999: The Most Underrated Leadership Skill: Why Having FUN Drives Results | Leadership Strategies
About this episode
Sara Dean discusses the importance of fun as an essential leadership skill for high-achieving women.
I’ve worked with high-achieving women for over two decades. I think I attract high-achieving women because this is an attribute I deeply relate to - sometimes to my own detriment. One of the things I’ve noticed my clients and I can struggle with is FUN. High achievers tend to take things seriously. Like, very seriously. We are intense and motivated to make everything great, if not perfect. This drive can suck the life right out of what otherwise might have been a footloose and fancy-free experience. Rather than embracing fun as a birthright, high-achieving women in leadership have a tendency to treat fun only as a reward - which must be earned after a remarkable and noteworthy win. It’s as if somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that fun belongs to others but not to us. But here's what I've learned: when you connect fun only to rewards and achievement, you aren't just flirting with leadership burnout; you're leaving one of the most underrated leadership skills on the table. Fun isn't a reward or a distraction from the work of female leadership — it's an essential emotional intelligence practice that sharpens decision-making, deepens connection, and builds sustainable…
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