Before we get into it: Power Shift registration closes tomorrow
When people talk about feeling powerless, it’s rarely true. There are hidden choices they’re making every day: to speak up or stay silent. To trust their gut or ignore it. To draw a boundary or let one collapse.
We do so much of this choosing on autopilot—only to wake up one day and feel at odds with ourselves and our lives. But today is as good a day as any to get intentional about what you want and need and how you’ll pursue it, even in confusing and chaotic times.
Join us for Power Shift, our 9-week leadership program, where we do deep work to get clear on those intentions and develop skills and strategies for living them out loud. Tomorrow is the last day to register for this year’s cohort. All the details are here.
I have a coaching client who’s become her team’s Swiss Army knife.
New initiative? Line her up. Gap in coverage? Slot her in. Someone else messing up? Send her over to make it right.
She is someone everyone enjoys and trusts. Her manager knows she’ll do solid work, hit deadlines, and bring out the best in her colleagues—even the difficult ones.
Earlier in her career, maybe this felt like a good problem to have—but now she’s sagging under the weight. Her weekends are spent playing catch-up on her core responsibilities. And the work she’s most passionate about languishes on her to-do list month after month after month.
I’ve been this person. Maybe you have, too. At first, it’s thrilling. You’re proud of the respect you get. You’re honored to be seen as so helpful. But over time, it starts to feel like an expectation. Of course you’ll step in—regardless of what else is on your plate. You have to step in, actually—because you’re the only one capable of fixing things. (Hubris alert!)
And then one day you realize it’s all too much. You’re curdled with resentment watching everyone else expected to do so much less and crashing from the realization that if this cycle goes on any longer you’re going to fall apart.
Enough is enough. And today is the day my client is sitting down with her manager to call it out. (Are we sending her all our best vibes today? Yes we are!)
We’ve practiced some of the language she’ll use—and not use.
OUT:
How could you do this to me?
How could I do this to myself?
IN:
How can we make my workload more sustainable?
How can we protect time for the work that gives me energy?
Notice the “we” in both of those? It’s by design. Because this situation isn’t one person’s issue to fix—it’s a problem that needs both parties to put their brains together and come up with a game plan. And I can’t tell you how happy I am that my client, the consummate helper, is finally asking for help. It’s long overdue.
She’s a little nervous, understandably. But we both know her manager isn’t a monster. Like many leaders, she’s likely fallen into the common trap of overburdening her most engaged employees. My client is reminding herself going into that conversation that just as it’s not in her best interest to be under this much pressure, it’s also not in her manager’s best interest to have her star player burn out. They both win if this conversation goes well.
Today’s a fresh start for these two. I can’t wait to hear where it leads.
If you’ve fallen into a dysfunctional pattern with a partner at work—whether it’s a manager, a peer, or a report—maybe it’s time for you to break the cycle, too.
Ask yourself:
What’s a pattern that’s feeling unhealthy to me at work?
How am I contributing to it? How is the other party contributing?
What better future is possible for both of us if we operate differently?
Now schedule that call.
What we’re reading
Human fallibility: It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
“The world is chaos right now. Nothing feels certain. The very human reaction to this is to try to eliminate whatever uncertainty we can. But that attempt is having an unintended consequence. In an effort to provide grounding we're positioning uncertainty as an enemy to be vanquished. We're teaching our future that certainty is their goal. But with certainty comes complacency, acquiescence, and mediocrity. Great leaders, great strategies, great inventions don't come from a place of certainty.”
Some things just take time
“I’ve been maintaining Open Source projects for close to two decades now. The last startup I worked on, I spent 10 years at. That’s not because I’m particularly disciplined or virtuous. It’s because I or someone else planted something, and then I kept showing up, and eventually the thing had roots that went deeper than my enthusiasm on any given day. That’s what time does! It turns some idea or plan into a commitment and a commitment into something that can shelter and grow other people.”
Don’t prompt me like a robot
“I want less apathy in how we treat each other. The clipped messages. The meetings without eye contact or genuine interest in anyone’s weekend plans. The feedback that sounds like a code review of a person. That’s not an AI problem. That’s a human one, and it was creeping in before the tools arrived. The tools just gave us permission to stop pretending it mattered.”
Workers who fall for ‘corporate bullshit’ may be worse at their jobs, study finds
“There’s a lot of useful things about the way people in a certain company speak to each other. But it becomes problematic when that turns into nonsense that’s used for misleading purposes,” Shane Littrell, a postdoctoral researcher and cognitive psychologist at Cornell University who authored the study, said. “It’s the people that can’t tell the difference that seem to have the most problems.”
🫶 Big thanks to Lisa Woodley, Armin Ronacher, and Amelie Sirois for their thoughtful writing, and to Bridget Lawrow and Jonathan McFadden for sharing the kind of articles on LinkedIn we’re excited to pass on!