“We can hear you!” one of my friends wrote in the chat last Friday.

I was so relieved to see it after the prior week’s Substack Live snafu, where I didn’t set up my mic properly and no one heard anything for 25 minutes.

I went on to say what I’d been afraid to say for months: I’m an executive coach, and I don’t love leadership content. I don’t seek it out. I don’t read it for fun. Coaching the person in front of me is what makes me feel most alive. But the articles, the frameworks, the posts? They drain me.

The result, at least on the call, was … drumroll, please … crickets.

Almost. One listener wrote in the chat that she’d spent 15 years as a travel producer and never read travel content.

That’s the thing about putting out a message that has tremendous weight for you. It might not elicit anywhere near the response you imagined.

To be fair, two friends messaged afterward with warm support. I had voiced something they had felt themselves. They wanted to talk more, to work through their questions and maybe to join me live.

And even without their messages, which were very welcome, I found value in simply expressing what was true for me.

It reminded me of something I see every week with the leaders I coach: even successful, senior professionals at the top of their game can trap themselves.

Sometimes you need a shake-up to wake up.

Early in my career, before I left the highly coveted finance career I had launched myself into, I spent years battling with what I knew to be true: it wasn’t a fit.

I didn’t enjoy reducing a business into logo-ridden charts and spreadsheets of 0s and 1s. The culture of investment banking was dog-eat-dog and ruthless competition. I didn’t trust my colleagues, my bosses, and ultimately, even my friends. Most importantly, I never felt a surge of energy from helping businesses access capital. That period of my life felt like an out-of-body experience, as if I were watching myself go through the motions but not actually experiencing it. Perhaps it was a way to protect myself from a life that didn’t feel like mine.

Only when I got really sick, with multiple blood draws a week and prescriptions that spilled out of a pill box, did I finally re-enter my body. Only then did I admit I wasn’t happy. That maybe I had chosen wrong. That maybe it was time to make a change.

Up until then, I had pretended to love the job, relish the opportunity, and go all in. Friends and family from the outside could see that physically I was ill (bloated, pale, 20 lbs heavier in 6 months). But I could fake it well, especially to myself.

The medical results shook me up enough to realize I needed to face my self-created, gilded cage. No amount of money, prestige, or external validation was worth my health.

That’s when I finally admitted to myself, and then to family and friends, that I needed a change. Saying out loud that I was going to leave a world I had worked years to enter wasn’t as scary as I thought, once I had freed myself from the assumptions that had trapped me.

There was more than one way to be successful, to make money, to be valuable, to matter.

But until I said it out loud, the cage was still locked.

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When you silence yourself, you silence your potential.

After I left investment banking, I had a series of wonderful career experiences, helping to grow technology companies, launching multiple businesses, including Hulu, and transforming businesses like the NBC local TV stations and the Knot.

I loved the climb in every one of those roles. Learning a new industry, getting acclimated fast. But once I got over the hill, I’d ask myself: Do I really want to read more about weddings? About streaming? About selling things online? The answer was usually no. I forced myself anyway, and it drained me.

Every time I made a switch, the first step was saying out loud what I wanted, what was missing, what didn’t feel right.

It was always scary to say so. When I left NBC, I was one month shy of receiving a pension. It still boggles my mind that I even had the option. Pensions are like fairies and goblins, the stuff of stories. But I had the chance to have one, and I left it, and I have never regretted it. I didn’t even enjoy the next job I took, and it was still the right decision to go when I did.

Every career change is a risk. But it’s also an opportunity to expand your network, learn about a new organization, and test your skills. Transitions also keep you nimble, learning new systems, cultural dynamics, and norms.

I left my next company 6 months pregnant with my first child. By normal standards, a bad idea.

But I knew the company and the role weren’t right. After I pushed back one too many times on our CEO’s regular half-baked, 5 pm whiteboard brainstorms, I was no longer invited into the room. I didn’t treat it as an indictment of me. I treated it as a sign it was time to speak my truth again.

I started to reach out to friends to ask about opportunities. When a former boss was named CEO, I reached out. Within weeks, I was on the next adventure that led to me becoming CEO at 32. This wasn’t by design. It was all because I was willing to say out loud what was true, including what was messy.

Say what you know, and be OK with what you don’t.

Every time I was ready to make a change, I didn’t wait until I had all the answers. I started to get out the word long before I knew exactly where I needed to go. I trusted my network to help me.

I did the same at work. When I wasn’t sure about whether we needed to expand into a new vertical, I said so. I’m sure it was difficult for some team members to hear that. But I think the most entrepreneurial ones valued my honesty. They knew I was asking for their help to find the right answer; I wasn’t going to provide false certainty.

Few leaders feel safe to say what is actually true. The ramifications of getting it wrong always feel larger than the implications of not saying anything at all. I think it’s the other way around.

Silence only breeds uncertainty. And uncertainty is what the mind is most fearful of. When we don’t know, we only imagine the worst. The reality is usually much less scary.

That’s what I realized this past Friday.

If you watch the recording above, you’ll notice: It’s unscripted. It wanders. That was the point.

And yet, I got out of it exactly what I needed. I found a voice that I’ve been holding back. One that is more unfiltered, raw, and willing to show my full self, the parts that feel unpolished and not credible. The parts that make me the coach that I am and the leader I was. I can talk EBITDA and growth multiples. I also love talking about mixing paint colors and the right way to wash your brushes. Both are me.

I’m not yet sure what this chapter of my career will bring. It’s still unwritten. That uncertainty frightened me before Friday. But now that I spoke what I’ve been thinking out loud (and people heard), I sense different parts of me starting to shift.

Halfway through the Live, I felt my shoulders drop. My breath came easier. It’s the kind of relief I’ve felt every time I acknowledged that it was time to make a change.

The power I feel when I coach or paint is starting to show up when I think about writing. It’s happening right now as I type. It’s only happened once or twice before in the last 2 years since I started this Substack.

The story I told myself—that I don’t write well and that writing stresses me out—was just another cage, like the one I built for myself in finance. And just as it was then, actually saying out loud what is true for me has helped me break free.

Take Action

Perhaps part of your work as a leader, or your career chapter, no longer fits. Maybe you’re only seeing this today, or perhaps, like me, you felt it for months but were afraid to acknowledge it.

What if you gave yourself permission to play with the idea that the structures and designs you held true might no longer be so?

If saying it out loud to someone else feels too risky, take a more measured approach:

1. Start with writing. If a statement feels too much like a commitment, start with a question. Use this as a chance to wonder about what might no longer be true. Offer yourself room to write what you wish could happen.

2. Talk to yourself. In a quiet place, on a walk, in front of a mirror. If you can’t yet say it to someone else, say it to yourself. You’re trying the words on for size. Notice how they feel when you hear them, not only when you think or read them.

3. Tell something that can’t judge you. I couldn’t even admit this to the AI tool I write with. When I finally typed it, the relief was physical. A journal app, a voice memo, a chatbot: the listener doesn’t matter. Hearing yourself say it does.

The goal isn’t to be right. It might not even be to figure out what you exactly need to say or do. It’s about facing the part of you that has kept you safe, but also kept you from where you’re meant to go next.

Only when we acknowledge that part can we free ourselves from the stories that trap us.

If you want to share your thoughts with me, please reply by email, share them in the comments, or, if you’re a paid subscriber, write them in the Substack Chat. I’ll respond to every one.

And to the people who joined me these last two Fridays, thank you. I cannot express how much your support (and curiosity) means to me.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

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25 minutes of silence.

That was my Substack Live last week. My first in six months. It did not go according to plan.

I was a bit baffled in the first few minutes. No one engaged. Even after I invited folks. Even after I prompted folks. Even after I thanked folks.

I chalked it up to a busy audience. People were multitasking. People were preoccupied. People knew me and trusted that I would be OK without their affirmation.

So I got on with it. I said what I had meant to say. No script. No guest. Just me.

Afterward, I felt relief and some satisfaction. I waited for the recording to load. I moved on to other work. An hour later, I realized something had gone wrong. I had said it all. And yes, people were there.

But no one heard me.

It was almost comical: a silent reveal.

Apparently, I clicked the wrong button during a too-last-minute setup of my Live. So there was no audio. Nothing was recorded. It’s as if it didn’t happen, but worse.

Because I tried, and I failed.

I promoted it. People showed up. People cared. And I just jabbered along, thinking I was sharing something personal and meaningful. Meanwhile, no one heard a thing. And no one hinted at the problem until after it was all over.

What fascinates me most about the Substack Live fail isn’t that I made the mistake. I make mistakes all the time. I can schedule another Live, and I will — same time, this coming Friday — October 16th at 11am ET.

The bigger insight was that 16 people were present and not one person said anything during the Live. Only one person pinged me afterward — a friend who didn’t start by asking me why there wasn’t sound. She simply said she loved the hook, “but for whatever reason I couldn’t get my sound to work.”

She blamed herself. Not me.

If I’d been in that audience, I would have typed within a few seconds: “Hi there? I can’t hear anything… is it just me?”

What the silence said.

I expected to create a stronger connection by sharing something I had been afraid to say. The reveal I planned never happened, but something new emerged.

Everyone who joined was curious and wanted to hear my message. There was some foundational trust. And yet, no one spoke up when they couldn’t hear me.

After I stopped beating myself up for such a silly error, I started wondering why no one raised a flag. Maybe they were too busy. Or maybe it was something else.

Maybe they didn’t want to be the one whose audio wasn’t working and needed “special attention.” Or they didn’t want to disrupt my flow. Or they thought they could hear it later in the recording.

I realized that this doesn’t just happen in Substack Lives. This happens in meetings every day. In every organization.

Someone zones out for a minute. Someone else has to step away. Someone didn’t understand what you just said. Someone can’t find the file you are referencing.

They’re not hearing the message, at least not the full one. And yet they say nothing.

When no one speaks up, the cost isn’t that you weren’t heard. It’s that the message was lost and no one even knows.

It’s not malicious. It’s not necessarily laziness. But it is a form of disengagement. Just because it’s passive doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. It might be even more dangerous because neither the person speaking nor the person who didn’t hear the message acknowledges it happened.

In a Substack Live, the host misses a chance to get a message across.

In a team meeting, it can have bigger ramifications: a topic might get missed, input might be ignored, or a decision might be made without valuable dissent. It’s how teams get out of alignment, how a seed of distrust gets planted, and how a team with great potential becomes a liability.

And no one means for it to happen.

I get to try again. So do you.

I missed all the signals that something was wrong. I won’t do that again. For this next Substack Live, I’m going to use every channel and every engagement tool.

I’ll type into the chat right at the beginning — “Can you hear me?” And I’ll keep checking in, asking questions and creating additional moments to engage throughout the call. I’ll worry less about the recording and more about the experience of the people actually there.

You can do that, too. Your team already trusts you. My audience did. Yet they still may not want to be the one who speaks up.

Don’t give them an excuse to stay silent. Don’t let your meetings become a monologue. Pause. Check in. Give different voices a chance to engage. Invite dissent.

If you’re the one in the audience who can’t hear, missed a beat, or needs a quick rewind and playback, don’t sit tight and wait. You were invited for a reason. Your judgment matters, but you can only share it if you are still following what’s being said.

Speak up, speak out, ask for what you need. You won’t just be helping yourself, you’ll be helping the entire team.

And if you fail, as I did, as the speaker or the listener, don’t give up. Try again.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

Thank you for joining me this week. If this piece resonated with you, consider giving it a ❤️. It helps me reach more leaders looking for their next move.

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“I’m being strategically focused, but I’m not finding many opportunities.”

Miranda is a senior operations leader. Very experienced, very smart. She created her own search tool to gather all the jobs in her industry, at her level, and in her function.

She was doing what she’d learned to do at work: be targeted.

Take the time to get clear on what you want. Identify what fits your criteria and leave out the rest. It’s a recipe for success in most areas of business.

But it wasn’t working for her.

And it might not be working for you either.

I’ve been the problem.

I know this from the other side of the table.

As COO at a growth-stage company, I thought we needed a Vice President of Marketing. We wanted to host a major conference. We needed to start marketing and not rely only on organic word of mouth. I couldn’t do it. Neither could the CEO.

We agreed on it on a Friday. I wrote a job description and was reaching out to my network by Monday.

Three weeks later, we decided to double down on hiring more in sales. To find the money, we cut the job I’d been so certain we needed. The budget we had left allowed me to hire a manager-level events project manager.

I rewrote the role. We found the person, but then realized we had scoped for a short-term need, not a long-term role. Six months later, we eliminated the job, and four months after that, we reposted for the Vice President of Marketing again.

A VP of Marketing searching only for VP roles would have seen us twice in a year, and missed everything in between. The person who’d been talking to me about our marketing problem, regardless of title, would have been my first call.

That’s the part most job seekers don’t see. When you narrow your search to roles that match your criteria, you’re assuming the company is as clear as you are.

Often, they aren’t. I wasn’t.

When narrowing works.

The standard business advice is to get specific. Know your target. Say no to everything else.

It works, but only when four conditions are true:

You’re clear. You know exactly what you want and you can say it in a sentence without hesitation.

You’re consistent. Your career has an obvious arc, and it points directly towards that role. A recruiter can see the path without you having to explain it.

You’re getting traction. The market is already responding. Recruiters are calling. Interviews are turning into second and third rounds.

The buyer is stable. The companies you’re targeting know what they need and aren’t likely to change their minds.

If all four are true, narrow. Focus will serve you.

But before you nod, look hard at that fourth one.

No one can see it from the outside. Remember my VP of Marketing? Anyone watching from outside saw a job posted, a job pulled, a smaller job, then nothing, then the original job again. None of it was visible until it was already over.

Which means for most senior leaders, a narrow search isn’t a strategic move. It’s a bet on certainty that doesn’t exist.

If any one of the four is false, specificity won’t work.

It’s time to widen your aperture.

What widening looks like.

I’ve watched this shift with several clients now. It usually goes like this.

They start out like Miranda. Targeted, organized, frustrated. They have a spreadsheet, or a search tool, or a very precise answer to “what are you looking for?”

Then they loosen one thing. Level or industry is usually the opening move.

And instead of asking people about open roles, they start asking about problems:

“What’s keeping your leadership team up at night?”

“Where do you see opportunity that you aren’t staffed to address?”

“Where is the company stretched thin right now?”

The conversations change.

A former boss brings up a founder who is currently looking for someone who has your skills. A friend has a tennis buddy looking for a leader with your background. A past colleague was waiting for you to be available and now has a role that seems tailored to you.

More than once, the role they landed was one they never would have found on a job board, because it didn’t exist yet when the conversation started. Sometimes the role gets shaped around them.

None of them gave up what mattered to them. They simply stopped excluding the companies that hadn’t figured out they needed them yet.

Miranda’s search is still underway. Most senior searches are longer than anyone wants. That’s exactly why you need an approach as fluid as the companies you are looking to join.

Take Action.

If you’re in a job search, use this as your assessment each week.

Stay narrow only if all four are true:

• You can say what you want in one sentence.

• Your career tells a consistent story toward your target.

• You’re already getting traction that’s showing up on your calendar.

• The companies you’re targeting have stable, defined needs.

If any one is false, it’s time to widen your criteria:

• Loosen one lever: level, function, industry, or location.

• In your next three networking conversations, ask about problems, not open roles.

• Check back in two weeks. If your calendar is still empty, loosen another.

And if you’re worried about wasting time, I get it. Widening has a cost. You’ll have more conversations that go nowhere, and your story may get fuzzier before it gets sharper. That’s the price of being in the room early.

You don’t have to pick one approach and stick to it. Like flying a kite, you adjust to the conditions.

Check the wind this week. Adjust. Then check again.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

Thank you for joining me this week. If this piece resonated with you, consider giving it a ❤️. It helps me reach more leaders who are searching for their next step.

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I started tearing up within a few seconds.

It was ten minutes of a World Cup match this summer. I don’t remember who was playing. I don’t remember if a goal was scored.

All I remember was the wave of emotion.

It was mesmerizing to watch the fans cheer on their countrymen. The singing, the chanting, the ferocity of pride. I couldn’t help but be swept away.

Only when I stepped away to grab a glass of water did I pause to reflect.

What was I doing? A middle-aged woman who isn’t a fan of the game or from the countries represented. What was causing such a swell in my heart?

It was something that I had felt before. At town gatherings. In places of worship. At company meetings rallying the team.

The feeling of being seen, valued, and worthy as a group. The power of unity.

That is the magic of shared purpose.

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Having a goal isn’t enough. People need to feel it.

The people happiest in their jobs feel connected — to the people they work with and to what binds them together.

It’s not the money.

It’s not the industry.

It’s not a title or a logo.

It’s a commitment to something bigger than their individual goals. A sense that you matter in the greater scheme of things. A vision of what could be if everyone pulls their weight.

This is what distinguishes workplaces where people sign in from those where they show up. They might both require hard work and long hours, but one burns you down while the other lights you up.

Places that demand you sign in attract people who are checking boxes and going through motions. Places that inspire you to show up attract people ready to engage, solve problems, and get dirty doing so.

I have worked in both environments.

In one company — a big, prestigious brand, the people who clocked in never wanted to put in more than what was necessary. They drew bright lines around what they were responsible for and stayed away from everything else. It wasn’t just that they stuck to their job description, it was that they didn’t want to be there, and weren’t going to spend a minute longer on anything that could keep them at work longer than absolutely necessary.

Contrast that with another company—a small, bootstrapped startup. We had little funding and never enough people to do the work. And yet teammates proactively volunteered to help each other. They shared ideas, and they shared the workload.

Both organizations had ambitious goals but where one had a mission that it posted on walls, the other had one people lived and breathed every day. One had money. The other had heart. One had people who needed to be there. The other had people who chose to be there.

In the second one, the team was inspired by the mission. It meant something to them beyond the paycheck. They were there to achieve something great and they knew they could only get there together. Their collective ambition made them willing to go harder and travel farther to get there.

Meanwhile, in the first organization, I’m sure there were also people who cared about the mission. But too many had lost their motivation. Even with annual goals and quarterly targets, being an employee at this company felt like being stuck on a piece of driftwood out at sea. You could try to swim or push forward, but what was the point? The organization felt like it was without direction and without a destination.

Shared purpose requires direction and goals, but those alone are insufficient. Shared purpose is only truly achieved when your team feels a connection to your organization and its work that feels visceral and valuable to their life experience.

Shared purpose works only when it aligns with personal values.

For most workers, the first and most critical question about work is what’s in it for them? How will it pay the bills, develop their skills, and propel their career forward?

My first full-time job was the first and last time I followed those principles. Choosing prestige and a path defined by others led me to serious health issues that took me two years to fully recover from.

When you go after something you don’t actually want, it takes triple the effort. You don’t just work hard doing the work. You have to work against your resistance as well. And the part that most people forget is that you also have to work to pretend that you want it. It’s no wonder I was completely depleted, physically, mentally and emotionally.

From that moment forward, I decided to carve a career path using a different lens.

I focused first and foremost on finding people with whom I shared common values. Things like how we viewed ambition, what created a healthy business, how priorities are set, and how we treated people.

What I didn’t realize was that I was filtering for what would become the foundation of shared purpose. Shared values are what enable people in an organization with the same goal to have a common approach. It means that what matters to them personally overlaps with what matters professionally. That’s the depth of alignment needed for complex businesses with big ambitions. Anything less means falling short of their full potential.

As a leader, this cuts both ways. Your values are what the right people will be filtering for when they decide whether to join you.

Shared purpose is the foundation of accountability and resilience.

Too many organizations suffer from a passing-the-buck culture: It’s not my problem. Someone else should solve it.

It’s not how great teams work.

At the startup, no one hesitated to contribute to what I call black-hole projects — ones that consume infinite energy and don’t sit in any one department. If it was important to the organization, it was important to them.

When people actually care, they aren’t nitpicky about who is doing the work. They are more concerned that the work gets done and that it gets done well. People feel pride in their work and a desire to show up with their colleagues because they trust each other to carry the burden together.

In an organization with a strong sense of shared purpose, people celebrate each other’s progress. They are willing to stick their necks out to give each other feedback. They know that each of them needs to be growing, contributing, and getting something out of the experience. Everyone is so talented that if they aren’t getting enough from the experience, they will leave, which would hurt the whole organization’s ability to reach its goals.

It’s not the fear that drives them. It’s the sense of possibility. And it’s the collective ambition to realize it. That’s what makes them resilient and able to sustain the difficult moments.

In a world where the pace of change and the level of uncertainty is only growing, this is what will separate the organizations that attract and retain the best talent from those that fizzle out.

Take Action.

Creating shared purpose is a full-contact sport. It’s not an overnight project. But there are some essential elements.

Start with what matters to you.

Your personal values are your compass. The purpose your team feels will be shaped by what you model, reward, and tolerate, whether you name it or not. When you don’t know what guides you, you won’t be able to build it into your team on purpose.

If you’re not sure where to start, use these questions to guide you:

1. Priorities - How do you determine what matters most?

2. Focus & Investment - How do you think about where to invest your time, money and attention?

3. People - How do you treat people, when and why?

4. Problem Solving - How do you identify issues? How do you address them?

You don’t have to answer all of the questions at once, but they can form the basis for your personal value system.

Get crystal clear on your mission and why.

A great litmus test is could a 6th grader explain it. If they can’t, it’s too complicated, too long, or just not clear. When it’s simple and clear, your team will be able to digest it and live it. Anything more complicated leads to misunderstanding and ultimately, misalignment.

As someone who loves context and caveats, this is not my forte. I have had to rely upon colleagues who challenge me to cut, to edit, to find the core essence and let go of the rest. Because when you can’t be crisp, you can’t be clear.

Don’t assume everyone is aligned.

Take the time to survey your team on the core parts of your business. Do they have the same definition for your target customer? Do they understand how your business functions and where the sticking points are?

I recently ran an organization through a Strategic Planning process. The leadership team had been at odds with each other for months, several were ready to quit. Once I surveyed them and their individual assessments of the operations, the source of the friction became clear.

Everyone was talking past each other. When one person talked about risk, they were referring to revenue. Meanwhile, another was concerned about brand. Everyone was bought into the mission, but no one shared the same picture of what was actually happening and what needed to change.

Shared purpose isn’t just about the direction you’re heading in, it’s about how you get there as well. Just like the World Cup teams, even if you know you have to get the ball into the goal, if you aren’t running the same play, it’ll just be a mess of players on the field. That’s what was happening to this leadership team.

The solution was to take the time to align on a common understanding of how they operated and why. If you’re facing the same challenge, don’t treat it as a deficiency. Use it as an opportunity to involve the leadership team, the Board, and other key stakeholders, including members of your team.

Weave it into how you operate.

Once you have sufficient alignment, then it’s time to weave it into your day-to-day operations and culture.

How do you embody it as a leader?
Do you mention it in your team meetings?
Is it part of your annual strategic planning and goal-setting process?
Would everyone on your team be able to name it?
Do you reward people for perpetuating it?

The most important question is: Do people feel it?

When people feel it, that’s when you know it’s fully integrated. You can’t manufacture the feeling. The trust, the emotion, the meaning. It only happens when the people in the organization live it.

I didn’t know a single player on that field. I still felt it.

Think back to the version of you at an inflection point in your career. The one still figuring out what mattered, choosing between the prestigious path and the one that fit.

What kind of place would that person have wanted to walk into? Where would they have signed in, and where would they have shown up?

You get to build that place now.

Someone out there is looking for it.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

Thank you for joining me this week. If this piece resonated with you, consider giving it a ❤️. It helps me reach more leaders who are doing the work to find the right path forward.

And if a leader comes to mind who could benefit, please consider sharing it with them.

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“Mom, are you angry with me?” my daughter asked as she came out of her taekwondo class.

I was completely caught off guard. I wasn’t angry at all. I was distracted because I needed to use the bathroom. I wasn’t upset; I was trying to hold it together for the seven minutes it would take to get home.

I had no idea that my jaw was set. I looked distracted. I was rigid with focus and discomfort.

I can’t tell you how many times this happens at work.

Leaders think they are being focused. But really, they are showing anger and unintentionally worrying their teams. And it’s all because they are preoccupied with something else and don’t even realize how they come across.

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A leader doesn’t just set the direction; they set the tone.

Anyone who likes to host parties knows that they are responsible not just for the date and the location. They are the source of the ambiance, the feeling that guests have when they walk into the room.

It’s in the details, the music, the scent, the food, the lighting. But it’s also in the emotion and the energy of the people in the room.

Unsurprisingly, if the host is agitated or anxious, it permeates everything.

That’s why great hosts don’t just emphasize the physical elements; they take the time to show up as they want and make their guests feel how they want them to feel.

Leaders are the hosts of their workplaces.

When a leader is off-kilter, it’s unsurprising if their team feels it. Even if someone on their team is level-headed and stays calm, the leader’s energy and perspective will permeate, distract, and even drain that person and those around them.

The cues you give aren’t always visible to you.

Most of us, unless we are trained actors or models, aren’t aware of the subtle cues we give.

Narrowed eyes. A furrowed brow. A stiff stance. These can all suggest that something isn’t right. That you are worried or disappointed. Perhaps you are simply uncomfortable, like I was, but your team doesn’t know that.

It’s human nature to assume that when someone engages with you and shows signs of discomfort, you are the cause. That’s exactly the calculus your team is making every day.

But it’s not what is actually happening.

Too many leaders are living in another reality. A past meeting that didn’t go well. A future conversation they are dreading. A budget they are still trying to negotiate. It might have nothing to do with work at all, like I was with my daughter.

Sadly, it’s rare for a leader to be fully present, even if they want to be. It’s even rarer for a leader to notice the signals they are giving off.

When a leader is relaxed, joking, and smiling, their team assumes that all is well in their work and their relationship with them. When someone isn’t worrying about what their leader thinks, they’re more likely to reveal what is actually happening, share concerns, ask for help, and be creative.

Risk-taking is less risky when a boss feels more ready to receive and support their thoughts.

What sets the tone for your team.

If you’re trying to create the conditions for your team to be fully engaged, the first and most important condition is you.

Even if the rest of the industry or company is going to pot, you are the person who can most influence how your team is feeling. I’m not saying you can manage your team’s feelings. Just that you can either be a source of productive conditions or a source of negative ones.

If you want to be a productive source, how do you do that when so many of the signals are things you might not even be aware of?

Like hosting a party, below are the ones that I’ve found mattered most in my career as a follower and as a leader, and how I calibrated them intentionally instead of letting them sneak up on me and sabotage my ability to lead.

1. Attention - Am I fully with the present conversation, topic, and person?

2. Pace - How do I feel about our speed, and what do I want the team to do?

3. Facial expressions - Do I know what my mouth, eyes, and brow are doing? Are they communicating what I actually want to convey?

4. Physical posture - Am I open or closed? Tight or loose? Upright, hunched?

5. Tone - What is the pitch, the emphasis, and tenor of my voice?

6. Language - The words I use.

The order above matters.

For example, I put language last because people overemphasize it. Being eloquent is great, but it’s not what people remember most.

My style is rather casual, but I’m often remembered for being diplomatic or having gravitas. It’s not my words that do that. It’s that I’m fully attentive and have taken the time to proactively tune the rest. Once your facial expressions, posture, and tone are in a good place, choosing your words naturally becomes the next focus.

I once worked for a leader who was regularly distressed and would speak loudly, turn red with agitation, and use clipped, staccato sentences. He wasn’t always annoyed with his team, but that’s what he conveyed. Whatever was causing him distress, he passed directly to his team.

When he wanted more innovation, he got more caution. When he pushed everyone to move faster, they panicked and made more mistakes. When he asked for better documentation, people wasted hours trying to perfect capturing systems that didn’t actually matter because they didn’t want to face his ire.

He regularly stood with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed. He rarely smiled, and he was often on his phone during meetings. It signaled deep disrespect and meant he missed much of what his team tried to share.

He had no idea what he was signaling. Most of us don’t. That’s the work.

Choosing the emotional temperature you want to convey.

As a leader, your team looks to you to understand how to react. Your team can be in a steady state flow, intensely fixing a critical problem, wildly testing as part of a wave of innovation, or calmly recovering from a big launch. You need to choose.

When you both anticipate where they should be emotionally and convey your energy in alignment, that’s how a team works best.

A great team doesn’t lack friction, but it also isn’t constantly stressed or split between what the leader is signaling and how the team needs to respond.

I was often highly conscious of the team’s emotional needs when things weren’t going well, but I would forget to pause when things were going well.

After a layoff or other cost-cutting measure, I took time to compose myself and be highly intentional about how I showed up in meetings and conversations. From what conversations were happening to when they took place to the words I used, I choreographed it all.

But when things were going well, I wasn’t always conscious that perhaps my team needed more acknowledgment, more pacing, or critical feedback that wasn’t all positive. When the numbers were going up and to the right, I overlooked those elements and took for granted that a simply positive demeanor might not best serve my team.

The most painful example of this was when our sales were growing rapidly. But our sales playbook and process weren’t in great shape. We were benefiting from a star seller carrying the numbers and an untapped market that didn’t require rigor to capture. It was smooth sailing on the outside, but underneath was a mess that would rear its head six months later once the initial honeymoon period passed.

Instead of having the hard conversations and lowering the mood, I wanted the team to persist in the high of the moment and avoided the harder work of asking key members of the team to dissect our process and build it from the ground up.

It would have required more time, budget, and new tools and processes. Naming it might have killed the high we were all basking in. I should have, but I didn’t.

Take action.

If you want to improve how you are setting the emotional temperature for your team, start with what your team needs emotionally.

Maybe it’s acknowledgment, or it’s recalibration, or perhaps a motivated push. Whatever it is, it might vary by person or sub-team. Get specific. Without goals, you are just winging it and likely to make the wrong call.

Be present in every interaction. This is perhaps one of the highest-ROI actions and yet the hardest to execute. If you’re like the leaders I coach, you are juggling a multitude of important things.

The only solution is to give yourself permission to be human and not keep all the balls in the air all the time. You don’t have to drop them; you have to put them down in order to give each the attention they need.

Give yourself time to transition between meetings and put away your distractions. When you are focused on the person or people in front of you, they can feel it. And what you’re signaling is far more likely to land.

Lastly, assess your actual behaviors. Until you truly see yourself in action, you won’t know what to adjust.

I once worked with an incredible technology leader who people often felt came across as robotic. Even though he was saying the right words, something about his gestures and tone made it feel not genuine. When I asked him more about his approach, he revealed he was an introvert and struggled with human interaction.

His solution wasn’t to shy away. It was to practice. He recorded himself multiple times and practiced his speaking in front of a mirror. He learned the importance of smiling, pausing, and relaxing his body while keeping an upright posture.

Even though he wasn’t the most charismatic leader, he more than made up for it with his analytical and strategic thinking, his care for his people, and his ability to set his team’s emotional tone; he created some of the strongest teams I’d ever worked with.

Borrow this leader’s playbook. Record yourself, practice in front of a mirror. Note what you’re signaling, not just what you’re saying. Study the features, postures, inflections, and words of other leaders whom you find effective. Practice one element for a week or two. And ask for feedback. You won’t know how it’s going unless someone tells you.

If you’d like to get even more formal feedback, consider working with a coach or ask HR for support. You don’t have to do this alone.

Setting the emotional temperature isn’t just about performance. The most skilled leaders do it in a way that’s real and relatable. That doesn’t mean sharing everything you feel. We are all a bundle of emotions and thoughts. Filter them to what the team needs while fully embodying the emotion because you feel it, too.

Choose just one of the actions above and try it out. And if you’re open to it, tell your team you want to improve in this area and would love their feedback.

It’s amazing what happens when we share vulnerably what we’re working on and how we might stumble. We show our teams not only that we are committed to growing as leaders for their benefit, but we also give them permission to do the same.

You’re already setting the temperature. Now you can do so intentionally.

May you lead without limits,
Kathy

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Practice this live, and with support.

Reading about this is the easy part. Watching yourself is harder, and most leaders won’t do it alone.

That’s why I built the paid tier of Lead Without Limits. Each month, paid subscribers get a mini-guide drawn from the processes I use with my coaching clients, plus a live group Ask Me Anything video call.

Need help practicing setting the temperature? Let’s do it together: how you walk into a tense meeting, how you deliver hard news, how you read the room while you’re doing it. Bring a real situation.

Our first session is Friday, October 23rd at 11am ET. And if temperature setting isn’t where you need help, bring what’s top of mind for you.

This is for leaders who’d rather practice than read about it. And ones who want to grow alongside others, not alone.

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Work with me 1:1

I also work 1:1 with a small number of senior leaders who are stepping into a bigger role, deciding what’s next, or leading through a hard stretch.

I bring two decades of leadership experience, more than half of it in the C-suite. Very little of what happens at work matches the textbook, so neither does my coaching.

I have two spots open this fall. Book a free strategy call to see if we’re a fit.

Several of my clients found me because someone who reads this newsletter sent them my way. If someone came to mind while you were reading, forwarding this post is the easiest introduction there is.

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“It’s been months. I’ve updated my LinkedIn. I’ve applied to dozens of jobs. But I’m still not getting any calls.”

There were tears in her eyes.

Celeste is a seasoned leader who was burned by a toxic boss in her last job. She had excellent experience in operations, commercialization, and sales, but her confidence didn’t match it.

I’ve built multiple teams. One look at her resume told me why.

Celeste doesn’t fit the mold of what people traditionally seek.

She’s a square peg trying to fit into a round-hole market.

The traditional path is the easy path… for recruiters

Senior leaders, even if you’ve built multiple teams, forget that in the search process, the recruiter is just trying to complete a task in the fastest, most frictionless way.

It’s why they look for candidates where the story is obvious and clear. There is a clear progression. Each role should seamlessly lead to the next and the next. In each job, the person grows their scope, their title, and their compensation.

That’s the easiest story to tell. It’s the easiest story to sell.

But most leaders don’t fit that mold.

I’ve worked with many successful leaders who took the path that doesn’t tie neatly into a bow:

Alisa stayed “too long” in one company.

David moved up several levels only to move back down again.

Others, like me, jumped through multiple industries and functions. I started in investment banking, moved into technology and media, and then e-commerce and finally social impact technology.

None of them had the perfect path. Yet all of these leaders found a fulfilling next step.

Help recruiters tell your story

Celeste could do the same. Her mixture of operational and revenue-generating experience was valuable, but she needed to connect the dots and tell a story.

Instead of defaulting to the titles she was given, she needed to translate her roles into a progression and a set of skills and impact that a recruiter could understand.

“Chief Evangelist” became Vice President, Go-to-Market.

“Director of Innovation” became Director, Product.

We revised her titles not to inflate or misrepresent them, but to make them searchable. As my friend and executive recruiter, , guides: if you aren’t using the same language as the database, no one can find you.

You aren’t making up a title; you’re taking your custom title and matching it to the industry standard. And don’t worry, doing this doesn’t take away what makes you unique. It’s helping more people find your uniqueness. And in case it isn’t clear, being undiscoverable isn’t integrity, it’s just staying hidden.

For each role, we described her responsibilities and authority to clarify the progression. It wasn’t always growth, but at each step, we showed how she kept adding to her skill set and taking on high-impact roles. We also clarified all of her transitions. She could describe the why and how for each one with specificity and succinctness.

Most importantly, she regained her confidence. By creating a narrative that made more sense to others, she had created a narrative that made more sense to her.

Where your story actually gets told

When Celeste came to me, she was exhausted.

She was a rule follower who had dotted all her i’s and crossed all her t’s to climb in her career. She had followed the steps she had used in the past, over 7 years ago for her last job.

Update her resume. Call a few friends and mentors. Apply to roles. Reach out to recruiters. Wait for calls.

It wasn’t working.

No one had told Celeste, and she didn’t know to ask, that her search process needed to change. That as a senior leader, and as someone whose career path didn’t fit the standard round hole, the classic application path wasn’t going to work.

She knew that networking mattered, but Celeste thought that calling a few friends and mentors was networking.

I’ve hired dozens of executives.

I can count on one hand how many came through the application portal.

When I told her that only networking would maximize her opportunities and increase how often they surfaced, her eyes widened. She took a deep breath.

As a sandwich caregiver, Celeste cared for her father and her children. Her schedule wasn’t predictable, and the work was emotional. But she couldn’t delay her search any longer. She had bills to pay.

Instead of increasing the pressure, we created a process that allowed her to pace herself. We set outreach targets that matched her schedule and created templates to make outreach less stressful.

The hardest part for her? The conversations.

Conversations required preparation, scheduling, real energy, even the virtual ones. The in-person ones were even more taxing. But once the calls and coffees started getting scheduled, Celeste realized something.

The part that had made the conversations difficult — worrying if she had a career that would resonate — wasn’t feeling as hard. The narrative work we had done earlier had helped her go into the conversations with a steadiness that she had lacked in earlier settings.

And once she realized that the conversations were not going to drain her, any remaining resistance she felt about networking faded.

Take action

Celeste is at the tail end of her search, and while she isn’t without stress, she no longer dreads the process, and often enjoys her networking conversations.

Borrow the playbook we created for her. Here are the steps in brief:

1. Write one sentence per role: A title that’s searchable on LinkedIn. What you were handed. What you changed.

2. Develop your transition stories. Why did you leave? What drew you to the new role? Naming what matters. If you have a long-tenure stint, explain why you stayed.

3. Say it out loud to one person you trust. Watch where they get confused. Pay attention to when you felt unsteady. Those are the parts to work on.

The organizations looking for you — and there are many, trust me — can’t find you unless you make yourself discoverable and with a story they can digest.

The steps above aren’t just about finding a job; they are about how you make sense of your past career choices and set yourself up for the next set.

You already did the work. This is about letting people see it.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

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It’s not because I think everyone should leave their corporate or other organizational jobs. It’s because I want to practice what I preach — that stepping out of your movie and reflecting is one of the best ways to learn. And if you’re curious about going out on your own, I hope this gives you a peek under the not-so-glamorous hood.

Thank you for being here. You’re the reason why I do this work.

Even when I published my Year 1 reflections, it was already starting. The insidious glide toward burnout.

As my business, followers, and subscribers grew, what no one else saw was that my anxiety, brain fog, and fatigue did as well.

I had started waking up each day feeling behind. My “have to’s” were starting to outnumber my “get to’s.” My body was starting to constrict and stiffen.

I had fallen into the toxic social media dopamine doom wheel. I couldn’t put down my phone. I had gotten tendonitis so bad that it kept me up at night, and kept me from working out, which made sleeping even more elusive.

They say starting is the hardest part. I think staying the course is.

Starting has rarely been my problem — I give myself permission to stumble, and I ask for help. It’s the part after the beginning, when you’ve shown some sign you can do it. That’s when the really hard stuff begins.

We’re so quick to turn early wins into more pressure.

High achievers do this a lot.

You set the bar too high, too fast.

Whether it’s in the job search or on the job, you don’t give yourself time to build momentum before you up the ante. The minute you get a win, you change the goalposts. The exact opposite of what will help you keep going.

I see my clients who are 1 month into the job search do this and I see those who are trying to make deep leadership changes do this. And the result? They psych themselves out.

They take one good networking call and turn it into a need for every outreach to convert into a job opportunity.

They take one good meeting about a hard topic with a direct report and expect everyone in their team to shift the culture.

But reality doesn’t work that way. Progress, on the kinds of things leaders tackle, usually isn’t linear, nor predictable. And when you set the bar too high, too fast, all that ends up happening is you burn out.

It’s not because you are working too hard. It’s because you realize that you will never achieve your expectations.

I fell into this exact trap last year.

Burnout only took me 3 months.

I had hit all of my year 1 goals for my Substack, coaching, and my painting practices. So I decided to pile on more.

I started to build a corporate offering.

I added more clients.

I increased my posting frequency.

I upped my posting quality.

I booked a professional photo shoot.

All this in the fall of 2025, during the busiest season of life in my household: when my kids were both transitioning schools, when birthdays land, when we are traveling or hosting. When my husband and I tend to get the most stressed.

By January, I was fried to a crisp.

I couldn’t even open LinkedIn, much less write or comment.

Admitting fatigue doesn’t mean being defined by it.

Collaborators and clients might have sensed I was tired. But I’ve had decades of practice hiding my fatigue, not just to others, but to myself.

Admitting I was tired has always felt unsafe. The facade of never-ending capacity and capability was my armor. If I gave myself permission to slow down, would I ever get back up again?

I knew the answer. The only answer: Yes.

The only way to get back up again was to rebalance my work and life.

This was yet another opportunity to practice what I preach. That only when you strike the right balance between work and rest can you truly achieve your potential.

And it all starts with empathy.

I didn’t berate myself for repeating old patterns; I showed myself care for how human I was. Everyone slips into well-worn habits when we react to our fears instead of stepping back to assess them.

You have to lower the goalposts before you reset them.

I decided to give myself space. A lot of space.

I stopped posting on LinkedIn. I slowed down my notes on Substack. I gave myself permission to be inactive.

It wasn’t that I was just burned out. I was frayed at the edges. For months, I had been waking up around 1-3am and unable to fall back asleep. I told myself it was just a phase, but it was approaching 6 months. My brain fog was at an all-time high. I was starting to panic.

What if this was my new normal?!?

I wasn’t ready to give up. I was just starting my next chapter, the one I had been waiting for all my life. It was too early to declare defeat. But what I had been doing wasn’t working. I needed a new playbook.

As someone highly motivated by goals, I knew I had to start with a more helpful definition of success. Year 2 couldn’t be about numbers or revenue growth. In fact, it wasn’t going to involve my business at all.

2026 would be solely about my routines. The fundamentals. The foundation that everything else in my life rested upon.

I called it: Honing My How.

If my body and my mind were in disarray, my heart was coming next. I wouldn’t let that happen. It was time to reset… everything.

I paused to assess what I needed. I didn’t need more business. I didn’t need to grow faster. I didn’t need to compete.

I needed a new set of routines. I needed to feel rested. I needed to feel clear-headed. And I needed to do all of this with kindness so that the new patterns I was building would be without pressure and toxicity.

Rest and recalibration are active choices.

Beyond slowing down on social media, I tried some simple digital detox tried-and-trues and some eating-habit improvements.

I stopped using my phone to fall asleep to a story or podcast, a habit I had developed when my kids were going through sleep anxiety. At first, it actually made me more anxious. Would I be able to fall asleep without help? What would happen in the middle of the night?

It took only a week to normalize not having my phone at night. Feeling the win, I stopped bringing my phone into the bedroom altogether. Then stopped using my phone in the evenings after 6pm. I started to use DO NOT DISTURB aggressively.

I increased my protein intake and reduced how much I ate and drank in the evenings before bed. I cut back on sugary treats, which was easier after the holiday invasion had passed.

I was doing many more of the right things, but I was still waking up at night, overheated, and over-agitated. I was starting to lose my nerve.

In April, I met Olympic gold medalist and executive coach Steve Mesler. We did a Substack Live and in our catch-up call afterwards, Steve gave me advice that turned everything around:

1. Get the 8Sleep system, which his wife swears by. It’s a bed covering that calibrates your bed temperature based on your needs (this is not a sponsored post).

2. Use AI to create a workout routine that incorporates my health concerns and time constraints.

3. Keep at it for 3-6 months. That’s how long it will take to reset.

I rarely impulse buy. I’m more of a ponder for awhile and then ponder some more kind of person. The more it costs, the longer I ponder. The 8Sleep system is expensive. I bought it the same day Steve told me about it. That’s how desperate I was.

A week later, I fed Claude my health history, current challenges, physical therapy exercises, and my devotion to Dr. Stacy Sims (women’s hormonal health and fitness expert). It spit out a 3x per week exercise routine that addressed my poor discipline on warm-ups and cool-downs, fit my time constraints, and would give me time to recover, something I am horrible at.

The messy middle is the most dangerous stage.

I felt immediate heat relief at night using the 8Sleep, but my sleep patterns didn’t change for months. Early on, I got annoyed that I had to update the 8Sleep tracker in the morning to subtract the 2-3 hours I spent awake again in the wee hours.

My strength (and waistline) didn’t improve much at first either. I was following the new workout routine, but the results were elusive.

Like most humans in affluent countries, I’ve developed an instant gratification expectation that is as unattainable as it is unreasonable. I know very few things in life with deep value (relationships, health, expertise) can be gained overnight. But I still wanted it to happen NOW.

I tried to stay curious and reminded myself of Steve’s guidance. Going backward wasn’t an option, even if I couldn’t see the finish line. I needed to trust the process and give my body time to acclimate.

But it was hard to keep going when the results weren’t visible. That’s what’s so hard about the middle. Even if you’re a believer in “progress not perfection,” no one tells you what to do when there isn’t obvious progress either.

Luckily, my rule-follower and stubborn tendencies kept me going. I also kept hearing Steve in my head: 3-6 months for real change to happen.

Stay present, otherwise you might miss it.

Three months in, it finally did.

It was so gradual, I almost missed it.

Even when I was at my worst, I would sleep through the night at least once every one to two weeks. So when that grew to twice a week, or even three times a week, I didn’t notice at first. Only when I paused to reflect weekly would I see the broader trend, not only of hours slept, but of how I was feeling.

The brain fog started to recede. My strength training started to compound. Things that had felt daunting, like writing, started to feel more approachable. I restarted writing on LinkedIn consistently. I felt more energy to explore a rebrand. I was starting to feel more like myself, something I didn’t even know I had lost.

Taking on new things can make sense, even in the midst of a reset.

You would think I would have slowed down other parts of my life outside my business during this rest-and-reset period. I did reduce some of my social interactions, and as a family, we chose a much lighter travel schedule.

But I took on more in other areas.

I joined the Board of my nonprofit art institute. As a completely volunteer-run organization, this wasn’t as simple as adding quarterly evening meetings. It was more like taking on a part-time (and, occasionally, full-time) role.

Since January, I’ve managed The Ridgewood Art Institute’s (RAI) website and email communications. After seeing some opportunities to build greater alignment, I also initiated a Strategic Planning process with the Board that will take the better part of a year to complete.

In my art, I decided to expand to portraiture. It’s been the type of painting I’ve most wanted to try, but felt the most daunted by.

Unlike a flower or a fruit, a person’s face has distinctive features that others will immediately see as out of place or not shaped correctly. The subtle color variations are complex and nuanced. In addition, my classmates are very skilled, and it can feel intimidating to paint alongside them, not because they are judgmental, but because I am.

Perhaps my brain fog clouded my thoughts, but I decided to give it a go in January.

It might seem strange to have taken on more in some areas of my life while I was pausing in others. I wasn’t just randomly choosing.

I used a simple rubric that I share with my clients:

When we spend time on what gives us energy, we aren’t simply adding more to our plate. We are adding activities that replenish us.

My work at RAI makes me feel more connected and puts me back in a leadership role context, something I didn’t even know I missed. Challenging myself in painting keeps my beginner mindset front and center. It keeps me wobbly, but in a way that supports my growth.

Both take time. And both add more than they take.

I check in with myself every week on where I’m getting energy and where I’m losing it. It’s how I stay present and actively calibrate my focus vs. letting myself slip into burnout again.

When you work on the fundamentals, the rest will follow.

So what happened to my business in a year when it wasn’t the focus?

It grew. Nearly 30%.

Importantly, it was driven by the segment I was focused on, my corporate clients. I love my individual clients, but I’m really enjoying serving a group of leaders, facilitating live sessions and speaking live.

And even though the business wasn’t my focus, I did make changes: I rebranded visually. I changed my pricing. I took on my first intern. I added a new offering.

I did it all in a stress-free way. I didn’t set hard deadlines or focus heavily on outcomes. I simply asked myself: What do I want to happen? What should I do to test or help it along?

If things took longer, so be it. If they didn’t happen at all, OK.

I didn’t do as much networking this year as in last year. My sleep and workouts took precedence. My online writing slipped in volume, frequency, and quality. It was the right trade.

I never lost sight of my clients and their needs. I’m sure I can improve how I support my clients, but I showed up to every call present, attentive, and ready to serve. More so this year, because I had more to give.

All because I prioritized the root of what was holding me back: the fundamentals.

What excites me about Year 3.

As I enter Year 3, the most obvious sensation I have is calm.

I’m not worried. I don’t feel pressure.

Instead of taking the wins from this past year and layering on more expectation and higher goalposts, I am simply going to keep going forward with the same rubric and focus on what gives me energy.

I don’t need more money. I don’t need more clients. I don’t need to do anything in particular.

I simply want to relish the opportunity to serve more leaders, to grow how I coach and paint, and to feel alive and connected to the people around me.

If you really want to press me for Year 3 goals, here’s what I would say:

1. Keep prioritizing my rest and health.

2. Keep checking in on how my commitments make me feel, and calibrating them.

3. More time painting.

4. Continue honing my writing routines to deliver maximum value with minimum stress.

5. Support more leaders and their teams who want to build meaningful careers and engaged organizations.

And in one sentence: Keep starting and ending each week feeling at peace with my progress and my priorities.

In my past, if my team was #5 on my list, I would have been concerned. But now, I don’t see my clients coming in at #5 as a problem. The leaders who want to work with me will relish the fact that I will serve them better because of 1-4, not in spite of it.

They know that because I’m focused on what gives me energy, I will be far more effective at helping them develop a new playbook, reorient their team, or shed habits that no longer serve them.

Take Action

Regardless of what type of job you have, the industry you sit in, or your career stage, you can benefit from a weekly reflection that helps you calibrate how you are spending your time and setting your goalposts.

You don’t need to wait until you’re feeling the negative effects of stress or for a year to pass.

Here’s my process for you to borrow.

Weekly Reflection

1. Give yourself 10-15 minutes of quiet. If your mind is still churning, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Stretching can help, too. Sometimes moving your body helps shift your mind.

2. Get a notebook and pen. There’s something clarifying that happens when you take a tactile approach.

3. Write down what went well and what didn’t go as well. Simple bullet-pointed lines. Nothing fancy.

4. Add a “(+)” and “(-)” next to what gave you energy and what drained your energy, respectively. Drop in some extra +’s and -’s based on what stood out the most.

5. Every month, take a look back at the last 4-8 weeks. Look for patterns.

6. Recalibrate your goals and priorities based on what you learn.

If you do this often enough, even if you miss a week or a month, it’s OK. You’ll have trained your mind to assess even without the sit-down. Don’t skip it on purpose, but don’t beat yourself up if you do.

Sometimes, the information won’t always make sense. For example, my RAI Board work is energizing most of the time, but it wasn’t in July. Looking back, I realized it was because I was overcommitted.

Even if the overall commitment isn’t too much, the micro-ones can be. Now I am much more conservative about how much I can complete in a day or a week, to leave room for unexpected issues or asks.

Commit to only 80% of your time. I guide my clients to do it, and I could only see I needed to do the same when I paused and stepped back.

Not sure you can reflect every week? Start with once every two weeks. Put it on your calendar. In a year’s time, you might be surprised at how your investments in your energy resulted in outcomes that exceeded your goalposts and didn’t stress you out in the process.

Give it a go and let me know how it works for you.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

🙏 Thank you for joining me each week. I am so grateful for your support and feedback. You are why I do this work. Your leadership, potential, and generosity help me persist through challenges and keep growing.

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My client was starting to think the issue was him.

Maybe he wasn’t seeing clearly. Maybe his boss thought he was focused on the wrong target. Or worse, maybe he was becoming an annoying, squeaky wheel, the kind people roll their eyes at, just not to your face.

The silence, intentional or not, had become a verdict.

They’re not ignoring you, they’re not here.

Senior leaders live six months to a year ahead. It’s the job. Setting direction requires it.

It can be hard to see into the future and still relate to what is happening in the present. Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 was put into a mental institution because of it.

Leaders don’t get locked up for it, but they often struggle with the same issue. Sometimes without even knowing it.

Even as executives work through scenarios, review trends, and hypothesize outcomes, they don’t get a pass on the day-to-day. That’s also part of the job. The problem is when they confuse the future and the present.

Too many executives overestimate their context-switching abilities and underestimate the negative impacts of the cost. They think they are simply juggling multiple realities, but really they can only hold one at a time. They miss the present while contemplating the future. And they color the future with their present concerns.

Your boss isn’t withholding a decision. They’re in a different year, and the version of them in the room is only partially listening.

The truth, from inside the other chair.

When I went into future-planning mode, I would become completely immersed. Strategic planning can be all-consuming, especially if you want to be thorough and collaborate as an executive team.

I would all but ignore my current operations, relying upon my deputies to lead. Unless it was an emergency, I didn’t have time.

Things I would have normally caught and properly addressed festered or ballooned. Underperforming employees didn’t get the feedback they needed. A large client who needed nurturing almost churned.

The one that stung the most? Deferring a deep assessment of our revenue engine. I knew it was important, but we were hitting targets. Had I dug deeper, sooner, I would have realized we had one star, but the rest of the team was floundering. We didn’t have a repeatable sale. Our business relied on one person to keep showing up.

I only realized the issue well into the next year, the one where we were supposed to grow exponentially. Instead, we had to rebuild from the ground up.

The worst part wasn’t the miss. It was the team members who had raised flags, more than once. But I pushed them aside while I lived in a hypothetical, rosy future.

I thought I was being the futurist leader when I was actually distracted and disconnected.

I wasn’t deftly juggling two realities. I could hold only one at a time, and by dropping one, I dropped the other. My team didn’t just suffer the delay alongside me; they saw a leader who they were no longer sure they could trust.

Why the gap costs more than delay.

The cost of the disconnect starts with perspective, but it can quickly grow into confusion and ultimately distrust. It’s the kind of team stress with no release valve: the team can see the gap growing, but their leader doesn’t even know it exists.

If you’re working with a leader like this, you know what it feels like. You bring up topics that should register with weight, and you get a cursory nod. You push for a controversial change with emotion, and you are told things are OK, now’s not the time.

The reaction is real, but it’s not correlated to what you said. It’s connected to another time and place, one that you have no context for, and no idea how it’s changing the conversation.

It means decisions are delayed, poorly executed, or just outright ignored. Some never needed prioritizing, but if you’re a senior, trusted leader bringing up the same topics more than once, it’s demoralizing to feel unheard.

A path forward with more clarity and coherence.

I’m always a fan of simply saying the thing. Every leader I know who has done this has built a stronger relationship, not a weaker one.

When my client raised his concerns for the fourth time, he did it with a question. “Am I not seeing something clearly? Why does it feel like this issue is a high priority for me, but not the leadership team?” It had taken five months, but his boss finally ran it up the chain and got it resolved.

The result wasn’t just closure, but confidence. He had proven something to his boss that acquiescence would have never conveyed.

Here are four actions that can help your boss move past indecision or a non-answer.

1. Ask what time zone they’re in. Plainly. “Are you in planning mode right now? When do you come out?” Most people never ask, and most leaders will answer.

2. Timestamp your asks. Lead with the horizon before the content — “this is a this-quarter decision” or “this is a next-year question.” Route yourself into the reality they’re standing in.

3. Raise the pattern, not the issue. “I’ve brought this up before. I want to understand whether it’s not landing or it’s not a priority.” Never assume. Name your fear not because you want sympathy, but because you seek understanding. Sharing that it feels like insubordination, or like admitting you’ve been keeping score gives your boss permission to tell you what is actually true.

4. Bring both horizons before you’re asked. Map the short-term and long-term implications yourself. You stop being the person raising a present-tense problem and become the person thinking in their time frame.

The gap was never about you, but you can help close it.

This is your reminder that your boss’s actions aren’t always about you or what you did or said, especially when they are in future mode.

They won’t always remember to share their context. And you don’t have to wait to ask.

The gap wasn’t caused by you. But you can help your boss see it and close it together.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

P.S. If you know of a leader who needs this reminder, please consider sending it to them. And if you enjoyed this post, consider giving it a ❤️. It’ll help me reach more leaders — thank you!

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“Why am I the only one naming the problems? Doesn’t everyone else see it? We’re wasting time!”

One of my clients, Malcolm, a talented EVP and division leader, is frustrated beyond measure.

He thought he was joining an ambitious, smart group of leaders, ready to accelerate the business.

His due diligence didn’t surface that underneath their buttoned-up exterior was a fear of upsetting others that resulted in endless meetings to hash and rehash issues. Critical blockers left unaddressed. Solutions unexplored because no one had the guts to raise the alarm.

I helped build a room like that.

Sadly, it’s a familiar situation that exists in many organizations. The lost time and energy are the most immediate impacts, but that’s only the start.

I’ve experienced this firsthand. In fact, I feel ashamed that I unwittingly helped perpetuate it in some of the companies I led.

I didn’t understand the damage I was causing until I learned of Kim Scott’s Radical Candor framework nearly 10 years ago.

It was the first time someone put such insightful words to my experience of balancing empathy and directness.

As someone who spent much of my early life living with someone who leaned towards obnoxious aggression, I defaulted to deep empathy. The fear and pain caused by this person in my life left deep scars. Speaking up more often led to demeaning shouting matches and tears rather than any productive outcome. I vowed never to make anyone feel that way.

But I wasn’t conscious of how a proclivity towards caring for someone else’s feelings could lead to ruinous empathy. It doesn’t just hurt an organization’s overall effectiveness, but also the relationships within it.

I learned this the hard way in one of my roles as a division lead. Working in a matrixed structure, I had a product partner who wasn’t developing the solutions we needed to drive commercial success. Our conversations were always friendly and congenial, but I only hinted at what I really wanted: faster feature delivery for partners and improved KPIs.

After 3 months, nothing changed.

My team, frustrated with my approach, asked me why I wasn’t pushing harder. My response was always, “He just needs time. He’ll get there when he gets there. We’ll be OK.”

I ended up being right and wrong.

The part of the business that depended on my collaboration with this particular product partner floundered, but another part of my business grew by leaps and bounds, masking the issue. My product partner never delivered the KPI results we needed, and no one but my team felt the miss.

Just because I got lucky didn't mean I had the right approach.

It took me a long time to realize it, but my miss wasn’t really about financial targets. It cost me the kind of relationship I value, one based on trust and mutual respect.

When I decided, consciously or not, to avoid telling him exactly what I was seeing and concerned about, I chose not to trust that he could handle that truth. I chose not to trust that he could address the issue. I chose to stay on the safe side of the relationship at the cost of both of our learning and growth as leaders.

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Saturday dinner. Everyone taking a turn, saying what happened that day.

Sometimes I would miss a fragment of a story. Sometimes an entire conversation. Only when the kids burst out laughing would I return to the moment.

It happened regularly. Central Park on a Saturday morning. A board game on Sunday afternoon. Anywhere, really.

First, I’d feel guilt and shame for not working. Then I’d feel guilt and shame for not being present for my family, my entire reason for not working. I would top it all off by hashing out all my tasks in my mind, one by one, over and over again throughout the weekend.

By the end of the weekend, I was more exhausted than if I had worked and spent time with my family and skipped sleep altogether. I expended more energy navigating my ruminations and emotions than I would have if I had done the work, which sadly, made me question why I had decided to stop working on the weekends in the first place.

It sounds terrible in words. But trust me, it was worse living it. I had already stopped working weekends. Six months earlier.

I shouldn’t have been surprised how deep this was woven into me.

I worked weekends for years. It started as a job requirement in investment banking, then became fun during my time in start-ups and media. I was consistently praised and promoted for my work ethic and results, which I attributed to my long hours, including late weeknights and weekends.

But as I started to build a family, it became a burden.

I wanted to cut back on my weekend hours. In fact, I wanted to stop altogether, but I just couldn’t.

The voices in my head were adamant: “If I didn’t work, I’d fall behind. I would let my colleagues and team down. I’d be unworthy of my leadership post. I would fail.” They created a rationale my brain felt safe holding tightly.

Eventually, nearly a decade after I had the inkling to stop working on the weekends, I did. It wasn’t easy.

When you have built your habits around a belief system that is guided by fear, you’ve built a cage out of habits you mistook for protection.

Persistence, patience, and some self-recognition.

So how did I eventually stop working on the weekends without tormenting myself? Just as I constructed the habit over time and with a mixture of fear, belief, and positive reinforcement, I needed a recipe with multiple elements.

The first and perhaps the most important ingredient: persistence.

I just kept at it. As adamantly as my mind messed with me, I was just as immovable about staying the course. Each time my internal saboteurs reared their heads, I would provide a counterargument and stay the course. I reminded myself how important my family is to me. I also wanted to give myself space away from work themes to refresh each week.

They were good reasons, but it was still hard to keep at it. So I needed another ingredient: patience.

When I found myself tensing up instead of relaxing into playtime with my daughter, I would have to remind myself, “the work will be there Monday — it’ll be OK.” The grace I gave myself was probably one of the main reasons I could persist.

My patience also extended to how I measured time and my progress. As someone highly motivated by goals, deep behavior change like this is hard. The roadmap is vague and without a clear endpoint. Milestones are hard to predict and even harder to measure. I needed to be OK with all of that and still keep going.

Which leads me to the last ingredient: self-recognition.

This is the part of the process high achievers tend to avoid because it feels cringe-worthy. Acknowledging your wins and giving yourself a pat on the back can feel ridiculous at best and embarrassing and a waste of time at worst. But rewards and recognition matter. What I found was that naming the small wins made the next week easier. That’s how I primed myself to make real change happen.

For me, self-recognition was mostly positive self-talk: “great job staying the course!” I found it so much easier to change how I spoke to myself than to formally reward myself. I’m not someone easily motivated by material things. I much prefer emotional rewards. The key was to not skip this step. Celebrating myself and my commitment made it easier to keep going, especially when the finish line wasn’t visible.

It took 6 months for the voices to quiet. Nine months before I actually enjoyed my weekends. More than a few times, I reconsidered my entire approach. I love pursuing goals, but I couldn’t see the goalposts on this one, and uncertainty breeds the worst kind of doubt. I had to trust far more than I was comfortable with.

Start with small, clear steps.

The routine I created for myself was simple.

Before shutting down on Friday, complete a 10-minute reflection:

• What went well for the week?

• What could have gone better?

• What are the biggest boulders to move Monday?

• Remind myself why I’m choosing not to work on that weekend

That’s it. Shut the laptop. Turn off notifications. And when the rumination and guilt come calling, be ready to recommit to my why.

After each weekend, I would complete a 5-minute reflection:

• How many times did I catch myself ruminating or feeling guilty? Those were all wins!

• How many times did I bring myself back to the moment? Another set of wins!

• A mini-internal celebration for completing another weekend! 🙌

And truth be told, I didn’t skip work every weekend. There were seasons of strategic planning, end-of-year reviews, or big deals when I allowed myself to work. But there was the difference from the past: it wasn’t driven by fear; it was intentional and time-boxed.

Your turn.

My challenge was working on the weekends. Yours might be entirely different. But how deeply it’s ingrained in you might be the same. Habits form over time and with evidence of their validity, even the ones that no longer serve you.

If you’re contemplating a shift, or deep into the process of making one, don’t let the hard days or tough months stop you. You’re making more progress than you can see; stay the course. Your future self will thank you.

May you lead without limits,

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I write every week because I want more ambitious, heart-led leaders to feel less alone and better equipped to reach their full potential. Thank you for being part of the journey with me.

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“Every time I enter the room, I freeze. I get stuck in my head. I catastrophize.”

I was coaching a client recently about how he prepares for executive team meetings. Leonardo is a VP of Data & Intelligence, and in one-on-ones, he is the sharpest person in the conversation. In the executive team meeting, he says almost nothing.

When you’ve been successful without much stress, it can be eye-opening to be faced with a challenge you can’t easily overcome.

It’s unsurprising he hadn’t developed a routine for dealing with challenging situations. He never had to.

As a leader who had risen in his career, like many, based on natural talents, it wasn’t that Leonardo didn’t have to work hard. It was just that applying himself and his natural instincts had always been sufficient.

But when faced with something that doesn’t come as naturally, and when your historically productive approaches are not working, your fear starts to take over. It has ample fodder to draw from to propel its narrative.

It can point to all the ways you haven’t been able to overcome your hurdle, and that just further reinforces the fear that you don’t have what it takes to tackle this particular challenge.

For Leonardo, he had seen other leaders be minimized for communicating poorly or for supporting an idea that others didn’t agree with. It felt reputationally dangerous to speak up, especially for someone who didn’t feel comfortable putting forth ideas extemporaneously.

What if he suggested the wrong approach or couldn’t string his ideas together in a way that felt compelling or clear? We worked through ways to challenge those fears. He understood all of it. He still couldn’t do it in the room.

When I shared the idea of a warm-up, Leonardo’s eyes opened a bit wider. It sounded so simple and yet, he had never considered it.

The reason why routines matter.

I never thought I needed a routine. As someone who has never needed motivation to get through the day (I’ve almost always loved work and school), I thought it was a waste of time.

Only recently did I learn that a routine can sometimes be essential.

It started with my decision to write online to build brand awareness and followership for my coaching practice.

I’ve always been insecure about writing. It was always easier to avoid than to do the work. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t just writing as I should, as I had throughout my career with every other task. In the past, even when I didn’t want to create a presentation or write a performance improvement plan (neither of which I enjoyed), I somehow found the ability to focus and marshal through.

But something about online writing felt different. Maybe it was because no one was waiting for me to publish. There was no specific person I was going to let down if I didn’t write. Or maybe the connection between publishing and generating business was tenuous at best. Regardless of the reason why, my mind and my body refused. They seemed totally in sync that it was better not to try than to make a misstep and fail.

Even after I joined multiple masterminds and connected with communities of other business builders, all learning how to write online, I still wasn’t consistent and struggled.

The solution?

A warm-up routine: to prepare my mind and my body to move through the fear and not get stopped by it. It’s not ground-breaking or complicated:

• I start with a short meditation where I quiet my mind and my body.

• I remind myself of the purpose of this work — to help others, and that my imperfections are part of the process, not a detriment.

• And then I do some reading. It might be a business book or something that simply interests me. I often find a subject that inspires a thought that becomes the seed for a piece.

On a good day, I go from avoidance to acceptance to action within 15 minutes.

Routines aren’t just habits. They are a way to calm your nervous system and ramp yourself into action.

Highways have on ramps for a reason. Most cars (and humans) need time to get from slow to fast. That’s how a warm-up routine works.

In athletics, the right warm-up can help you improve your performance in your workout or sport. Overcoming something you fear can work on the same principles.

Let’s break down the parts of a warm-up that help you work through your fear:

• Starting with small steps makes it easier to see progress.

• Aligning your warm-up to the work you want to do helps you feel focused.

• Keeping it short helps you accelerate into what you ultimately want to tackle.

• Visualizing success or finding inspiration gives you a starting point to work from.

That’s it.

And if you want to add something that feels like a mini reward or an extra source of energy or relaxation, consider environmental elements like the room you choose, ambient sounds or music, a beverage you enjoy, or a scent that helps your mood.

All of those contextual cues help your mind and body associate positive feelings with the work you are about to do. It’s another way to reduce your fear and avoidance.

The goal is to make the experience more enjoyable so that you can do what matters to you, even if it isn’t something you find easy.

What a work warm-up looks like in practice.

Leonardo found that creating a 15-minute buffer window before any high-stakes meeting allowed him to incorporate a warm-up routine.

His warm-up looks very much like mine for writing:

• He steps away from the computer to give his eyes a rest and his body and brain a chance to transition from whatever he was doing last.

• If he has time, he’ll go for a short walk, which can be energizing if he feels sluggish.

• He’ll focus on the agenda for the next meeting and what “good” looks like.

• He’ll anticipate some topics that might come up and what he wants the leadership to know or focus on. If there are particularly complex or challenging issues, he might schedule a larger window for his warm-up and even add music to his routine.

• When he gets back to his computer, he’ll turn off notifications and close all his windows so that he can be distraction-free.

• Then he’ll take a few deep breaths right before the meeting starts.

He didn’t arrive at this all in one go. It took him a few weeks to test different versions, and he’s still experimenting. But just giving himself time before the meeting to transition and set an intention immediately helped.

Even in the first few meetings where he did this, he felt calmer and ready to engage. He didn’t always speak up, but he felt less scared to do so. Eventually, he was regularly interjecting and no longer holding back, even if what he was sharing wasn’t a fully formed thought. There were still meetings where he stayed quiet. The difference was that it was a choice by then, not a freeze.

Testing and building a warm-up routine takes time and iteration.

Over time, Leonardo will find that some practices are still helpful while others he’ll retire. It’s less about what you specifically choose and more about taking the time to acknowledge that you need a way to ramp into the work, especially the work that doesn’t come easily.

It took me several attempts to find an initial routine that worked. And then, funny enough, when that clicked, after a few months, I got bored and needed to refresh it. That’s the thing about a routine: it is designed to become predictable. That’s one of the reasons why it combats fear so well. Our minds are most relaxed when we perceive predictability and certainty.

But if you’re like me, trying to do work that requires creativity as well, sometimes you have to change it up to reinvigorate your creative engine. For me, it looks like different books and different locations for my warm-up process. One thing I want to try before winter is going outdoors. Morning sunlight can be a wonderful way to wake up the senses. I’m looking forward to trying it, and I know that it’ll just be one iteration of many.

Your Turn.

I was allergic to routines for a long time. I thought of them as fads. When I realized they could be a tool for my growth, it was a revelation.

Giving myself permission to develop a process that worked for me and to tweak it over time was freeing.

I’m curious, what’s a task or a skill you have been wanting to pursue but have been putting off? It could be work-related, but it doesn’t have to be.

Would you be open to creating an on-ramp for yourself, a warm-up that makes it feel safer and more enjoyable?

I’d love to hear more about what routine you’d like to try or what has worked for you in the past in the Comments.

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A hard chapter may not be easy, but it isn’t a cause for concern. It’s an opportunity to build your leadership toolkit and maybe unlock far more than you ever expected.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

If you found this post helpful, consider giving it a ❤️ so that more leaders can get the support they need.

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“What if you did the math and found out you could actually make it work?”

He paused, looking down, slightly ashamed, he answered, “I don’t know.”

I asked my client this question last week after he shared his torment.

He had been laid off after a decade-long career he had built with care. He was struggling to fully commit to a job search, putting in effort in fits and starts. Whenever he started to build a little momentum, he would second-guess himself.

His head was telling him that he needed to land a traditional job, but his heart wanted to pursue an entirely new path, a creative and independent one.

He was locked in limbo. He avoided doing the work to assess the feasibility of the creative path, and wasn’t making progress on the traditional one.

Doing neither didn’t just keep him stuck; it kept him safe.

Indecision is a decision.

What my client was experiencing is something many leaders face when the stakes feel high. It’s often easier to stay the course than to pause and reconsider all of your options.

This isn’t just true in the job search; it can also happen when you’re in the role, too. It could be a shift in strategy or a redesign of your organization; any significant move can trigger a corresponding stalling or avoidance.

It starts with a signal or even a hint of one that makes you question if you should make a change. You can either investigate and validate, or you can keep marching forward.

Making the decision feels hard because inertia is real, not just a theoretical law of physics. When you’re already on a path, or if you’ve bought into a particular narrative (”We have to…” or “The only way is to…”), it’s very difficult to swim against that tide.

And since very few of us exist in a vacuum, it isn’t just your own views you have to navigate. It’s those of the people around you.

Every time I made an industry change (and I made 5 throughout my career), I first had to fight my internal instincts. But then I had to face those of my friends, colleagues, and mentors. They all had a point of view, and if they were sitting on one side of the context (as most were), they were often biased. They simply didn’t have the broader perspective.

All of these opposing forces can push you into a standstill. They can make you feel trapped. When pressure is being applied on all sides, it feels easier to stop resisting.

But standing still only extends your time in limbo. It solidifies the trap around you.

The only way to break through is to first ask yourself, not which path to take, but “why won’t I do the work to pick a path?”

How your fear clouds your vision.

For my client, it wasn’t just that a more traditional path had lost its luster or that he would regret his choice.

His true fear was that if the math worked out — if it was actually possible to create a financially viable career out of a creative pursuit, he’d have to take the risk and pursue it. That was the scariest thing he had to face.

Not knowing what was possible was like wearing padded handcuffs.

It was holding him hostage and letting him avoid doing the harder work of mapping out a real plan. The dream could stay alive and out of reach. His fear intentionally obscured the path forward — the fog became the plan.

When I played it back to him, I saw his eyes widen in realization, “What if you stop letting your fear run the show, and instead did the math and talked with your partner to actually find out what is possible?”

He nodded slowly in agreement, even as I could see his fear struggling to keep clouding the picture.

When you choose to see clearly, you’ll still feel the fear, but you’ll stop being controlled by it.

When I took over a small, declining e-commerce business line, my mandate was clear. I had a year to turn the business around. The pressure was high. I had replaced a beloved leader, and 200+ people’s jobs were on the line.

I was deeply scared of making the wrong call. My decision would impact so many lives and the overall company’s success.

I tested a number of changes to stabilize losses — website, email, and product adjustments. I studied the trends and headwinds working against us. The data was all there, but I struggled to see it and make sense of it. My fear mixed it all up in my head, creating a chaotic stew of thoughts.

Only after several conversations with my boss, the CEO, did I finally pause long enough to digest and accept the facts. I couldn’t create a clear path forward until I faced them.

My fear never left me, but at last, it lost its power to dissuade me from seeing reality.

I learned to “never assume” you’re stuck because you don’t know the right answer — oftentimes, a part of you already knows, the part that already sees the truth.

Your fears are controlling more than you realize, for you and your team.

The thing about fear is that it often wears the costume of a wise counselor.

It might show up when you think the data points to a change in your strategy, but you avoid asking your team to gather the numbers. Your fear doesn’t want to “bother” your team, and it certainly doesn’t want to “force” a strategy call. But avoiding the hard look doesn’t make the facts go away. It just keeps your blinders on and delays the right decision.

Or you have someone on your team who keeps “exploring options” long past the appropriate moment because a decision pushed aside someone’s work on the team. The fear of someone feeling less valued is legitimate, but it isn’t addressed by rehashing decisions. It’s addressed by ensuring the person is assigned work that aligns their strengths with organizational priorities.

Or it might look like the career choice others would make, instead of what’s right for you. The truly unfortunate career decision is the one where you never gave yourself permission to explore and discover what might be possible before you shut down the path and narrowed your options.

Your brain is wired to default to the known and to the path you’re already on. It’s an evolutionary design, but it isn’t always the best option.

You have the power to choose… always. Use it.

Your action plan.

The path towards clearing the fog your fear creates isn’t complicated, but it is intentional. If you’re sensing your fear is clouding your judgment and constraining your path forward, take these steps.

1. Name the option(s) you’re refusing to research.

The one that makes your stomach drop when I say “run the numbers.” The drop is the signal. If there’s more than one, write them all down.

2. Do the math. The real math.

The actual figures on an actual page — runway, costs, savings, revenue, income, timeline, skills, capacity, energy. Not the 2am catastrophe version and not the version that someone else tells you. Use your judgment. And talk with your partner or teammates about it, if you have one. If you don’t live or work alone, don’t plan alone.

3. Decide what a “yes” would require — say it out loud.

“If the numbers work, am I willing to move?” If that’s the scary part, good. Now you’re starting to face reality. This is when you begin to realize that the fear was the scariest part, not the action.

And if any of the above feels hard, that’s normal.

Don’t do all of this at once. Pace yourself. And find support. I have rarely navigated a hard moment all by myself. The person supporting you doesn’t even have to fully understand what you’re navigating. They just have to be willing to listen, be present, and be patient.

Lastly, it’s OK if you get it wrong. That’s one of the best ways to quiet your fear and let it take a backseat while you get back in front of the wheel. The stumble isn’t the fail, the lack of attempt is.

You don’t have to stay in indecision. There is another path.

The cost of indecision isn’t just time. It’s a sense of agency.

When you let your fear protect you from the clarity that would ask something of you, something different than what you’ve done in the past, it keeps you safe by holding you back.

The cost is being trapped by your fear, and not learning what any path would tell you about what is possible.

When fear keeps all options open, it’s actually keeping all of them closed. Remember that.

Start by giving yourself permission to do the homework and build a clearer picture, even when you feel scared, not in spite of it.

And if you’re up for it share it with me — reply to this email if you’re a subscriber or share it in the Comments.

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Part of the process of facing your fears is acknowledging them and helping to normalize that they exist for everyone. Your share might just help you get unstuck the next time your fear is starting to constrain you.

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Thank you for helping me to reach more leaders!

May you lead without limits,

P.S. Before your fall routine starts, if you’re thinking about getting more support, I have three ways to help:

1. Corporate group coaching and live events — I help organizations level up their collaboration, motivation, and alignment as a coach, keynote speaker or facilitator. If you’re looking for someone who has actually been in the leadership trenches, I have 2 spots open for the fall. Book time to learn more.

2. 1:1 Executive Coaching — I help leaders amplify their leadership, realize their career goals, and strengthen their mindset so that they can fully appreciate the journey. I have 1 spot open for the fall. Book time to learn more.

3. Career without Limits Retreat — I am hosting my first retreat this November to help leaders who want a clear roadmap for their next career move. If you’re looking for clarity with a dose of fun to figure out what’s next, this is for you. Learn more and reserve your spot.

It was past midnight. Again.

We were somewhere in a weeks-long stretch of 2:30 a.m. finishes, the kind of hours that blur together until you stop counting them.

And every night, without fail, my boss would look over as we were wrapping up and say the same thing.

“Come on. I’ll share a cab.”

He didn’t have to. He was tired too. He probably would have rather had a quiet ride alone.

But he never left without me. Not once.

It said: I see you. We are in this together.

And I never forgot it.

Around the same time, two jobs earlier, I had the opposite experience.

I was in investment banking, heading to a client meeting with one of the largest technology companies in the world. I’d been up all night preparing. Really, all week.

I stumbled under a duffel bag stuffed with somewhere between forty and sixty presentation books, so bleary-eyed I could barely walk in my suit and heels.

Not one person offered to help.

These weren’t unkind people. They weren’t trying to make a statement.

The absence made one anyway.

It said: rank has its privileges. And you don’t have them yet.

I don’t carry resentments, but I felt that one deeply. Maybe it was the fatigue, or just feeling alone.

The impression never left me. I promised myself I would lead differently.

The imprints we make unintentionally sometimes last longer than the ones we make intentionally.

We spend a lot of energy on the formal moments of leadership. The produced all-hands. The values statement. The message from the top that took three rounds of revisions to get right.

Those moments matter, but they don’t build culture.

Culture is built in the cab ride home. In who picks up the duffel bag. In what you do with your calendar, your attention, and your energy when you think no one is paying particular attention.

Your team is always paying attention.

Not in a surveillance way. Not consciously, necessarily. But the daily choices you make about pace, presence, boundaries, and care are teaching your people something. Every day. Whether you intend them to or not.

The question is whether you know what you’re teaching.

I taught something I would never have said out loud.

I was a COO at a company in startup mode. One of the things on my plate was a conference we were hosting, and I owned it.

It wasn’t landing. Our CEO kept telling me the pieces weren’t coming together, and privately I agreed with him, though for a different reason. I didn’t think the direction was focused enough on the business or on the outcomes we needed.

I had a team. Any one of them could have helped me build a better structure.

I didn’t ask.

Instead I held it. More hours. More iterations. More rounds of asking for feedback on work that had already been reworked twice.

I told myself I was protecting them. They were stretched. They weren’t ready for something this visible.

And there was enough truth in that to let me believe it.

Underneath it was something I couldn’t see at the time. I was afraid to ask them to stretch. And I was more afraid of what would happen if they could.

Because if my team could carry more than I believed, and carry it better than I could, then my role would have to change.

That’s the fear that kept me holding the bag. It was safer to believe I was the one who had to do it all than to find out I wasn’t.

It took me years to hear the reframe. I didn’t have to shift. I got the chance to.

But that shift asks for something harder than more hours. It asks for strategic thinking, honest reflection, and a look at reality that’s easier to avoid.

The overwork was how I avoided it. It just looked like commitment.

And what I modeled to my team, without meaning to, was overthinking. Rumination. A leader who wouldn’t set down a load that was crushing her.

Your habits may be doing more harm than you realize.

Recently, I was on a video call with a senior executive, a potential client. Thoughtful, experienced, someone who cared about his work and his people.

His eyes kept drifting. Typing. Reading something.

He could follow the thread well enough. Our conversation was loose, the topic manageable.

What I felt was unmistakable. Something else mattered more than our conversation, than me.

I’m not telling this as a criticism. I’m telling it because I understand exactly how it happens.

Leaders today are inundated. Dashboard updates, Slack pings, email stacking up, texts arriving underneath all of it. The demands are real and relentless. Over time, without intention, presence becomes a casualty of keeping up.

Team conversations are among the most expensive things we do. They cost you time. They cost the other person time. And they’re one of the richest chances we get to exchange something harder to measure than information: trust, connection, the sense that this person sees me.

When you’re half there, you think you’re juggling, maybe even helping. You’re actually sending a message: what you’re saying doesn’t warrant my full attention.

It’s not what you mean. But your team receives it either way.

The antidote is intention.

A few months ago, I was facilitating a strategic planning session. The leadership team had fractured since the process started. This was high stakes. A lot was riding on the next few hours.

I wasn’t anxious, exactly. But I knew my energy would set the tone in that room before I said a word.

So on the drive over, I put on a specific song, one I knew would make me feel connected to the people I was about to work with and to the meaning of the work itself.

I did this because I know what happens when I don’t. I walk in running on competence, and people can feel the difference.

By the time I parked, my eyes had welled up. It wasn’t manufactured. It was real.

And it changed what I could do in that room. I could be open and pointed at the same time. I could redirect people when the conversation drifted, and it didn’t land as correction, because they could feel I was with them. I could keep drawing each person back in.

That mattered, because the goal of that session was never a set of answers everyone agreed on. It was to rebuild trust in the process, and every person in the room believing their input counted.

I could do that because I was already connected when I walked in. My job was to make those threads visible as the conversation went.

That’s what intention looks like. Quiet. Often invisible. The choices you make before you walk through the door.

The harder question too many leaders leave unanswered.

Most leaders I work with aren’t sleepwalking on purpose. They’re moving fast. And when you’re moving fast, the small gestures go first. The eye contact. The follow-through. The moment of connection before the meeting starts.

The harder question is whether you know how you’re landing. Most of us have never checked.

A 360 can surface some of it. An open conversation with your team can surface more. Both require trust, and if that trust isn’t fully there yet, start by paying attention on your own.

Notice what your daily choices are teaching. Ask yourself whether the culture you think you’re building matches the one you’re modeling.

When there’s a gap, it almost always lives in the small moments.

Your Turn

This week, pick one conversation. One meeting. One moment where you’d normally be half-present.

Show up fully instead. See what it opens.

And if you’re ready for the harder version: ask someone you trust on your team what they notice. What habits land. Where they feel the gap.

That conversation, uncomfortable as it is, is itself a message. It says: I’m paying attention to how I’m showing up for you.

The leaders who shaped you weren’t performing when they shaped you. They were doing the ordinary thing in the ordinary moment, and you never forgot it.

You’re doing the same for someone right now.

May you lead without limits,

If this was useful, tap the ❤️ so more leaders can find it.

And if someone came to mind while you were reading, send it to them.

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I write this to reach leaders who need the reminder to check how they’re showing up, and you sharing it is how that reach happens.

“I know I have a strong network. But I don’t know if they’ll even want to talk to me.”

She’d been promoted every 1-3 years for the last decade. Associate to project lead. Project lead to director. Director to executive leader—the kind of role that people dream about but don’t often achieve. By almost every measure, she had already arrived somewhere impressive.

And now she was stuck.

Not because she couldn’t find a job. She had landed every recent role through her network. They’d called her. They’d known to reach out. But sitting down to call them? That felt different. Riskier. Like she might actually discover that those relationships were more fragile than she thought.

I asked her a simple question.

“When you got your last role, did they find you, or did you find them?”

“They found me,” she said.

“Right. And why do you think they knew to call?”

She paused.

What we don’t see when we’re in the thick of it.

Here’s what I’ve watched happen over and over in coaching senior leaders:

We confuse reputation with visibility.

We think our reputation is built on awards, titles, promotions, or big splashy announcements. We imagine it’s something polished and public—a LinkedIn headline, a promotion announcement, a press release.

It’s not.

Your reputation is what you leave behind when you’re not in the room. It’s how you showed up when the bigwigs weren’t in the room. How you handled pressure. How you treated people who couldn’t do anything for you. What you delivered when the stakes mattered. How you moved through a project, a team, a crisis.

People are watching. They’re noting it. And they remember far longer than you think.

The truly disarming part?

You don’t build this by doing extra. You build it by doing your actual job well. Every day. In how you relate to others. In the results you delivered. In how you carried yourself through your work and the work of others.

That’s it.

I learned this the hard way.

A few years ago, when I was getting ready to launch my coaching practice, I posted about it on LinkedIn. Within days, someone from my past reached out. She’d worked adjacent to me at one company. Different department, different reporting line. We’d crossed paths in meetings and collaborated on a few initiatives. But we’d never worked directly together.

She responded immediately to my post. Said she wanted to catch up. And then, when we talked, she told me something that genuinely surprised me:

She’d been watching how I showed up. She’d seen me in meetings, in how I handled the bigger organizational challenges, difficult colleagues, and complex issues. And she had been impressed. Enough that when I put my work out into the world, she thought: I want to support this person.

Over the next two years, she referred me to multiple senior leaders. Several became clients.

I had no idea I’d made that kind of impression on her. I didn’t imagine I had made such a meaningful impression. I was just doing my job.

And yet it reinforced what I had learned a few years prior.

In my first job out of college, I worked with a senior banker. He was leading deals, while I was the grunt on them. I wasn’t the top analyst in my group. I was mid-tier—solid, but not standout. And honestly, in that role, I was struggling. Not just with the work, but with the pace, the culture, the demands. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I didn’t show up as my best self. I was surviving, not thriving.

Twenty years later, when I wanted to reach out to his current company for business reasons, I had no idea if he’d even remember me. And if he did, I wasn’t sure what impression I’d left.

I reached out anyway.

He responded immediately. We caught up. And then he referred me to someone inside his organization.

Again. No idea that what I’d done in that first job had lasted that long. That I’d mattered enough, despite my own doubts about my performance in that role.

What this means for you.

When you’re mid-to-late in your career, you’re no longer building a reputation for its own sake. You’re building optionality.

Every interaction you have right now, in meetings, in how you handle your team, in how you respond when something goes wrong, in the way you collaborate with someone in a different function, is creating a network of people who know what you’re like to work with.

They’re tracking whether you deliver. Whether you’re easy to collaborate with. Whether you show up as someone who thinks bigger than your own role. Whether you can be trusted when things get complicated.

This doesn’t require extra. It requires intention.

It means showing up fully in your current job, even if you’re already thinking about the next one. It means treating the person on the junior team the same way you’d treat the senior leader. It means following through on commitments, even small ones. It means being the person people actually want to work with again.

Because when you decide it’s time to make a move, whether that’s in six months or five years, the work is already done.

Your reputation precedes you. And people will respond not because they’re doing you a favor, but because they’ve already seen what you’re capable of and they want to benefit from the association.

Your move.

If you’re not currently in a job search, don’t skip this: think about one relationship you’ve been meaning to deepen. Someone you worked with years ago. Someone in your current organization you admire, but don’t yet really know. Someone a friend mentioned to you, but you haven’t had (or made the) time to connect. Reach out. No agenda. Just a genuine conversation.

Your future self will thank you for tending to it now.

If you are actively searching and are hesitant to reach out to past colleagues, remember this: you’re not asking people to take a chance on you. You’re giving them the opportunity to be associated with someone they already know is excellent. That changes everything about the conversation.

Either way, the relationships you’re building right now are compounding. Don’t wait until you need them to nurture them.

If you found this post valuable, please consider giving it a ❤️ to help others find it too. And if you’re feeling generous, share it with a friend. You won’t just be helping them — you might be creating an accountability buddy who helps you take action, too.

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May you lead without limits,

A couple of things I’m opening up this fall, in case either is useful to you:

I have 2 spots available for one-on-one coaching, and 2 openings for live team facilitation if your team needs a reset.

And if you’re ready to step away from the daily fray and reset your career roadmap, I’d love to have you at my Career Without Limits Retreat in November. More here.

It’s 8pm and the dinner delivery has just arrived. The CEO and CFO start to inhale the food without even looking at it, as they push forward on day 3 of drafting end-of-year goals for the business.

Meanwhile, the rest of the exec team is at home, wondering what is being cooked up, when the next round of “emergency” inputs are needed, and whether what gets shared resembles anything practical.

The CEO and CFO are wearing their hero capes with pride, thinking they are bearing the heavy lifting on behalf of the leadership team.

But really, they are simply trading the short-term facade of speed and efficiency for mid-term misalignment and rework, and long-term distrust and execution risk from disillusioned team members that were never brought along.

Sound familiar?

I’ve sat on both sides of the experience. And neither wins.

It took me years to reconcile how early narrow conversations that feel expeditious can actually create friction that is hard to undo and later slows down the business in ways that are truly painful.

But there is another way. It’s counterintuitive and has a delayed payoff, but it’s the only way to drive to the outcomes that really matter: an aligned team that feels real ownership over their goals and is ready to attack them with all their energy.

The Core Problem

What leaders who optimize for efficiency and accuracy often miss is the relational cost and the downstream execution cost of going too fast too early.

Moving fast and keeping things tight feels efficient in the moment—but creates wasted cycles later when people have to make sense of decisions they weren’t part of and don’t feel bought in. These are the costs that are harder to see when you’re rushing to get things started:

Four Specific Friction Points

1. Timeline and steps unclear — Finance and CEO work in a black box sounds efficient, but it’s really just an opaque black box. Without a clear path for how other people get brought in by function and by level, everyone either resigns themselves to the sidelines (slowly starting to check out) or their anxiety starts to grow as they wonder what’s really happening behind closed doors. You don’t need to have it mapped out day-by-day, but even a weekly or monthly view, along with key deliverables, will help everyone anticipate what they need to budget time for and what they can expect.

2. Decision authority and responsibility muddled — A leader who’s used to calling all the shots and having full authority may feel it’s not necessary to specify who decides what, who makes trades, and why. But when people don’t know what they control versus what gets funneled up the chain, they start to get stressed. Conversations also quickly become personal negotiations between leaders if they don’t have a reference point on how to engage. Relationships don’t just get tested; they can often be pushed into zones where they are hard to repair.

3. Communication blackouts — When executives are in the thick of planning, they often forget to message their teams. I know I did, and it’s understandable. The work is intense, and the stakes feel high. But information vacuums create uncertainty, which leads to fear. This builds distrust and can hurt team productivity as people start to guess or assume the worst might be happening.

4. Unstated hypotheses and assumptions — One of the biggest misses in goal setting is when leaders have preconceived notions and don’t share them upfront. It’s easy to blow past this step when you’ve been thinking about the details 24x7 for weeks. But when you unveil everything as a finished product, it feels like a black box, which is harder to understand and even harder to accept. People need time to digest, disagree, and contribute their best thinking. When you rush through these steps, you don’t get the benefit of their inputs, and you delay or hurt their ability to become fully bought into the path forward. It also means you didn’t pressure-test your foundation, soliciting input or data points that could augment the current strategy or even indicate a better path forward. That means you run a higher risk of pushing forward without a complete picture in addition to poor team buy-in.

The Shift: Transparency as the Solution

All of these issues can be addressed by committing to planning out your process and sharing it in advance. Specify the process, roles, responsibilities, and key themes upfront. Make assumptions and hypotheses visible so people can weigh in, prepare their input, and actually understand the thinking. This builds trust and gets better thinking from across the organization.

And don’t over-engineer your approach. The best ones are clear, simple, and acknowledge that you won’t get everything right. Committing to getting feedback, learning, and making adjustments is just one more way to build trust.

Last but not least, time-bound all of this work. It’s easy to get into rabbit holes and add more details, more decision-points, more, more, more. But your initial instincts that guided you to keep this process efficient and not overtake the core work of running the business were correct. You just needed to make sure you weren’t anchoring towards speed above all else.

Why Start Now (July)

It may feel early, but outlining the process now means that when you get to the real goal-setting work in Q4, you’ve already laid the groundwork. You’ve alerted your team, set expectations about what happens when, and created a path for inclusion. This requires more upfront work but generates far more leverage, speed, alignment, and execution later.

Your Turn

The goal-setting process doesn’t have to be a bureaucratic waste of time. It can be a moment to reinforce a culture of inclusion, transparency and of strong decision-making.

The payoff: People who actually want to execute because they were brought along. Better alignment. Faster execution. And teams that trust the process because they were part of building it.

What’s one thing you can start outlining now so that your team gets the benefit later as you set your goals for 2027? I’d love to hear about it in the Comments.

And if this post resonated, give it a like or even better, share it with a friend who needs the reminder to get started now.

May you lead without limits,

This July 4th evening, instead of fireworks, we lost power twice. The first time, it came back in fifteen minutes, and we barely noticed. The second time, it didn’t come back at all.

The family was already in bed, and the house had gone completely silent in the way a house only gets quiet when the hum of every appliance stops at once. It was getting hotter by the minute.

Every window shut against the storm outside. I lay there doing what I always do at night when I’m anxious, running through my worries for the next day: my husband too unwell to help in the morning, my son’s bags still not fully packed, the drive to campus ahead of us, and underneath all of it, a low current of fear that none of us would sleep well enough to be ready for the day we actually needed.

We slept more than I expected. But I woke up already anxious, and the morning confirmed why. My husband couldn’t come. So it was on me: the last of the packing, somehow still unfinished despite days of trying to get ahead of it, and then getting my son to a program that was, in every practical sense, going to be fine.

The drive itself was easy. No traffic. We got there early, which I thought was a gift. We finished unpacking at noon. His program didn’t start until one. We had time to leisurely walk across campus and sit together in the student center, where he’d eventually have lunch.

Except the extra time didn’t end up being a gift. It became a gap.

My son, who does not get anxious, who has spent years being the one who tells me Mom, I’ll be fine, sat in that gap, and with each passing minute, I could see his struggle grow, right in front of me. Not dramatically. Just a deeper slouch, a receding and blinking, watering eyes.

He didn’t know anyone yet. It was too early, and the room was too quiet. None of the energy and machinations of a pending event had started.

I watched and understood, the way you understand something in your body before your mind catches up, that my staying there was making it worse, not better. He told me as much. Mom, you can go. Which is a strange thing to hear from your child. An offer of mercy, or maybe a soft plea to go before my presence drew out more of the emotions he was trying to keep in check.

As I walked away and saw him attempt to marshal his feelings, I repeated to myself why this experience would help him grow, was a wonderful opportunity to explore, and an important step in his development. But even as I ran through my logic, all I felt was guilt that I was asking my child to suffer, fear that maybe I didn’t know what was best, and concern that maybe I was even doing harm.

Before we left, I found a program coordinator. Told her he wasn’t feeling great. Asked if he’d be introduced to the other kids, if someone would notice if he needed a hand. She told me it would be fine. The afternoon would offer lots of activities. It would be great. All things I already knew. I needed to hear them out loud anyway.

Then I left. My daughter was with me, quiet in the back seat, and within a few minutes on the road, my phone started lighting up. It was my son.

He wasn’t feeling well. He was worried. He said so outright, which he never does. I called him from the car, my daughter listening to every word, and I told him the only thing I could: that it was going to be okay, that I wouldn’t force him to navigate these feelings alone, that he could call me the second he needed to, and I would figure out what to do next, even if there was a cost. I said for him, but I think I needed to say the words to myself.

At some point during that call, I glanced at my daughter and saw she was tearing up. Silently, the way she does. She’s an empath, like I am, and she’d been absorbing it all, her brother’s growing worry moving straight into her own body without either of them saying a word to each other.

I was doing my best to get us home safely through a storm that had followed us from the campus. The rain and wind were a mirror of what I was feeling inside, holding my son’s fear on the phone and my daughter’s grief in the backseat. And underneath both of those, my own version of the same feeling, masked as composure because someone in that car needed to drive.

We got home. I got my daughter lunch, dropped her at a friend’s house, and came back to a house that still didn’t have power, hours after the outage, the food in the fridge starting to turn, and the air thick with the kind of heat that makes your brain turn to molasses while your heart starts to ruminate.

And then, nothing. No text. No call.

I’d braced for a flood of updates and instead got silence, which is its own particular kind of hard. I didn’t check in. I wanted to, more than once. But checking in would have meant not trusting the thing I’d told him in the car, and I’d meant it when I said it.

So instead, I did the only thing I actually had control over: I focused on me and what I needed. I finished a workout I’d promised myself, moved through my own afternoon, and let the not knowing sit there without trying to manage it.

By evening, his text came. The afternoon hadn’t been so bad after all. Dinner was not great, but OK. He was still there and more open to staying. The next morning, he told me he’d slept well, and that he was willing to stay the first week, evaluate from there, see how it went.

I felt the whole thing let go at once, the way your shoulders drop half an inch without you noticing they’d been up near your ears all day.

Relief washed over me. There was still an ache that hadn’t fully gone by the next morning, the kind that doesn’t come from any one hard moment but from holding several at once and not putting any of them down.

I didn’t have a way to fix the forty-five minutes at the student center. I couldn’t shorten the wait, or the silence after, or make the outcome arrive any faster than it was going to. All I had was a decision, made months ago, tested in a student center and in a parking lot with my daughter watching, and the discipline to leave it alone once I’d made it.

That’s a harder skill than it sounds like. Most of us are trained to keep managing, keep checking, keep intervening until we have proof we did it right. But some of the most important calls you’ll make, as a parent or a leader or anyone responsible for someone else’s hard day, don’t come with proof. Just the decision, and the waiting, and whatever you’re able to trust while you wait.

I’d love to hear about a time when you had to make a call and then simply live with not knowing, at least for a while, whether it was the right one. Share it in the comments below. It might just help someone navigate a similar situation. Whatever you’re holding right now, I hope you find a way to trust it.

May you lead without limits,

My clients are high performers. Ambitious. Proven. They have succeeded over and over again.

So they come to me already moving fast, and they want to move faster.

One client is months into a stalled job search. Another is staring at negative feedback she can’t make sense of, much less address. The thread running through all of them is the same: the dread that creeps in when you keep spending effort and stop seeing progress.

They expect me to tell them to push harder. Longer hours. More on the plate. It’s what has always worked for them, and it’s what their instinct screams when things slow down.

I rarely suggest any of it.

Instead, I tell them to pause. To breathe. To move their bodies. Getting out of our minds and into our bodies has a way of loosening the grip that fear and old habits have on us.

And then I ask the question that makes them go quiet:

What gives you joy?

What makes you laugh? What could you do and lose all track of time?

Most of them freeze. Not because the answer is hard, but because the question feels so out of place. So unrelated to work.

That’s exactly where the work is.

This is a hard time to be a worker, and even harder to be a leader.

With an always-on culture, there is always something to worry about. Some new threat to the business, some risk to your financial health, some stealth competitor, or just the dark and scary unknown.

The data backs up the mood. Globally, employee engagement fell to 20% last year, its lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace: 2026).

When times get harder, the highest-performing leaders tend to double down. Push harder. Demand more, of themselves first and then of their teams. There is nothing wrong with asking for more when more is required.

But too often we forget the power of joy. Of the things that make us feel lighter and filled with energy instead of dread.

Today I want to explore the path less taken to keeping yourself and your team on course when things feel dark.

Classic management guidance isn’t bad, but it isn’t enough.

Most leadership advice says you stick to the basics when sentiment is down:

• Be clear about the why behind the goals. Purpose unifies a team and keeps people motivated.

• Delineate roles and decision authority. Autonomy gives people a sense of control and speeds up the work.

• Recognize great work publicly and regularly. People who are seen and valued feel more secure.

• Give and receive feedback with respect, timeliness, and specificity. When everyone knows where they stand and how they can improve, they worry less and deliver more.

These are all good practices, and they should be part of your core playbook. But sometimes they aren’t enough.

Why?

Because sometimes the work itself isn’t what motivates someone. And no amount of positive reinforcement, or even a healthy culture, can mask the insidious risk of working in a deeply uncertain environment.

Even if you lead well, there are sociopolitical and macroeconomic forces that can disrupt your business and how your team works. Tariffs, wars, supply chain breakdowns, inflation, fuel prices. They aren’t in your control, even when you build contingency plans. And even if you mitigate some of them, your clients and partners may not be able to.

It sounds grim. Perhaps it is.

So take a page from the Stoics and the Epicureans.

The Stoics believed worry is unnecessary. If you can’t control something, let it go. If you can control it, then do something about it. Either way, worry takes you nowhere.

If you can’t control macroeconomic change, stop wringing your hands over it. You can control your response, so do some prudent, anticipatory scenario planning, and then let it go.

That’s a great way to handle uncertainty. But I’ve found the human mind is an unwieldy thing. Even when you try to manage it, it squirms away. Doing the prep work is one thing. Actually letting it go is another.

This is where a dose of Epicurean philosophy keeps you on track. The Epicureans believed in the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good. They’re often misread as seeking reckless indulgence, but it’s really about making reasonable choices that increase your enjoyment and reduce your pain.

If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re tired, sleep. This isn’t about answering every craving, especially the destructive ones like abusing substances or overspending. It’s about meeting your essential needs and making yourself more comfortable.

So what happens when you marry the Stoic view with the Epicurean one?

You find a path that lowers the stress for you and your team, and gives you permission to put some joy back into your work and your life.

Permission to be less focused, on purpose.

When my clients hit a wall, they are universally surprised by what I suggest. I almost never tell them to work harder. I ask them what lights them up.

For one client, it was building a transformative children’s product. For another, it was more time with his nearly grown children. For another, it was exploring new hobbies with no need to achieve anything at all.

The activity didn’t matter. It was how it made them feel that made the difference.

For me, it’s painting and drawing. Playing games. Exploring new places. Dancing. Music. When I’m doing any of those things, I lose all track of space and time. I’m lost in the joy of it.

Here’s why these things belong woven into your days and weeks, not saved for some someday: our best work, our most creative thinking, our greatest ability to lead and collaborate, all of it comes when we are relaxed. I’m not saying fear and anger can’t produce results too. But they come with side effects you don’t want. Migraines. Fatigue. Fraying relationships. A low hum of malaise.

It’s far better to feel upbeat and ready to engage. And that only happens when you give yourself permission to spend time on the things that get you there.

It’s counterintuitive. Taking time away from your core work to loosen up and exercise different muscles can feel like you are purposefully avoiding your work. Or that you aren’t committed to your goals. But it’s actually the opposite if you’re doing it intentionally and with time bounds.

My client who was struggling with the job search felt like he would be abandoning his responsibilities to his partner and family if he took time to build out his children’s product idea. I gave him permission to time-block parts of his week for it.

Why? Because it was the one thing that made him feel better. And when he felt better, he was able to persist in his search. Even more important, he was able to show up to networking conversations and interviews with energy and enthusiasm, something he couldn’t fake. Without a positive attitude, no amount of outreach and applications was going to land him opportunities.

The pursuit of his side project idea wasn’t a distraction. It was his fuel.

When you allow yourself time to insert joyful activities into your routine, you build the capacity to sustain your energy, your resolve, and your strategic thinking when the pressure is on.

Know what lights up your team, and protect it.

Once you know how to re-energize yourself, learn what does the same for your people. Make time to hear how they’d spend their time if they had no constraints.

Then, when you can, don’t just ask. Have them share it. Make it a team activity.

Putting joy into the work isn’t only a mental break from the grind. It’s how your people come to feel fully seen. When someone gets to share their love for something, it lets everyone else share in their happiness.

The antidote to fear is joy. And just like fear, joy is contagious.

This doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. A golf outing hosted by the fanatic on your team is lovely, but if that’s not in the cards, have them tell the story of how they got into the sport. A five-minute mini-lesson on Zoom. That’s it.

It sounds basic, maybe even reckless, to spend what little time you have on something unrelated to work. But giving your people the floor to share what matters to them will do more for them than any KPI review. And their teammates will feel the shift too.

Your greatest asset is your team.

The only way to truly maximize their contribution is to maximize their energy and their engagement. Using something outside of work to do it? That’s the quiet advantage the wisest leaders already rely on.

It’s time for you to use it too. For yourself, and for your team.

Your Turn

What lights you up? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. And I’d love to know how you make room in your days for those moments. If you’ve found a way to bring more joy into your team’s work, share that too. Other leaders would be grateful for it.

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May you lead without limits,

Three months into my second COO role, I got appendicitis.

I’d like to tell you it was bad luck. But I knew better. I’d been running at a pace that wasn’t sustainable from day one — convinced that proving I belonged meant doing everything at once.

Client conversations. Negotiations. A new employee evaluation process. A pricing model. Hiring. I was also trying to assess what the business actually needed most. But I couldn’t do it well, because I couldn’t do any of it well. I was doing too much.

My body made the decision my ego wouldn’t.

And here’s the part that still embarrasses me a little: when I came out of it, I worked harder. I didn’t see the appendicitis as a signal. I saw it as a distraction, something to push past so I could get back to proving myself. And the crazy thing is, it wasn’t my first time.

I carried that spiral of worry and reactivity for the rest of my time in that role. It was only after I left, with some distance, that I could see clearly: I didn’t need to be more reactive. I needed to be more strategic.

Years later, I watched a friend walk the same road.

She was the new CMO of a SaaS company serving industrial businesses. New industry, new product, but not a new function. She’d built marketing organizations from scratch before. She was ready to do it again.

She’d spent those first months mapping the marketing strategy, aligning with the executive team, and scoping the key hires she needed. Deep work. The right work. But when the company launched a new product, she couldn’t resist. She weighed in at every phase of the planning process, drawing on years of product marketing experience.

Then: silence. No feedback. No engagement. The launch kept moving without her.

She didn’t know whether to push or wait. The clock was ticking. Meanwhile, the hiring process was taking more than she’d expected. She felt stretched thin. And as the fatigue built, so did the fear that she wasn’t doing enough.

That’s when she called me.

My first question was simple: What does your boss actually need from you right now?

She paused for three full minutes.

That pause told me everything. She’d been operating on two assumptions she’d never examined: that she already knew what mattered to her boss and the leadership team, and that the answer to her exhaustion was more effort, not less.

She wasn’t unusual. Neither was I.

We’d both swallowed whole exactly what our culture tells new leaders they’re supposed to do.

Have a 90-day plan and execute it with precision.
Be omniscient about the future and make fast, quick-win decisions.
Show immediate progress and build the foundation for long-term trust.
Model healthy behaviors and work around the clock.

It’s BS. And it will kill your ability to do exactly what matters most: be the strategic leader the organization needs.

Every organization has the same core strategic context

In most organizations, there are only five things that matter most:

(1) Who is the customer?
(2) What needs are you solving?
(3) How well are you doing it?
(4) How are you doing financially?
(5) Who are the key players, how are they performing, and how strong is your relationship?

To be fair, that is a lot to digest, but it’s really what matters most. Your role, your team’s role, how you are structured as an organization, all of that must fit into the above. If you have a good understanding of these elements and if your leadership team does as well, you’re pretty far ahead of the game.

I know this because I got almost every one of them wrong.

Unfortunately, most leaders, when they start a job, don’t focus on these elements. They dive into the minutia of their department and zero in on small details. Those details are super attractive because they are fully in your purview and give you a chance to feel you’re making a mark. But they are a distraction.

When you don’t focus on the right things, you run the risk of setting the wrong strategy and simultaneously running yourself into the ground.

Remind yourself of what matters most and let the rest go

When it came to my CMO client, checking her assumptions changed everything.

She discovered that not only did folks not expect her to do any product marketing work yet, their departments weren’t ready to receive it, hence the silence. And when she checked in with the CEO, it turned out she was doing more than enough and was focused on exactly what mattered most: setting up a strong marketing strategy and creating the capacity to execute on it.

Everything else she was worried about was a distraction.

The relief she felt was immediate and rejuvenating.

I didn’t get that relief in the moment. I got it years later, sitting with enough distance to finally see the pattern clearly. Which is part of why I’m writing this now.

The REAL new job checklist

The moral of the story is to stay focused on the fundamentals and take time to align on what the job expectations actually entail. Here’s what that actually looks like — and what I wish I’d done differently.

(1) Who is the customer?

If you have more than one segment, understand why and what differentiates them. Don’t just operate in the abstract; dig into specific examples.

In my COO role, the industry was entirely new to me. I read up, attended conferences, spoke to customers. But I never gave myself permission to go deep enough. I kept thinking: I should already know this. If I don’t, customers won’t trust me. So I faked fluency instead of building it. And faking it didn’t get me closer to our customers. It took me further away from the kind of empathy that would have helped me assess our situation more strategically.

If you can, talk directly with customers. If you can’t, spend time with the people at the organization who do. Customer empathy is what differentiates those companies that can anticipate the market and those who have to react to it.

(2) What needs are you solving?

Do you understand the pain points your organization is solving? What is the ROI for your customers? Is this a one-time issue or a recurring one? Do you know what success looks like?

I could have done more customer discovery conversations early on. Our product market fit wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t optimized either — and I didn’t go deep enough soon enough. I just assumed it was sufficient because we were closing deals. Closing deals felt like proof. It wasn’t.

If you can’t describe these elements clearly, there is a real risk of product-market fit issues, or you simply aren’t going deep enough to understand the issues. It doesn’t matter if you don’t work in sales, product or marketing. These are the kind of issues that affect very department because it affects the core of the organization.

(3) How well are you doing it?

This isn’t about your team. It’s about the company as a whole. Where does the organization meet or exceed the needs, and where is it coming up short.

After we had more than two dozen customers, I didn’t pause to get real feedback. I wanted to keep pushing for growth. So we were operating and growing based on assumptions rather than verified knowledge. It didn’t show up as a miss right away. It showed up later, when we were trying to grow our sales team without a strong enough playbook. That playbook should have been built through a deeper assessment of how we were actually performing. By not building it, we slowed our progress by more than three years. This is where rushing can actually slow you down.

Why zoom out so broadly when your team only contributes to a portion of the solution? Because you’re a leader. Your job is to think bigger than your function. A different perspective — 30,000 ft or 10,000 ft or 5,000 ft — results in a different set of objectives and priorities. Being able to see each and then align as a leadership team on which one deserves your attention the most is how you calibrate appropriately.

(4) How are you doing financially?

The best leaders know that money creates or constrains opportunity. When you understand your financial reality, you have a greater grasp of what is possible.

I was so focused on minimizing spending and growing revenue that I didn’t realize I could be making strategic investments to lay the foundation for growth. It was narrow-minded — and if I’m honest, it was rooted in fear. Knowing when to invest is as important as being frugal with spending. My fear blocked that insight.

Regardless of which way things are trending, functions that identify opportunities for growth have a far higher likelihood for greater investment. Understanding both — the current constraints and the future opportunities — that’s how you create a strategy that is grounded in reality and reaches for the stars.

(5) Who are the key players, how are they performing, and how strong is your relationship?

Your people are your greatest asset. Especially in the age of AI.

Relationships are a superpower for me. I was able to build strong ones internally and externally. But the gap in my case was that I became overly anchored on the feelings of some of the team, and let that distract me from my broader leadership responsibilities. Building connection through respect is important. Overly anchoring to the need to be liked is not. That is where I fell short on this one.

Understand why your team matters and make sure they do as well. Set clear expectations for success that are both outcomes and behavior-driven.

Make the ones that are meeting the mark feel seen and valued. Make sure the ones that aren’t know where they stand quickly and clearly. If they can’t improve, move them out. This isn’t just for your sake, it’s for theirs as well. A person in the wrong role will not only not deliver, they’ll feel terrible about it to. Do them and the organization a favor, don’t hold on too long.

Develop your employees, pay them fairly, and create an open, two-way dialogue so that neither of you is ever caught off guard when an issue arises. When you have that type of relationship, you’ll create an organization that people will flock to and stay with.

(6) Stop assuming, start verifying

When in doubt, ask. Don’t fall into the trap my friend did — or the one I did — and let your fears and assumptions drive your actions.

Instead, ask your boss, your board, your customers, your team. Don’t let the stories you make up in your head guide your decisions. Get the input from the source and then decide what to do next.

(7) Make time for what’s most important and let the rest go

If you’re starting to feel overextended, don’t treat that as a sign to do more. Use it to find a way to focus instead.

Those first few weeks and months are important not just for setting direction and establishing relationships, but also for creating an operating rhythm that is sustainable.

Burn yourself out by trying to do too much, and you won’t just be too tired to do the work; you won’t have the mental energy to do it well.

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Starting a new job is the beginning of a marathon

If you’re fortunate enough to have found a role worth taking and are about to start your next gig, adopt the right mindset. Don’t get swept up by the tumult of the first 90 days. Instead, see the beginning as it actually is: the early moments for a long run.

What matters most is understanding and setting up a roadmap so you know where you are headed and why, and creating the foundation so you can sustain the work. The pace you choose is as important as the focus of your effort. Choose both wisely, and you’ll make progress on what matters most and be able to enjoy the process instead of slogging your way through it.

And if you get a little lost along the way, don’t let your ego keep you charging ahead. Pause and ask for directions. Get input. It’s not a sign you’ve missed the race. It’s a sign that you’re committed to finding your way wisely and with help when needed.

I wish someone had said that to me three months into my COO role. Before the appendicitis made the decision for me.

Success may not be predictable nor guaranteed, but you can set up the conditions well for yourself right at the start so that it’s more likely than not that you reach the key milestones that will signal you are well on your way.

Your turn

What has helped you start a new job on the right footing? Have you ever had to change course and what allowed you to do so? I’d love to hear what you recommend in the Comments. Sharing what we’ve learned doesn’t just help others, it helps reinforce our learnings so that we don’t lose them going forward.

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And if you know of someone who is starting a new role, consider forwarding this to them to help guide their early moments on the job.

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May you lead without limits,

—

P.S. If you’ve been wondering if it’s time to make a change in your career, but you haven’t figured out either what or how, the Career without Limits Retreat might be for you.

I’m hosting this intimate gathering November 12-15 in Lancaster, PA. Participants will walk away with a personalized roadmap for their career step and a memorable long weekend filled with farm-to-table gourmet meals, healing activities, and insights from a group of diverse leaders.

Spots are limited. Learn more here.

“I don’t know why I bother. Everything I share with him comes back with a thousand redlines. It doesn’t even resemble my work anymore. Even an email — he has an opinion about everything. And nothing is good enough.”

As the EVP listened during the skip-level meeting, she struggled with what to do.

One of her most senior leaders was struggling. The VP was one of the most promising hires on her team. But his team was stifled by his approach — constant redoing of work, checking in at every step. Some had already left. Those who remained were fearful and deflated.

She hired him because he was so well respected in the industry. Everyone agreed, he wasn’t just brilliant, he was the future.

None of the interviews and reference checks revealed what would happen after he came on board. He wouldn’t just bring his acumen; he would also bring a set of standards and corresponding behaviors that were unsustainable, for him and for his team.

What made him dramatically successful as an individual contributor had become just as dramatic a limitation to his ability to lead.

The EVP didn’t have an answer yet. Neither, it turned out, did the VP.

That question — what to do — is what brought her to me.

The ego trap

It’s natural to connect your identity with your achievements. And early in your career, it is what helps you get ahead.

For me, early on, it was essential that I held on to every success because I needed evidence to build my confidence and my courage. It didn’t feel like feeding my ego because my insecurities felt so much more dangerous — they were the bigger risk to my career. I needed to stop questioning myself in order to take on bigger assignments, greater challenges, and responsibilities that required new skills.

Without achievement, I would have been left floundering in the uncertainty and the stress of whether I would hit my targets, get recognized, and have more opportunities for growth.

When we start to see measurable progress, our brains register it as evidence that we can do the work and succeed. Over time, it builds our confidence. This is essential to our ability to seek out more complex work, higher-stakes mandates, and greater scope and responsibility. Our prior successes give us the evidence that we can do more, be more.

The challenge is when we start to conflate our successes with our identity — who we are and our self-worth. When we believe that we are only worthy because of our successes and that only we can succeed, that is when we have created our own cage.

Leadership is fundamentally about directing and mobilizing more than ourselves toward a goal. You simply cannot do that well if you believe that only you can do the work.

For the VP, it showed up as control — the thousand redlines, the constant corrections, the work that was never good enough.

But the ego trap doesn’t always look like the VP’s story. Sometimes it doesn’t look like control at all. Sometimes it looks like responsibility. It looks like the person staying latest, carrying the most, never letting anything drop — not because they believe they’re the best, but because they’re afraid of what it means if they’re not there to catch it.

That was my version.

The quieter version

I thought I was done with conflating my success with my identity after becoming an executive at a publicly traded company and leading a team of over 250 people. But no.

When I returned to a smaller startup, where I doubled down on the mission and attached my identity to the organization’s success, my ego reared its head again, and all the old narratives came back.

I wasn’t micromanaging my team. I was doing something that felt more virtuous — I was filling gaps. There was work that needed doing and no one with the bandwidth or expertise to do it. So I did it.

I told myself: this is temporary. This is what leaders do in early-stage companies. This is ownership.

What I didn’t say out loud — not to my CEO, not to my board, not really to myself: we need to hire someone with expertise I don’t have. And we need to hire someone to increase our capacity.

Those were structural problems. I was trying to solve them with personal effort.

The result? I overextended myself, I lost my focus, and my self confidence, again.

I ultimately reduced my scope of work (with some persistent and kind nudging from my CEO). I won’t lie, it felt like a tremendous blow. But it was the change I needed.

The question I’ve sat with since: why did it take my CEO nudging me to reduce my scope before I named that out loud?

I think I know the answer. Saying ‘I can’t fill these gaps alone’ felt like admitting I should have seen it sooner. Should have hired better. Should have built capacity before we hit the wall. The reluctance to name the structural problem was its own ego trap — not arrogance, but the story that needing help meant I had already failed.

That is the version of this trap that I almost never see written about. And it’s the one I encounter most often in the senior leaders I coach.

The limitations you don’t see

The cage starts off small. It’s all about you.

When you let your ego’s narrative that only you can do the work, you start to overwhelm yourself. When only you are the solution, then you have to do all of the work.

It starts with later nights, some weekends. It grows into rumination in bed, a racing mind when you wake up in the middle of the night. It means distraction from your personal relationships and interactions.

But then it also starts to distract you in your work meetings. Instead of focusing on the topic at hand, you’re thinking about the projects you need to finish — the ones that only you can do. But these aren’t the worst of it.

The most negative impact shows up in how your team starts to read you.

Your constant corrections and insertions get interpreted as, “I don’t trust you.” And the truth is, you don’t.

It becomes unsafe to speak up or share a thought because you’ve proven that your default is to correct, nitpick, or simply take over the work.

People stop trying or showing proactive effort. What’s the point? It ultimately won’t matter because you’ll critique the work, commandeer it,or micromanage the task until the person wants to give up.

Your team starts to simply wait for you to initiate, to think, to drive the work. You become your own worst enemy. Instead of having your team become owners, they become deferrers — waiting for you to initiate everything.

If your version looks more like mine — overreach rather than control — the limitations are less visible but equally damaging. Your team may trust you. They may even feel protected by you. But they’re not growing, because you’re carrying what should be theirs. And you’re not growing, because you’re too busy plugging holes to lead.

And that vicious cycle reinforces your ego’s narrative, “there is no one else, only you.”

Whether you arrived there through control, overreach, or by not naming the structural constraints, the destination is the same.

You burn yourself out telling yourself that “you’re being thorough,”“keeping high standards,” or “shouldering the burden for the team .” And your team stagnates, loses their ability to grow and lead, because it’s never safe to take a risk or attempt something where they might fail.

The impact is longlasting

The immediate signs are bad, but they are overshadowed by the long-term impact.

Even worse than not developing your team is losing your best talent. The most capable people want to grow. They won’t sit still while you hold them back. They will leave. Why stay when they will never be trusted?

The most devastating part? You never discover what you are capable of as a leader because your ego is making you too attached to being a doer.

When you let your ego lead, you limit your true potential. If only you can do the work, then your hours, energy, and intellect create the limit of your power.

You cannot take on bigger roles, more scope, and greater responsibility because you haven’t developed anyone around you to take over your current tasks.

Over time, you aren’t just limiting your growth; you might even be shrinking your power by depleting yourself completely.

You are exhausted, mentally and physically, because you won’t allow yourself to rest. Or because the structure genuinely can’t support the work without you — and you haven’t yet named that as the organizational problem it actually is.

When it all sits on your shoulders, how can you rest?

None of this is comfortable to sit with. I know, because I sat with it for longer than I’d like to admit.

The path forward (not a fix — an unlearning)

If you want to aim for bigger roles, more scope ,and more impact, the shift you need doesn’t start with doing more.

It starts with doing less.

Putting down the list of to-do’s, and pausing to reflect: What do you want to become?

Do you want to be the person who delegates and spends their time on the things that only they can do?

Do you want to be a leader who develops people into their potential?

Do you want to be the person whom people trust and know that you trust them?

Are you willing to be the person who doesn’t get the credit because your greatest work is invisible — it’s in the culture you build, the leaders you develop?

If you want the above, your path forward isn’t filled with more. It’s actually about being willing to be OK with less:

Not being the hero at every turn.

Not knowing every detail of every project.

Not controlling every outcome.

Being willing to name the structural gaps you’ve been filling with personal effort — and asking for what the work actually requires.

Being needed less and no longer the go-to person.

The way to shift your mindset and your behaviors isn’t by adding more. It’s about taking things off your plate to make space for reflection and unlearning.

The step too many leaders miss

If you choose this path, be aware that it will take time to resist old habits and recurring narratives. These are long-held beliefs that served you well.

To let go of all of these stories, you have to be willing to grieve and go through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and finally acceptance.

These are not small feelings, and they do not pass without causing some waves in their wake.

Denial is the resistance to reality that feels like a way to contain the situation, but really is just a way to delay the inevitable. Reality is like gravity. You can fight it, but you already know who will win.

When I was struggling to lead all the functions I had chosen to take on, I kept pushing back on my CEO. My ego blocked my ability to see what was evident to everyone else. Denial is your ego’s first tactic. It masks what it doesn’t want you to see and justifies what it wants you to do.

Only when I broke down one evening after yet another fight with my husband about my working hours and level of stress did I start to acknowledge the truth. I was in way over my head.

And that’s when my ego moved into anger.

Anger can brew loudly, with explosiveness, or softly, with venom. In both cases, it will drain you and leave you feeling empty and without any energy left for critical thinking or resolve.

For me, anger showed up with a victim mentality. Instead of owning my part in not addressing the structural gap and instead, adopting an unhealthy hero’s mindset, I chose to defend my choices and blame everyone and everything around me.

Only when I started to take responsibility did I shift into depression, or what I’d like to call despair.

Depression showed up for me in the form of moping and retreat. My realization and role rescoping announcement came while I was on vacation at a family reunion. Instead of taking part and enjoying the festivities, I was busy nursing my wounds and feeling sorry for myself. I felt shame, guilt, and a continued sense of being wronged. I’d like to say I moved out of this phase with clarity and a renewed sense of purpose, but I didn’t. If I’m honest, it took me weeks, if not months, to truly move through the depression phase.

Bargaining showed up late for me — after I thought I was through it all. I assumed that once I’d settled into the reduced scope, my ego had made peace with reality. But no, I found myself looking for ways to insert myself into other parts of the business. My ego wasn’t done. It was just regrouping.

Bargaining is one last Hail Mary from your ego, trying once more to push against reality and what you actually need. The negotiation is just a way to delay the final step.

I only stopped negotiating when my body flat-out refused to do more. I was so exhausted and frayed. I needed rest, deep rest.

Acceptance is when you can finally move forward. It might not feel relaxed, but most people feel some release from the tension when you reach this state. You’re no longer fighting against gravity, you’re starting to work with it.

When I finally reached the stage of acceptance, I felt like a deflated balloon. I was finally ready to take on less to focus on my health, my family, and to work my way back towards more sustainable and strategic leadership.

What I didn’t realize when I was going through it was that you might have to go through this cycle over and over again. Different situations, different people will trigger different narratives, requiring you to recommit to this path and to grieve again and again.

I was 15 years into my leadership career when I was reminded: Your ego will not let go of its attachment to your success narratives without a fight. And that it will try to regain its control whenever it sees a chance.

Choose your path

If you’re feeling the burden of “only I can do the work” or have someone on your team who is struggling through it, the good news is that you (or they) can overcome these default tendencies.

It will not happen overnight, and it will require time and persistence. And the more practice you invest, the easier it will get. The cycles, when they return (notice I said “when” and not “if”), will get shorter and less stressful.

The key is to start with a strategic pause to reflect and ask yourself, “What do you want to become?”

The ego that got you here wants you to think letting go means failure. It doesn’t. It means evolution.

What I found on the other side wasn’t ease. It was clarity — and the first real sense in years that I was leading instead of just surviving.

YOUR TURN

I’d love to know which old habits no longer serve you and what you did to break free. Share them in the comments below. I read each one, and I know others will benefit, too.

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And if this post resonated with you, please consider sharing it with another leader who needs a reminder that their challenges are not unique and that they can get to the other side. I’ll be cheering them on.

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May you lead without limits,

P.S. My First Retreat — A Career without Limits

I’ve been planning something special for the fall. Many of you have reached out asking for more help in shaping your career. You might already be looking for your next adventure at your current company or another, or perhaps you haven’t yet started but would like to take a strategic pause with support.

If this is you, come and join me for my first-ever (and maybe my only) retreat on November 12-15 in Lancaster, PA. It will be a relaxing long weekend of fun, reflection, and nourishment. Spaces are limited, and as a subscriber, I’m letting you know first. Learn more here.

The narrative we’ve been sold is false.

The hockey stick up and to the right isn’t how most businesses are built, nor is it how most careers develop. Yet this is somehow the yardstick that we’ve all come to use to measure our progress against.

It’s no surprise that we believe it. Our brains gravitate toward simple ideas, even if they're filled with lies.

The actual tumult, twists, and turns of a real career (not a manufactured fairy tale) are hard to capture. They don’t make for the easiest social media posts. They’re complicated and take time to understand the context, the nuance. In short, it’s too much work to delve into, so we don’t.

Instead, we believe the false narrative that success comes from successive progress without any speed bumps or roundabouts.

And yet, examples abound to prove otherwise:

• Steve Jobs was fired at the height of his first stint at Apple.

• J.K. Rowling was on welfare, navigating depression and single-motherhood, and was rejected 12 times before the first installment of Harry Potter was published

• Babe Ruth held the record for strikeouts for decades before he became a baseball superstar.

• Thomas Edison was told he was “too stupid to learn anything” and was fired from his first 2 jobs for not being productive enough. He made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts before inventing the lightbulb.

We don’t hear these stories because we don’t seek them out, and they aren’t the sexiest headlines, especially in a culture that worships success.

They also aren’t widely available because the people featured also likely didn’t talk as much about their struggles as their successes.

Think about your friends who’ve achieved great heights. How often do you hear about their fears and setbacks?

Not often, is my guess. It’s easy to understand why not.

We are wired to peacock our wins and to hide our misses.

It’s safer to present a facade that communicates strength, power, and consistent success.

When I was feeling lost and depleted in my last job, I felt shame, guilt, and tremendous fear. It was all compounded by my intense desire to hide these feelings. It felt tantamount to surrending and admitting defeat if I acknowledged I didn’t feel steady or confident.

In fact, I remember talking to a former colleague in a catch-up call when I was particularly down, and I could see the empathy, but also the judgment in his eyes when I shared my challenges. I never heard from him again. I’m not saying he didn’t care, but our relationship wasn’t the kind that was strong enough for him to see me as anything but broken.

It’s not surprising I didn’t reveal how I was feeling to anyone else after that.

Why would I weaken my reputation?

Perception is reality, but it’s not what you think.

The people who succeed didn’t do it because they didn’t face snags. They didn’t possess magical powers, and they weren’t “the chosen ones.”

But they did find a way back to their confidence and purpose. They didn’t get there immediately (unless they were a bit delusional). There were likely many days and nights spent suffering, asking themselves existential questions.

But they eventually found their way through the darkness. Through trusted friends and family members, and through their own wisdom or faith in a higher power, they gave themselves:

They either knew or simply accepted that issues would arise. They weren’t going to achieve their vision in a linear path. And just because they faced hurdles, those weren’t a reason to give up.

Obstacles were simply part of the journey.

This view sounds simple in theory, but for people who are used to winning or who have adopted the mindset that the only way forward is up, it’s actually a rather significant shift.

It means that you understand that negative signals are necessarily indicators of long-term failure. This one is worth pausing on for a moment because cognitively, it doesn’t make sense.

How can these two statements both be true at the same time?

• You receive data that something on your critical path isn’t working

• Your success isn’t doomed

The people who can reconcile those two concepts intellectually and emotionally are the ones who can continue to persist and don’t give up.

And while persistence isn’t a guarantee for success, quitting is a guarantee that you will fail.

So the learning isn’t just to keep going, it’s how you perceive the path and your progress on it.

Because if you are to convey to anyone else that you will win, first, you have to convince yourself.

That’s the perception that matters most.

Your own.

You don’t have to do it alone.

I don’t want you to misinterpret my story above as a guide to navigate the hard times alone. In fact, I feel the opposite.

It’s not that you should isolate yourself. It’s more about being selective about who you reach out to and when.

Every leader should cultivate their network at all times.

In the good times, it’ll feel easier because you’ll be bolstered by your success and positive vibes.

In hard times, lean on your closer ties, confidants who can support you and help you sustain the work and effort it takes to move through the inevitable obstacles without judgment.

Who you choose to reveal your vulnerabilities to matters. Don’t make the mistake I made and show all your cards to a weak link. Only do this with your trusted circle or hired help.

You might be surprised that when you ask for help from someone who you’ve established a relationship, you’re not actually draining the relationship.

As David Brooks noted in “How to Know a Person,” sometimes asking for help is one of the most meaningful ways to build trust. It’s a meaningful way to signal that you value the other person so much so that you are willing to be vulnerable and that you trust their input.

Relationships built through hardship are often the ones that have a more lasting and positive impact on both parties. Don’t resist reaching out, just be thoughtful about who and when.

And the power of revealing your stumbles isn’t just in helping you navigate through them. It’ll give the people in your trusted circle room to do the same.

Imagine a world where this is repeated over and over again?

That’s how we change the narrative of success from smooth and linear to bumpy and unpredictable, and help more leaders give themselves “permission to stumble” and persist on their path to success.

If you found this post helpful, please consider liking or sharing it with other leaders you think might benefit.

And if you’re one of the leaders who have given yourself permission to stumble and are ready to push ahead — bravo! I’d love to hear how it’s going.

May you lead without limits,

P.S. If you’re looking for someone to help you navigate meaningful challenges (or opportunities) at work or in your career, I have one opening for an individual client and one opening for a team engagement this summer.