Coach on Call: When Perfectionism and Burnout Collide - Learning to Lead Yourself with Permission, Not Pressure

In this Coach on Call episode of Boss Yourself First, Robyn invites listeners into two powerful, true-to-life coaching sessions that many high achievers will recognize.

Meet Elena, a perfection-driven project manager who believes “flawless equals worthy,” and Marcus, a burned-out executive who fears everything will fall apart if he slows down. Through reflective storytelling, Robyn models how to coach beyond performance into belief, balance, and permission.

You’ll learn why perfectionism and burnout are two sides of the same self-leadership coin and how to reclaim your energy, update unhelpful beliefs, and lead yourself with compassion instead of criticism. Along the way, Robyn shares evidence-based insights from neuroscience and leadership research on why rest fuels creativity and why beliefs, once examined, can literally reshape your brain.

If you’ve ever chased “good enough” that never arrives or worn exhaustion like a badge of honor, this episode is your gentle invitation to lead differently -  with permission, not pressure.

Transcript

You are listening to The Boss Yourself First podcast, season 3, episode 15.

Welcome back to Boss Yourself First. I'm your host, Robyn White, and today we're adding a new twist on our season of permission and trying something a little new. I'm calling it Coach On Call. And here's the idea. I'll share two case studies that are based on the challenges of my actual clients, the things they come to me with, and to be honest, some of the things that you guys have come to me with as well.

So hopefully there'll be a lot to relate to. And instead of the usual back and forth of a live coaching session,

i'll walk you through these sessions in story form. The other thing you need to know is this is a condensed version of our sessions. Coaching is about creating awareness and space for exploration. But for us on the podcast, we'll hit the highlights. You'll hear the kinds of questions I ask, why I ask them, and you'll get to try on the insights for yourself.

So think of it. Like sitting in on a coaching session where you don't have to talk, you just get the takeaways. So here's why I'm excited about this format. The self-leadership, it's lived in real challenges of everyday life and two of those challenges, things I see most often. And sometimes separately, and sometimes actually together are perfectionism and burnout, and they might look different on the surface, but perfectionism is, is whispering.

You are not good enough unless it's flawless. And burnout convinces you that if you stop moving everything. Including yourself will fall apart. But here's the connection. Both are giving away your permission. That's why it fits in our season. So I want us to continue with the permission lens, but I want you to look at these two specific things, perfectionism and burnout.

In perfectionism, you relinquish your permission and you allow fear and avoidance of failure and impossibly high standards to run your life. To dictate what you're going to do and not do. In burnout, you relinquish permission and allow pace and pressure to define your worth. Kind of speaking into your identity, both leave you drained, both leave you disconnected, and both leave you questioning your value.

And both of these are self-leadership challenges that when you name them and have the strategies to shift them can change everything. So today you'll hear two case studies, Elena's story of perfectionism and Marcus's story of burnout. Don't worry, these are not their real names.

But they're different situations. Same route invitation to lead yourself with permission, not pressure. So I wanna introduce you to Elena. She's 39. She's a project manager in a tech company. She's sharp. Ambitious, well respected, really good reputation.

But when we sat down, she leaned forward and she said, everyone thinks I'm successful, but I am drowning. I stay up late tweaking presentations so no one will notice. If it isn't perfect, it isn't worth doing, and honestly, I'm terrified. One mistake will expose me as not good enough. Get a little imposter syndrome in there too. E ven at home,

Elena shared that her husband says that she's more married to her laptop. She has a better relationship with her laptop. And her kids, they tease her about not being able to stop till version seven of every project. And she feels the tension between those two worlds and she feels like she's failing in both.

So that kind of gives you some context. In our session, after Elena had shared this with me. I said, it sounds like you have a belief that flawless equals w orthy and I paused because sometimes naming the belief is the most powerful step. Just wanna let it land and let it, let her process. And notice what's happening here.

I'm not asking Elena to go digging in her past. Coaching is about moving forward. I'm simply holding up a mirror. So she can hear what she already believes and give her room and space to decide if that belief still works for her. Her response was, she nodded, and she said, well, yeah, that feels true, but it is exhausting and I'm not sure it's sustainable.

So I said sometimes our beliefs serve us for a season, and I think I've had this conversation with almost every client that we do have permission to change our beliefs. Some of them will keep serving us and some of them we need to let go of. But it takes that dynamic intention to look at our beliefs and shift them to serve us in this season.

So beliefs keep us safe. They help us achieve, but not all of them are meant to travel with you forever. Some of them just don't accommodate growth. So what's a belief you could hold instead? This is what I asked her, what's a belief you could hold instead, one that would serve you better now, better flawless, equals worthy.

Just to, to remind you of the, the belief we're working to shift. So she thought for a little bit and then. Almost asking it as a question. She said it really quietly. Maybe, maybe one is excellence is finishing on time with some energy left over for what matters like my family or exercise or friends.

I wanna repeat it to you. Excellence is finishing on time, still hitting the deadline, but with energy left over for what matters. That's gold. We didn't throw away or dishonor her value of excellence. We redefined it, and that's one of the most important moves in coaching. Take what matters most to a client and reshape it so it helps them to thrive instead of burnout.

So then I asked her if you carried that new belief into your week. Remember, the belief is excellence is finishing on time. With energy leftover for what matters. That's the belief. And I said, if you carried that new belief into your week, how would it change the way you approach your work? And she smiled and she said, I'd stop at version three instead of version seven, and maybe I'd actually close the laptop before bedtime.

Here's why this matters, and not just for Elena. Research from the American Psychological Association, the A PA, shows that perfectionism has risen sharply in the last 30 years, especially among high achievers. And I know that we've already even talked about it this season, but I want to reiterate it because it is rampant.

I hear it in my students, I hear it in my clients. I hear it in my friends. And guess what? It's not making us better. It is strongly correlated to anxiety, burnout, and depression. Why? Because perfectionism keeps moving the finish line. You never win no matter how much you achieve. It whispers not good enough.

The good news, neuroscience tells us that our brains can rewire. We've also talked about neuroplasticity. When you practice a new belief like Elena's redefinition of excellence, those neural pathways strengthen good enough, can literally become easier to believe over time, but it does take practice, consistency, intention. I didn't say it was easy. It's pretty simple. All right, so here's some takeaways for you. Things I really want you to notice if you see yourself in Elena, think about this few questions. What belief am I living as though it's true, unchangeable ,written in stone?

Is that belief still serving me or is it based on an old model of me? I've grown, I have new experiences, I have new wisdom. Is it a little outdated? Is it still serving you? And then thirdly, what belief would serve me better now? Try that this week and just notice the shifts. I encourage you to conduct your own little experiment.

Elena's story shows us how unchecked beliefs can drive us into overwork and self-criticism. Now let's look at the cousin of perfectionism, and we've even alluded to it a little bit because it can lead to it - burnout. If perfectionism is never letting yourself rest, because it's not perfect yet, burnout is never letting yourself rest because it feels unsafe to stop at all.

Both are patterns that high achievers fall into and both require courage to break. So now I wanna introduce you to Marcus. He's 52 VP of operations in healthcare. He started our session, came in and you could just see it.

You could just see the the deflating moment. 'cause we were on a Zoom call and he just let out this big sigh and you could just see he was tired. Everything about his body language said tired. And he said, I feel like a machine. If I stop moving, everything falls apart, but honestly, I'm falling apart.

Marcus was working at 70 hour weeks. His blood pressure, as you can probably guess high, very high. He was getting feedback from his body that it was hitting its limits. And guess what? It was showing up as irritable to his team. His team was walking on eggshells. He didn't actually know it till we did a little bit of investigation in some of the responses he'd gotten lately.

And yeah, his team sensed his irritability. His partner said, you're here but you're not really here. Anything there sound familiar? So I asked him. What message do you send your team when you work 70 hours a week? And he just, he smiled. It was actually, I think the first smile that, that I saw in that session and he said they think they should too, which is not what I want.

I wouldn't wish this on anyone. not his expectation for his team. He's much harder on himself. But notice here, I didn't ask how he felt about his hours. I asked about the ripple effect. Burnout narrows our vision to survival. We forget what it may look like to other people because we're just trying to survive.

This question helped Marcus zoom out and see his influence. And then I asked, what are the facts about what would actually fall apart if you paused? I want you to notice I wasn't focused on his feelings. I was asking him for the facts, what actually, and he, he took a minute and, and I could almost see him like checking things off in his head, a mental list.

And he said, maybe my inbox. It would overflow very quickly. That's really it. So I reframed. It's not that the company would actually collapse then it's that you'd lose some control. But what if letting go of a little control actually made you a stronger leader? And he side again and he said, I just dunno how to stop.

I don't even know what rest looks like anymore. And so I offered, what if rest isn't the opposite of leadership, but actually part of it that gave him pause. That didn't sound like leadership in his book. I think we even expanded on that a little bit and, and he pushed back. But eventually I just said, what if pausing is a performance strategy?

And while I'm not gonna go into it here, we did go a little bit sideways around, you know, what would you talk about with one of your team members Who are your direct reports that comes to you and says, I am, I'm dying here. You would advise them to rest so that they could show up. Strong. It's that whole, you can't pour from an empty cup.

So what if pausing is a performance strategy? And finally I asked him, because you know, with someone who's gone and he said, I don't even know what rest looks like anymore. And someone who's gone on that long in the habit of overworking and is really burning out in front of you. Saying you need to take a total pause is a little bit scary and overwhelming.

I'm not saying , it's never to be done. In fact, I have a client that was told by their doctor they would be taking a two week pause. But I came back to, to Marcus and said, what's one small way you could practice leading with rest this week? Just one small way.

It took him again a bit and he, he tried a few different options and finally he kinda came to, I'll block 30 minutes for nothing twice, and I'll delegate the weekly report even if it isn't perfect. And again, I pushed back a little bit and I said, perfect, or just not the way you would do it. And sometimes that's what a coach does, my friend.

Sometimes a coach challenges you a little bit, so he committed to blocking two 30 minute time slots for absolutely nothing and delegating the weekly report, which freed him up a bit. Here's the teaching piece here, you know how I always like to bring in a little bit of data to back up some of the things that we're talking about.

Not necessarily something I would do in a coaching session, but here, this is what I want for us. So a 2021 Gallup study found that managers who work extreme hours aren't actually more effective. Their teams report lower engagement and higher turnover. Burnout doesn't just hurt the leader, it cascades.

It's that ripple effect. Right? And neuroscience backs this up too. When you rest, your brain shifts into the default mode network. We have talked about the DMN before. It's the state where creativity and problem solving thrive. That's why breakthroughs happen in the shower or on a walk, not staring at a spreadsheet.

Harvard Business Review even found that leaders who intentionally recharge show up with 40% higher resilience. they recharge and they show up rated as 40% higher in resilience, almost double the creativity of their always on peers. There were some comparative studies done by HPR, so rest isn't weakness, it's return on investment.

So if Marcus's story sounds familiar, here's , a little bit of coaching questions for you to consider. I'm inviting you to this challenge. What are the facts about what will fall apart if you pause?

Really give it a make a list if you need to. And what message does my current pace send to those I lead? Now you may be pushing back there and saying, Hey, I am not a team leader. You are leading, you're leading from wherever you are on that team. Additionally, you lead other people. Then professionally, you lead other people in your world and community.

So yes, there is always a ripple effect, and you are sending out a message. So notice what that message is. And what's one small way I can practice leading with rest this week? I want you to try it, watch what happens. I encourage you to write it all down, as I always do. Alright, my friends, Elena reminds us that self-leadership means updating our beliefs so they serve our growth.

She showed us that our beliefs drive us and sometimes they need updating to make space. Marcus showed us that burnout isn't a badge of honor. I know we wear busyness and burnout like that sometimes, so it's not a badge of honor. It's a warning light that tells us to steward our energy better so we don't lead from empty.

Different stories. Same lesson. Self-leadership starts with permission. Permission to reframe what success looks like. Permission to rest before you collapse. Permission to lead yourself with kindness, not just hustle. That's the thread that ties these stories together, and it's the thread that can tie together your own growth.

And here's the thing, when you give yourself permission, you're not just leading yourself differently, you're modeling a new way for everyone around you. I hope this felt supportive to you guys. I hope it was fun to peek inside coaching sessions, what it would be like for us to work together. Thanks for joining me on the Coach on-Call episode, and I would also love your feedback on that as far as that goes.

But if it gave you something to think about, share it with a friend, or leave a review to help others find the podcast and expand the ripple effect of self-leadership done well. It might be the nudge they need today. And if you want to keep growing in your self-leadership, check out my book, Three Permissions.

It's available on Amazon or wherever you buy books. . And if you haven't, please join my email list. Let's stay in touch. There's a link posted here with the podcast.

So until next time, remember, be well and lead well. Take care everyone.