A senior leader recently told me something that stopped me: 

“I’m doing well… but everything feels heavier than it should.”

On paper, she was succeeding. Strong performance. High trust. Big responsibility.

But behind the scenes:

• she was carrying too much

• making more decisions than her role required

• and holding emotional weight that wasn’t actually hers

Nothing was “wrong.” But it wasn’t sustainable. Successful on paper. Exhausted in private.

Quietly questioning how long she could keep going.

She wasn’t underperforming. She wasn’t disengaged. But she was carrying more than her role required, emotionally, mentally, and operationally.

The result:

• constant decision fatigue

• difficulty delegating

• growing frustration with her team

• and a feeling that leadership was costing her too much

We mapped how she was naturally wired to lead, how she processes decisions, where her energy flows best, and what kind of responsibility she’s actually designed...

Like they’re always bracing for something. Like they can’t ever fully relax. Like they’re carrying the whole world in their head.

They do the job. They run the business. They hold the family. They handle the emotions.

And everyone thinks they’re fine. But inside, it feels like living in a body that never gets to exhale.

That’s not weakness. That’s what happens when you live out of alignment with how you’re built.

You don’t need to quit your job and reboot your life. You just need to understand how you actually work.

There’s a different way to be successful that doesn’t cost you yourself.

Find your Expansion Style if this feels uncomfortably accurate.

You’re not lazy. You’re not ungrateful. You’re not broken.

You’re just tired of carrying everything.

The decisions. The people. The expectations. The version of yourself you have to be to keep it all running.

Most successful women don’t feel stressed, they feel heavy. Like life is a backpack they can’t take off.

If that’s you, y...

What you're actually experiencing is Ego–Self misalignment.

You built a powerful Persona (the competent leader, the fixer, the reliable one)… but your true nature (how her energy and decision-making actually works) is being abandoned every day.

That creates chronic inner friction. That friction feels like:

• Exhaustion that rest doesn’t fix

• Resentment that you don't want to admit

• A creeping “I should be further along than this” shame

• And a weird grief for a life you never had time to live

This isn’t stress, it’s self-betrayal with a mortgage.

What you are really suffering from is that internal repeating loop of “If I stop performing who I had to become… will I still be worthy, respected, or safe?”

So you keep over-functioning, over-delivering, people-pleasing upward & holding everyone together… even though the internal pressure is quietly screaming “this isn’t how I’m built.”

That is why burnout feels existential. You're not tired, you're miscast.

What you ...

They built their careers by becoming who they needed to be:
The reliable one,
The competent one,
The one who doesn’t need anything.

It worked... they got the title, the income, the reputation. But inside...

Something feels quietly wrong. Not broken, just "off".

Not dramatic.
Not a breakdown.
Just a constant low-grade tension in the chest that never fully leaves.

That’s not stress. That’s what happens when your internal pressure is forcing you to live a life it wasn’t designed for.

When you keep making decisions from obligation instead of instinct.
When you lead in ways that drain you instead of fuel you.
When you succeed by betraying your natural way of operating.

Most women think:
“I just need more rest.”
“I need better boundaries.”
“I need to try harder or care less.”

The truth is much simpler and far scarier...

You are running your life on someone else's operating system. Your Leadership Design isn’t about personality. It’s about how your energy is meant to move through the wor...

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, of course. But the impulse was real)

That's when I knew something was deeply wrong, deeply misaligned.

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 ...

"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...