“Your message around sustainable leadership and the ‘cost of being capable’ resonated deeply with our participants. Many attendees commented that they saw themselves reflected in the examples and challenges you shared, particularly the tendency for capable leaders to continually take on more while neglecting their own sustainability.”
Claire Lessel, CPHR · Chair, ACCEL 2026
The people organizations rely on most are often the ones they are least equipped to see. They perform exceptionally, absorb more than anyone realizes, and receive praise for the very behaviours that are costing them. The cost often appears in the body while the work still looks fine: disrupted sleep, rising blood pressure, chronic pain. Drawing on sixteen years of clinical practice and thousands of patient encounters, Verena introduces contingent belonging: the belief that safety, worth, and acceptance must be earned through performance, productivity, silence, or self-abandonment. She reveals the personal cost of survival-driven performance, why it stays hidden behind exceptional work, and how leaders can build capacity around the people carrying the most.
Learning outcomes
- Distinguish high performance driven by ambition from high performance driven by survival, and understand why the two look identical from the outside
- Recognize behavioural patterns that signal unsustainable strain even when performance remains high
- Identify where workload, support, and shared responsibility must change to build capacity around the people carrying the most
- Use curiosity to open more useful conversations with people carrying disproportionate responsibility
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