Brilliant & Broken: Success at What Cost?

You've seen it before—the glassy-eyed executive shouting at his staff to "pick up the pace," pounding the air with both fists like it's part of the job description. Or the standing ovation at an offsite after someone boasts about a 90-hour workweek and a postponed honeymoon. The startup founder bragging that no one on the team has taken a vacation in two years, and the crowd nodding in reverent silence. The conference room applause when someone calls a direct report a 'machine.'

These moments aren't anomalies. They're myths in the making—subtle rituals of a culture where output is divine and recovery is betrayal.

The Air Up Here Is Thin

At the highest levels of performance, something strange starts to happen: the meetings are faster, the coffee stronger, the ambition sharper, and the people, thinner—figuratively and literally. These teams are efficient to the point of aestheticism. Metrics aren't just watched; they're worshipped. Purpose becomes purity. You're no longer just doing your job. You are your job. And that, precisely, is the problem.

We tend to romanticize elite teams—the startups that never sleep, the consultancies that run on espresso and existential dread, the teams that "go to war" together. But beneath the surface, a subtler story unfolds. When high performance becomes culture, and then becomes identity, the line between commitment and cultic devotion grows thin.

This is not just a metaphor. It's psychology. And increasingly, it's pathology.

What's particularly striking is how these dynamics transcend cultural boundaries while manifesting in culturally specific ways. In Japan, the phenomenon of "karoshi" (death from overwork) is recognized as a serious social problem with government initiatives to combat it [4]. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley's "hustle culture" continues to celebrate similar behaviors under the banner of ambition and disruption. The contrast reveals that performance obsession isn't inevitable, but culturally constructed—and therefore changeable.

For executives, this is a moment for reflection: if performance is the defining currency of your culture, what unspoken behaviors are you rewarding? If you're an employee, ask yourself whether striving has turned into self-erasure. Where is the line between excellence and self-abandonment?

The Aesthetic of Excellence

There is a distinct texture to elite environments. The walls speak in mission statements. There are standing desks, branded hoodies, biometric trackers, and—crucially—a shared language of intensity. Everyone is "crushing it." Everyone is "on."

What begins as motivation calcifies into social conditioning. Research on conformity suggests that people internalize roles when placed in intense environments [1]. Similarly, studies on authority show how perceived duty can override individual judgment [2]. In elite teams, the context itself becomes an unspoken command: perform, or disappear.

The aesthetic is not just visual. It's behavioral. There's a cadence to high-performance environments: the micro-celebrations of every win, the coded applause of emojis in digital threads, the ritualistic cadence of key meetings. These markers reinforce a constant sense of forward motion. Standing still is an implicit transgression.

Humans are deeply attuned to group norms. In high-performance settings, the norm is relentless optimization. Achievement becomes not just the goal, but the threshold for worthiness [3]. You are only as good as your last quarter.

If you're in a leadership role, consider this diagnostic: Are your team rituals reinforcing clarity or conformity? Are they energizing, or obligatory? Normalize stepping back to audit what your culture implicitly teaches. For employees, pay attention to the invisible scripts. Are you performing out of pride or fear?

Belief as Behavior: The Mechanics of Indoctrination

High-performing cultures operate like belief systems—totalizing, self-reinforcing, and difficult to question from within. Drawing from cult psychology, we see several red flags:

• Isolation from dissent ("This is the only way to win")

• Insider language ("10x-er," "grit," "hustle")

• Hero myths (founders who worked 100-hour weeks)

• Rituals (stand-ups, OKRs, retrospectives)

What ties these together is behavioral control through shared belief [5]. The team is not just aligned—they are converted.

Some argue that intensity is necessary for breakthroughs. Elon Musk famously stated that "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week." However, research on creativity and innovation suggests that sustained creativity requires cycles of intensive work followed by recovery. The greatest teams don't eliminate intensity—they harness it sustainably and recognize when it becomes counterproductive.

Intermittent reinforcement plays a critical role. Like slot machines, unpredictable rewards—praise, bonuses, promotions—create dopaminergic dependency [6]. We don't just want to perform. We need to.

In organizations like these, internal culture documents are sometimes longer than employee handbooks.

Expectations around hours, email etiquette, and communication style become part of a soft doctrine. You don't ask whether the team takes breaks. You ask how long until the next push.

Over time, this creates a state of psychological fusion. Performance isn't something you do. It's who you are. And losing it would mean losing yourself.

If you're building teams, ask yourself: Are you cultivating belief or dependence? If you're in the system, ask when you last disagreed aloud. The inability to challenge is not a sign of harmony. It's a symptom of indoctrination.

The Identity Merger

Philosopher Charles Taylor described identity as a story we tell ourselves, formed in relation to the people and values that grant us recognition [7]. In elite teams, recognition is gated through output. To matter is to deliver.

This creates a dangerous merger. The self becomes an optimization project, not a human with limits, but a product in beta. Flaws aren't tolerated; they are debugged. Rest isn't recuperation; it's inefficiency.

What emerges is a fragile selfhood: one that is constantly recalibrating, never enough, always seeking proof of its right to exist.

This, as Erich Fromm warned in The Sane Society, is the hallmark of alienation: becoming a thing among things, valued only insofar as one is useful [8].

It also makes feedback existential. When who you are is fused with what you do, even minor criticism hits with the weight of rejection. A missed goal isn't a data point. It's a threat to your place in the system.

Perhaps the clearest recent example of this dynamic was at Theranos, where questioning was equated with disloyalty. Former employees described an environment where 16-hour days were standard and founder Elizabeth Holmes cultivated an atmosphere of unquestioning belief [15]. The company's eventual collapse demonstrates how identity-based performance cultures ultimately self-destruct when reality intrudes.

To prevent identity-performance fusion, teams can implement several practices:

• Role separation rituals - Create explicit transitions between work and non-work identities

• Feedback reframing - Train team members to separate performance feedback from personal value

• Identity diversity - Actively encourage interests and communities outside work

• Language monitoring - Eliminate phrases that equate people with their output

If you're an employee, be wary of identity foreclosure—when the story you tell about yourself leaves no room to evolve. And if you lead, be conscious of how your evaluation systems silently define what's valuable. Sometimes, what they leave out speaks loudest.

Fragile Gods: The Taboo of Weakness

Elite teams rarely discuss fragility. Fatigue is reframed as "stretch." Burnout is "a sign you care." Doubt is "a mindset issue."

Yet the numbers betray the mythology. A 2023 Deloitte study found that 52% of employees report feeling frequently exhausted and 49% experience frequent stress [9]. In founder culture, these numbers spike even higher: nearly 72% of founders report that the entrepreneurial journey affects their mental health, with 37% suffering from anxiety and 36% from burnout [10].

Psychological safety—the belief that one can express vulnerability without punishment—is often absent in these environments [11]. The fear of seeming "non-elite" becomes its own form of silence.

This isn't just an HR problem. It's a philosophical one. If worth is tied to work, and work is unceasing, then there is no space left for humanness. There is only output. And people, inevitably, break.

Recent research from MIT Sloan found that toxic culture was the single best predictor of attrition during the Great Resignation—ten times more powerful than compensation in predicting employee turnover [13]. This suggests that the costs of performance-obsessed cultures aren't just human but financial.

The contrast with successful transformations is instructive. Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft shifted from a cutthroat, stack-ranking system to a growth mindset culture emphasizing learning and collaboration [14]. The result wasn't diminished performance but accelerated innovation and market value. This transformation demonstrates that elite performance and psychological safety aren't mutually exclusive.

If you manage people, ask what happens when someone falters, not on paper, but in the room. If you're in the seat of struggle, consider this: not speaking up doesn't protect you. It isolates you. Often, others are silently waiting for someone to go first.

The Paradox of Cult Logic

Cults rarely see themselves as cults. They believe they are living the truth. So too with high-performance teams: the very intensity that creates dysfunction is reframed as a badge of honor.

This is the paradox: the more deeply you are enmeshed in a performance culture, the less you can see its distortions. Feedback becomes echo. Doubt becomes treason. If you leave, you "couldn't hack it."

The philosopher Albert Camus might call this the absurd condition—a system that demands meaning, but offers only repetition [12]. To revolt, in Camus' terms, is not to quit performance altogether. It is to

reclaim agency from doctrine.

That's not failure. That's freedom.

For executives, this is the hard part: your culture may have been shaped by your best intentions, but what does it do to people when they live inside it every day? And for anyone feeling trapped, remember: questioning the system isn't betrayal. Sometimes it's the beginning of coming home to yourself.

Dissolution or Rebirth?

So what's the way out? Not resignation, but recalibration. Here's a framework for transforming performance-obsessed cultures:

For organizations, the path forward includes auditing unwritten rules, redefining what "elite" means beyond output metrics, redesigning rituals to celebrate growth rather than just results, shifting language away from war and machine metaphors, realigning incentives to reward sustainability alongside achievement, integrating recovery into work cycles, and creating protected channels for questioning and critique.

For individuals, transformation begins with boundary setting, actively cultivating sources of meaning outside work, practicing the separation of feedback from self-worth, building connections with others who question the status quo, and defining personal success criteria separate from organizational metrics.

Teams can remain ambitious without becoming absolutist. They can choose cultures that value integrity over intensity, where rest is not suspect, and identity is not tethered to output. They can make room for dissent without dismantling excellence.

The goal is not to be average. It's to be whole.

• If you're a leader, start with vocabulary. Replace metaphors of war with those of growth. Audit incentives, not just outcomes. And design rhythms that breathe.

• If you're inside the system, give yourself permission to redraw the boundary between self and performance. That line is yours to define.

Because in the end, the most elite performers aren't the ones who never break. They're the ones who know how to stop believing long enough to think. And maybe, to leave when belief becomes too small for what comes next.

Have you witnessed or experienced the cult of high performance in your workplace? Your story matters and could help others recognize similar patterns in their environments.

Share this article and add your perspective:

• What rituals in your organization blur the line between commitment and devotion?

• Which practice from this article will you implement to protect your team or yourself?

• Tag a leader who exemplifies sustainable excellence while maintaining psychological safety

The conversation about high-performance cultures is just beginning. By sharing your experiences, you help others understand they're not alone and contribute to building workplaces where excellence and wellbeing coexist

References

1. Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2012). Contesting the "nature" of conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's studies really show. PLOS Biology, 10(11).

2. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

3. Cialdini, R. (2021). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Revised edition.

4. North, S., & Morioka, R. (2016). Hope found in lives lost: Karoshi and the pursuit of worker rights in Japan. Contemporary Japan, 28(1), 59-80.

5. Lalich, J. (2004). Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults. University of California Press.

6. Eyal, N. (2014). Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

7. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.

8. Fromm, E. (1955). The Sane Society.

9. Deloitte Insights. (2023). Advancing Workplace Well-being: What Will Move the Needle on Workplace Well-being? Deloitte Well-Being at Work Survey.

10. Startup Snapshot. (2023). The Impact of Stress on the Well-being of Startup Founders and CEOs.

11. Edmondson, A. (2019). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace.

12. Camus, A. (1942). The Myth of Sisyphus.

13. Sull, D., & Sull, C. (2022). Why Every Leader Needs to Worry About Toxic Culture. MIT Sloan Management Review.

14. Edmondson, A. C., & Huang, C. (2024). Leading Culture Change at Microsoft Western Europe. Harvard Business School Case 624-096.

15. Carreyrou, J. (2018). Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Knopf.