High Performance Behaviour: 10 Characteristics That Set Exceptional Leaders Apart (and How You Can Develop Them).
Having worked with hundreds of successful leaders, I know you didn’t get to your senior leadership role by accident. You’ve navigated the fires, the intense board meetings, the late nights. You know how to build, lead and deliver.
What I see with the high performers I work with though, is that there is another level, one that isn’t about working harder or smarter, but differently. It’s about behaviour, micro actions that compound into extraordinary results.
Here are the top 10 high performance characteristics I see that set exceptional leaders apart.
1. Decisive Patience
Exceptional leaders master the paradox of slowing down to speed up. They don’t rush anything. Their decisions are informed, their words are considered. They know that slowing down to give the important things full focus is more impactful than rushing and trying to give everything their attention.
Why it matters:
Impulsive actions tend to be based on emotion rather than reasoned logic and don’t always lead to the best outcomes. High performers understand that patience isn’t hesitation, it’s precision.
How to develop it:
Create a “pause.” In any moment where a response is required from you, pause and create space to scenario plan. Ask yourself “what is the outcome I want to achieve here?” and work backwards from there to determine your response.
2. Self Reflection Over Self Confidence
Confidence gets you into leadership. Reflection keeps you there. Exceptional leaders have a growth mindset. They are deeply curious about their own blind spots and are always looking for ways they can improve. They don’t protect their ego; they ruthlessly audit it.
Why it matters:
The higher you go, the fewer people will challenge you which means you lose important opportunities for growth.
How to develop it:
Schedule a monthly 15 minute “leadership review”, not for your team, for you. Ask yourself 3 questions:
What am I doing as a leader that is working well?
What could I be doing better?
What is one action I will take this month to improve my leadership?
3. Energy Awareness
It’s not time management that is the problem, it’s energy management. High performing leaders don’t run on caffeine and chaos (ok well some of us do run on caffeine but not the chaos bit!). These people might seem superhuman, but I assure you they are not. They have simply discovered the cheat code to creating the most value in the shortest possible time. How? By learning to cultivate, protect, and direct their energy deliberately.
Why it matters:
Working with your energy rather than against it will transform your productivity.
How to develop it:
Complete an energy audit on your week. Notice what times you feel most energised and the times when you feel less so. Re-design your calendar to do the focused work that requires most thinking in the hours you feel most energised and the less taxing work in the hours when your energy is lower.
4. Ruthless Focus
Exceptional leaders know exactly what their North star is. They constantly have an eye on the bigger picture and what their day-to-day work is building towards. They don’t allow themselves to get distracted by noise or other people’s priorities. Their focus is narrow, intentional, and brutally aligned with impact they want to make.
Why it matters:
A lack of focus can slow momentum and leave you feeling distracted and frustrated.
How to develop it:
Once a quarter, ask this question:
“If I could only achieve one thing this quarter that would make the biggest difference, what would it be?”
Set your top three weekly priorities accordingly (and block out time to work on them).
5. Emotional Mastery
Leadership isn’t about “emotional control”, it’s about learning to master your emotions and being able to use them to your advantage in any given situation. The best leaders are human, they a real and relatable, they have emotion. They also have the ability to recognise their emotions and to choose which ones to access, whether it’s empathy, power, vulnerability, intensity, calm etc, depending on what’s required.
Why it matters:
True leadership is the ability to embody different emotional states to create trust, momentum, and meaning.
How to develop it:
Practice emotion switching. In any given situation, ask yourself:
What emotion does this situation need from me?
What emotion am I actually in right now?
Then use micro-shifts (music, breathing, posture, fresh air, self-talk, visualization) to switch to the emotion that is needed.
6. Self Leadership
High performing leaders know that to lead others effectively, they need to start by leading themselves. They know that if they want people to trust and engage with them, they need to lead with integrity which means ensuring their words match their actions.
Why it matters:
You can’t expect from others what you aren’t doing yourself. People sense fakeness and will see past your words. They will feel your true leadership through your actions and the minute the two don’t align, trust will be broken.
How to develop it:
Identify the mindsets, attitudes, standards and behaviours you want to see from your team and model them. You’ll find that by leading yourself, your team will follow your lead.
7. Conscious Recovery
Most leaders schedule performance, not recovery. Exceptional ones schedule both. They understand that sustainable growth is a rhythm; exert, recover, expand, and that trying to consistently stay in the “exert” phase will only lead to burnout.
Why it matters:
Without recovery, your energy tanks as you have no opportunity to rebuild it. Your concentration and focus suffer, creativity drops, and you start mistaking busy for progress. We aren’t designed to continuously operate at that level so it will only be a matter of time before a plate is dropped too.
How to develop it:
Review your calendar incorporate “white space” into your week. Block it out in your diary and protect it like it is as important as everything else in there, because it is. Use it to rest, decompress and re-energise around the other daily tasks that require your energy. Think of it as performance insurance.
8. Relational Depth
Leadership is about people and high performing leaders lean into this. They recognise that strategy and performance are only part of the equation, building meaningful connections is the other crucial part. Exceptional leaders build trust at a cellular level. They don’t collect contacts, they create alliances.
Why it matters:
People don’t follow titles, they follow relationships.
How to develop it:
Every month, pick one key relationship and go a layer deeper. Make a point of speaking with them. Invite them for coffee. Go for dinner. Ask a human question that shows genuine interest and builds meaningful connection. You will be surprised how much your relationships can elevate your leadership.
9. Future Embodiment
High performers don’t just think about their future vision, they start being it. They align their mindset, habits and actions today with the identity of the leader they want to become tomorrow.
Why it matters:
Your current results are a reflection of your current identity not your ambition, and if you continue to operate in the same way, you will get the same results.
How to develop it:
Write a short “identity statement” starting with:
“The kind of leader I want to be is someone who…”
List their mindset, habits and behaviours and choose one to live immediately.
10. Comfortable Discomfort
Exceptional leaders operate at their growth edge. They constantly push themselves out of their comfort zone because they know growth is the key to progress, and they don’t let the fact that it feels uncomfortable stop them.
Why it matters:
The longer you stay in your comfort zone, the harder it becomes to step out of it. This is when you start to feel like you are coasting and will notice that you no longer feel fulfilled as you once did.
How to develop it:
Draw three circles on a piece of paper, one inside the other like a bull’s eye target. In the smallest circle in the middle write down everything that is currently in your comfort zone. In the middle circle write down everything that is in your stretch zone (things outside of your comfort zone which feel like a stretch but doable). In the outer circle write down everything that is in your panic zone (things that you would like to do one day but they feel absolutely terrifying right now).
Pick one thing from your stretch zone and do it until you can move it into your comfort zone.
Repeat until you have expanded your comfort zone to include everything that was once outside it.
Final Thought
High performance is not about how much you can do, it’s about how cleanly you can operate.
You already know how to succeed. Now it’s about learning how to build upon that success through deeper awareness, deliberate energy, and intentional action.
Which one will you try?
