Are your good leadership habits actually driving you closer to burnout?

If you’re a humanitarian or development leader who’s constantly saying yes, pushing for perfection, and always trying to be available for your team — you may unknowingly be suffering from High Performance Syndrome.

This episode explores the subtle emotional cues that reveal whether you're truly thriving or on the path to exhaustion.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- How to identify if your motivation is coming from a healthy place or from obligation.

- Discover a powerful emotional test to prevent burnout before it starts.

- Hear real-life stories of NGO leaders who redefined what being a “team player” truly means — and reclaimed their time and energy.

Listen now to uncover the mindset shift that could save your energy and amplify your impact as a modern humanitarian leader.

Watch on YouTube Here

What Is Your Leadership Style? Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader. Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

This podcast empowers international development and humanitarian NGO UN leaders to achieve high performance teams, fostering diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, overcoming burnout and overwhelm, while maximizing impact and productivity.

As a NGO leader, you probably wanna be a team player.

You probably wanna be resilient.

You probably want to get things perfect, but what if these exact desires are

also the reason that you're burning out?

My name is Torrey Peace.

I'm the host of the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader Podcast, and

today we're gonna talk about these subtle differences between thriving or burnout.

We often think that doing more makes us better leaders, but there's a small

invisible switch in your brain that determines if your hard work leads

to high impact or just frustration.

And this episode, I'm going to teach you the high performance syndrome

test, a simple way to know if your current habits are helping you thrive

or slowly destroying your energy.

So one of the steps to becoming a clear NGO leader, which I talk about on

this podcast, is to build resilience.

And I would argue that when you are truly thriving, you automatically

make a greater impact in your work.

So think about it.

When you are close to burnout, you're just surviving.

You're just going through the motions, dragging yourself through the day.

But when you're thriving, you are open to new ideas, you're

motivated, you get more done.

You're innovative.

So what is it that gets in the way?

What is the difference between thriving and burnout?

It's what I call high performance syndrome.

So after coaching hundreds of humanitarian and development leaders

globally, I have noticed a pattern.

It is so common in the development world that we don't often realize

that we are sabotaging ourselves.

Here's the definition I want you to remember: high performance

syndrome is when your healthy desire to do good work morphs into a

destructive obligation to be perfect.

It is tricky because it's so prevalent.

It's around us all the time.

It's the way most of us operate, and on the surface, high performance

syndrome sounds like good leadership.

For example, you might think I need to be a team player, or I need to

be available for my staff, or This grant proposal needs to be perfect.

These all sound like great thoughts.

But the difference between these thoughts being good versus bad is a subtle one

I wanna talk about now, so that you can determine from now onward whether

you're leading to thriving or to burnout.

So a student inside my "Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development

Leader" course recently asked me, but aren't those good things, these thoughts,

these, I need to be a team player?

I wanna be perfect for or help this report become perfect?

I need to be available for my staff.

Aren't those good things?

And how do you determine if being a team player, for example, is

leading to burnout or to thriving?

To answer that, we have to look at the emotion behind the thought.

Let me explain.

So picture this, it's 2:00 PM on Friday.

Your coworker approaches you and asks you if you can help them for on a donor report

that is not normally your responsibility.

So leader A might think I need to be a team player.

And from that thought they feel a spark of excitement.

They know they have some time to help, even though it is not

within their job description.

And they want to help.

They want to help and be a team player.

So they dive in, they finish the work, and they leave energized.

Leader B thinks I need to be a team player, but they feel a

pit of dread in their stomach.

They feel resentful.

They feel obligated to do the work, but they also aren't motivated to

do it, is the exact same thought.

I need to be a team player, but a totally different outcome for your nervous system

and for the results you end up getting.

When you feel you are saying yes, because you want to help, not out

of obligation then that is a signal that you are on the path to thrive.

If you are leader B on the other hand, and you think the same thing, I need

to be a team player, but you feel stressed or you feel resentful, that is

coming from high performance syndrome.

So those negative feelings that lead to unhealthy actions like saying

yes, when you have no capacity, you're rushing through tasks and

eventually you might lead to burnout.

What I have found is that so many leaders do not pay attention to how they are

feeling when they are saying yes to extra work, for example, or to making

something perfect or when they think they have to be available all of the time.

They're not paying attention to these feelings.

And when that happens, you are not aware of how you may be saying yes to

things that are leading to you becoming overwhelmed, overworked, and burnout.

It's a small accumulation of resentment or overwhelm, which adds up over time.

Okay.

But when I teach my students how to become aware of their thinking

and the feelings that arise from their thinking, they can make better

decisions about using their time and what to say yes to in order to thrive.

So a recent example.

In my course there was a student who was constantly saying yes to help her

teammates because she wanted to be a team player, but when she became aware

that as she said, yes, she was feeling resentment and causing delays in her

work and causing overwork and having to work longer hours, she decided that

she wanted to redefine what it meant

to be a team player and she decided that being a team player meant

that she would help when she felt she had the time and motivation.

In other words, when she was able to say yes from a positive place, this

simple switch allowed her to follow her feelings and free up several hours a week

in her schedule, several hours a week.

Just that simple noticing and deciding how she wanted to think

about this definition of team player.

So.

Here's the homework I want you to try.

Over the next week, the next time you are about to say yes to a project, or

you decide to keep your phone on in order to be available all of the time, or you

decide that a report needs to be perfect, pause and check your feelings, your gut.

Ask yourself.

Is this dread I'm feeling, or is this motivation?

Am I saying yes and feeling a positive thing, or am I saying yes

and feeling something negative?

Be honest with yourself, and I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

What is one task that you are currently doing because you feel

obligated and not motivated to do it?

Let's talk about it down there.

I'll see you in the next episode.

Until then, keep evolving.

Bye for now.