Stop Performing for Approval and Start Leading

Some of the most capable leaders in an organization are also the most exhausted, and the reason rarely shows up on a performance review. It shows up as a pattern: saying yes to everything, needing to be the one who can be handed anything, and never once admitting that the cost of all that competence is climbing. This is not a productivity problem. It is a survival pattern I call Validation Through Achievement, and it explains why so many high performers cannot stop even when every external measure says they have already won.

I explored this pattern recently with Renee Jackson-Smith, a leadership strategist who spent 30 years in corporate life before building her own practice around a single question: Is this confidence, or is this performance? Renee’s own answer took her two decades to find.

In this piece, I break down what Validation Through Achievement actually looks like inside a leader long before anyone else can see it, using Renee’s story as the case study.

The short version: an unprocessed loss gets converted into a belief that competence must be continually re-earned. That belief shows up as credential-collecting, an inability to rest, and a leadership style that models nonstop output for an entire team.

The framework I use to map this, the Leadership Impact Model, traces how something entirely private eventually becomes fully visible in an organization’s culture. Renee’s story maps cleanly onto it.

And the conclusion matters for anyone leading people: this pattern is recognizable and changeable once a leader is willing to look at what the achievement was actually protecting.

The Survival Pattern Behind the High Achiever in Your Organization.

Validation Through Achievement rarely announces itself. It looks, from the outside, like exactly what most organizations reward: the leader who finishes the degree, takes the next certification, volunteers for the stretch assignment, and never seems to need a break. Renee described the pattern from the inside as a constant reading of the room, an instinct to become whoever the room needed her to be rather than simply showing up as herself.

“I wasn’t truly in the room. I was the room.” — Renee Jackson-Smith

What the pattern looks like from the outside.

• Says yes to nearly every request, especially the ones no one else wants
• Collects degrees, certifications, or titles beyond what the role requires
• Rarely takes real time off, and stays reachable even when officially away
• Models an always-on standard that the rest of the team absorbs as the norm
• Deflects concern with some version of “I’m fine”

Where the Pattern Actually Comes From.

Renee lost her mother a month after her twenty-first birthday, and carried that loss unprocessed for the next twenty years. She told me she never once saw her mother cry, and absorbed an early lesson that strength meant never breaking down. In the years that followed, she collected degree after degree and credential after credential, telling herself it was ambition. Looking back, she recognized it differently: proof that she was still standing, still enough, still honoring the mother she had lost.

How a Private Pattern Becomes a Visible Leadership Style.

The Leadership Impact Model traces exactly how this happens. On the inside, where no one else can see it, Renee carried grief she had never given herself permission to feel, alongside a belief that competence had to be earned again with every achievement. At the bridge, where the private becomes observable, that belief converted into behavior: never pausing, always finishing the next credential, treating “I’m fine” as a full-time performance. On the outside, where a team actually experiences their leader, that pattern showed up as an executive who modeled nonstop output, whether or not anyone asked her to.

“If you keep telling yourself that you’re okay, you’re okay, and you don’t give yourself that moment to pause, something eventually is going to break.” — Renee Jackson-Smith

A moment that named it out loud.

The pattern finally surfaced when Renee’s pastor asked how she was doing after church one Sunday. She said, “I’m great.” He looked at her and told her plainly that she was not. She described the moment as feeling exposed, like a fraud finally caught, and it became the beginning of a healing journey she describes as ongoing rather than finished.

What Changes When a Leader Stops Performing.

The shift did not happen all at once, and Renee is clear that healing rarely does. One turning point came from an unlikely source: a boss who threatened to fire her unless she fully disconnected during a week-long vacation. That threat became permission Renee had never given herself. She now treats real rest as non-negotiable, and she connects that lesson directly back to her mother, who worked long hours and then genuinely stopped when it was time to.

“Give yourself permission to take up space. Give yourself permission to speak.” — Renee Jackson-Smith

What grounded leadership looks like in practice.

• Understanding the actual reason behind a goal, not just the achievement itself
• Giving yourself permission to take up space in a room instead of managing it
• Disconnecting fully during time off, without a working version of “off”
• Naming the difference between performing for approval and performing for mastery
• Leading with clear, direct communication instead of softening every message

Why This Pattern Costs the Team, Not Just the Leader.

A leader running on Validation Through Achievement rarely appears to be a risk from the outside. She looks like the strongest person in the building. But a team absorbs whatever standard its leader models, and an always-on leader teaches an always-on team, whether the lesson is intended or not. Renee named this cost directly: she recognized, only in hindsight, that her own children learned to equate her love with constant work, long before she understood what that example was actually teaching them. The same dynamic plays out on a team. A leader who cannot rest is training a culture that cannot rest, one that treats burnout as the price of belonging rather than a signal something needs to change.

The HEAL Framework™ Offers a Way Through This, Not Around It.

Recognizing a survival pattern is the first step, not the last one. The HEAL Framework™ moves leaders through a rewiring of their survival patterns, teaching how to heal through hope, evolving, and love in action. For a leader shaped by Validation Through Achievement, that path usually starts with the hardest action of all: stopping long enough to notice what the achievement was actually protecting.

If any part of Renee’s story sounds familiar (the achieving that never quite feels like enough, the vacation that is really just a change of scenery for the same inbox), I would like to hear from you directly. Email me at beth@empoweredsurvivors.com. 

Key Quotes

• “I wasn’t truly in the room. I was the room.” — Renee Jackson-Smith (~02:29)
• “If you keep telling yourself that you’re okay, you’re okay… something eventually is going to break.” — Renee Jackson-Smith (~07:03)
• “No, you are not.” — Renee Jackson-Smith’s pastor, as recounted by Renee (~08:12)
• “Give yourself permission to take up space. Give yourself permission to speak.” — Renee Jackson-Smith (~47:20)

Q&A 

Beth Jones

Leadership Performance Transformationist | The HEALing Mentor | Creative Visionary, Leader Rewired™