259. Beware the High Achiever
At The Table with Patrick Lencioni
Patrick Lencioni
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’re achieving at a high level while ignoring the health of your inner life, how can you reset?
In episode 259 of At The Table, Pat and Cody explore why high achievement can be a warning sign rather than a badge of honor. They explain how leaders often use success to compensate for fear, insecurity, or unresolved personal issues. The conversation underscores that true leadership effectiveness begins with inner health long before it shows up in organizational results.
Topics explored in this episode:
(00:30) The Real Cost of High Achievement
* High achievement often masks deeper personal wounds and unmet internal needs.
* Why leaders must address their spiritual, emotional, and relational health before chasing success.
(03:15) The Inner Circle of Influence
* How Stephen Covey’s “circle of influence” applies to a leader’s need to focus first on their internal well-being.
* How fear can become the engine driving unsustainable achievement.
(05:35) Organizational Health Begins With Leader Health
* Warning signs: neglecting physical health, spiritual life, or family relationships despite outward business success.
(09:27) Pat’s Personal Journey With Identity and Achievement
* Pat opens up about decades spent tying his sense of worth to professional success and learning to shift toward internal wholeness.
(14:25) Beware the High Achiever in Yourself and Others
* Encouraging leaders to pursue hobbies imperfectly, embrace being “not the best,” and refuse to let performance define identity.
This episode of At The Table with Patrick Lencioni is brought to you by The Table Group: https://www.tablegroup.com. We teach leaders how to make work more effective and less dysfunctional. We also help their employees be more fulfilled and less miserable.
At The Table is a podcast that lives at the connection between work life, leadership, organizational health, and culture. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4hJKKSL), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6NWAZzkzl4ljxX7S2xkHvu), and YouTube (https://bit.ly/At-The-Table-YouTube).
Follow Pat Lencioni on https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-lencioni-orghealth, http://www.youtube.com/@PatrickLencioniOfficial, and https://x.com/patricklencioni.
Be sure to check out our other podcast, The Working Genius Podcast with Patrick Lencioni, on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4iNz6Yn), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3raC053GF5mtkq6Y1klpRU), and YouTube (https://bit.ly/Working-Genius-YouTube).
Let us know your feedback via podcast@tablegroup.com.
This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you work with somebody else, one of the greatest things you could do is to love somebody enough to say, |
| 0:04.7 | are you attending to the most important things in your inner circle of influence? |
| 0:08.8 | Because if you're not, there's no way that this other thing you're doing in your work is going to bring about the satisfaction and the fulfillment you want. |
| 0:16.8 | I wish somebody could have sat me down years ago just to say, hey, I think that you have |
| 0:20.9 | some things that you're running from that might be propelling your business, but it's never |
| 0:25.3 | going to satisfy you if you don't become personally, spiritually, emotionally healthy. |
| 0:31.3 | Welcome to At the Table, the podcast that lives at the intersection between teamwork, organizational |
| 0:35.8 | health, leadership, and culture. |
| 0:38.2 | I'm Pat Linchone, your host, joined by Cody Thompson, my co-host. |
| 0:42.3 | And Cody, we still cannot convince Tracy to come on and do this. |
| 0:46.2 | She won't do it. |
| 0:47.5 | One day. |
| 0:48.8 | That's going to be us. |
| 0:48.9 | That's right. |
| 0:49.6 | But we're going to have her pop in sometime. |
| 0:52.2 | We're going to do that. |
| 0:52.8 | She's doing research right now. |
| 0:54.5 | Cody, what's the topic of today's podcast? Beware the high achiever. That's right. And I think we've |
| 0:59.5 | talked a little bit about stuff related to this before, but there's a lot more to talk about |
| 1:04.1 | that we really wanted to get to in a different way. And when we talk about beware the high |
| 1:09.6 | achiever in ourselves and others, there's this kind of |
| 1:13.3 | interesting thing growing up. People go, well, that guy's a real high achiever or she's a high |
... |
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