Whenever an ambitious leader enthusiastically lists all their plans to transform their team, I gently caution them against "flooding the zone."

This strategy of deliberately saturating an environment with simultaneous changes might seem like an effective way to pressure people into hitting performance targets, but it invariably undermines performance and leaves people more fragile.

Most mid-career professionals I coach are surprisingly bad at assessing their own success in real time. They tend to focus negatively on what they haven’t been able to do, what hasn’t gone well enough, and what still needs to be accomplished. It’s as though they believe staying vigilant and critical in the short term ensures success in the long term…but this is an outdated belief.

Way back in 2015, I had the privilege of consulting on strategic work inside a world-famous corporation. It was, and still is, known all around the world for its bold brand positioning and its high performance culture…so you can probably guess which one I’m talking about.

If not, I’ll give you a hint: its name rhymes with “Mikey.”

During my tenure, I got to work with some truly brilliant professionals: category leaders, functional leaders, innovators, and creators, and I was charged with leading workplace transformation inside various departments.

Every month, I have the privilege of engaging in wide-ranging conversations with ambitious professionals - bankers, attorneys, physicians, start-up founders, non-profit executives, and small business owners.

Every week, I take a front row seat to their busy schedules, their remarkably complex responsibilities, their tenuous relationships, and their bold visions.

I know how exhausting it is to be a human at work these days, and how much you long to feel seen, heard, understood, and respected by your colleagues, clients, or customers. (Because we all do!)

I don’t know a single professional who hasn’t been confronted by heightened emotions at work, or tried to suppress heightened emotions in the midst of work. This is because we’ve been told for decades that emotions don’t belong in the workplace, and they are bad for decision-making, but this broad advice couldn’t be further from the truth, especially as we march forward into an AI-supported “relationship economy.” Knowing how to gather emotional data and work with it is an extremely valuable competency - especially if you aspire to lead yourself, your clients, and colleagues toward more creative and innovative solutions.

There’s a performative security we’ve gained from setting S.M.A.R.T goals year after year, and for those of us who’ve bounced around the corporate world, drafting those specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals has become an increasingly meaningless ritual.