Suzan Song on why high performers mistake endurance for strength

What this conversation is about

Dr. Suzan Song is a psychiatrist, researcher and humanitarian adviser whose work runs from war zones to executive offices. Her book, Why We Suffer and How We Heal, is about what happens to people living under constant instability, and why some of them flourish anyway. She joined Glenn Llopis for the Earning Conviction series with a question he opens on: why, despite every perk and wellness program, are so many people still exhausted?

Her own path explains her interest. Her parents emigrated from South Korea and ran small businesses in Maryland. When she was 15, her father was attacked during a robbery and later died. She kept going, she says, and felt it had not affected her, until two decades later she found herself in hiding in Burundi during PhD research and realized she had recreated a scene of violence like the one her father experienced. That was when she began asking why she did the work she did.

You can read more of her thinking in Glenn’s Forbes piece Why Leaders Burn Out From Performing Not From Working Too Hard (April 22, 2026).

The pause, and what conviction actually is

Glenn shared his own turning point. In 2021 he told his team he was a workaholic and checked into Canyon Ranch the same afternoon with three questions: how do I disconnect, how do I care less, and how do I last another 40 years for my family? He left with his answers: connect more with yourself, care more about yourself, and do both more.

Song says the first step is exactly what he did, which is to stop:

"And within that pause is so much power" — Suzan Song · 00:09:31

Why do people avoid it? Because they are afraid of what will come up: am I mediocre, am I enough, do I matter to anyone? Her definition of what lies on the other side is the line at the top of this page, conviction as no longer bargaining your worth for anyone else. Finding it takes some sense of safety, she adds, or someone who matters enough to you that you finally stop.

Endurance is not strength

Asked what high performers misunderstand about themselves, she answers immediately:

"I think a lot of these high performers mistake endurance for strength." — Suzan Song · 00:15:57

Through every restructuring they tell themselves to push through. That is endurance. Strength, in her view, is adaptability: knowing when to press on the gas and when to recalibrate. People rewarded early for over-functioning come to believe it is effectiveness. Many of the people she sees are very good at setting and hitting goals and feel empty once they get there, because they mistook a goal habit for purpose.

Part of the problem is that the identity was written by someone else:

"we all have what I call these identity scripts that are written for us." — Suzan Song · 00:18:12

For physicians the script says your needs come last and sixteen-hour days are normal. Her method for rewriting one is concrete: write out the script, ask who wrote it, rewrite it so you own it, then try small changes and keep what fits.

"And oftentimes to think about who wrote that script, because it's not us, it's someone else." — Suzan Song · 00:22:56

It does not have to feel perfect to be worth continuing:

"even if it's 30% resonant, that's enough." — Suzan Song · 00:24:38

Glenn described doing a version of this himself, deliberately shifting what he solves for every year and a half or so:

"I used to solve for the identity crisis, then I solved for helping executives break free from standardization traps. Now I'm solving for earning conviction." — Glenn Llopis · 00:20:10

What personalization actually requires

Song is pointed about what passes for personalization in many organizations. One healthcare system she worked with was proud of the mugs it handed out on National Doctor’s Day, printed with a message calling its physicians heroes. When she asked the doctors, they said it made them feel disposable. What they needed was help with documentation, time off and protected time. Appreciation and personality assessments are fine first steps, she says, but they miss meaning and they miss a person’s real capacity at a given moment, whether they are caring for a sick parent or dealing with their own illness.

"I see you, I understand you, and I value you as a human being, not as a robot who's disposable." — Suzan Song · 00:13:16

Prolonged uncertainty makes this harder. Under chronic instability people fight, flee, freeze or fawn: they get snippy, procrastinate, numb out, or say yes to everything and then feel guilty. Leaders feel pressure to project certainty they do not have, and teams sense the gap and lose trust. Her advice to them is to drop the performance. People do not need certainty; they need honesty and to be seen.

Leaders who say feelings are not their job

Glenn raised the executive who says, I came here to lead, not to be anyone’s therapist. Song’s first reaction was a dry good luck. Her fuller answer is that a leader’s ability to engage with other people as humans depends on their ability to do it with themselves, and that treating people as robots who never change is a strategic mistake as well as a human one. Those leaders will burn out, and the talented people will go elsewhere:

"especially right now in this age of AI and tech, they know that they're disposable and replaceable." — Suzan Song · 00:33:13

What she would have organizations unlearn is the idea that perks motivate people. The better model she has seen comes from humanitarian teams in active conflict, who deploy people based on who has the bandwidth right now, because small units mean someone knows how each person is doing. Her book’s framework for hard seasons comes down to narrative, ritual and purpose.