Why High Performers Struggle Under the Wrong Leadership Conditions
One of the most common leadership challenges I see isn’t poor performance.
It’s misalignment between people who are both very good at what they do.
I once worked with a CEO and a Sales Director who were each high performers in their own right. Revenue wasn’t the issue. Effort wasn’t the issue. Capability wasn’t the issue.
The tension came from the fact that they were designed to work, sell, and build trust in very different ways.
Different paths to success
The CEO had built his career in sales through his network.
Opportunities came from people he already knew.
Trust was built over time.
Relationships came first, sales second.
This approach had served him extremely well.
So when he hired a Sales Director, he naturally expected the same strategy to work again.
But the Sales Director succeeded through a completely different route.
He was exceptional at initiating new relationships.
Walking into unfamiliar rooms.
Meeting people face to face.
Opening doors where no relationship yet existed.
This wasn’t a personality quirk.
It was how he created momentum.
Where leadership assumptions created friction
The misalignment became clear around conferences.
From the CEO’s perspective, travelling to events across the US felt unnecessary and inefficient.
From the Sales Director’s perspective, it was essential to doing his job well.
The CEO was optimising for control and consistency.
The Sales Director was optimised for presence and trust-building.
Both were reasonable.
They were simply operating from different assumptions.
Communication and working rhythms
Their differences extended beyond strategy.
In communication, the CEO preferred careful, diplomatically worded questions.
The Sales Director wanted directness. Clear questions. No inference.
In working style, the Sales Director operated in intense bursts of focus, followed by recovery.
The CEO expected steady visibility and constant availability.
When those expectations weren’t met, tension grew — not because performance dropped, but because performance didn’t look the way the CEO expected.
What Human Design helped make visible
When we explored this dynamic through the lens of Human Design, the pattern became obvious.
The CEO was a Generator, designed for sustained effort and consistency.
The Sales Director was a Manifestor, designed to initiate, move in bursts, and create momentum through action rather than presence at a desk.
Crucially, the Sales Director also needed in-person connection to do his best work.
Not Zoom calls.
Not systems.
Not constant check-ins.
Real rooms.
Real conversations.
Human presence.
Once this was understood, the resistance to remote-only selling stopped looking like a problem and started looking like intelligence.
Motivation wasn’t the issue either
The final misunderstanding was motivation.
The CEO was driven by Desire motivation — tangible outcomes, visible success, material rewards.
The Sales Director had Fear motivation — not fear as anxiety, but alertness.
A natural sensitivity to risk.
Strong timing awareness.
An instinct to notice what could go wrong before it did.
This alertness was one of his greatest strengths in sales.
But because it didn’t look like the CEO’s motivation, it was misread as caution.
The leadership shift
When I explained what it actually means to manage someone like this, the CEO became emotional.
Not defensive.
Not resistant.
Emotional.
Because he could finally see that his Sales Director hadn’t been disengaged or difficult.
He had been constrained by systems that didn’t match how he was designed to work.
This wasn’t a bad hire.
And it wasn’t poor leadership.
It was unspoken difference.
Why this matters for leaders
Most leadership breakdowns don’t happen because people aren’t capable.
They happen because leaders unconsciously design roles, systems, and expectations around their own way of working.
When leaders understand how their people are wired to:
build trust
communicate
initiate
work and recover
stay motivated
friction reduces dramatically.
Leadership stops being about correction and starts being about conditions.
A better way to lead
Leadership isn’t about cloning yourself.
It’s about creating the conditions where different strengths can actually thrive.
When that happens, performance doesn’t need to be forced.
It emerges naturally.
About me
I’m Carly Ferguson, a leadership coach working with founders and senior leaders who want to lead with more clarity, less friction, and stronger relational dynamics.
I use Human Design as a practical framework to help leaders understand how people are naturally wired to work, communicate, sell, and stay motivated — so performance becomes sustainable rather than exhausting.
You can learn more about my work here.
