And if you’re not careful, an expiration date

If you don't know the difference, you're probably working past yours.

Think about milk.

The sell-by date is when the store should stop selling it, but it's still good for a week or two after that.

The expiration date is when it's actually spoiled. Done. Unusable. Throw it out.

Most leaders confuse the two.

You hit your "sell-by date" when:

• The role that used to excite you now drains you
• The company culture that used to inspire you now suffocates you
• The leadership style that used to work doesn't fit anymore
• You've outgrown the position but keep trying to make it work

But instead of recognizing the sell-by date, you push through.

You manage harder. You optimize more. You convince yourself you just need better boundaries, better systems, better time management.

And you keep going until you hit expiration.

You know you've hit expiration when:

• You don't recognize yourself anymore
• Every Sunday night feels like dread
• You re...

I'm not a boxer.

But I was ready to pick a fight.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Another leadership meeting. Another conversation negotiating who in our leadership team was taking on what portion of our division’s goals. Yet another situation where my team was being pressured to take on an additional 30 Million in quota to cover the shortfall of another team. 

I felt my jaw clench. My voice got inappropriately loud. My hands slapped down on my notebook on the table.

And I had this wild thought: "I could flip this table right now."

(I didn't. But the impulse was real.)

That's when I knew something was deeply wrong.

Not with the meeting. With me.

Because leaders don't fantasize about flipping conference tables in quota meetings.

But managers who are pretending to lead? We absolutely do.

Here's what I realized in that moment:

I was no longer leading my team. I was managing their problems. I was no longer leading myself. I was managing my resentment. I was no longer leading with vi...

"You can have it all, just not all at the same time."

We used to say this constantly. To our team. To other women. To ourselves.

And we were wrong.

Not wrong about the sentiment. Wrong about what it implied.

Because when we say "you can't have it all at the same time," what we're really saying is:

"Leadership requires sacrifice." "Success requires compromise." "You have to choose between your career and your life."

And we’re calling BS.

The problem isn't that you can't have it all.

The problem is that you're trying to have it all in someone else's design.

Let me explain.

We spent years trying to lead like the men around us. Early mornings, late nights, constant availability, relentless drive.

We thought that's what leadership looked like, because that was all we saw.

So when we burned out, we assumed the problem was that we wanted too much. Career success AND personal fulfillment? That's not realistic. Pick one.

But here's what we discovered after a decade of deep work in ...

We spent 20 years climbing the corporate ladder as the "good leader."

We said yes to every request. Put our teams first, always. Stayed late, came in early, and prided ourselves on being the most helpful person in the room, whatever room we were in.

And we were absolutely miserable... but you'd never know it.

We loved working with our teams. Loved strategizing & solving complex situations. Loved leading our groups/initiatives. 

But with each over-step of our own boundary, each yes we actually didn't want to take on, each decision we made thinking we may finally get the actual reward we were seeking, we finally started to recognize, too late, that we were more than just tired, we were exhausted & completely burned out. 

Here's what no one tells you about servant leadership: It doesn't make you a good leader. It makes you a burned-out leader.

Because somewhere along the way, we confused leadership with people-pleasing.

We started believing that being a "yes man" was the same thing...

Why Leadership by Design Is the Future of Sustainable Performance

For decades, corporate leadership programs have leaned on personality frameworks & behavioral tools like DISC, StrengthsFinder, and the Big Five (OCEAN) to improve communication, build teams, and increase performance. Don't get us wrong, we have used some of them and these tools absolutely have merit, they’re accessible, research-backed, provide a snapshot in time view and a language for self-awareness.

But they’re also missing something big... they don’t tell you HOW to work or lead WITHOUT burning out.

As corporate executives and leaders with a combined 40+ years of experience managing teams, departments, and enterprise-level change, we followed A LOT of different suggested or mandated playbooks. We knew how to build strategy, develop high performers, and scale results. But we also learned, through personal trial (& error), that simply knowing behavioral assessment types weren’t enough to keep our teams (or ourselve...

"The true test of leadership is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create" - R. Sharma 

Recently Lynn & I were talking with a manager who's struggling to get engagement from her team & feeling like she has to constantly be micromanaging. Our discussion quickly shifted to the difference between leading, managing and when to use either skill. We realized two very important things:

First, reflecting on our 20+ years of leadership, one of the most impactful shifts in our careers was learning the difference between managing & leading. Both are very important skills to understand & master. Knowing when to use one, the other or both will set you apart as a leader. 

Second, we realized this is advice we REALLY wish we had as 25 year old, bright eyed & bushy tailed managers, who didn’t realize there was a difference.

Management is a title. Leadership is your influence & presence. You don’t need a title or even a team to be a leader.

When developing & coaching your...

Being 'Superwoman' is burning you out:

Superwoman Syndrome refers to women feeling the pressure to 'do it all' perfectly, juggling multiple roles & responsibilities, in her career, family, household, social etc., often neglecting self care & her own well-being. It is a psychological condition Marjorie Shaevitz coined in her book: The Superwoman Syndrome: Sensing the Tension Between Family, Career, and Self

81% of Women feel being busy is glorified

Female leaders are well versed in the delicate balance between work, family & social expectations. This creates a cycle of juggling an overwhelming amount of information to organize & track and a feeling that “busy” is rewarded. 

This constant juggling of priorities leads to cognitive overload.

Feeling a lack of recognition

They often feel they aren't recognized for their efforts at home & at work. The lack of recognition for their efforts, even when they meet or exceed expectations, also contributes to emotional fatigue & cognitive ove...

For the past few months we have had the pleasure of going through the process of rebranding our offering as we lead up to the launch of our new xDesign solutions, April 1st. We have had the privilege of evaluating our entire product suite, reviewing the benefits and opportunities of all our coaching and courses. As we were thinking about our unique differentiator, we realize that you can get an executive coach with proven methods, you could find a leadership coach with years of experience, you could even hire a leadership design reader who knows the system. But with us, not only do you get two coaches, you ALSO get a solution that includes ALL THREE areas giving you the most integrated Life & Leadership tool you can’t find anywhere else.

We help ambitious leaders, identify whether they're truly burning out, in the wrong role or simply juggling too many of the the wrong things, by understanding her own unique design.

With extreme excitement, we look forward to telling you about the ne...

As I’m nearing my 50s, I realize now that if I had just listened to her in my 30s, my 40s would have been completely different.

As I sat there in the thin blue gown, my feet rested on the cold metal tray. The paper covering the bench crumpled and split beneath me as I shifted slightly trying to get a little bit more comfortable. Just as I started drifting off, the door opened quickly bringing me back to reality as my doctor walked in. She pulled up my electronic chart where she had just received the results from my heart monitor test and blood work. We were trying to figure out the slew of strange symptoms that I felt like I was too young to be experiencing. Complete & utter exhaustion, heart palpitations, swollen ankles, irritability, unexplained weight gain, stomach issues, shortness of breath, just to name a few. Most symptoms on their own are easily written off but I was in my 30s not my 70s for crying out loud! 

I remember the discussion like it was yesterday. As she swive...

Hi, we are Katie & Lynn and we are recovering over-committers.

We spent our entire adult life, and if we are being real honest as early as our teen years, overcommitting to things. We continually accepted more projects than we should. Our hobbies started as things we loved, but quickly turned into side hustles adding more commitments and eating up more unavailable time. We took on the "turn around" teams, even when we knew it wasn't a good fit. And we kept starting/taking on new corporate initiatives framed as "unique opportunities" thinking they would help us get ahead. We were master multitaskers and we did it all with a smile on our faces, even if our home life was filled with shit... literally. My boss was shocked the day I called to let him know I was working from home for an afternoon because I had an insurance inspector coming to the house. He had no idea that two weeks prior my finished basement had a city sewer backup into it and we had to essentially move a soggy basement ap...