I once watched a colleague hover over the send button of an email for about 10 minutes. What was she doing? Reading it over and over. And over. I watched another colleague miss a critical launch deadline for a website because he was debating a 5 pixel difference in the size of a logo. That's an unrecognizable difference to most people. I once spent so much time obsessing over a Powerpoint document that I literally fell asleep with my laptop open and my finger on the track pad

Why people-pleasing might be sabotaging your leadership—and what to do about it.

“Maybe I’m just bored”. I hear that sentence from about 50% of my clients. They’ve been in the same job at the same organization for years. They’re good at their job. Sometimes, it’s even what a decade earlier they told everyone was their dream job.  But something’s off. They’re tired. They’re feeling annoyed by coworkers, clients, the woman in front of them at the grocery store checkout (why is she moving in slow motion?!). Is it that dry but necessary annual review they're

Last week, we talked about how women receive waaaaay more negative feedback at work than men do. This week, let’s talk about the impact of that feedback. Because as it turns out, there’s a gender gap there too. In 2024, the team at Textio asked about 450 people to share how often they’ve been described with positive and negative terms in workplace feedback. The theory is, if we remember the feedback, we’re more likely to have internalized it. Men consistently recall hearing

I don’t make a secret of the fact that I’m highly sceptical of annual performance reviews. They’re stressful, untimely, and ripe for all kinds of anxiety and mischief. The truth is most managers aren’t remotely qualified to give an effective performance evaluation. And the training to get them qualified would take much more time than most individuals and organizations are willing to invest. But that’s a topic for another blog post on another day (and I promise it’s coming). B

These days, to keep myself from doomscrolling in the evenings, I like to play a video game called Sneaky Sasquatch. Sasquatch spends his days fishing and mushroom hunting and sometimes puts in a shift as an emergency room doctor. He also has a dog who does tricks and hunts for truffles. It’s a lovely, low stakes game that makes me happy. The other evening though, I caught myself feeling guilty for feeding Sasquatch’s dog (I’ve named her Daisy) too many burgers and fries and n

Katie has a great idea. She’s vetted it with a few of her colleagues, and they agree – there’s something there, and it could be a big win...

A long time ago, in my thirties, I had the unenviable job of VP Digital at a newspaper company. It was a frustrating gig. I, along with...