The Suppression Tax
I coach a founder who scaled his company from $3M to $120M in four years. On paper, he's one of the most successful CEOs I work with. In practice, he's spent years swallowing what he actually wants to say to his team, because he doesn't want to come across as difficult.
He thought he was being the kind of leader nobody could call difficult. His team experienced him as unpredictable.
When his head of product missed two deadlines in a row, he said, "no worries, let's regroup." What he wanted to say was, "I'm going to lose investors over this. We have to fix it. Now."
His team can't tell what he wants. They walk on eggshells because they sense his frustration even when he never voices it. With enough suppression, everyone feels the tension anyway. He was trying so hard not to be that boss that he became something worse: a boss nobody can read.
He's not unusual. Almost every founder I work with runs some version of this pattern. Most never see it.
After working with hundreds of CEOs, I've noticed something sneakier than overwork or burnout. Whatever someone's actual strength is, they almost always discount it and reach for the opposite.
Founders who are naturally decisive build consensus processes because they think good leaders are collaborative. Founders who care deeply go cold and "professional." Founders who are careful and deliberate force themselves to move fast because they think that's what ambition looks like.
None of those things are wrong. But founders consistently decide the best leader is one they aren't already. So they import someone else's playbook. Sometimes a playbook from leaders they hated working for.
You end up running two systems at once: who you are, and who you're performing. The gap between them is where your energy disappears. And your team's.
The Suppression Tax
This is the suppression tax. The performance doesn't just drain you. It taxes the team. Every day, in ways nobody names.
Your team can't calibrate when you keep shifting between your real instincts and the version you think you should be. One week you push for speed because that's what leading looks like. The next week you're frustrated that nobody slowed down to think, because what you actually needed was space.
Your team doesn't copy your hours or your intensity. They copy the quality of your focus. When you show up fragmented from performing a version of leadership that drains you, they show up unsure.
They stop bringing you the hard things because they can't predict which version of you will receive them. They walk into meetings having already decided what to leave out. They do everything more cautiously and move slower. Not because they're not capable. Because you've made it impossible for them to know what you actually want.
That's the suppression tax. You pay it in your own energy. They pay it in caution.
Designing Around Who You Actually Are
If you've spent years believing someone else would do this better, leading like yourself will feel wrong at first. The work of pushing against that belief is the most fun you'll have as a CEO. You get to stop performing and start playing.
Designing around who you are starts with a question most founders skip: how do I want my days to feel? Not how productive. What conversations do you want to be having? What does your best thinking actually require: solitude, movement, a whiteboard, a long walk? How much space do you need between meetings to process what you just heard?
Most founders know what the business needs from them. They rarely ask what they need from the business. When you start paying attention, you notice the obvious: three hours of deep work in the morning make you sharper for every meeting that afternoon. The decisions you've been agonizing over resolve in twenty minutes when you stop interrupting yourself.
Most CEOs know when something is working. They just don't stop to name it. When you do, you can build around it.
What Happens When You Stop Performing
A team that gets the real you, consistently, can move at the speed of your conviction. They disagree more freely because they understand how you think. They work independently because they've absorbed your actual values, not the borrowed ones you were performing. They work harder because your genuine interest sets the energy.
I notice this in my own company. When I lead how I actually want to, the team performs better. I value experimentation, agency, people who want to be here because the work is worth doing. So when I sit down with my editor, I don't tell her "here's what I need you to deliver." I tell her what I'm seeing, where I feel pulled, what I want to build next. I want her to want to beat her own work — not deliver mine.
I don't even use the word "should" in my company. Nobody does. Everything's an experiment. Otherwise, I have the wrong person.
When the performance drops, the right people feel pulled in. They start giving me their own ideas, their own enthusiasm, their own thinking. The same thing happens when you stop performing. The people around you stop guessing and start contributing.
Easy Doesn't Mean Wrong
The reason you're performing a version of leadership that doesn't fit isn't lack of confidence. It's that you've internalized a belief that what comes naturally to you isn't enough. That your actual strengths are too easy to count as real leadership. That the way you naturally communicate is too soft, too direct, too quiet, or too much.
So you adopt someone else's version. It costs more energy to maintain than the actual work of leading. Every minute you spend being someone you're not is a minute you can't spend leading as who you are.
Ask yourself this week: if I were competing against myself, would I be intimidated by what I'm building? The honest answer points at the talents you've been taking for granted. The ones you've been working against because they felt too easy to count. Build the company around those.
The form your leadership takes doesn't matter. For some CEOs it's quiet determination. For others it's contagious enthusiasm. For some it's intensity. For others, stillness. What matters is that it's actually yours.
Reply to share your thoughts — I read every message. See you next week! 👑
If You Want To Go Deeper...
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