Comparing yourself to someone else’s leadership highlight reel will make you forget your own team exists.

Comparison uses a rigged set of numbers: somebody’s edited best against your unedited middle. It also pulls your attention off the actual people in front of you, which is the only place your work happens. Nothing you learn from a highlight reel is applicable, because you cannot see the conditions that produced it. Meanwhile your own group is right there, unnoticed.

When you catch yourself measuring, close the app and do one concrete thing for one real person nearby. Name what your group needs this week that nobody else’s group needs. That is the only comparison with information in it.