Why High Achievers are a Little Neurotic
The first installment of my conversation with Dr. Judy Ho
Recently I had the pleasure to speak with Dr. Judy Ho about psychology and leadership, and my book The Psychology of Leadership. Judy is a triple board certified and licensed clinical psychologist, a tenured associate professor at Pepperdine University, and the author of many books, including The New Rules of Attachment and Stop Self-Sabotage. She has a great Substack newsletter as well I encourage you to subscribe to.
I’d like to begin with an excerpt from our conversation where we explore:
Writing as a tool for self-reflection and self-development,
The unexpected value of neuroticism, and
The science behind optimal stress.
The following transcript has been edited for concision and clarity.
Why I wrote The Psychology of Leadership
Dr. Judy Ho: First, thank you for an early copy of your book. I’m going to tell everyone to buy it because I felt like it was eye-opening, and I love that every single chapter was basically a specific type of practical advice that we can implement today.
I want to start by asking you why this book and why now? Most people know you as a financial executive, but here you are delving into these principles of positive psychology and really wanting to understand how to apply psychology to leadership. Tell me about that origin story.
Sébastien Page: I'm kind of addicted to writing. It's relaxing for me. I just love it. I wrote this to become a better leader myself. In the intro where I say to my readers, “you are reading this book for self-improvement, and I wrote it for the same reason.” I wanted to become more resilient and a better leader. As I was writing, I got so excited, I thought, I’ve got to share this as broadly as possible. It’s going to help people.
JH: I love the fact that there's such an intimate connection between you and this work, and how you wrote this essentially as advice for yourself. It was part of your own self-improvement project.
SP: It's really great to hear that you enjoyed the book because you're a professional psychologist. I'm not. For me, it’s a user's manual for positive psychology, if you will.
JH: Well, I love it because psychology has so many applications, and I love that there are leaders like yourself who are trying to make this translatable for people who want to do better every day.
Neuroticism as a Personality Trait
JH: One of the things that really caught my attention is your breakdown on the big five personality traits. I love what you said about neuroticism because I think, in general, when we talk about that trait of neuroticism it feels kind of like there's a negative connotation. People use it all the time to describe somebody, and it's kind of a throwaway critical comment of a person. But in your book, you talk about the positive sides of neuroticism. As somebody who I think is a little neurotic myself, I want to hear all about what you think the positive aspects are, because I think there are some.
SP: I will admit, when I took the personality test, I scored high in neuroticism. But there’s research in psychology that shows that traits like neuroticism (but also introversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, etc.) are not set in stone. Rather, they sit on a scale. You can have different degrees of them and you change over time and based on the situation.
We all think stress is bad, and you have research that shows stress is basically going to kill you, but it really is more nuanced than that.
What some consider to be neuroticism, anxiety, or stress, sports psychologists would call activation or arousal, which is not as negative as stress. “Stress” can be a source of motivation. If I'm not a bit anxious about something, I'm not going to prepare as much. I'm not going to perform as well. There's a certain level of activation, or a certain level of stress that's actually good for performance.
This is widely documented in sports psychology. There's a theory of flow in positive psychology which says that if you're not a little bit activated, if you're not a little bit stressed about something, you're going to get really bored. And that's not a good state of mind.
The other thing, since we're looking at the positive side of neuroticism, is that anxious people tend to have active imagination. There's a survival mechanism here. You need to imagine the possible threat. If you look at artists, it’s been shown that most of them score high in neuroticism. So, there's an empirical link between neuroticism and creativity.
And one last thing on perceiving threats: people who score high in neuroticism do well as risk managers. Think about the money management business. You want your risk manager or money manager to be a little anxious and worried about what might happen to your investments. So, it’s not all bad.
JH: I completely agree with that. Another way that I sometimes talk about neuroticism is I describe them as type A individuals, right? That's usually a connection that people make. And I always say I want my doctors, the professionals who are managing my finances, people who are doing important work, I want them to be a little neurotic. I want them to be a little obsessive with the details because I don't want them to make any errors.
And so, I personally do see the positive sides of neuroticism too, and I tend to gravitate towards neurotic people or people who score higher on that scale in my personal and my professional life, and I tend to get along the best with them.
But I love what you said about stress. We all know that the relationship between stress and performance looks like an inverted U-shaped curve. If it's too high it impairs performance, but if it's too low, it also impairs performance.
Handling Stress in a Work Environment
JH: As a leader, how do you advise other people who want to lead in a stressful environment? How do they help individuals, their team, and themselves meet that optimal section of that inverted U-shape curve for productivity?
SP: We all want ourselves and our teams to perform at their optimal level. And again, that means you will be a little stressed. Athletes, for example, are famously stressed during games and key moments. The question is then, how do you find that optimal level? What I found in the research is that the optimal level of stress depends on the type of task.
This was a revelation for me as a leader. We don't talk about this in the workplace.
We talk about setting goals, KPIs, putting pressure on people to perform, fostering high performance cultures, but we don't really differentiate how different types of work will require different levels of pressure.
I'm not going to go to my research and development team and just scream at them and say, “Innovate, innovate by tomorrow.” It's not going to make them more productive.
And not only does it depend on the task, but also on your own makeup and personality.
Some people operate well at a high stress level. My brother-in-law likes to jump out of planes. He needs a high level of activation. Other people get really nervous and bent out of shape and struggle at a low stress level.
So, not only is it task specific, but everybody has their different curves. If you're managing a team, you want to understand who's going to respond to pressure and who's not going to respond.
JH: That's a good point. We are so different there. It's all about understanding every single person at an individual level to know how best to leverage stress and stress levels to help them to be productive and to feel meaning in their work.
The Value of an Examined Life
I hope you found this excerpt of our conversation helpful. Remember:
There is an optimal level of stress and that level is not zero. While the exact level will vary person-to-person and task-to-task, I encourage you to spend the time to identify what that level is for you and the task at hand.
Effective leadership requires understanding team members. The same approach won’t work for everyone, and (as mentioned above) pressure must be calibrated to both the task and the person.
In a business world that often prizes conformity, perhaps the path to exceptional leadership lies in embracing our unique psychological profiles—neuroticism and all. Recognizing our shared humanity and imperfections allows us to forge stronger connections and collaborate effectively, regardless of our differences.
I hope you will join us in the coming weeks where we will discuss:
Flow States and Teamwork
The Importance of Relationships and Connection When Giving Feedback
The Common Mistakes People Make When Selecting Role Models
I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Be sure to subscribe so you get the next one.
Seb
Dr. Judy Ho is a triple board certified and licensed clinical and forensic neuropsychologist, a tenured associate professor at Pepperdine University, television and podcast host, and published author.
Dr. Judy conducts neuropsychological and psychodiagnostic evaluations, serves as an expert witness in legal cases, conducts clinical research, provides expert commentary to media, and is a sought-after public speaker.
Her book, The New Rules of Attachment is a revolutionary approach to attachment theory that teaches readers how to heal their inner child to change their anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style in relationships, friendships, at work, and home.
Also, check out Judy’s podcast below.
When he decided to write a book on leadership and self-improvement, Sébastien Page was rejected by over 200 literary agents.
He was asked, “Why would a finance expert write about leadership?” He was told to stay in his lane.
Sébastien has more than two decades of leadership experience. As an author, he believes breakthroughs often happen when experts venture outside their field. That is why, in "The Psychology of Leadership," he went beyond finance and economics to study research in psychology.
He is currently Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in assets under management.
Sébastien won research paper awards from The Journal of Portfolio Management in 2003, 2010, 2011, and 2022 and the Financial Analysts Journal in 2010 and 2014. In addition to The Psychology of Leadership, he is the author of Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know About Asset Allocation (McGraw Hill, 2020) and the coauthor of Factor Investing and Asset Allocation (CFA Institute Research Foundation, 2016).
Sébastien is also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal, and the Board of Directors of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (Q Group). He regularly appears in the media, including Bloomberg TV and CNBC, and was recently named amongst the 15 Top Voices in Finance by LinkedIn.