We Glorify The Hustle, But No One Teaches Us How To Lead

Through years of working in the startup ecosystem and earlier in corporate, I’ve witnessed the same gap consistently repeated: no one addresses the definition of what it truly means to lead. Yes, leadership can be learned on the job. However, too often, what’s learned under pressure isn’t leadership, but rather survival mode.

Not everyone comes equipped with the skills or self-awareness to lead with clarity in high-pressure situations. Yet leadership directly shapes strategy, ROI, and a company’s ability to scale.

We spend countless hours dissecting capital, frameworks, and product-market fit. Critical, yes, but by the time you’re a mid-stage business, with a founder still wearing multiple hats while trying to bring the team along, the real pressure isn’t the business model, it’s leadership.

Leadership doesn’t start with strategy; it starts with the human embodying the role. When that human is stretched (and let’s be honest, what founder or executive isn’t?), blind spots begin to run the show. These blind spots don’t just affect the leader; they dictate how decisions are made, how teams align, and whether the business achieves its full potential.

The mid-stage leadership problem

At the mid-stage of growth, certain patterns emerge repeatedly. While it’s easy to assign blame, we must acknowledge the reality: leadership under pressure to scale up is demanding. Blind spots and default behaviours don’t disappear; they intensify, often unaddressed.

As a high-performance coach, here’s what I see most often, and how you might recognise them in your environment, or perhaps yourself:

• Identity fusion. When a founder becomes entwined with the business, letting go feels like losing control. Growth stalls as “founder’s syndrome” sets in, where the organisation cannot evolve beyond the founder’s grip.
• Glorifying hustle. What worked at five people, late nights, firefighting, relentless hustle, destroys performance at twenty-five. Teams burn energy reacting instead of building.
• The reactivity spiral. Stress is contagious. When leaders operate visibly under strain, teams absorb and mirror it. Culture shifts from intentional to reactive.
• Lack of SOPs and communication. As headcount rises, detail often remains trapped in the leader’s head. The fallout? Missed handovers, rework, and chaos. Process and communication are no longer optional; they’re essential.
• Skipping 1:1s. Regular check-ins are simple yet overlooked. Without them, misalignment festers while leaders assume everyone is on the same page.
• Early hires vs. next phase. The loyal first joiners aren’t always fit for the next stage. Avoiding those hard conversations will cost you in both culture and performance.

If these points feel familiar, you’re not alone. These patterns show up in nearly every scale-up I’ve worked with. However, they only become entrenched if left unaddressed. With intention, they can be shifted.

The insight

Leadership development is not separate from business strategy; it anchors execution with alignment, resilience, and consistency. Without it, even the most well-planned strategy eventually falls apart. I’ve seen founders who avoid difficult conversations leave underperformance unchecked for months. Others become so entwined in operations that they can’t make strategic decisions, creating bottlenecks that frustrate teams and investors alike. Too often, leaders stretched thin fail to communicate expectations clearly, leading to confusion and drift. The opposite reveals the following. Leaders who examine themselves, their stress responses, their clarity of communication, and their willingness to release control, unlock transformation. Teams align, culture stabilises, and the business scales with intention.

This is the Human by Design philosophy in action: growth begins with the human and their ability to lead. Leadership defines the ceiling for how far your business can grow.

Three pillars for leaders at scale

At the heart of my work are three pillars: resilience, leadership, and sustainable growth. The outcomes you deliver mirror how you lead the journey and who you become in the process.

1. Resilience. Founders often mistake resilience for endurance. Real resilience is recalibration under pressure, bringing perspective and steadiness when the business feels stretched. Teams take their cues not from how long leaders endure, but how well they recover.
2. Leadership. At mid-stage, leadership isn’t about title or control; it’s about authenticity.  The leaders who inspire alignment are decisive yet human, creating space for others to rise.
3. Sustainable growth. Scaling isn’t momentum at any cost. It’s about building systems, processes, and habits that align with values, allowing for expansion while protecting people and purpose. Scaling a business is not merely sharper strategies or larger funding rounds; it’s increasing leadership identity. The way you lead shapes clarity, cohesion, and capacity. Both founding and scaling a business can be demanding, and both require growth from the leader. In many ways, scaling is the greatest self-development journey you’ll ever undertake. For leaders willing to establish strong foundations early, self-awareness, effective communication, and alignment yield a compound payoff. Leadership is not fixed; it can be learned, practised, and refined. When leaders grow as humans, businesses grow as a result.

In the end, success isn’t just about the goals you set; it’s about the person you must become to achieve them.