Hoe ga je je leven meten?

A leadership question every serious leader eventually has to face

There is a moment in almost every leadership journey when progress no longer feels like progress.

• You are delivering.
• You are trusted.
• You carry responsibility, influence, and a full agenda.

And yet, often in a quiet moment, not in crisis, a deeper question surfaces:
Is this the life I actually want to be building?

I have encountered this question repeatedly over the past decades, as a managing director, as a transformation leader, and now, most often, in confidential coaching conversations with senior leaders.

Clayton Christensen once framed it in a way that still cuts through all complexity:

• How will you measure your life?
• Not your role.
• Not your achievements.
• Your life.

When success becomes a narrowing force

Most leaders I work with are not struggling because they lack competence or ambition. They struggle because they have too much of both, channeled into systems that reward speed, output, and availability.

Organizations are very good at reinforcing what is visible:

• Results
• Decisions
• Responsiveness
• Short-term wins

They are far less good at protecting what is essential but less tangible:

• Relaties
• Values under pressure
• Integrity over time
• Meaningful contribution

No one consciously chooses to drift away from what matters most. But drift is exactly what happens when life turns into an uninterrupted series of urgent reactions.

The life strategy you are already executing

In organizations, we know this well: strategy is not defined by intention, but by resource allocation.

Where time, attention, and energy go, that is the real strategy.

The same applies to your life. If we look honestly at:

• your calendar
• your energy at the end of the day
• what occupies your mind when things get quiet

we can see the strategy you are actually living.

Many senior leaders unintentionally optimize for short-term, measurable success while underinvesting in the very foundations they claim matter most: trust, family, health, integrity, and long-term impact.

Not because they don’t care. But because the system quietly nudges them there.

Integrity is lost in small, reasonable steps

Rarely does integrity fail in dramatic moments. It erodes in sentences like:

• “Just this once”
• “Given the circumstances”
• “I’ll correct it later”

Every leader who ended up somewhere they never intended to be did not cross one big line. They crossed many small ones, each defensible in isolation. In my experience, it is far easier to hold a principle 100% of the time than to negotiate it at 98%.

Leadership, especially in complex, high-pressure environments, requires clarity before the pressure hits.

Culture is not only a corporate concept

We often talk about culture at work. Much less about culture in our own lives. Yet culture exists wherever behavior repeats itself.

• In teams.
• In families.
• In leadership roles.

Culture is what happens without discussion. It is shaped by what you reward, what you tolerate, and what you model, especially when it costs you something.

If you want resilient teams, trust, accountability, and psychological safety, those qualities must first be visible in how you lead yourself.

The wrong scoreboard keeps you busy…. and empty

Late in life, leaders rarely regret ambition. What they question is different:

• Did I help people grow?
• Did I act in line with what I claimed to stand for?
• Did I invest in what mattered—or only in what was easiest to measure?

Titles fade. Quarterly results expire. But the impact you have on people compounds. That is the only scoreboard that holds its value over time.

A deliberate pause

This is not an argument against performance, ambition, or responsibility. It is an invitation to lead with intent instead of default. To pause long enough to ask:

• What am I really optimizing for right now?
• Where am I drifting instead of choosing?
• What would “success” look like if I measured it in people, not outputs?

At Salomons.Coach, this is where my work with leaders begins. Not with tools or frameworks—but with clarity. Because leadership in a VUCA world does not only require better decisions. It requires leaders who are anchored, reflective, and deliberate about the life they are building while delivering results.

If this question resonates, and you sense that speed and responsibility have left little room for reflection, then it may be time to stop navigating on autopilot. I work with senior leaders who want to:

• realign performance with personal values
• lead with integrity under pressure
• make conscious choices instead of reactive ones
• and build impact that lasts beyond roles and titles

If you would like to explore what measuring your life means in your context, I invite you to connect or start a conversation via Salomons.Coach. Sometimes, the most powerful leadership move is to pause, and choose deliberately how you move forward.