Feelings are not KPIs

This essay is cross-posted from LinkedIn.

The meeting begins not with what broke in shipping or what the Q2 churn data reveals, but with how you are feeling.

Asked in the soft cadence of a grief counselor.  Everyone nods, a few smile, as if handed something warm.  The Zoom squares light up: Feeling hopeful, feeling heavy, feeling grateful, but overwhelmed. These are not metrics.  These are weather reports.

We live in an age where emotion is a credential, where moods are treated as compasses, as if how someone feels at 9:03 a.m. on a Tuesday predicts the quarterly strategy’s success.  The ritual of naming one’s state aloud feels liturgical, a secular examen.  But no one asks how the logistics chain feels.  Or the EBITDA.  Because freight invoices don’t feel triggered.  P&Ls don’t need to feel seen.

 The feelings are real.  Yet, the question is wrong.  The job remains: Do the work.

 Someone mistook a feeling for a fact, and now we measure mood as performance.  We say “alignment” but mean agreement, “energy” but mean enthusiasm, “engagement” but sometimes mean obedience.  The assumption is dangerous: That how we feel about a task dictates its outcome; that high morale guarantees high numbers.  But there’s no empirical model for “vibes.”  Some of the best work happens in silence, without feeling—a nurse on a double shift, a pilot on final descent.

 KPIs are not mood rings.  Units shipped.  Code deployed.  Contracts signed.  They live outside your body, indifferent to your heart.  Feelings may guide the self; KPIs guide the system.  Confusing them isn’t compassion—it’s mere confusion.

Marcus Aurelius, without Slack or pulse surveys, wrote: “You have power over your mind—not outside events.” A warning, not a poster.  You can feel afraid and still send the invoice, feel lost and still write the memo no one wants but everyone needs.  A feeling is not a red flag.

Servant leadership is misread as weakness, as a collapse into feeling.  But service is discipline, a taut wire.  The servant leader listens, props up others, lingers past dusk—yet keeps their own counsel.  They don’t spill emotion for the camera, banking on vulnerability to spark output.  The one who cares most bears their mood in silence, like a ledger of unspoken losses.

To lead is not to feel more, but to feel it all and still act, to achieve.

We mislabel emotional control as repression, as if composure betrays the self.  We’re told to “feel our feelings,” but not to question them.  Authenticity becomes tyranny.  Leadership isn’t the absence of feeling—it’s refusing to be ruled by it.  It takes spiritual strength to feel anger and choose silence, to feel fear and act anyway.

The world doesn’t need emotionally available executives.  It needs people who steer through fog.  Detachment isn’t indifference—it’s clarity.  You can feel sorrow and still sign the purchase order.

Work isn’t a stage for self-expression.  It’s a place apart, where value lies in outcomes, not catharsis.  The office isn’t a therapist’s couch; the spreadsheet doesn’t care about your childhood.  That’s not cruelty—it’s grace.  Expecting work to heal you is like expecting the coffee machine to love you back.  Work offers direction, structure, and rhythm.  You don’t need to be whole to do it well.

You can be falling apart and still meet the deadline.  Not because you’re numb, but because you’ve decided.  Work’s gift is not reflecting who you are, but asking who you might become when you keep going. 

The meeting ends with a slide: People over profit, as if the two were enemies.  No one mentions the missed deadline or the postponed decision.  You nod.  You don’t interrupt.

To lead is not to correct every illusion, but to outlast them.  Leadership isn’t a live feed of your interior life.  Sometimes, the most responsible act is to keep your face still, your hand steady.  Emotional restraint is mercy—it lets others anchor to your calm, not your chaos.

You live by KPIs or by moods.  Not both.  The spreadsheet waits.  The decision is yours.

So, rise above the haze of work as a wellness retreat.  Stop waiting for the room to feel ready.  Lead by choosing the hard clarity of outcomes over the soft fog of feelings.  Build something real—systems that deliver, promises kept, lives changed through the quiet power of results.   That’s service: not a performance of care, but a commitment to achievement that lifts everyone.  Step forward.  Decide.  The confidence you seek is waiting in the work you finish.