The Dangerous Advice We Keep Giving High Achievers

Why Grit Isn’t a Strategy (and What Is)

We love grit.
We put it on slides. Praise it in performance reviews.
Frame it as the magic fuel of entrepreneurs, leaders, mothers, anyone pushing through.

But here’s the thing no one likes to say:

Grit will get you through the fire. But it won’t tell you where you're going.

For years, I’ve coached leaders who’ve worn resilience like armour. Yes, I wore it like armour. Grit was the badge of honour, the ability to keep going, push harder, stay late, carry more.

Until one day, it wasn’t working.

They (we) were still exhausted. Still stuck. Still solving the same problem for the fourth quarter in a row, but with darker under-eye circles and fewer good ideas.

That’s because grit, for all its praise, is a survival mechanism.
It helps you endure.
It doesn’t help you decide what’s worth enduring.

Grit gets you through. But strategy gets you out.

The most pivotal conversations I’ve had with CEOs and execs lately aren’t about stamina. They’re about clarity.

• What are we still pushing that no longer fits?

• What are we avoiding in the name of "resilience"?

• Are we solving the right problem, or just solving something because we don’t know how to stop?

Grit says “just keep going.”

Strategy says “hang on, is this even the right race?”

I’ll take the latter. Every time.

The deeper truth: Grit without direction can become self-abandonment.

I’ve seen it and I’ve lived it.

Leaders with extraordinary stamina, quietly burning out.

Mothers juggling three calendars, running multimillion-pound businesses and still believing they haven’t done enough.

Founders clinging to growth plans they stopped believing in months ago because walking away feels like failure.

That’s not grit. That’s entrapment.

So what is the strategy?

Here’s what I offer my clients instead of empty resilience talk:

• Discernment. Knowing the difference between a hard season and a harmful one.

• Design. Building systems that don’t require you to white-knuckle your way through them.

• Direction. Clarity on what you're actually trying to create, not just what you're trying to survive.

The best leaders I know aren’t the grittiest.

They’re the clearest.

The ones who can pause mid-storm and ask, “Why are we still doing it this way?”

Final word?

Grit has its place. It gets you through hard things.

But if you want to lead well and live well, it can’t be the only thing.

Because pushing harder isn’t a plan.

It’s what you do when you’ve run out of one.