Lead with Spark | Authentic Leadership for Women, Executive Presence & Career Confidence

Your reviews are glowing. Your dashboard is green. Your boss thinks you are crushing it. And underneath all of that, you feel like you are slowly disappearing. That isn't burnout. It's quiet cracking, and almost everything written about it is aimed at HR and employers. In this sequel to the Energy Ledger episode, Lynsey talks directly to the high performer whose numbers look fantastic while her se...

A girls' trip to Florida, an $80 umbrella rental, and a $15 bargain umbrella that lasted about four seconds before the wind flipped it inside out. The funniest part wasn't the umbrella. It was what Lynsey and her friend did next: before they checked the damage, they checked the audience. In this episode, Lynsey unpacks that instinct to scan the room before we let ourselves laugh, speak up, or try...

How to Stop Comparing Your Insides to Everyone Else's Highlight Reel Have you ever looked around a room full of accomplished people and thought, "What am I doing here?" Last week at a conference in Tampa Bay, Lynsey did exactly that, and within ten minutes she had talked herself right out of her own résumé. Then she walked up to one of the speakers, had a real conversation, and discovered that the...

When a senior leader calls Betsy Kauffman and says, I have this person and they need help, they usually mean the person is broken. Betsy's whole career is built on a different premise: your people are not broken, your system is. Betsy Kauffman is the founder and CEO of Cross Impact Coaching, a TED speaker with over 1.6 million views, and the author of The Fix. After 25 years leading large-scale te...

I recently coached a client on boundaries, and about ten minutes into the conversation I knew it was something I needed to share with you too. She told me she has such a hard time saying no that she gives everything away, and then feels hurt when someone does not choose her. Then she said the sharper version: I do not say no, I am always looking for how I can say yes. In this episode I walk throug...

It is the end of August, which means sometime in the next two weeks you will open your calendar, look at what is left of the year, and feel one of two things. The sprint: grab every unfinished January goal and muscle to December 31st on caffeine and sheer personality. Or the quiet quit: eh, we will regroup in January, and coast through four months of your one precious life. Both are traps. In this...

You have been waiting on a memo. The one where your boss, the board, or some committee of very official people sits you down and says you are now allowed to lead your way. Trust your gut. Push back in the meeting. Run the team the way you actually want to. Signed, everyone. Lovingly, here is the truth: that memo does not exist. It was never in the mail. In this solo episode, Lynsey names why so ma...

If you are carrying a lot, leading a lot, achieving a lot, and still wondering why you feel exhausted underneath all of it, this conversation is for you. Dr. Alicia Newsome returns for Part 2 of our series, and this time we zoom out from the body to the whole picture: the beliefs running underneath your leadership, the exhaustion our culture quietly applauds, and her new book, Worthy of Rest. This...

When someone on your team is struggling, what is your first instinct? Do you coach them through it, or do you quietly take the thing and do it yourself? If you just went quiet, this one is for you. In this solo episode, Lynsey names what she and her retreat co-facilitator Paula Shannon call the lifeguard trap: the habit of jumping in to rescue that feels like leadership, looks like dedication, and...

If you have ever felt just a little bit off but could not quite explain it, this conversation will open your eyes in the best way. This week kicks off a special two-part series with Dr. Alicia Newsome, a functional medicine practitioner, executive advisor, international speaker, and three-time bestselling author who helps high performers get to the root cause of what is going on inside their bodie...

Something big is happening this October, and in this episode you get the full reveal. Lynsey is joined by Paula Shannon, founder of Whole Leader Lab, former deputy superintendent, and a leader who spent 30 years in public education before clinical burnout forced a reckoning. Together they announce the Audaciously Unapologetic Retreat , a four-day wellness and leadership experience for women, Octob...

Eight hours of real work capacity. Fourteen meetings on the calendar. The math has never worked, and yet somewhere along the way we all agreed that this is what a workday looks like. In this episode, Lynsey names the meeting culture problem for what it is: not a scheduling issue, but a culture that quietly turns you into a very expensive FYI. Drawing on 26 years in corporate leadership, including...

Have you ever looked at your life on paper and thought, this all looks right, so why does something feel off? Nothing is broken. Your career is solid, your family is fine, and yet there is a quiet hum underneath it all telling you that this is not it anymore. In this episode, Lynsey digs into the identity gap: the space between the version of you that got you here and the version of you that is tr...

Default settings are great for printers and computers. Not for people.   In this episode of Lead with Spark, Lynsey Mulder sits down with corporate communication coach Amy Greensmith for one of the most honest and practical conversations on people-pleasing, burnout, and using your voice that you are going to find anywhere. Amy has been working in the personal development space for over twenty year...

We are halfway through the year. How did that even happen?   In this solo episode of Lead with Spark, Lynsey Mulder gets honest about where her own year stands, the book she is writing, the retreat she is planning, the course she has not started, and what she has learned about protecting summer before it disappears one unplanned Friday night at a time. And she brings all of it back to a question e...

You are the one who delivers. You are excellent at your job, everyone knows it, and yet the promotion keeps going somewhere else. When you ask for feedback you hear a polished version of we need to see you operating at the next level, and inside you think I already am. Here is the part that stings before it sets you free. The problem is not that you are not good enough. The problem is that you are...

This episode is coming straight from Lynsey Mulder's Iowa backyard, where summer has officially arrived, everything is growing, everything is blooming, and apparently everything has collectively decided to test her leadership skills on the way.   In this solo episode of Lead with Spark, Lynsey turns four very real backyard situations, carpenter bees boring into the deck, barn swallows relentlessly...

What if executive presence is not only about how you show up in a room, but how you sound in every email, proposal, message, and comment with your name on it? In this episode of Lead with Spark, Lynsey Mulder sits down with Grace Aldridge Foster to unpack why writing is part of your brand and how leaders can use words more intentionally at work. Grace is the co-founder and principal of Bold Type,...

She used to walk into work with her shoulders squared and her ideas ready to go. She loved her job. She was good at it. People counted on her to figure it out, hold the line, and deliver.   And then something shifted. Not all at once. In small increments over months. A comment in a meeting that landed harder than it should have. A decision made about her without her. A version of events she knew w...

What if the most powerful leadership move you could make right now had nothing to do with adding something new to your life, and everything to do with quitting something that has quietly been draining it?   Lynsey Mulder just finished a book about a group of friends who made a pact. They called themselves the Quitters Club. And the concept stopped her cold, because every single woman she has ever...

Every woman Lynsey Mulder has coached in the last sixty days who is in the middle of a pivot has said the same thing, almost apologetically: I just feel like I should have figured this out sooner.   Sooner than what? Sooner than the body breaking down? Sooner than eighteen months of broken trust with a manager? Sooner than the blood pressure reading that finally told the truth about the calendar?...

There is a gap in leadership development that almost no one is talking about. The higher you climb, the less support you get. Senior managers, directors, and VPs are running multimillion-dollar budgets, leading complex teams, and navigating organizational politics, all while figuring it out largely on their own. Sound familiar? In this episode, I sit down with Lori Lalonde, a leadership developmen...

Picture your week. Not the highlight reel, not the version you would put on social media, but the real one. The walk you skipped because someone moved a meeting. The lunch you ate at your desk for the third day in a row. The text from a friend you keep meaning to answer and still have not. Now ask yourself one question: was the reason all of that happened actually urgent? Or was it just loud? In t...

What does it actually take to lead at a high level without burning out? In this solo Lead with Spark episode, Lynsey Mulder shares a powerful reflection from a recent leadership panel centered around one question: what does it really take to lead well without losing yourself in the process? Drawing on her own experience in corporate leadership and decades of coaching, Lynsey unpacks the truth abou...

What happens when two women leaders sit down like old friends over coffee and talk about what is really shaping work and life right now? In this candid Lead with Spark conversation, Lynsey Mulder is joined by strategy and operations leader Rebekah Brandmeyer to unpack busy versus aligned living, leadership boundaries, culture, AI at work, career growth, personal ethics, and the choices that help w...