The Unburdened Leader

None of us move through the world in isolation. We all carry histories, our nervous systems, familial and cultural narratives, and the strategies we unconsciously adopted to get by into every single room we enter. If we want to be better at being human with each other, we have to understand the systems we’re human inside of –– internally, in our relationships, and the larger social, political, and...

So many of us have felt invisible at one time or another. We feel passed over, diminished, or unknown. And it takes a toll on our wellbeing. But many people are continually unseen in their full existence –– because of the color of their skin, the faith they hold, where they live in the world, the resources they don't have, or the various identities they carry. Not only does that impact an individu...

What comes up for you when you think about conflict? For most of us, our reaction to real or perceived conflict happens before we even realize it or know why. The way we respond to conflict is shaped by our histories and temperaments, and it shapes how we lead ourselves and others. And if you have a fraught relationship with conflict, the real work isn’t becoming comfortable with conflict, it’s le...

We’re better together. We need community. We need the collective. We hear these ideas and believe in their truth. But when so many of us grew up learning that we’re supposed to do it all on our own, letting go of individualism takes a lot of conscious unlearning. An individualist lens on leadership tells us that when things go wrong, we’re both the source of the problem and responsible for the sol...

No matter how much we’d like it to be true, we can’t think our way into changing. We have so much information, language, and so many tools to help us understand what makes us tick right at our fingertips. And who doesn’t love a quiz, a personality test, a self-help book, or (ahem) a podcast that helps us make sense of ourselves and others in our personal and professional lives? Whether it’s Myers-...

What does connection mean to you? How do you know when you're feeling connected? Connection is foundational to building trust, and trust is an essential quality that any team or relationship needs to grow. Yet in many relationships, both personally and professionally, we tolerate disconnection. We miss the early signals of missed deadlines, the subtle cues of quiet resentment, and the team that’s...

When the stakes rise and more is on the line, everything about visibility shifts –– what it means, what it costs, and what it asks of you. And if you ever experienced bullying, relational trauma, betrayal, or abuse, visibility can be more than just awkward or uncomfortable. Unprocessed echoes of those burdens can make the past feel like it is happening in the present. We have to do the work of bui...

A lot of people feel like they know who they're supposed to be, how they're supposed to show up, and what they're supposed to value, and they assume those things come from themselves instead of external influences.  But we all have internalized beliefs and expectations from others, our culture, and the systems we live in. It takes a beat, sometimes a long one, to get clear on who you actually are...

How many times have you talked yourself out of pursuing an opportunity, telling yourself it wasn't for you, that you weren’t ready, or you weren’t qualified? What if that hesitation wasn't self-awareness but a script you internalized? Many women have a complicated relationship with their ambitions for greater leadership and greater wealth. And it isn’t because women are somehow inherently less sui...

Say the word ambition, especially around women, and it brings up a complicated mix of emotions and beliefs. If you're not succeeding, you're not ambitious enough. If you are succeeding, wanting a lot, and going for it, you're too ambitious, and you get penalized or punished. It happens at work, at home, and in the communities we move through every day. There are so many mixed messages about ambiti...

Some words and experiences come with a lot of baggage, conjuring up fear, stigma, and shame. But being afraid or ashamed doesn’t protect us from those experiences or those words. It just keeps us from really understanding them or being able to talk about them. And what we can’t process for ourselves, we can’t help those we love and lead with either. In the clinical space, dissociation is one of th...

Every system we move through runs on norms: rules and agreements that are both explicit and implicit. And nowhere are they more powerful–or more invisible–than in how we lead and how we build our businesses.  In fact, sociologists have consistently found that norms don’t announce themselves.  They travel through families, schools, workplaces, and entire cultures through repetition and imitation, o...

It is hard to be human. And right now, it is even harder to be humane, to ourselves and to others. And so many high-achieving, deeply caring leaders are under pressure to stay regulated, calm, and adaptable, no matter what they’re facing. They look serene on the outside, but internally? They feel like a hot mess.  They mask what they’re feeling and push through so they can try to be the person, fr...

The way you relate to power is the way you relate to everything around and within you–your work, your people, your sense of what's possible. And most of us have never actually examined that relationship. And in this season we are in, when everything is changing so quickly, any unexamined beliefs we hold will quietly run the show. They will shape the risks we take, the rooms we walk into, and the m...

You have probably heard of the concept of psychological safety and what it takes to foster it on your team and in spaces you lead. Maybe you’ve read books or taken trainings.  Here’s the tricky thing: psychological safety is an emergent quality of the group environment, shaped by leadership behaviors and team norms. You, as the leader, are a key variable.  So when you walk into a high-stakes meeti...

When you think of networking, do you feel discomfort or even dread? Most of us learned that “networking” is fundamentally transactional, asking for and doling out favors in order to further our aims. Maybe you or someone you know is the type to be constantly trying to connect people to prove their own worth, or counting themselves out because they feel like they have nothing to offer. That’s the k...

Story is our brain’s first language. And our minds fill in a story’s blanks long before the facts catch up. Before we consciously interpret an event, our nervous system has already scanned for threat and sent that information to our brains, which in turn builds a narrative about what it means. We’re constantly interpreting events, and not always accurately.  Research has shown that negative inform...

Most of us know about the “fight, flight, freeze” responses to trauma. But there is another concept that has been steadily gaining awareness over the last several years, in large part due to pop psychology on social media: Fawning. You might have heard it described as akin to extreme people-pleasing, over-accommodating, over-functioning, and fundamentally a problem in the person doing the fawning....

There is a well-known cognitive phenomenon that we are all susceptible to, and even more so when we’re stressed. And we’re all at least a little stressed and overwhelmed right now. The illusory truth effect catches us when we repeatedly hear statements and begin to assume they are true through repetition and familiarity. Things feel true, even if they couldn’t be further from it. Research has show...

If it feels like you’ve lived a year inside of a month right now, you’re not alone. The cycle of our times is relentless and demands more of our attention and emotional capacity than we were ever meant to carry. This disorientation makes us more prone to disengagement, burnout, cynicism, and the lure of certainty. We also risk what social psychologists call moral narrowing, where our moral attenti...

Our nervous systems form the foundation of how we move through the world. It is the filter for our thoughts, behaviors, and interpretations. And when our nervous systems are dysregulated, it impacts how we show up for ourselves, our loved ones, and those we lead. Emotional regulation isn’t as simple as a human equivalent of turning your computer off and on again. But it is an essential practice to...

How do we stay awake and aware without constantly being outraged? Or, perhaps even worse, normalizing what should be utterly unacceptable? Staying human is hard in this environment. So many leaders are trying to hold onto their boundaries and values against pressure to act contrary to them, to stay compassionate and curious when so many forces benefit from and encourage our outrage. Anger, rage, a...

Every day, we’re flooded with information–headlines, opinions, advice, noise. And beneath that deluge of input, we carry stories that tell us how we stay safe and what asking questions will cost us. Certainty too often feels like safety. So we rush to respond before we understand and defend before we discern. We don’t pause to reflect or to question the loudest voices in the room–proverbial or oth...

Leaders carry the weight of more than their current roles. We receive messages from the generations before us about our worth, work, and belonging that shape how we show up–for better or worse. This is just as true in our working lives as it is in our families. If we want to change the narratives, we have to become aware of the legacy burdens–personal, familial, cultural, systemic–that have been p...

What does it mean to be good? It’s a little word that carries a lot of weight for many of us. Be a good girl. Be a good friend. Be a good leader. Do good. Good can sound like praise, but become a cage of expectations and shoulds, a performance that chips away at our authenticity. Good is no longer something we are, but is how others see us. It leads us to people please and keep the peace at all co...