The Weight of Approval
Why Senior Leaders Still Quietly Chase Gold Stars, and What It Costs Them
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He’s a respected leader.
Smart. Trusted. High-output. The kind of person who gets thank-you emails from the CEO and applause in town halls.
And yet, there he is at 11:38 p.m., reworking a slide deck.
Not because it's wrong. Not because he thinks it won’t resonate.
But because something in him still believes that perfecting it might earn him something: validation, safety, proximity to power.
He won’t call it that, of course. He’ll say it’s about quality. Or being a team player. Or setting the standard.
But beneath all of that? A quiet question that never quite goes away: "Am I enough? Even when I’m not over-delivering?"
The Hidden Currency of Approval
In private conversations with high-performing leaders, I see this pattern often:
People who appear self-assured on the outside are, in reality, deeply attuned to others’ reactions; still chasing invisible grades long after leaving school.
They don’t seek approval because they’re weak.
They do it because it’s how they survived.
Approval once bought them access, opportunity, maybe even safety. And now? It's a currency they can’t stop trying to earn, even though it costs them their evenings, their clarity, and sometimes their joy.
One of my clients, a senior leader at a global tech firm, once said, “I don’t even like the work anymore. But the recognition... I’ve built my whole identity around it.”
He is not the only one, I am sure. Because it is not about the job; it is about the need to matter.
What It Costs (But Rarely Gets Talked About)
When you're unconsciously performing for validation, here's what it erodes:
Time: You stay too long in meetings you don’t need to be in.
Trust: You micromanage others because their mistakes reflect on you.
Vision: You prioritize optics over outcomes.
Energy: You burn out. Not from the work itself, but from the constant effort to be seen as irreplaceable.
And it keeps you stuck in roles you’ve outgrown. Because risking something more aligned means potentially losing the approval you’ve built your identity around.
That’s not simply a “mindset” issue. It is a survival strategy that has outlived its usefulness.
How It Shows Up Today
You might not call it approval-seeking, but it shows up in quieter, more 'professional' disguises:
Rewriting an email five times before sending it to your VP.
Volunteering for the thing no one else wants to do, just to be seen as a team player.
Sitting in meetings where you add little, but not leaving, because leaving feels like losing status.
Feeling irritated when someone else gets public credit, even if you said you didn’t really care.
Logging back in after dinner, not because it is urgent, but because “being done” still feels unsafe.
These are not behaviors of incompetence. They are the habits of someone who has learned to earn worth through performance, until it became the only way they knew how.
The Real Lesson
Freedom doesn’t come from being liked, praised, or promoted.
It comes when you stop negotiating your worth through your work.
I’ve lived this. Back in my Wall Street days, I found myself chasing titles and nods from corners of the firm that were never going to give me peace. It wasn’t until I stopped outsourcing my value that I finally stepped into the kind of leadership that felt honest: and actually influential.
And here’s the paradox: Once you no longer need their approval, you finally lead in a way that earns real respect: from your team, your peers, and most importantly, yourself.
If This Hit a Nerve...
You don’t need another TED talk on burnout. You need a place to talk about the real patterns underneath your leadership.
That’s what I write about weekly in my email letter. If you were forwarded this, make sure you’re subscribed here.
I coach high-level leaders in reclaiming authority over their work, energy, and identity—without walking away from the success they’ve spent a lifetime building.
You can find out more, or start the conversation, at
https://rajupanjwani.com/programs
Raju Panjwani
Former Morgan Stanley MD | 5X Entrepreneur
Helping high-performing leaders live and lead with full self-authority
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