Leadership After 5

You have been in the room where everyone knows the right call and nobody will make it. That is not a process problem. That is insecurity, wearing a business suit. In this episode, Kim breaks down what insecurity actually looks like at the top, and why it has almost nothing to do with a leader protecting the organization. It's a leader protecting themselves from it. When the question quietly s...

Look around right now. The trust is low and the fear is high, and you can feel it everywhere from the headlines to your own hallway. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim takes the trust deficit we're all sensing in the wider environment and brings it home to where it quietly does the most damage: inside our organizations. How do you actually know your team trusts you? And if that trust...

Nobody warns you about this part. When the mentor who guided your whole career retires, the hard part isn't that they can't help you anymore. It's that you realize you never built your own judgment.  In this episode, Kim gets honest about the years she lost sitting still after her mentor left, the Olivia Dean lyric that finally woke her up, and why an executive coach is a need-to-ha...

The better your work gets, the more people show up wanting a piece of it. Most of them mean well. Some of them don't, and the hard part is they can look exactly the same. This episode is about the opportunist. The person who studies how to look like your friend, says the perfect thing at the perfect moment, and positions themselves right next to your success the second there's something...

Most leaders don't hold back because they lack vision. They hold back because they've read the room and understood the consequences of going too far. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim introduces one of the most underexplored and least discussed dynamics in organizational leadership — the tempered leader. The one who can see exactly what the organization needs. Who believes in th...

Most leaders don't avoid problem employees because they don't care. They avoid them because they don't know if they'll be supported when they do something about it. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the hardest parts of leadership: dealing with the employee who is quietly destroying your team's culture while the organization looks the othe...

The Sunday scary is real. And leaders get it too. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about her own Sunday scary. What it looks like, what it's actually pointing at, and why it has almost nothing to do with not liking the work. She breaks down the real math of the weekend, why Saturday is not actually a day off, and what it means when the dread shows up right on schedule at...

We spend a lot of time talking about what leadership gets wrong. Today we are celebrating what it gets right. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim flips the script and names the green flags. The real, observable signs that tell you without any doubt that you are in the presence of a leader who gets it. Not the theory. Not the framework. The actual things you can see and feel when great leade...

Have you ever watched someone completely transform the moment power walked into the room? In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim opens with a scene from a church hallway that never left her, and unpacks what it revealed about one of the most quietly destructive dynamics in organizational life. Proximity to power. From DC events to Miranda Priestly, Kim traces how the instinct to perform for po...

Someone on your team used your own words against you. Not because you did something wrong. Because you did something human. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the most painful and least discussed realities of leadership: character assassination from within. What it actually feels like. Why it happens. And why loneliness is almost always the door that gets left open...

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about what it actually feels like to shift culture in an organization that isn't ready for it. The resistance. The moments you question whether the change was even necessary. The unexpected things behind the wall that cost more and take longer than anyone planned for. Kim breaks down why most culture change efforts stall before they finis...

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the least discussed realities of stepping into a leadership role, inheriting a team you didn't choose. The resistance. The uncertainty. The employees who had already made up their minds about you before you walked through the door. Kim breaks down why inherited team dynamics are harder than anyone prepares you for, what to do...

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets direct about people pleasing in leadership and why it doesn't stop with new managers. At the executive level it gets quieter, more sophisticated, and more dangerous. Kim explores the fine line between good leadership and approval seeking, the parenting analogy that reframes it all, and why the leaders who are remembered aren't always the on...

It’s a question most leaders never stop long enough to answer. And the longer you go without answering it the more the role starts to answer it for you. In this episode of Leadership After 5, I’m getting honest about something I experienced firsthand: what happens when your identity and your leadership role become the same thing. The blind spots it creates. The connections it costs you. The quiet...

You've been told you can have it all. And maybe you believed it. Until you were sitting in a leadership role, missing a recital, and wondering how everyone else seems to be holding it together. They're not. They're just quiet about it. In this episode of Leadership After 5, I'm having the conversation nobody prepares you for; what it actually feels like to lead while mothering....

Leadership After 5 is the podcast that says what most leadership content won't. This is the conversation your mentor would have with you behind closed doors. Honest, direct, and built for leaders who are ready to do the real work. In each episode host Kim brings you unfiltered talk about what it actually takes to lead. The loneliness nobody warns you about. The trade-offs nobody prepares you...