. Leaders pushing “do more with less” and “just work harder” as if those slogans haven’t already broken people.
So if you’re feeling dubious about this whole high-performance business—fair enough. As someone who has sacrificed herself more than once on the altar of overgrit and imposter syndrome, I get it. I’ve written recently on this very topic – how “high performance” has been weaponised.
A few months ago, I was in a room with a partner group from a professional services firm. We were talking about the difference between:
- a culture of high performers (competent hard workers working hard, siloed, trying to score goals solo), and
- a high-performance culture (where people work together to elevate one another).
When one of the partners raised her hand and asked: “But what if we don’t want to be high performance?”
She went on to describe what I’ve heard from others who’ve left places like the Big Four: that after years of grind, great pay, and zero life, she just wanted something different. Less stress. Shorter hours. Maybe even less money. But more life.
It’s a great question.
“What if we don’t want to be high performance?”
It’s the kind of question that begs some thoughtful investigation. How are we even defining this for ourselves (versus what our cultural conditioning, or our places of employment tell us it’s supposed to be). And maybe, just maybe, it’s not about any of us at all, but about how we are defining and living by this term.
As I said to that partner group, this high-performance business is not an on-off switch. Because nothing worth pursing is always or even most of the time easy…AND it shouldn’t be impossible to sustain. There’s times when sustained hard effort is called for…AND is balanced by recovery. There’s individual excellence…AND social support and inspiration. There’s tough challenges AND uplifting inspiration.
And critically: it shouldn’t be defined only by outcomes.
So, before you decide that you don’t want to be high performance, or worse—don’t think you’re capable—let’s bust a few myths.
Myth #1: High performance is supposed to be hard.
This is the one I believe that partner in the room was responding to. The assumption that high performance equals constant strain, top-down pressure, and grind at all costs.
It’s a myth born out of fear, ignorance, and some seriously outdated ideas about how humans perform under pressure.
We also confuse what we see in high-performance environments with what’s really going on beneath the surface.
Yes, elite athletes have red faces, corded necks, and heaving gasps during competition. But behind that? Recovery. Tapering. Rest. Strategic effort.
Elite sport understands the ebb and flow underpinning high performance better than most corporate environments ever will.
We also let cultural narratives skew our perception that hard effort = success. We’re raised on “grit” stories like Rocky, The Karate Kid, Million Dollar Baby—tales where hardship plus determination equals glory. Or rags-to-riches fables like Disney (fired for lack of creativity) or Edison (hundreds of failed lightbulbs before success).
And then there’s modern business—scorched earth tactics sold as excellence. Where the only model of success we’re offered is brute force. No wonder people opt out. If that’s “high performance,” what’s the alternative? Mediocrity?
We need new language. New models. New avatars.
Because opting out of that version of high performance doesn’t mean opting out of being ambitious, excellent, or fulfilled.
It might just mean you’re ready for a version that works for humans, not against them. A version that celebrates ease, less effort, and even the occasional “good enough” versus perfect outcome.
There are people doing great work here. Jason Jaggard calls it Meta Performance in his book Beyond High Performance. But being the persnickety wordsmith that I am, that term doesn’t work for me either.
Here are a few alternatives I’m playing with—names that aspire to something more intelligent, more sustainable:
- Enduring Excellence
- Regenerative Performance
- Exponential Performance
- Aligned Performance
- Operational Integrity
None of them are quite right. But each of them gets closer to a version of high performance that’s about working better, not just harder. That’s built on mastery, autonomy, and purpose—not shame, stress, or survival. If you have suggestions here, lay them on me.
And…stay tuned for more high performance myth-busting to come!
This is the work I love to do. Helping professional services leaders, teams, and organisations build performance that’s sustainable, human, and that actually gets the results they want.
If you’re curious what that could look like in your context, let’s talk.
