When hustle culture meets shame: The psychology behind performance
By Chantelle Botha
BUSINESS in South Africa and beyond are increasingly exhausted by hustle culture. Let’s just say it plainly – we are tired. And it’s only May.
The real problem isn’t necessarily the increasing workload. It’s the misalignment of internalised expectations and socialised pressures that create cognitive dissonance within us.
In business language, desire is usually sanitised and renamed ambition. It’s the energy that drives our search for meaning – the reason we choose careers where we hope to make an impact and leave a legacy.
Most of us begin our professional journeys with that desire intact. But as workloads increase and expectations multiply, the edges start to fray.
When your plate is so full that sixteen-hour days become the norm just to keep the basics in place, something begins to shift internally. You start questioning yourself: Is this actually making a difference? Is it even worth it?
This is where shame makes its appearance. In the corporate context, shame is simply the weight of feeling unable to meet an impossible standard.
Men and women carry this pressure differently, but the outcome is remarkably similar. We strive externally to meet the socialised expectation that hustle is good and busyness is honourable, while internally we begin second-guessing ourselves.
The masculine experience of shame often centres around provision and status. The pressure is to prove competence and success through visible achievement.
The feminine experience of shame tends to centre around likeability and acceptance. The pressure becomes a constant calibration – not too much, not too little, always carefully adjusting to the expectations of others.
Different masks, but the exhaustion is the same. Many of us are bearing these roles daily, often unconsciously. And the longer we wear them, the further we drift from the desires that originally drove us into our careers.
The solution is surprisingly simple – but it asks a great deal from us: vulnerability.
When men drop the invincibility mask, and women drop the likeability mask, something powerful happens. We become honest about what we actually want, and stop paying lip service to the hustle culture.
Because the real danger in organisations is uninspired leadership.
When leaders trade authentic desire for professional veneer, energy disappears from the system, contributors stop speaking up and burnout slowly takes root.
The answer isn’t another strategy meeting; it’s the courage to acknowledge the shadow. Individually and collectively.
When leaders become honest about their own uncertainty, pressure and limitations, they create psychological safety for others to do the same. Research consistently shows that psychological safety remains one of the strongest predictors of high-performing teams.
Desire is the fuel for motivation. When it is suppressed by shame, people slowly lose their edge, and apathy creeps in.
This is why vulnerable leadership is not weakness. It is a strategic advantage.
In your next one-on-one conversation, instead of asking only for a status update, try asking a different question: “What is one thing you’re genuinely excited about right now – and one thing you’re worried might be overlooked?”
That single question reveals both desire and shame. And where those two forces are acknowledged openly, we become powerful in our vulnerability.
We have spent decades optimising our systems. Perhaps it’s time we started paying attention to the human engines that power them. Because authentic desire is the only source of motivation that doesn’t eventually run out of fuel.
The real leadership question for you today is this:
How will you create space for authentic desire to emerge in your team?
Chantelle Botha, known globally as The Catalyst, is an Identity Architect who partners with leadership and talent teams to unlock confidence and performance in business. Using her proprietary Phoenix Blueprint, she helps companies build cultures of curiosity and courage that translate into confident decision-making. Through her current research exploring the relationship between desire and shame in women, Chantelle explores the internal psychological dynamics that influence performance and confidence.
Ready to drive meaningful, results-driven change?
Connect with Chantelle to strengthen psychological safety and unlock authentic motivation — within your teams or yourself. It starts with you.
www.phoenixconfidence.com
chantelle@phoenixconfidence.com
