EP 142: The Hidden Leadership And Mental Health Costs Of Performative Goodness With Elise Loehnen The Unburdened Leader podcast

EP 142: The Hidden Leadership and Mental Health Costs of Performative Goodness with Elise Loehnen

published 19d ago

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What does it mean to be good?

It’s a little word that carries a lot of weight for many of us. Be a good girl. Be a good friend. Be a good leader. Do good.

Good can sound like praise, but become a cage of expectations and shoulds, a performance that chips away at our authenticity. Good is no longer something we are, but is how others see us. It leads us to people please and keep the peace at all costs. And that’s especially true for women.

All too often, when women are in leadership, their goodness is measured by how they make others feel–good, comfortable, understood. All of that matters. But when the measure of leadership becomes how comfortable other people feel around us, we lose something essential.

We perform and manage emotions instead of building trust and respect. We seek to be liked and to fit in at the cost of real integrity and effectiveness. And likability is oh-so fleeting.

Respect, integrity, and true belonging take time and discomfort to build, but they last.

My guest today has written beautifully and bravely about the cost of being good, the truth of belonging, and the courage it takes to lead ourselves and others through discomfort.

Elise Loehnen is the New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread, where she interviews cultural luminaries about the big questions of today, including people like Joy Harjo, John and Julie Gottman, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Esther Perel. In addition to On Our Best Behavior, she is the author of a corresponding workbook—Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness—with coach Courtney Smith (July 2025), and the co-author of True & False Magic, with legendary psychiatrist Phil Stutz. Elise lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Max and Sam.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How Elise traced the cultural roots of the “good woman” back to early Christianity and the many additions, erasures, and mistranslations of Biblical stories
Why we need to pay attention to our envy and how it shows up in relation to other women
How envy, pride, and greed fuel each other and the ways we stay small and tear other women down
How social media has heightened the risk of reputational damage and changed how women work and lead, for better and worse
Why we latch onto ideas of goodness and purity more deeply in times of greater uncertainty
How current narratives about the “natural” order are ahistorical manipulations that limit what we believe is possible

Learn more about Elise Loehnen:

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