You Don't Need to Care Less. You Need to Care Differently.

A CFO I worked with once said something that stopped me in my tracks.

"I need to stop caring so much."

I knew exactly what he meant, and the exhaustion behind it. The sense that caring about the business outcomes and about getting it right was costing him more than he could afford.

But I didn't agree with the solution.

Because the answer isn't to care less. It's to care differently.

Ben Crowe, mindset coach to some of Australia's finest athletes including Ash Barty, puts it this way in Where the Light Gets In:

"The goal is to be totally committed yet fully detached, so there are no expectations and nothing is personal."

Meaning totally committed to your values, to your people, to how you show up, while remaining fully detached from the outcome.

At first glance that sounds like a contradiction. If you care, surely you're attached to what happens?

But sit with it for a moment.

Detachment from outcome doesn't mean indifference. It means refusing to let the outcome determine your worth, your steadiness, or your next decision. It means doing the work with full commitment AND releasing your grip on what you cannot control.

For leaders in high-pressure environments, this distinction is everything. Because when we become fused with the outcome, when our identity rides on whether the board approves the budget, whether the restructure lands cleanly or whether the numbers come in, we lose the very clarity and steadiness that good leadership requires.

Caring about outcome is not the problem. Being consumed by it is.

In the CFO role, holding tension is a structural necessity.

The role itself is built on paradox. You are simultaneously the organisation's financial steward and a member of the executive team. You are expected to be both independent and collaborative, to challenge and to support, often in the same conversation.

Your job is not to eliminate tension. It is to frame trade-offs, surface consequences, and hold the space for better decisions to be made. The discomfort is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is a sign that you are doing your job.

The CFO, who told me he needed to stop caring, cared deeply about the long-term health of the organisation. What he needed to release was not the caring - it was the illusion that he could control all the outcomes.

In my last newsletter I asked what tension you were trying to resolve, when it might need to be named and held instead.

This time I want to ask something slightly different:

Where are you fusing your identity with an outcome you can't fully control?

And what might it look like to stay fully committed - to your values, your people, how you show up - while releasing your grip on the result?

That is not "not caring". That is maturity. And in my experience, it is where the most grounded leadership lives.

With love

Sue