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.

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.