The Top 1% Mindset: How High Performers Think, Lead, and Thrive

Why do some engineers in tech get promoted super fast into leadership or technical roles while others stay stuck, even though they're technically brilliant? My name is Naz Dalam and today I'm here to share with you the one big lesson I've learned in my career, which is how does the people on top 1% talent in tech perform, lead, and execute on a daily basis? In this talk, you will learn about the framework to build that mindset in yourself.

I've reviewed hundreds of resumes and coached engineers from Microsoft, to Meta, to Netflix, and I can tell you this, the biggest leaps in people's careers don't come from grinding harder, it comes from thinking differently. Quick show of hands, how many of you feel like you've been working harder than ever but it's not getting where you're getting that you're noticed or you're promoted? This talk isn't about hustle, it's about performance. You will learn today that is how it is to shift this mindset, install micro systems and lead with leverage, just like the top 1% in tech.

Know that elite performance don't follow the fame playbook, they rewrite it. But they all tend to live by a few universal philosophies that I would want to walk you through these core philosophies that the top 1% follow. Number one, clarity is bigger than hustle. Hustle culture is overrated, movement isn't progress. At Netflix, a mentee of mine was working 60 hours a week and was on the verge of burnout. We introduced a system to audit his goals every Friday. Within six months, he got promoted, not because he worked harder but because he worked smarter with more focus.

Remember, weekly focus filter, it can help you build a mental triage system. You can use it every Friday, Sunday evening to evaluate whether your time and effort are aligned with a strategic growth. Ask yourself three questions, is the task or project helping me grow new skills? Is this increasing my visibility and influence in the team and organization? Is this for creating leverage, which is automating, multiplying value or saving time and cost? If the answer is no to all the three, you either delegate it, defer it or deprioritize it. This filter helps you redirect your energy from being busy to being impactful. Over time, this practice becomes a compass guiding your weekly execution toward long-term career acceleration.

Number two, systems are bigger than willpower. Talent is unpredictable. And as a leader, I've learned systems create predictability. I had another client use a one-person barrier system, log one career or skill win daily. It revived their mindset from an imposter syndrome to quiet confidence. System habit loop, what is that? Build systems for recurring actions. Create a weekly learning goal and block one hour, only one hour to focus on it. Set up a Friday weekly wins, review where you track your highlights. Automate daily habits with tools like Notion, calendar, Trello or things even chatbots nowadays to help you. Why it works? Willpower is a finite resource. Systems automate success.

Number three, leverage is bigger than effort. Hard work has diminishing returns. Leverage compounds. At LinkedIn, I had a staff engineer who I was mentoring stop coding 70% of the time. Instead, he built an infrastructure others could use. That single shift doubled his impact. Build this leverage lens. At the start of each week, identify one task that will either, one, save your team a repeated effort, two, allow others to do their work better or three, multiply the results with minimum recurring input. Examples could be documenting tribal knowledge, automating manual QA, mentoring a junior teammate or building something effective for repetitive tasks within your team. Top performer asks, what's the one thing I can do that makes everyone else easier or unnecessarily things for the team goes away?

Let's look at the part two. You built that core philosophy. You learned about the three core philosophies that is, number one, was clarity is over hustle. Seconds are bigger than willpower and leverage is more than a fourth. Now let's learn about the leverage flywheel. Imagine doing something once and it pays you back for months. That's leverage. Three spokens. These flywheels basically have three spokes.

These flywheels basically have three spokes. It can have code leverage. It could be reusable code, automated code, abstractions. It could have people leverage, mentorship, delegations or team enablement or platform leverage like AI, tools, systems that will scale you. A mentee of mine created an onboarding docs and loom videos. He spent four hours creating them and saved the team 20 hours of repeating this for every new hire. Mackenzie found top performing teams spent 65% more time building automation and enablement systems rather than doing the repetitive work.

Part three, build your personal operating system. And this is the most important part of this talk because you can't scale yourself until you treat yourself like a system. Your personal operating systems has things like inputs, like meetings, slacks, tasks. Processing is weekly reflections and energy and output like quality work and visibility and energy that you like to have. Treat yourself like a product. What's the roadmap for me? How do I know what's working with me? Things like a daily prompt can be super helpful. What are the three things must I done or must I get done today?

You can have a weekly debug prompt. What drained me last week? What energizes me the most? Block 90 minutes per day for deep work and learn to protect your time like your reputation depends on it because it does. Your time is your most valuable asset. Let's look at part four. Clarity as a competitive advantage. Clarity is one of the other most important things that you need to drive as an engineer. And engineers who are the most successful are the ones who are most clear and drive the most clarity in the roadmap and strategic work. Because clarity drives action. Unclear people over things. Top performance decide faster, recover faster, and execute better because they have clarity. So how do you build that? There's some tools to find clarity. You can have weekly one sentence goals. What's the most important thing on your plate this week? What's your area of focus? You can have an Eisenhower matrix around your task and have personal OKRs that identify your focus areas. That way you can accept the work that comes your way and learn how to say no to the things that doesn't really matter to your focus right now. Most engineers don't lack the skill. They lack the focus. Top performance also do everything.

You think so? No. Top performance don't do everything. They choose what matters the most and they do that perfectly.

Step number five, how do we build that one person mindset? Confidence, visibility, and influence. Confidence isn't something you wait for. It's something you earn and you build. And I had a mentee who published a technical blog series. The first post scared her. She was hesitant to even post it and asked me 10 times if I should put this out in public. The third made her proud and the fifth got her noticed by senior leadership, and the 10th gave her a keynote speech in a conference.

Visibility is not bragging. It's contribution at a scale. Document what you do. Post a brown bag. Post a talk. Answer questions in Slack. Influence is built in consistency plus trust. So ask yourself this every day. Am I raising bars in these rooms or blending in? Which one are you doing at work? So really, confidence is a lagging indicator of action that comes from evidence. As I mentioned, consistency in action builds trust and builds confidence in you. Visibility, if they don't see it, it didn't happen. Make sure the things that you're doing is visible to people. And as I say, document, share it, share it in Slack, share it in lunch, share it in retros, have a weekly email go out on your updates in your areas of ownership. Influence, influence, it comes from consistency, trust, and communication. Ask, am I raising the bar in the room or am I blending in?

The recap is really thinking leverage, not effort. Build systems, do not hustle. Seek clarity, not chaos. Treat yourself like a product, not an employee. Share, teach, and elevate others. Being in the top 1% isn't about working harder. It's about thinking, deciding, and operating at a different level.

So the real question is, are you optimizing your career like a high performer or just surviving the day? A lot of people are just surviving nowadays. Because the top performers, the top 1%, they choose intention. And that choice is available to everybody.

And I want you, after this talk, think about one question. Are you actually driving your work or your work is driving you? Are you going to work with intention or you're just blending in? And if your answer to these questions is the second one, come see me. If you have any further questions into these frameworks, I'm available on LinkedIn. Shoot me a message and I would love to talk to you more. Thank you for listening to me.