We Were Never Meant to Lead Like This

It is easy to forget how recently in our history women have been allowed to lead at all. A century ago, most women could not sign a mortgage, manage a bank account, or walk into a boardroom without an escort. Today, women hold roughly 32 percent of executive roles in the United States, according to McKinsey’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report. That is progress, yes, but it is also proof that most of us are still newcomers in rooms built by and for someone else.

We are often the minority at the table.

We know it.

They know it.

And we learn to perform accordingly.

From an early age, girls are taught to read a room before they ever learn to trust their own voice. We are rewarded for making people comfortable, praised for being adaptable, and quietly punished when we are not. By the time many women arrive in leadership, performance has become muscle memory. We have learned how to be palatable, how to manage perception, how to hold authority without appearing “too much.”

“We inherited a leadership script written for someone else, and the cracks are showing.”

As a woman who has spent her career in senior leadership, I have watched brilliant women fracture themselves trying to fit inside systems that were never designed for them. They perform strength in cultures that reward stoicism. They soften their truths to stay likable. They translate empathy into data just to be heard.

It is exhausting.

And it is unsustainable.

We inherited the wrong script. One that equates leadership with control, authority with volume, and composure with worth. A script that says feelings are liabilities and intuition belongs at home, not in the boardroom.

But the cracks are widening, and light is getting through.

The Fracture We Carry

When we lead from fractured selves, we split the very qualities that make us powerful. We compartmentalize our intellect from our intuition, our logic from our empathy, our structure from our spirit. We think we are being strategic. In reality, we are surviving.

The cost is subtle but steep. It shows up as burnout disguised as dedication, as imposter syndrome that never quite fades, as the quiet ache of feeling successful but not whole.

“True leadership is not about compartmentalization. It is about integration.”

That ache is not weakness. It is wisdom. It is the soul of leadership reminding us that control and connection are not opposites. They are partners.

When half the population learns to lead through suppression, entire organizations lose access to imagination and trust. We pay for fracture collectively—in creativity, in innovation, and in culture.

The Seat at the Table

I come from the world of higher education, a place where systems and stories coexist in a delicate dance. On paper, my role is about physical and digital infrastructure: buildings, spaces, servers, software, and strategy. In reality, it is about people. Every decision about technology ripples through human lives: faculty who teach, students who dream, and staff who hold the institution together quietly and usually without credit.

It is a world that prizes order. But it is also a world full of friction.

Structure, ideas, and innovation often collide.

And that is where I have learned the most about leadership.

Integration does not mean erasing boundaries or ignoring structure. It means remembering that efficiency without empathy is not sustainable. It is scaffolding with no building inside. The best systems and processes work because they honor both logic and life.

When I lead from wholeness, when I allow intellect, intuition, and emotion to stand in the same circle, the work transforms. Conversations deepen. Teams collaborate differently. Innovation stops being a buzzword and starts being a byproduct of trust.

And the results are better. Every measurable outcome improves when people feel seen as whole humans.

The Hidden Performance

Women are often told to “lean in.” I understand the intention. But leaning in to a table that was not built for you only teaches you how to balance better on the edge.

“It is not lean in. It is evolve out.”

Evolving out does not mean walking away from the table. It means rebuilding the table entirely and reclaiming what leadership looks like, sounds like, and feels like when it is fully human.

It means speaking in full sentences, not softened ones.

It means allowing intuition to be a form of intelligence.

It means recognizing that empathy is not emotional labor. It is strategic insight.

Women who lead from wholeness do not perform confidence; they embody it. They do not ask permission to exist in full color. They simply stop muting themselves for comfort.

The shift is subtle at first. You start telling the truth without flinching. You stop apologizing for tone and start clarifying intention. You bring both compassion and accountability into the same meeting. And slowly, the energy around you changes.

People begin to exhale.

Teams start to trust.

Work starts to feel like purpose again.

What Integration Looks Like

Integration is not a slogan. It is a discipline. It is choosing alignment over approval, depth over performance, and authenticity over applause. It is the daily practice of checking in with yourself before you check off another box.

In practical terms, it might look like pausing before a decision to ask, What does this mean for the people behind the numbers? It might mean protecting your own energy as fiercely as you protect your team’s. It might even mean saying, I do not know yet, and trusting that uncertainty is not incompetence. It is honesty.

When women lead from wholeness, everyone benefits. Culture shifts. Creativity expands. And the next generation grows up seeing a version of leadership that looks a lot less like control and a lot more like truth.

“Integration is not softness. It is the next evolution of strength.”

Breaking the Script

The hardest part of evolving out of the old script is realizing how deeply it is written into us. I still catch myself performing. I still modulate tone, translate intuition into logic, and worry that softness will be mistaken for weakness.

But now I notice it.

And noticing is the first rewrite.

Each of us who chooses to lead whole gives others permission to do the same. Every time we refuse to fragment ourselves, we repair something larger: the collective story of what leadership can be.

We are, all of us, still writing the script. The beauty is that it is no longer a solo act. We are co-authoring a new narrative built on clarity, compassion, and courage.

The story of integration.

The story of evolution.

The story of women who lead as themselves without apology.

When the Quiet Voice Becomes Your Compass

There was a time when I believed the loudest voice in the room was the one that mattered most.
The voice that spoke first. The one that carried weight through confidence, data, and volume.
I mistook authority for noise and believed that leadership required projection.

But over the years, I’ve learned that the voice worth listening to is rarely the one commanding the most space. It’s the quiet one. The one that sits just beneath the surface. The one that speaks in tension, intuition, and knowing before words ever form.

The quiet voice doesn’t compete for attention. It doesn’t perform. It waits.

And when you learn to hear it, everything changes.

The Ache That Speaks in Whispers

There’s an ache that doesn’t hurt in the way pain usually does. It doesn’t arrive with crisis or collapse. It arrives softly. A hesitation before yes. A pause before you reply. A tightness in your chest when you convince yourself you’re fine.

I call it the whisper ache.

It’s the gap between what looks good on paper and what feels true in your body.
It’s the moment when achievement feels hollow or when a compliment lands but doesn’t stick.
It’s that flicker of misalignment that says, “This isn’t quite right,” even when you can’t name why.

That whisper is your body trying to speak before your mind rushes to reason.
And for a long time, I ignored it.

I filled the silence with yes after yes.
I mistook exhaustion for importance.
I built a life that looked steady but felt heavy.

The whisper kept tugging, quiet but insistent. It wanted me to stop. To listen. To return.

The Moment I Finally Heard It

I remember sitting in a meeting that should have felt like an accomplishment.
The kind where your name is on the agenda and everyone turns toward you when it’s your turn to speak.
I had my notes, my strategy, my data points. I had prepared for everything except the ache rising in my throat.

Halfway through my presentation, I caught my reflection in the conference room glass. I looked composed, collected, polished. But inside, I felt hollow.

I realized I was performing presence instead of living it.

I finished speaking. The group nodded, approved, and moved on.
And in the quiet after, my body whispered, “You’re here, but not here.”

That was the moment I understood that the quiet voice wasn’t weakness.
It was truth.

How the World Trains Us to Ignore Ourselves

We live in systems that reward performance and speed more than reflection.
Urgency becomes a form of validation. Busyness becomes a badge.

From a young age, we’re taught to value noise over knowing.
Speak up. Be decisive. Don’t pause too long or they’ll think you’re uncertain.

So we fill every space with words and every hour with movement.
We silence the subtle signals that might tell us to stop, to breathe, to think differently.

We call that silence inefficiency. But it’s actually wisdom.

Every system that benefits from your depletion depends on your disconnection from that wisdom.
The longer you ignore your body’s knowing, the easier it is to keep you rushing, agreeing, producing, and performing.

The quiet voice is the antidote to that system.
It is how you reclaim your rhythm in a world that profits from your imbalance.

Listening Is Not Passive

People often think listening to intuition is a soft skill, something mystical or passive. It isn’t. Listening is work. It’s an active discipline.

It takes strength to stop mid-motion and ask, “Is this true?”
It takes courage to pause when everything around you screams for urgency.

Listening means you allow the discomfort of not having the answer yet.
It means you wait until clarity arrives instead of forcing certainty.

For me, this looks like small daily practices.

I pause before responding.
I breathe before deciding.
I write before reacting.
I let silence fill the space that used to be occupied by over-explanation.

The quiet voice does not rush. It moves at the pace of integrity.

And once you start listening, it becomes impossible to return to the noise without noticing the cost.

When Stillness Starts to Feel Unnatural

In the beginning, stillness feels wrong.
If you’ve built your life on urgency, pausing can feel like failure.

You might reach for your phone just to prove to yourself that you’re still relevant.
You might open your inbox just to feel needed.
You might fill the silence because it feels too honest.

That discomfort isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s the withdrawal from performance.

Stillness is a detox from noise. It’s a recalibration of pace.
It’s the space where clarity starts to form.

Your nervous system has to learn that safety exists even when you’re not responding, performing, or pleasing.

When you stop mistaking motion for meaning, you create room for alignment.

What Happens When You Follow the Quiet Voice

At first, you will disappoint people.
You will say no to things that once made you feel important.
You will let go of opportunities that don’t feel aligned.

The world will keep asking for more, and you will learn to answer less.

You’ll speak slower, but your words will carry more weight.
You’ll work with more focus but less frenzy.
You’ll stop rehearsing conversations in your head before you have them.

And one morning, you’ll notice that the ache has softened.
Not because the world changed, but because you did.

You stopped outsourcing your direction to noise.
You started listening to your compass instead.

The Compass Inside You

The quiet voice doesn’t tell you what to do next. It tells you when something isn’t true.
It’s less about direction and more about discernment.

It won’t always make sense to others. Sometimes it won’t even make sense to you.
But clarity doesn’t need consensus. It needs courage.

You will know you’re following your compass when peace replaces certainty.
When you stop seeking permission.
When you stop explaining your intuition to those who need proof before they believe it.

Trusting that inner compass doesn’t mean you ignore logic. It means you let wisdom lead logic, not the other way around.

Your body holds intelligence that your mind has been taught to question.
The more you listen, the more you remember that leadership begins with self-trust.

How I Practice Returning

Listening to my quiet voice is not a single decision. It’s a rhythm.
A daily returning.

When the world feels loud, I do three small things:

1. I breathe before I respond.
That one pause often changes everything. It gives clarity a chance to arrive before words do.

2. I ask, “What’s true right now?”
Not what’s pleasing. Not what’s safe. Not what others expect. Just what’s true.

3. I let silence do some of the talking.
I’ve learned that the truth doesn’t need defending. It simply needs space to land.

These aren’t rules. They’re reminders.
They bring me back when I drift into noise.

And I drift often. But I always return.

When the Whisper Becomes the Guide

You will know the quiet voice is guiding you when your choices stop being about control and start being about congruence.

You’ll stop chasing the life that looks perfect and start building the one that feels peaceful.
You’ll stop needing everyone to understand you and start needing only yourself to believe you.

And slowly, that whisper that once felt like doubt will become the most trustworthy part of you.

The quiet voice becomes your compass when you stop treating it like an interruption and start honoring it as direction.

A Few Things I Know Now

The quiet voice never rushes you.
It always invites you to slow down.

It never speaks in panic. It speaks in presence.

It doesn’t ask for permission. It asks for truth.

And when you ignore it long enough, it won’t punish you.
It will wait.
Because your intuition is patient. It knows you’ll come back when you’re ready.

And when you do, it will be there, steady and clear, whispering what it’s been saying all along:

You already know.

A Question to Carry

Where in your life is the whisper asking to be heard?
What truth have you been softening to make it more acceptable?

You don’t need to broadcast the answer.
You don’t need to turn it into a plan.
You only need to pause long enough to listen.

That quiet voice is your compass.
And when you follow it, you’ll find your way home every time.

When Clarity Crosses a Line

I’ve always known what my strongest gifts are: clarity, vision, and truth. They’re the things I’ve leaned on most of my life. They’ve opened doors, built trust, and helped me make sense of complex, often chaotic situations. They’re also the gifts I’ve been praised for—over and over again.

But gifts always come with edges. And when you lean too hard on them, or wield them without care, they can cut both ways.

This post is about one of those times.

The Misstep

Recently, I overstepped. Not in a dramatic or malicious way. But in a subtle, very human way: I spoke truth when I hadn’t been invited to. I offered vision without asking if it was wanted.

I said something that landed as intrusion rather than support. In my head, I was being helpful, practical, even protective. But in reality, my words carried an unintended sharpness.

The response was immediate: a recoil. A pulling back.

That moment told me everything I needed to know. Even without words, I could see the line I’d crossed. And while grace was extended, the truth is still the truth—I had stepped into someone else’s space without permission.

What It Felt Like

If you’ve ever had one of those moments, you know the sinking feeling. The quick flash of Oh no. That wasn’t right.

For me, it landed as both guilt and self-awareness. Guilt, because I had caused harm, even unintentionally. Awareness, because I could suddenly see the shadow side of my gift in action.

• Clarity offered without invitation can feel like intrusion.

• Vision spoken without context can feel like dismissal.

• Truth carried without gentleness can feel like force.

What I intended as support felt to the other person like something else entirely.

The Shadow Side of Gifts

I’ve always believed our strengths come with shadows. Leadership especially is filled with these paradoxes. The things that make you most effective can also make you most dangerous when used without awareness.

My clarity has carried me far. It cuts through noise and confusion, makes things simple, helps people see a path forward. But unchecked, that same clarity can bulldoze nuance, flatten someone else’s lived experience, or make me sound like I’ve got all the answers.

That’s not who I want to be. And yet, that’s how it landed in this moment.

What I Learned

The lesson is both simple and difficult: permission matters.

It’s not enough to have a clear vision or a sharp truth to offer. The question is, has anyone asked for it? If not, then even the best insight may come across as arrogance, intrusion, or dismissal.

This is where timing and pace come in. Influence isn’t about the speed of your clarity, it’s about the rhythm of your presence. You breathe. You pause. You listen. You feel the moment and the people in it. Only then do you speak—and even then, gently, as an offering.

That’s what I missed.

The Temptation to Retreat

After a misstep like this, my instinct is to retreat. To fold inward with guilt and self-doubt. To replay the moment in my head until I’m convinced I shouldn’t speak at all.

But retreat isn’t growth. Retreat is hiding.

This time, I decided to do something different. Instead of spiraling into self-criticism, I treated the moment as a teacher. It wasn’t a reprimand, it was care. It wasn’t condemnation, it was feedback.

And feedback is a gift, even when it stings. Especially when it stings.

The Work Ahead

So here’s what I’m practicing:

• Pausing before I speak. A breath, a beat, a check-in. Do I have permission?

• Asking instead of telling. “Would it be helpful if I shared an observation?” creates space for consent.

• Letting timing do the work. Sometimes the most powerful thing is to wait until someone is ready to hear it.

• Softening the delivery. Not everything has to land like a final word. Sometimes clarity should arrive like a suggestion, not a verdict.

• Respecting lived experience. My truth doesn’t override someone else’s background, history, or skillset. We sit at the table together.

This is the work of stewardship—holding my gifts with enough care that they help rather than harm.

Why This Matters

Leadership isn’t about never messing up. It’s about what you do when you inevitably do.

For me, this moment was a reminder that my desire to influence for good doesn’t exempt me from the responsibility of how that influence lands. I can’t assume good intent is enough. I have to practice timing, tone, and permission.

Because otherwise, clarity becomes a weapon instead of a light.

What I Hope You Take Away

Maybe you don’t share my particular gifts. Maybe your edge is different—patience that turns into passivity, decisiveness that slides into control, or empathy that spills over into burnout.

Whatever it is, here’s what I want to remind both of us:

• Every gift has a shadow.

• Awareness is the first step to managing it.

• Feedback, even painful, is often an act of care.

• The goal isn’t to stop using your gifts—it’s to learn how to wield them with wisdom.

We’re not called to perfection. We’re called to growth.

Closing Reflection

I don’t share this story because I want to paint myself as wise or evolved. I share it because it was messy and uncomfortable and still raw. It showed me the exact places I need to keep working.

That’s leadership. It’s not polished or packaged. It’s a practice. A rhythm. A cycle of learning, adjusting, and moving forward.

So, the next time I feel clarity rising on my tongue, I’ll pause. I’ll breathe. I’ll ask. And if the answer is silence, I’ll respect it.

Because silence, too, is an answer.

The Leadership Gift of Space: Finding Clarity Beyond the Busyness

Making room for clarity, energy, and authentic leadership

I used to think the best leaders were the busiest ones. The ones who could glide from meeting to meeting, answer emails at lightning speed, and keep their calendars crammed so full that every square inch of the week looked like a game of Tetris. Busyness felt like proof: proof of value, proof of commitment, proof that you were doing leadership “right.”

But the truth? Busyness doesn’t always mean impact. More often than not, it means exhaustion.

When our days become a blur of back-to-back commitments, we confuse motion with meaning. We fill every gap, squeeze in one more call, say yes when we should have paused. It looks productive from the outside, but inside it drains clarity, erodes presence, and leaves us leading on fumes.

The gift—the secret we’re rarely taught—is that leadership actually expands in space.

When you make room, you breathe differently. You think differently. You show up differently. The pause before answering a loaded question gives you perspective. The five minutes you spend alone with your coffee before opening your laptop resets your energy. The hour you carve out for deep reflection lets you step back far enough to see the whole picture instead of just the piece in front of you.

Space is not the absence of leadership. It’s the foundation of it.

Leaders who create space don’t just feel calmer; they model a way of working that gives everyone else permission to slow down, too. And here’s the twist—slowing down rarely means falling behind. It means you’re more present when it counts. It means your decisions are sharper because they’re rooted in clarity instead of reaction. It means your team trusts you to see not just the next step but the one after that.

I’ve learned that space is not something you stumble upon at the end of a packed day, when the inbox is finally cleared and the meetings are done. That kind of space rarely comes. True space is something you claim, deliberately, even stubbornly, in the middle of the busyness.

It might look like closing your eyes for three breaths before walking into a difficult conversation. It might look like blocking off time on your calendar and refusing to apologize for it. It might look like walking your dog at lunch without earbuds, letting your mind wander without an agenda.

None of these practices will ever appear in a quarterly report, but they are the unseen scaffolding of authentic leadership.

Because when you create space, you create room for the things that matter most: clarity, energy, and a presence your people can trust.

The Myth of Busyness

Busyness has become a kind of cultural currency. We wear it like a badge, trading in stories about how late we worked, how many emails we’ve answered, how long our days have been. “How are you?” too often gets met with, “Busy!” as if that single word sums up both our worth and our relevance.

But here’s the catch: busyness isn’t the same as effectiveness. In fact, the two often pull in opposite directions.

Think about it. How many of your most creative ideas have ever come to you while sprinting between meetings? How many breakthrough decisions were made with three Slack notifications buzzing and your inbox climbing by the minute? When we stack our calendars to the brim, we give ourselves no space to think, no space to process, no space to listen deeply. We’re moving, but we’re not necessarily moving the right things forward.

And yet the myth persists—because on the surface, busyness looks like success. An overflowing calendar suggests you’re in demand. The 9 p.m. email signals dedication. The constant motion feels reassuring: If I’m this busy, surely I’m doing something that matters.

I’ve fallen into that trap myself. There was a season where every day started at 7:30 a.m. and ended close to midnight. I’d sit at my desk with two devices open, toggling between conference calls, project plans, and half-written reports. From the outside, it looked impressive: a leader running at full tilt, managing it all. But the truth was uglier—decisions delayed because I didn’t have the space to think them through, conversations rushed, opportunities missed because I was too buried in the weeds to lift my head.

Busyness, in other words, was eroding my leadership while convincing me it was strengthening it.

Research backs this up. Studies on multitasking show that our brains are not wired to handle multiple complex tasks simultaneously without a drop in quality. Neuroscience tells us that without downtime, we struggle to form long-term memories and creative connections. Leadership isn’t about how much you can juggle—it’s about knowing what matters most and showing up fully for it.

But here’s the dangerous part of the myth: busyness can be addictive. It feels good to be needed. It feels validating when your day is so full that there’s no room left to squeeze in another meeting. Busyness creates the illusion of control, even when, underneath, it’s robbing us of presence and clarity.

Breaking this cycle takes courage. It means admitting that doing more doesn’t always mean doing better. It means recognizing that saying yes to everything dilutes the power of the moments where your leadership is needed most.

And that’s where the gift of space comes in. When you let go of busyness as a badge, you open the door to a deeper kind of leadership—one built on clarity, energy, and authenticity instead of sheer volume of activity.

The Cost of No Space

The cost of constant busyness isn’t just fatigue. It’s erosion — slow, steady, and often invisible until the cracks show.

When leaders don’t create space, decision fatigue creeps in. Every question feels heavier, every choice more complicated. Instead of leading from clarity, we lead from exhaustion. We rush through conversations, make reactive calls, and push problems forward instead of pausing to solve them.

The brain is powerful, but it’s not a machine that can run indefinitely. Neuroscientists tell us that when the mind never rests, it struggles to integrate information, recognize patterns, and generate creative solutions. That’s why your best ideas show up in the shower or on a walk — not when you’re buried in back-to-back meetings. Without space, your brain is stuck in traffic, looping through the same routes without discovering anything new.

And it doesn’t stop with you. Leadership is contagious. The pace you set becomes the pace your team follows. If you model a constant grind, they’ll mirror it. If you never take a breath, they’ll assume they can’t either. The result? A culture where exhaustion is normalized and innovation gets squeezed out. People play it safe because they’re too tired to stretch. They avoid creativity because they don’t have the bandwidth for it. Burnout stops being the exception and becomes the water everyone swims in.

I’ve seen this play out. In one season of my career, our team was buried under overlapping initiatives. Everyone was running hot. Meetings stacked on meetings. Every week felt urgent. And yes, we delivered — deadlines were met, projects crossed off — but the hidden cost was staggering. Turnover climbed. Morale tanked. The best ideas never made it to the table because no one had the energy to lift their heads up from the grind.

No space means no margin for humanity, either. It’s the quick email reply that lands sharper than you intended. It’s the meeting where you’re technically present but mentally elsewhere. It’s the way exhaustion flattens patience and compassion. Without space, the parts of you that people trust most — presence, empathy, authenticity — get crowded out by stress.

There’s also a personal cost that doesn’t show up on an org chart: the way busyness seeps into life outside of work. The missed dinner. The restless sleep. The hobbies and friendships that slowly disappear because there’s simply “no time.” Leadership without space doesn’t just burn out teams — it burns out lives.

This is why space is not optional. It’s oxygen. Without it, leaders suffocate slowly, losing clarity, creativity, and connection piece by piece. And while the world may applaud your hustle in the moment, it rarely sees the price tag you’re paying behind the scenes.

The good news? The cost of no space is entirely reversible. Space is something you can reclaim — in minutes, in hours, in seasons. And when you do, you’ll find that leadership doesn’t collapse without busyness. It gets stronger.

The Practice of Space

If busyness erodes leadership, then space is what restores it. And here’s the truth: space doesn’t appear magically at the end of your day or your week. It isn’t waiting for you once the to-do list is cleared. Space has to be created, claimed, and fiercely protected — not as a luxury, but as a discipline.

The good news is that space comes in many sizes. You don’t have to run off on a silent retreat to find it (though if that calls to you, go for it). Space can start small — as small as a single pause — and ripple outward into the way you live and lead.

1. Micro-space: The pause before the yes

These are the tiny, almost invisible moments where leadership shifts. It’s the breath before answering a hard question. The pause before hitting send on an email you wrote in frustration. The silence you allow after someone else speaks in a meeting, giving room for others to step in.

Micro-space doesn’t take time; it makes time. In just a few seconds, you reclaim choice instead of reacting on autopilot. Over time, those tiny pauses add up to better decisions, kinder words, and a steadier presence.

Try this: before saying yes to the next request, pause. Ask yourself: Does this align with what matters most right now? If the answer is no, space gives you permission to say so.

2. Daily space: The ritual reset

Busyness doesn’t disappear in a day — but you can build anchors of space inside your day. Think of these as rituals that ground you before the swirl begins.

For me, it’s an hour of writing before the workday starts. No emails, no Slack, no one else’s priorities. Just words, coffee, and the quiet that reminds me who I am before the world asks for anything.

For you, it might be a morning walk without earbuds. It might be ten minutes of journaling at lunch. It might be a closing ritual at the end of the day where you jot down three wins and one release before shutting your laptop.

The point isn’t what the ritual looks like — it’s that it creates a boundary. It says: Here is space that belongs to me.

3. Strategic space: Deep work and big-picture thinking

Leadership isn’t just about today’s fire drill; it’s about shaping tomorrow. That requires strategic space — blocks of uninterrupted time to think, plan, and imagine. Without it, you get stuck in reactive mode, always responding, never creating.

The challenge is that strategic space is the easiest to sacrifice. It feels indulgent to block two hours on your calendar for “thinking.” But here’s the reality: if you don’t claim that time, no one will give it to you. Your calendar will always fill with someone else’s priorities.

Start small. Block one hour a week as “focus time.” Protect it as fiercely as you would a meeting with your board chair. Use it for deep work: writing vision documents, sketching out strategy, tackling the project that requires your full attention.

And when guilt creeps in? Remind yourself that the most valuable work leaders do isn’t measured in emails sent — it’s measured in clarity, alignment, and direction.

4. Seasonal space: The bigger reset

Finally, leaders need seasonal space — longer breaks where you step away to reset and renew. Think retreats, sabbaticals, even a long weekend where you unplug completely. These aren’t just vacations; they’re resets that allow you to see your work and life from a new vantage point.

Some of my best insights have come not at my desk but while walking a beach, hiking in the mountains, or sitting with a notebook in a café far from home. Distance changes perspective. Space on a bigger scale gives you back the wide-angle lens you lose when you’re buried in the grind.

If you can’t disappear for a week, start with a day. A “think day” where you clear your calendar, get out of your usual environment, and spend time reflecting on the big questions: Where are we heading? What’s working? What needs to change?

Protecting space without apology

Of course, making space takes courage. Our culture rewards busyness, so choosing space can feel rebellious. You may worry what others will think when you block time for reflection or decline another meeting.

Here’s the reframe: protecting space isn’t selfish; it’s stewardship. You’re not just managing your calendar — you’re managing your energy, your clarity, and the culture you model for others.

When you lead with space, you show your team that it’s not only acceptable but essential to create breathing room. And that changes everything.

The Ripple Effect

When leaders create space, the benefits don’t stop at their own clarity and calm — they ripple outward.

A leader who shows up grounded gives their team something priceless: psychological safety. When your people see you taking a breath before reacting, or watch you block time for deep work without apology, it signals that it’s safe for them to do the same. Suddenly, meetings feel less frantic. Conversations go deeper. Ideas that might have been rushed past in the chaos actually get airtime.

Space restores trust, too. When you’re not buried under busyness, you can listen — really listen — instead of mentally racing ahead to the next item on your list. That kind of attention is rare, and people can feel the difference. Teams led with presence tend to be more engaged, more innovative, and more resilient because they know their contributions matter.

And here’s the paradox: slowing down often helps organizations move faster. Space allows leaders to see patterns and problems before they escalate. It gives room for creativity, which accelerates solutions. It prevents burnout that would otherwise slow the whole system down.

Culture is contagious. If busyness spreads exhaustion, space spreads renewal. And when leaders normalize space, they’re not just improving their own leadership — they’re reshaping the culture of work for everyone in their orbit.

Conclusion: The Gift You Can Choose

Busyness will always be there, tugging at your sleeve, promising that if you just do more, you’ll finally feel enough. But the real gift of leadership isn’t in cramming your days full. It’s in making space.

Space is where clarity surfaces. Space is where energy renews. Space is where your authentic leadership — the kind that people remember and trust — finally has room to breathe.

The good news? You don’t have to wait for a perfect moment to claim it. You can begin today, with one pause, one breath, one block of time you protect like it matters — because it does.

So here’s the invitation: this week, create one pocket of space. Notice what shifts in you and in those around you. You may discover that in giving yourself room, you’ve given your leadership its greatest strength.

Stop Performing, Start Integrating: A New Way to Lead

There’s a moment in nearly every leader’s life when the outside doesn’t match the inside. On paper, you’re checking all the boxes. Your performance is solid, maybe even exceptional. You’re responsive, polished, quick on your feet. You’ve learned how to carry the weight of expectations with a steady smile. And yet, beneath the surface, something doesn’t line up.

I call it the ache.

The ache is that quiet tug in the body, the restless dissonance you feel when the version of yourself the world rewards doesn’t match the truth you carry inside. It doesn’t roar; it whispers. And for a long time, I ignored it. I mistook it for stress, or fatigue, or just the cost of being a high-achieving professional in a demanding world. But over time, I realized the ache wasn’t a flaw to be fixed. It was a compass.

Looking back, I see how hard I worked to outperform the ache. I believed that if I just rehearsed more thoroughly, prepared every possible scenario, smiled a little brighter, polished a little harder, I’d finally feel the alignment I craved. But performance never brought peace. It only deepened the fracture.

The truth is, most leadership models were designed inside the very systems that create the ache in the first place. They emphasize productivity over presence, polish over honesty, endurance over wholeness. They train us to wear resilience like armor and call it success.

For years, I lived inside that paradigm. And for years, I grew more tired, more restless, more disconnected from myself. The ache became my teacher. It pointed me toward a different kind of leadership—one not built on performance, but on integration.

That’s where the Integration Compass was born.

The Integration Compass doesn’t promise to map every step of the journey. Instead, it orients you. It reminds you where true north lies when the landscape of leadership feels confusing or overwhelming. Its four quadrants—Presence, Power, Purpose, and Alignment—offer simple, repeatable moves you can make in real time, in real rooms, with real stakes. They are not performance hacks. They are un-performance practices.

And that distinction matters. Because while performance fractures us—splitting who we are from who we think we need to be—integration restores us. It brings the whole self back into the room.

This blog is my invitation to you: to stop performing, and start integrating. To notice the ache, not as a weakness, but as your own internal compass pointing toward a truer way forward.

Section 1: Why the Ache Matters

The ache is not imaginary. It is the body’s way of signaling misalignment. Leaders feel it when they’re praised for their output but unseen for their humanity. It shows up as the tightness in your chest before a meeting where you know you’ll have to edit yourself. It’s the exhaustion that lingers after delivering a flawless presentation, because even as you were winning the room, you were abandoning yourself.

The ache reveals itself in different ways:

• Over-preparation. You rehearse every answer until your confidence is brittle, shattered by a single unexpected question.

• Endless availability. You believe being indispensable is the only way to belong, so you stretch yourself thin, available to everyone but yourself.

• The mask of certainty. You pretend to know when you don’t, because admitting uncertainty feels dangerous in systems that punish vulnerability.

Why does this matter now? Because we are living through a leadership crisis. Burnout is everywhere. Disillusionment is spreading. The demand to “do more with less” has stretched leaders past endurance. The old models—built to optimize performance in fractured systems—are collapsing under their own weight.

And for those who have always had to navigate leadership while shrinking parts of themselves—women, people of color, LGBTQ+ leaders, and other historically marginalized groups—the ache is not new. It is familiar. It is the cost of belonging in spaces that were not designed for wholeness.

This is why we need a new compass. One that doesn’t teach us to survive misalignment, but to return to integrity. One that doesn’t reward performance, but restores presence.

Section 2: The Integration Compass

The Integration Compass is built on four quadrants: Presence, Power, Purpose, and Alignment. Each quadrant comes with a simple, signature practice that helps leaders return to themselves when the ache flares.

Presence – The Reset

Presence means actually being here, in the moment you’re in, not racing ahead to rehearse or lingering behind to replay. It sounds simple, but in practice it’s often the first thing we abandon when the stakes rise.

Signature Practice: The Presence Reset
Before responding in a meeting, pause for one breath. Ask: Am I speaking from clarity or from fear of being misperceived?

That pause isn’t symbolic. One intentional breath tells your nervous system it is safe. Safety creates the conditions for clarity. And clarity is what gives presence its power.

Presence is not about delivering perfect lines. It’s about showing up as yourself. And when you do, the whole room feels the difference.

Power – The Root

Power, in this framework, is not dominance. It’s not the loudest voice or the highest title. It’s rootedness—the kind of authority that comes when you know you belong without having to prove it.

Signature Practice: Power Rooting
When self-doubt rises, press your feet firmly into the floor and silently repeat: I am already grounded.

This isn’t woo. It’s physiology. Pressing your feet engages the largest muscles in your body, signaling stability. Your nervous system steadies. You stop flailing and start rooting.

Performance power is brittle. Rooted power is resilient. It doesn’t need to impress; it simply is.

Purpose – The Filter

Purpose is the compass point that helps us discern between what is urgent and what actually matters.

Signature Practice: The Purpose Filter
At the end of the day, ask: Did I choose urgency, or did I choose what matters?

Most of us live in urgency, answering emails at midnight, racing to meet arbitrary deadlines, letting noise consume our energy. Purpose calls us back to what is meaningful. It reminds us that leadership is not about doing more, but about doing what matters most.

Alignment – The Check

Alignment is wholeness. It is the integration of presence, power, and purpose into choices that reflect your true self.

Signature Practice: The Alignment Check
At the end of each week, write down one choice you made from wholeness. Over time, those notes create a record of integrity.

Alignment isn’t about perfection. It’s about pattern. The more you practice returning to yourself, the more natural it becomes.

Section 3: Micro-Acts of Courage

The Compass lives in the big picture, but its power is felt in the smallest acts. I call them Micro-Acts of Courage—tiny, repeatable moves that interrupt performance in real time.

Examples:

• You pause before hitting “send” on an email and ask: Does this reflect clarity or anxiety?

• You take one breath before answering a difficult question, giving yourself space to respond from presence.

• You end your week by noting one choice that came from wholeness.

These moments don’t require fanfare. No one else may even notice. But they matter because they disrupt the reflex to perform. They return you to yourself.

Grand gestures can inspire, but it’s the micro-acts that transform. They build the muscle of integration one choice at a time.

Section 4: A Story of Shift

I once sat in a high-stakes strategy meeting where urgency filled the room. Voices overlapped. People rushed to prove their points. The air felt heavy with competition. My reflex was to match the speed—speak faster, jump in, prove I belonged.

Instead, I paused. One full breath.

When I spoke, my cadence slowed. My voice grounded. The room shifted. People leaned in, not because my words were flawless, but because presence has a frequency. It steadies the space around it.

That moment taught me something performance never could: clarity is contagious. Rootedness ripples outward. Presence changes the room.

Closing

Leadership doesn’t need more polish. It doesn’t need more endurance. It needs more wholeness.

The ache you feel is not failure—it’s an invitation. It’s your body reminding you to stop performing and start integrating. To return to presence. To root into power. To filter through purpose. To check for alignment.

You don’t have to overhaul your life overnight. Start small. Choose one practice this week:

• Pause for one breath before responding.

• Press your feet into the floor when doubt rises.

• Ask at day’s end: urgency or what matters?

• Note one choice from wholeness.

These micro-acts will add up. They will reorient you, even in the messiness of leadership.

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Breaking Scripts I Didn’t Write

There’s a strange moment of realization when you look at the path you’re on and think, Wait. Who wrote this story? Because it doesn’t sound like me.

For a long time, I thought I was following my own script. I had the lines memorized, the cues down, the gestures polished. But somewhere along the way, I slipped into a role that had been written for me—or worse, a role no one actually wrote at all. It was cobbled together from expectations, “shoulds,” and the invisible pull to do things the way they’ve always been done.

The problem with those scripts is they don’t leave much room for your own voice. They keep you busy performing, but not alive creating.

This past week, I caught myself mid-performance. I was gearing up to do something big, something that looked shiny and impressive on the outside, but when I stopped to listen in, my gut said: This isn’t mine. I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t aligned. I was just… following.

So I set the script down. And here’s the wild part: the sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t stop spinning. What did happen was a deep exhale, the kind that comes when you step back into your own story.

Breaking the script doesn’t always mean walking away. Sometimes it means rewriting. Sometimes it means flipping a single line so it finally sounds like you. Sometimes it means refusing the part altogether.

But every time, it means remembering this: your voice belongs in your story.

This week, I’m practicing that question with everything on my plate: Am I doing this because I choose it, or because I think I’m supposed to?

And if it’s the second one? That’s my cue to pick up the pen and start rewriting.

Where the Scripts Come From

Scripts don’t fall out of the sky. They are built, piece by piece, from the world around us. Some are handed down directly, like family expectations: This is what women in our family do. This is what success looks like. This is how you behave in public. Others are absorbed quietly, through observation and repetition. We see leaders praised for being loud, polished, and always “on,” and somewhere in us we decide, That must be the way.

And then there are the scripts no one talks about, but everyone feels. The ones built from cultural norms, institutional traditions, or the subtle but constant weight of “should.” You should want the big stage. You should chase the title. You should sacrifice for the job, no matter what it costs you.

When you’re young, these scripts feel like safety. They give you structure. They give you an outline for how to move through the world. And for a while, they even help. They give you lines when you don’t know what to say, a character to play when you’re not sure who you are.

But if you stay in them too long, the safety becomes a cage.

The trouble is, most of us don’t notice when the cage door clicks shut. It happens quietly. A promotion here, a “yes” to something you didn’t really want there, an unspoken rule you’ve learned not to break. One day you wake up and realize you’re living a story that feels polished but hollow.

I’ve been there. Many times.

And each time, I’ve had to ask myself the same hard question: Am I choosing this role, or am I just playing it because it was written for me?

The Cost of Following Scripts

The cost of living by someone else’s script isn’t always dramatic. It’s not always a breakdown or a blow-up. Sometimes it’s quieter. It shows up as exhaustion that doesn’t go away, no matter how much you sleep. It looks like achievements that should make you proud, but leave you feeling empty. It feels like the constant, nagging question: Why doesn’t this feel better?

There is an emotional cost: the disconnection from yourself. When you’re constantly performing, you lose track of what your own voice even sounds like. You start confusing applause for alignment.

There is a physical cost too: burnout. Your body keeps the score, even when your mind insists you’re fine. I’ve lived through the headaches, the sleepless nights, the stress that settles in your shoulders until you can barely breathe.

And then there’s the cost that’s harder to measure but maybe the most devastating: the opportunities you never see because you’re too busy following the script. When you’re locked into lines you didn’t write, you don’t leave space for improvisation, for serendipity, for the things that might have lit you up if only you’d had your head up long enough to notice them.

I remember one moment vividly. I had been preparing for a keynote that, on paper, sounded like an incredible opportunity. Big stage. Big audience. Big visibility. It was the kind of thing most people would leap at. And I almost did.

But then I paused. I sat with it. And what came up wasn’t excitement. It was dread. My body tightened. My chest felt heavy. This wasn’t my moment. It wasn’t my stage. It was just a script I thought I was supposed to follow, because “that’s what leaders do.”

So I put it down.

The relief was instant. The script wasn’t mine, and I finally stopped pretending it was.

Breaking and Rewriting

Breaking a script doesn’t always mean tearing it up and walking away. Sometimes it means editing. Sometimes it means rewriting entire scenes. And sometimes, yes, it means stepping off stage entirely and walking out the side door.

For me, breaking scripts has looked like:

• Saying no to things that look impressive but don’t align with who I am.

• Choosing to celebrate my birthday quietly with my family instead of trying to squeeze in one more obligation.

• Redefining leadership as something rooted in presence and wholeness, not performance and perfection.

• Asking simple, grounding questions before I commit: Do I want this? Does this align with my values? Or does this just look good on paper?

That one question—choose it, or supposed to—has become my compass. If I can’t answer “choose it” with a full-bodied yes, I know I need to pause.

The beautiful part is that rewriting doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be as small as changing a meeting agenda so everyone gets a voice, or deciding you won’t answer emails after a certain time, or giving yourself permission to leave a party early.

It can also be as big as walking away from an entire path that no longer fits.

I’ve done both. And each time, the freedom I’ve found is worth the fear.

Because here’s the truth: the world doesn’t need more perfect performances. The world needs more leaders willing to show up as themselves, unscripted, real, and present.

The Power of Owning Your Story

When you break a script, you don’t just free yourself. You give permission to everyone watching you.

I’ve seen it in my own teams. When I show up and admit, “This isn’t working for me, and here’s what I’m changing,” it opens the door for others to do the same. When I share that I’m nervous about something or that I don’t have all the answers, it gives them space to be honest too.

Authenticity isn’t just a personal win—it’s contagious.

And let’s be clear: authenticity doesn’t mean chaos. It doesn’t mean throwing out structure or ignoring discipline. It means that the structure serves you, not the other way around. It means the script is one you wrote, not one that was forced into your hands.

The most powerful leaders I know aren’t the ones who stick to the script flawlessly. They’re the ones who know when to put the script down and improvise.

Closing Reflection

Breaking scripts is not a one-time event. It’s a lifelong practice. Because the truth is, new scripts will always try to sneak in. Expectations will always pile up. “Shoulds” will always whisper in the background.

The practice is in noticing. In pausing. In asking: Am I choosing this, or am I just performing it?

When I remember to ask, I find my center again. I hear my own voice again. And I remember the most important truth of all: my voice belongs in my story.

Yours does too.

So here’s the question I’ll leave you with: What script are you ready to break?

The Cost of Always Being On

Last Saturday, I did something unusual for me: I stopped.

I didn’t mean to. It just happened. The day unfolded with no big agenda. I met a friend at the dog park in the morning. I came home and napped in the afternoon. That evening, my husband and I went to see a scary movie — The Conjuring: Last Rites — where I clutched his hand through every jump scare and let out one very real, very loud scream. Later, I poured a bourbon, settled onto the deck, and listened to Norah Jones while the sky faded from blue to black.

It sounds ordinary. And maybe that’s the point. It was one of the best days I’ve had in months.

Always On, Always Available

The truth is, most of us are always on. For me, it’s a natural side effect of being a CIO. There’s always another meeting, another decision, another email demanding attention. Even when the calendar ends, my mind doesn’t. It runs in the background, like an app I forgot to close.

Maybe you know that feeling. Your title might not be “Vice President,” but you’re the person people rely on. You carry invisible weight. You’re the one who gets the text, the call, the “quick question” that really isn’t.

At some point, “available” starts to blur into “exhausted.”

The Value of Pausing

Here’s the irony: presence doesn’t come from being always available. It comes from pausing. That Saturday reminded me that the quiet moments are the ones that refill the well.

Being fully present with a friend at the dog park meant I wasn’t half-scrolling through email. Screaming in a movie theater (loud enough to make my husband laugh) meant I wasn’t trapped in a running mental checklist. Sitting on the deck with bourbon, dogs at my feet, and music in the background gave me something a full week of productivity never does: peace.

Why It Matters in Leadership

In leadership, we like to glorify “hustle.” We tell ourselves presence means showing up to every meeting, responding quickly, stretching our calendars tighter. But I’ve learned — sometimes the hard way — that people don’t remember how fast you replied to their email. They remember if you looked them in the eye and actually listened.

We can’t do that if we’re depleted. We can’t bring clarity if our heads are clouded. Leadership presence doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from knowing when to stop.

The Practice of Stopping

Stopping doesn’t happen by accident very often. It usually takes intention. That’s the hard part.

So here’s what I’m experimenting with:

• Micro-pauses. A walk outside between meetings, five minutes with no phone, a deep breath before answering.

• Clear boundaries. Reminding myself (and others) that email isn’t a fire alarm. It can wait.

• Simple joys. A scary movie. A bourbon on the deck. A nap without guilt.

These aren’t luxuries. They’re fuel. Without them, the cost of being always on shows up as stress, irritability, and missed opportunities to connect. With them, I lead better, think clearer, and actually enjoy the work more.

Your Turn

Here’s my invitation: notice one place this week where you could stop. Not forever, not dramatically. Just for a moment.

Turn off the notifications. Take a walk without your phone. Close your laptop at a reasonable hour. Pour something into a glass and sit on your deck or couch without an agenda.

See what happens when you’re not “on.”

You might just find, like I did, that presence isn’t about availability. It’s about attention. And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can give your work — and yourself — is the gift of stopping.

The Cost of Saying Yes: Why Leadership Requires Aligned Boundaries

I used to think saying yes made me valuable.

Yes to the extra project. Yes to the late-night email. Yes to the request that came five minutes before I was supposed to walk out the door. Each yes was a way of proving I was dependable, capable, the kind of leader who could carry anything. And for a while, it worked. I was praised for being calm under pressure, for always coming through, for never wavering.

But beneath the applause, something quieter was happening. I was unraveling.

I didn’t see it clearly until I started noticing the ache — that restless hum in my chest that showed up in the quiet moments. It whispered in the commute when my jaw ached from clenching. It hummed in the middle of performance reviews when praise felt disconnected from who I actually was. It roared the night I missed my daughter’s school performance for a last-minute meeting, and she asked me if I’d seen her wave from the stage.

The ache wasn’t weakness. It was direction.

The Myth of Yes

We live in a culture that rewards leaders for saying yes. Yes signals commitment. Yes shows you’re a team player. Yes proves you can be counted on. The problem? That myth is expensive.

Every yes costs something. Sometimes it costs time with family. Sometimes it costs sleep. Sometimes it costs your own clarity, traded for the noise of urgency. And the more we say yes reflexively, the more we erode the very presence we’re supposed to bring to leadership.

I thought yes was proof of my worth. What it really was? Evidence of my erosion.

The Hidden Cost

Yes isn’t neutral. It carries weight.

When we overextend, the cost shows up in our bodies — the clenched jaw, the shallow breath, the exhaustion that sleep can’t fix. It shows up in our relationships — being physically present but emotionally absent. And it shows up in our leadership — decisions made from depletion, not clarity.

A yes made from fear or proving is rarely aligned. It might look good on paper, but it fractures us inside.

The Shift

Leadership isn’t about collecting yeses. It’s about protecting alignment.

That shift came to me slowly. First in exhaustion, then in resentment, then in the quiet realization that the people I loved most were often getting the fragments of me left over. I had to decide: was I going to keep saying yes until I disappeared? Or was I going to start leading from presence instead of performance?

Boundaries became the way back. Not as walls to keep people out, but as anchors to keep me whole.

Three Practices for Aligned Boundaries

1. The Presence Reset
Before saying yes, pause for one breath. Ask: Am I agreeing from clarity, or from fear of being misperceived? That pause interrupts the reflex to perform and brings you back to yourself.

2. The Purpose Filter
At the end of the day, ask: Did I choose urgency, or did I choose what truly matters? This simple filter reveals whether your energy is building something meaningful or just feeding someone else’s noise.

3. The Alignment Check
Each week, name one decision you made from wholeness. Maybe it was saying no to a request that stretched you too thin. Maybe it was protecting time with family. Naming aligned choices builds integrity into habit.

Boundaries Are Leadership

We don’t talk enough about boundaries as leadership skills. But they are. Boundaries signal to your team that sustainability matters more than optics. They show that rest isn’t weakness, that presence is more valuable than performance, that alignment produces better results than endless proving.

Every leader I’ve coached eventually comes to this realization: boundaries don’t make you less of a leader. They make you more trustworthy. Because people can feel when your yes is clean — and when it’s costing you too much.

The Call to Reflection

This week, I want to invite you to notice your yeses. Not just the ones you said, but the ones that lingered heavy afterward. Ask yourself:

• Did that yes align with my values?

• Did it deepen me, or did it deplete me?

• What boundary could protect me next time?

Because here’s the truth: every yes has a price. Make sure it’s not yourself footing the bill.

Presence Over Performance

We live in a culture that rewards performance—polished presentations, quick answers, the appearance of fearlessness. But lately, I’ve been noticing something different: the leaders who actually shift rooms don’t do it with polish. They do it with presence.

This week, I’ve been sitting with the difference between performance and attentiveness, force and steady strength, and what it means to choose presence instead of polish.

This morning, with my coffee in hand, I sat on the deck and realized how much of leadership, and life, comes down to presence. Not the polished kind we perform, but the steady, grounded kind that actually changes the room.

Lately I’ve been noticing the difference between two ways of engaging: study and reflection. Study is about understanding. Reflection is about being shaped. Both matter. But it’s the combination, the weaving together of thought and attention, that actually transforms how we live and lead.

That idea struck me again in a story I revisited recently. What stood out wasn’t fearlessness or bold declarations. It was attentiveness. The quiet willingness to listen, notice, and respond. That attentiveness led to obedience, not obedience in the sense of blind compliance, but in the sense of alignment. A readiness to act on what you know is right, even when it disrupts your plans or takes you somewhere unfamiliar.

And here’s what I realized: obedience and attentiveness are two sides of presence.

The Pull Toward Performance

So much of leadership culture trains us to perform. We measure success in polished presentations, quick answers, the ability to appear confident even when we’re crumbling inside. We rehearse our tone, soften our edges, and calculate how our words will land before we even open our mouths.

It works, for a while. Performance buys us access. It earns us praise. People admire our composure and our polish. But there’s a cost.

Inside, it hollows us out. Because what the world rewards is often the mask, not the whole person. And when you’re constantly rewarded for the mask, it becomes harder to remember who you are underneath it.

I’ve lived this. The quiet ache of leaving pieces of myself outside the room. The fatigue of bracing before meetings. The dissonance of being praised for qualities that were really just self-suppression.

Performance isn’t presence. It’s a substitute. And it keeps us from the deeper strength we actually need.

Attentiveness as Strength

The leaders who shape me most aren’t the loudest or the most polished. They’re the ones who are deeply attentive. They notice what others miss. They adjust when the obvious path feels wrong. They hold steady when everyone else is spiraling.

That’s what I saw in the story I sat with this morning: strength as attentiveness. A man who listened to direction and changed course, even when it meant uprooting everything. Wise travelers who followed a sign others ignored, then refused to go back the way they came. Their impact didn’t come from force—it came from paying attention and responding.

That’s the kind of strength leadership actually demands. Not force. Not performance. Not fearlessness. Attentiveness.

Fear and Redirection

Here’s what really resonates: even the most attentive leaders get afraid. Fear isn’t a flaw, it’s part of being human. The question isn’t whether we feel fear, but what happens next.

The story reminded me of a man who was afraid to return to where he’d come from. His fear wasn’t ignored or shamed. Instead, he was redirected. Guided to another path.

That’s leadership too. Sometimes fear signals danger. Sometimes it’s a cue to pay attention, to pause before moving forward. And often, it leads to redirection—not giving up, but finding another way that’s safer, wiser, more sustainable.

In my own life, some of the best decisions I’ve made came when fear stopped me long enough to consider another route. The redirection didn’t feel like failure. It felt like protection.

That’s a truth I want to carry with me in leadership: fear isn’t the end of the story. It can be the doorway to another path.

Integration: Presence Over Performance

All of this—attentiveness, obedience, redirection—comes back to integration.

In Lead Like You Mean It, I talk about the Integration Compass: Presence, Power, Purpose, Alignment. It’s my framework for leading whole, instead of fractured. And the themes I noticed this morning fit squarely into that compass.

• Presence is choosing attentiveness over performance. Being here, in this moment, instead of rehearsing or rehashing.

• Power is the rooted kind that doesn’t need to force or prove. It’s steady enough to shift a room simply by slowing it down.

• Purpose is the filter that helps us decide when to say yes, when to redirect, and when to release. Fear sometimes reminds us to check our purpose again.

• Alignment is what happens when presence, power, and purpose come together. It’s not about being fearless. It’s about being whole enough to act from clarity instead of fracture.

When I think about leadership this way, the question shifts. It’s no longer: How do I perform well enough to belong? It becomes: How do I embody attentiveness, rootedness, clarity, and alignment—even in fear?

What This Looks Like in Practice

It’s one thing to write about these themes. It’s another to practice them in the real world of meetings, deadlines, and expectations.

Here’s where I’m trying to practice:

• Before responding in a meeting, I take one breath. A pause to notice: am I speaking from clarity or fear of being misperceived? That one breath slows me down just enough to stay present.

• When fear rises, I don’t bulldoze through it. I ask if there’s another route. Sometimes redirection is wiser than pushing ahead.

• When urgency screams, I run it through the Purpose Filter: Is this urgent because it matters, or because it’s loud? That question keeps me from spending energy on noise.

• At week’s end, I note one moment I chose alignment—one decision that felt whole instead of fractured. Naming it helps me see the pattern and strengthens it.

These are small practices, but they shift the texture of my days. They remind me that leadership isn’t about force or perfection. It’s about presence.

Why This Matters Now

We are living in a time when leaders are burning out, leaving roles, or staying but feeling fractured. The pressure to perform is everywhere—emails polished to sound agreeable, meetings rushed for speed, decisions made to prove competence instead of embody clarity.

But performance is exhausting. What we need isn’t more polish. It’s more presence.

Presence over performance. Attentiveness over fearlessness. Strength as steady rootedness, not force.

When leaders embody this, rooms shift. People feel safer to be real. Teams focus on what matters instead of spinning in noise. Cultures slowly bend toward clarity and alignment.

That’s why this matters. Because presence doesn’t just change us—it changes the spaces we lead.

Reflection Questions

As you step into your own day, consider:

• Where are you tempted to perform instead of being present?

• What fear might actually be an invitation to redirection?

• How could steady attentiveness serve you and those around you better than force?

Closing

The more I study, reflect, and live these themes, the more I’m convinced: leadership isn’t about being louder, faster, or more fearless. It’s about being rooted enough to listen, steady enough to respond, and whole enough to stop performing.

Presence over performance. That’s the strength that lasts.

The Frequency of Presence

We’ve been taught that leadership is about having the right words, the polished delivery, the confident smile that makes people lean in. But anyone who’s been in a room where the energy suddenly shifted knows the truth: presence has a frequency. People feel it.

And the irony? Most of us are so busy performing leadership that we miss the chance to actually embody it.

Performance vs. Presence

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat in a meeting with my mind racing two steps ahead—rehearsing responses, adjusting tone before I even spoke, calculating how my words would land. On the outside, I looked composed. On the inside, I was performing a version of leadership that wasn’t rooted in me at all.

That’s what performance does. It pulls you out of the moment and into the role. You nod, you smile, you deliver your lines. But you’re not really there.

Presence is different. Presence doesn’t rely on polish or volume. It doesn’t demand charisma or quick wit. Presence is about being so rooted in the moment, so connected to yourself, that others can feel the steadiness radiating from you. It’s clarity, embodied.

A Story: When the Room Shifted

I remember one high-stakes strategy session where urgency pressed like a weight in the air. Voices overlapped, people spoke faster and faster, and the energy of the room began to spiral. My reflex was to match the speed—to prove I could keep up, to perform the same urgency.

Instead, I paused.

One full breath. A deliberate exhale.

When I finally spoke, I slowed my cadence and grounded my voice. I didn’t have the perfect words or a dazzling argument. But the room shifted. People leaned back. Shoulders softened. Conversations began to steady.

It wasn’t what I said. It was how I said it. Presence has a frequency. People feel it.

Why Presence Matters in Leadership

Leadership cultures often reward the wrong things—speed over clarity, polish over honesty, charisma over congruence. But when you strip those things away, what people actually trust isn’t your performance. It’s your presence.

Presence is the exhale you didn’t know you were holding.
Presence is planting your feet on the ground after pacing in circles.
Presence is the moment when static clears and the signal comes through.

People may forget the exact words you said, but they remember how your energy landed. They remember if they felt safe, seen, or steady in your presence.

Why We Resist Presence

Presence feels risky because it slows things down. And slowing down can feel like weakness in a culture that worships speed.

We’re rewarded for instant replies, rapid-fire decisions, the ability to look “on” at all times. But speed fueled by fear is not leadership—it’s survival.

Presence interrupts the reflex to perform. It asks you to pause long enough to let clarity catch up to your words. It reminds you that your authority doesn’t come from how fast or polished you sound. It comes from how grounded you are when you speak.

The Science Behind the Pause

Neuroscience backs this up. A slow, deliberate inhale followed by a longer exhale signals safety to the brain. Your nervous system shifts out of survival mode and into clarity. That one intentional breath changes not just your body, but the frequency of the space around you.

It’s simple physiology—and yet, in practice, it can feel revolutionary.

The Practice: The Presence Reset

So how do you shift from performance back to presence? It doesn’t take an hour of meditation or a weeklong retreat. It takes one breath.

The Presence Reset:
Before responding in a meeting—or sending the email, or saying yes to the request—pause for one slow inhale and one longer exhale. Then ask yourself: Am I speaking from clarity, or from fear of being misperceived?

That’s it. One pause. One question.

It may seem too small to matter, but that pause disrupts the reflex to perform. It creates just enough space to bring you back to yourself. And when you come back to yourself, the room feels it too.

What Changes When You Lead from Presence

Presence doesn’t guarantee everyone will agree with you. It doesn’t erase conflict or complexity. But it does change the texture of how people experience you.

• In meetings, it shifts chaos into clarity.

• In conflict, it calms escalation without silencing truth.

• In decision-making, it roots you in values instead of urgency.

The irony is that what we’re often taught to perform—charisma, polish, quick answers—pales next to the resonance of true presence.

You don’t have to be the loudest voice in the room. You don’t have to be the most polished. You only have to be fully here.

Closing Reflection

Leadership isn’t about dazzling performances. It’s about frequency.

Presence has a frequency. People feel it.

And the most transformative leaders aren’t the ones who perform strength the best—they’re the ones who remember to return to themselves, one breath at a time.

So the next time you feel the urge to perform, try the Presence Reset. Take one intentional breath. Let your shoulders drop. Then speak—not from fear, but from clarity.

Because when you choose presence, you don’t just shift yourself. You shift the room.

The Myth of Either/Or: Why You Don’t Have to Choose Between Heart and Ambition

How many times have you been asked—explicitly or silently—to choose? Be respected or be liked. Be strategic or be soulful. Show strength or show kindness.

The myth of either/or runs deep. It whispers that leadership is a binary game and your belonging depends on picking the “right” side. But here’s the truth: the choice is false.

The Trap of False Choices

I was sitting in a conference room with a group of leaders, the kind of meeting where strategy and vision were supposed to be the focus. But the real conversation wasn’t about vision at all—it was about performance.

“Do you want to be taken seriously,” someone asked me, “or do you want to be liked?”

The question landed like a trap. Heart or ambition. Authority or authenticity. Strategy or spirit.

The truth is, I had already been choosing for years. When I softened my words to sound palatable, I chose likability over clarity. When I swallowed my instincts to follow the louder voices, I chose ambition over alignment. Every time I split myself into compartments—the “professional me” and the “real me”—I was living inside the myth that success required sacrifice of the self.

That’s the lie of either/or. It keeps us hustling for worth, shaving down our edges to fit the mold. And I believed it, until I didn’t.

Because the moment I stopped choosing between heart and ambition, I found something bigger: integration. Not either/or. Both/and. That’s when leadership started to feel like mine again.

The False Choices We Inherit

From the earliest moments we learn what it means to “lead,” most of us are handed a binary. A rigid system of opposites:

• You can be powerful, or you can be kind.

• You can be respected, or you can be warm.

• You can be strategic, or you can be spiritual.

• You can lead, or you can feel.

These rules are rarely spoken outright. They’re absorbed.

They show up in the silence after you speak with emotion. In the label “too passionate.” In the performance review that praises your competence but warns you to “watch your tone.” In the way you’re called a “natural leader”—but only if you don’t challenge what’s comfortable.

And the rules aren’t neutral. They’re written into the culture. A man who raises his voice in a meeting is passionate; a woman who does the same is “too emotional.” A father who leaves work early is responsible; a mother who does the same is “less committed.” The same behavior reads as strength for one person and weakness for another, depending on which box the culture has placed them in.

Research confirms what so many of us have felt in our bones. Studies on the likeability–competence tradeoff show that women leaders are judged on a double bind: lean into competence and you’re respected but less liked; lean into warmth and you’re liked but considered less capable. Either/or. Approval or authority. Rarely both. A 2021 McKinsey & LeanIn study found that women leaders are far more likely than men to have their judgment questioned, their tone policed, or their ideas dismissed until repeated by someone else. The message is clear: fit the binary, or pay the price.

And the cost is cumulative. It doesn’t just shape how we feel inside—it shapes who gets promoted, who gets mentored, and whose voices carry weight in the room. The either/or trap isn’t personal failure. It’s systemic design. A design that keeps wholeness out of reach and rewards fracture.

The Emotional Cost of Splitting

At first, the split is subtle. You soften your voice in meetings. You override your gut in favor of what sounds “data-driven.” You polish your answers until they’re technically correct but emotionally absent. You tell yourself you’re just being strategic. Just adjusting. Just leading smart.

But over time, the adjustments stop feeling optional. They become default. You lose track of your unfiltered voice. You stop asking what you really think. You equate your worth with how well you can contort yourself to fit the room.

The cost is real. Anxiety. Exhaustion. A hollow kind of success that shines on the outside but erodes on the inside.

The body feels it first: a jaw that aches from clenching, shoulders that never drop, a nervous system on permanent alert. The mind follows: second-guessing every email, replaying every word in a meeting, editing yourself until your voice no longer sounds like your own. And then the spirit: the slow, corrosive shame that whispers maybe you really are “too much.”

Splitting may win you a seat at the table, but the price of admission is often your wholeness. And if the table requires that cost, you have to ask: What exactly am I being invited into?

The Compass Out of the Binary

If the myth of either/or is the trap, the Integration Compass is the way out.

Where either/or tells us to choose between presence or power, clarity or compassion, strategy or soul, the Compass reminds us that integration is not only possible but practical. Each quadrant—Presence, Power, Purpose, Alignment—offers a simple practice that interrupts fracture in real time.

• Presence (Reset): Before you edit yourself out of the moment, pause for one breath. Ask: Am I speaking from clarity or fear?

• Power (Root): When proving feels safer than truth, press your feet into the floor. Remember: I am already grounded.

• Purpose (Filter): When urgency eats your day, ask: Did I choose urgency, or did I choose what matters?

• Alignment (Check): Each week, claim one decision made from wholeness. Build that record.

The Compass doesn’t erase bias or silence every critic. But it gives you a way not to fracture yourself in response to it. It’s not about being flawless. It’s about remembering who you are, again and again, in rooms that would rather you forget.

Real-Life Glimpses of Integration

Integration isn’t abstract. It shows up in small, tangible moments:

• Saying no to a project that drains you, without apology.

• Admitting “I don’t know yet” from a grounded place, instead of performing certainty.

• Speaking a hard truth and walking away steady, not spiraling.

• Protecting your bandwidth for what matters most—even if it disappoints someone else.

Each of these is a micro act of courage. And each one creates ripple effects.

Because integration isn’t only personal. It’s contagious. When you stop fracturing yourself, others feel permission to show up whole too. Your steadiness slows the room down. Your refusal to abandon yourself models a new way forward. Your ability to hold both clarity and compassion creates space for conversations that fractured leadership could never hold.

Closing Call-to-Action

You don’t have to choose between being respected and being real. Between ambition and heart. Leadership isn’t about splitting yourself in two—it’s about integrating the fullness of who you are.

So here’s my invitation: Where in your leadership are you still playing by the myth of either/or? And what would change if you chose both?