A 42-year-old CEO was diagnosed with colon cancer. It pushed her to trade perfectionism for vulnerability.

"When Jennifer Goldsack woke up after emergency surgery last Christmas, she was waiting to hear she had a stress ulcer. Maybe appendicitis. But not this. The surgeon had news that made no sense to her, as a 42-year-old CEO and former athlete: late-stage cancer. Goldsack had always prided herself on being able to get anything done - Olympic training schedules, corporate roadmaps, back-to-back meetings. Cancer forced her into a new, uncertain kind of leadership: one built on vulnerability, delegation, and uncertainty."

""Good leadership is to be able to be clear and to have a plan," Goldsack, head of the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), told Business Insider. "Or, to at least have a plan to make a plan. And I wasn't able to do that." She is sharing her story to highlight the pressures that today's leaders face, often having to shoulder pain and stress in silence. And to share how she's learned, over the past 10 months, to lead her organization with more vulnerability than she ever imagined she'd allow."

"As a world-class Olympic rower, Goldsack knew how to push her limits. She had perfected the art of identifying her strengths and working effectively as part of a team. That helped her move seamlessly into leading a company. As a CEO, she prided herself on being the kind of boss who never asks her employees to do more than she would. "Be humble, be hungry, and always be the hardest working person in the room" was her mantra."

Jennifer Goldsack woke from emergency surgery to a late-stage cancer diagnosis that contradicted her expectations. The diagnosis forced a transformation from achievement-driven leadership to one that prioritizes vulnerability, delegation, and coping with uncertainty. Athletic and professional habits of endurance, intense schedules, and never asking more of others than she would created a pattern of minimizing personal health signals. Declining iron, stomach pain, and being turned away from blood donation were dismissed as fatigue. The experience exposed hidden pressures on leaders and led to clearer limits, increased reliance on teams, and acceptance of imperfect planning.

Read at Business Insider