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Rahul Bhandari calls some of the executives he coaches “caffeinated squirrels.” It’s not meant as a term of derision but a description of leaders who have so bought into today’s culture of speed that they are ineffective.
“These leaders are wired for novelty and speed. They bristle at process, default to idea-generation and often run meetings like whiteboard storm sessions. They talk quickly, think faster and are rarely seen without a phone in one hand and a half-baked initiative in the other. Initially, they’re magnetic. But over time, their pace becomes unsustainable – not just for themselves, but for their organizations,” he writes in Harvard Business Review.
Perhaps you know one. Perhaps you are one.
He stresses the problem isn’t their intelligence or work ethic. It’s that they mistake motion for progress and overwhelm their teams with shifting priorities, reactive decisions and intellectual whiplash. They are pursuing one of the most persistent myths in executive leadership: That the highest-performing leaders are those who move the fastest.
The result is a leadership style marked by constant motion, high mental velocity and a persistent discomfort with stillness.
“These leaders aren’t modeling peak performance – they’re playing out a high-stakes version of restlessness. They don’t just run hard; they run noisily. And while they often credit their success to this intensity, what actually sustains organizations over time is disciplined clarity, not speed alone,” he notes.
He has found hyper-driven leaders often carry deep internal pressures. Many are first-generation overachievers, founders or individuals who have spent years trying to prove themselves. “They associate stillness with laziness and action with value. Some are addicted to novelty – the dopamine of the next big thing – while others use constant motion as a buffer against deeper insecurities,” he writes. “Boards misread it as passion. Peers experience it as chaos.”
Early in a career, being a caffeinated squirrel can be an asset. You are seen as an idea machine or the fixer who gets things done. But it becomes a big disadvantage when you move into a role that requires strategic patience.
“The most effective executives I know are not the fastest thinkers. They are the clearest thinkers. They understand that what a business needs from its leaders isn’t more activity – it’s better judgment, sharper focus and energy that aligns with enterprise rhythm,” he says.
Working with one of his clients, they mapped her calendar and discovered she was initiating more than 10 strategic threads per month, only two of which reached completion. They decided on a “leadership rhythm reset.” She began holding monthly clarity reviews, eliminated half of her discretionary meetings and created a personal decision journal to track when and why she made strategic pivots.
“Within a quarter, her team reported increased trust and better execution. She hadn’t lost her energy – she’d simply focused her fire,” he says.
Another technique he recommends is a strategic pause review. Before any new initiative is launched, you should pause for 48 to 72 hours and reflect on these three questions:
- Is this idea aligned with our current strategic commitments?
- What capacity trade-offs does it imply?
- What’s the downside of not acting immediately?
“This mechanism doesn’t kill innovation – it prevents impulse from masquerading as strategy,” he says.
Research nearly a decade ago looked at the rhythms by which leaders work and the notion of social synchronicity. Sally Blount, a professor of strategy at Northwestern University, and Sophie Leroy, a professor of management and dean of the School of Business at the University of Washington Bothel, found the most successful leaders are highly aware of their colleagues’ pace and sense of urgency, and continually adapt to them.
“Speed and urgency, although necessary attributes of leadership, are not sufficient. In fact, our research suggests that the leaders who can tether an obsession with deadlines and time to an ability to sense the work and energy flow of their colleagues will have the most success,” they wrote in strategy + business.
Humans in groups like to experience a sense of social synchrony, an alignment in how they perceive and adapt to others in order to create a sense of relational smoothness and flow in interaction. Research repeatedly finds people tend to like coworkers with whom they feel naturally aligned on pace. This alignment is often what people sense when they express feeling “flow” or smoothness in an interaction.
We differ, individually, on the importance we give to this synchronicity urge. Some of us are wedded to clock time, punctuality and predictability, driven by urgency. Others have a sense of social time – of the group. That means leaders, if their team is mixed between both types, must balance the need for the group to feel synchronous with time urgency.
“Although effective leaders must be able to keep their teams on schedule and manage time effectively in order to meet deadlines (something at which time-urgent individuals excel), they also need to facilitate interpersonal interactions within these schedules to help employees function as a team,” the two professors advised.
They set out the notion of “temporally agile leaders,” who set out timetables and deadlines but easily adjust, if needed, to create more synchronicity and team flow. That contrasts markedly with the caffeinated squirrel.
Cannonballs
- Korn Ferry organizational consultancy’s CEO Gary Burnison recalls a favourite college professor who filled the blackboard with diagrams and other geological information, erasing over and over again to put down more notes, but with old notes still showing through. He believes leaders also operate at the intersection of past and present, a useful metaphor to ponder. As well, in analyzing nearly 110 million job assessments, his firm found 80 per cent of professionals carry at least one blind spot – the biggest being stuck in the past. So erase and embrace the future.
- A study of more than 30,000 entrepreneurial loan requests on the Prosper peer‑to‑peer lending platform found negatively worded pitches were funded faster, came with lower interest rates and defaulted less often than neutral or positive ones. Individuals who admitted mistakes, debt or setbacks attracted money more quickly than those who emphasized only strengths and optimism. They also paid it back more reliability. The researchers figure investors expect to see struggle, especially on platforms that attract people who may be excluded from traditional banking, and so squeaky‑clean stories can sound suspect.
- Executive coach Dan Rockwell says every successful leader is a people pleaser. The more customers, employees and stakeholders you please, after all, the more successful you become. Ignoring others leads to reckless decisions. Just make sure you are pleasing, not pandering or abandoning important values.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.