When Mental Toughness Becomes a Liability in Leadership
Mental toughness is usually treated as an unquestionable strength in leadership.
When the pressure rises, strong leaders are expected to keep going. They work longer, absorb more and find another gear. If the situation does not improve, the answer is often assumed to be more effort.
That approach can be extremely effective. It can also become dangerous when pushing through is the only response a leader knows how to use.
Josh Komen understands both sides of that tension.
Before being diagnosed with leukaemia, Josh was a competitive 800-metre runner who took enormous pride in his ability to work. He described getting up at 5am to train, spending ten hours working in the bush with a chainsaw and then running another 20 or 30 kilometres after work.
His willingness to endure discomfort helped him progress as an athlete. It also became part of how he understood himself.
As Josh puts it:
Your best attribute can be your worst too.
Mental toughness was not the problem
It would be easy to interpret Josh's story as an argument against discipline or hard work. It is neither.
The discipline he developed through running helped him tolerate discomfort and continue when motivation disappeared. Those qualities remained valuable when his life became significantly harder.
The problem was that his toughness had no flexibility around it.
Josh had spent years learning that discomfort was something to move through. Harder work had become both his response to difficulty and proof of his worth. Resting, reassessing or allowing someone else to help did not fit the identity he had built.
That worked while the problem in front of him could be influenced by effort. It stopped working when he faced something he could not overpower.
After being diagnosed with leukaemia twice, Josh lost much of the physical capability on which his identity had been built. He could no longer train, perform or see himself as the strong and relentlessly capable person he had been.
Working harder was no longer the answer. Continuing to treat it as the answer made it harder for him to accept what the situation required.
When a strength becomes rigid
Most leadership strengths have a point at which they begin working against us.
Decisiveness can become impatience. High standards can become control. Confidence can make it harder to hear uncomfortable information.
Mental toughness can become rigidity.
The warning sign is not that a leader is working hard. It is that they continue applying the same response after the evidence shows it is no longer helping.
That can look like:
Increasing the pressure on a tired team because performance has fallen.
Taking on more personally because delegating feels slower.
Refusing to change a plan because too much has already been invested in it.
Treating exhaustion as evidence of commitment.
Avoiding help because capable people are supposed to handle things themselves.
Persistence is useful when the direction remains sound and the obstacle can be overcome through sustained effort. It becomes a liability when it prevents a leader from seeing that the situation has changed.
Identity makes it harder to change
The practical decision to slow down is often complicated by identity.
If a leader has built their reputation around being dependable, tireless or calm under pressure, changing their response can feel like abandoning the qualities that made them successful.
They may understand intellectually that they need support, but still experience asking for it as weakness. They may know a plan is failing, but changing course feels like admitting that they were wrong.
Josh faced an extreme version of this when illness removed his ability to be the athlete he had spent years becoming.
His recovery could not be built around returning immediately to the old version of himself. He needed medical care, psychological support, connection with other patients and the willingness to let people into a situation he had been trying to manage alone.
One of the strongest ideas from the conversation is:
You're not using all your strength unless you ask for help.
Asking for help did not replace Josh's toughness. It gave him access to strength that individual effort could not provide.
The same principle applies in leadership. Using the experience, judgement and capacity around you is not a retreat from responsibility. In many situations, it is how responsibility is exercised properly.
Slowing down creates room to see the problem
When leaders are under pressure, speed can feel productive even when it is taking them in the wrong direction.
Josh describes a lesson from one of his skydiving instructors:
Slow is fast and fast is slow.
Slowing down does not always mean stopping work. It means creating enough space to understand what is happening before committing more effort to the current response.
That pause allows a leader to ask better questions:
What does this pressure actually mean?
What remains within my control?
Is my current response improving the situation?
What am I failing to see because I am moving too quickly?
Who else needs to be involved?
Josh uses his breathing as one way to create that space. The objective is not a complicated breathing technique. It is simply to interrupt the automatic reaction long enough to reassess the situation and choose the next useful action. That pause created a better decision.
Make plans without falling in love with them
Leaders need plans. Teams need direction, priorities and a clear understanding of what happens next.
The danger begins when commitment to the plan becomes more important than responding to reality.
Josh's advice is to make plans without falling in love with them. A plan should guide action, but it should not become part of the leader's identity. When the conditions change, the plan may need to change with them.
This does not mean abandoning goals whenever progress becomes uncomfortable. Discomfort is often part of meaningful work.
The question is whether the discomfort is moving you towards the objective or merely proving how much you are willing to tolerate.
A strong leader can hold the destination firmly while remaining flexible about the route.
Strength includes knowing when your response no longer fits
Mental toughness in leadership remains valuable. Teams need leaders who can carry pressure, make difficult decisions and continue through setbacks.
But toughness is incomplete when it only means enduring more.
Sometimes the strongest response is to continue. Sometimes it is to pause, ask for help or change the plan. The skill lies in recognising which situation you are actually facing.
Josh puts it simply:
We make those plans, but we don't fall in love with them.
Josh Komen is a two-time leukaemia survivor and former competitive 800m runner, now an author, speaker and breathwork coach. This piece draws on his conversation on the Fireside Leadership Podcast.
The article captures the shape of it. The full conversation is where you hear how close it came to going the other way, and what actually pulled him back.
Watch the full Fireside Leadership Podcast conversation with Josh Komen:
Listen on Spotify:
The Fireside Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Aegis Leadership and supported by Dark Horse Coffee Co.
Content note: The full conversation includes discussion of cancer, depression and suicidal thoughts. In New Zealand, you can call or text 1737 at any time for free support. If someone is in immediate danger, call 111.
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