Stop Performing. Start Leading.
We’ve been sold the myth that leadership means doing it all, knowing it all, being it all. Exhausted? Overextended? Burned out? You’re not failing—you’re following the wrong script.
Random Musings - All thoughts are my own
We’ve been sold the myth that leadership means doing it all, knowing it all, being it all. Exhausted? Overextended? Burned out? You’re not failing; you’re following the wrong script.
We’ve been living in hustle culture for far too long. We’ve built systems that reward doing more in order to move up the chain, but in the process, we burn out creativity, passion, humility, and good old-fashioned humanness.
If you’re struggling, it’s not because you can’t keep up. It’s because the system is failing you.
This version of “leadership” that asks you to be everything to everyone sounds like a great idea - until you actually live it.
As a marketer in my day job, one of the first lessons you learn is this: don’t try to be everything to everyone. It waters down your impact. So why are we still telling leaders to do exactly that?
I’m tired of watching great leaders leave organizations and not because they lack talent or commitment, but because they’re burned out, disconnected, or trying to “find themselves.” When in reality, it’s the system that needs to change—not the leader.
Our cultural lens is so fixated on hustle and doing more with less that we’ve become numb to it. We choose hustle over human. Productivity over receptivity. Work over presence. Responding over listening.
It’s an epidemic and our AI-everything world isn’t helping.
I’m not anti-AI. But this idea that because we have AI, leaders should be able to move faster, take on more, and carry even heavier loads? That’s dangerous. AI is accelerating a leadership model that was already broken.
Last summer, I was asked to give a presentation on Marketing and AI. I had a really hard time with it. I thought I had writer’s block until I realized it wasn’t writer’s block at all. It was a philosophical block.
I was already exhausted by the AI hype.
Everyone was talking about AI and technology, AI and jobs, AI and the economy. But almost no one was talking about AI and leadership and about what it means to lead humans in an AI-driven world.
What happens when technology accelerates a system that’s already burning people out?
What happens to leaders when speed increases but humanity doesn’t?
That’s the conversation I couldn’t ignore.
Then let's rewind to 2023.
After years of hustle culture and burning the candle at both ends as a mom, wife, leader, sister, constant problem-solver and layer in health challenges, COVID homeschooling, a child with systemic medical needs… I hit a wall.
Literally.
It was a normal Monday morning walk in the fall. The rug was pulled out from under me, and I fell.
That fall started a three-year journey through psychology, neuroscience, wellness, leadership systems, and my own healing. Along the way, I had a series of realizations I’m no longer willing to keep to myself.
I read self-help books now and laugh and not because the intent is bad, but because so much of the advice is cliché. Trite. It puts the burden back on individuals instead of questioning the system that broke them in the first place.
I don’t want another burned-out leader answering the Monday morning “How are you?” with a reflexive “I’m fine.”
Leaders aren’t fine.
And AI is about to put the gas on the path to not fine and fast.
But we can right this ship.
Here’s the thing: I’m not bold. I’m not loud. I’m quiet. Reserved. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch people I care about go down with a sinking ship when there is a better way.
I don’t have all the answers. But I’ve done a lot of hard work to climb out of "the system" and re-envision a way of living and leading that fits my humanity, instead of forcing myself to fit into a system that was never designed to sustain it.
I got a plaque for Christmas from a leader that I admire dearly that said “Leader” on it. I looked at it and thought, You know what? I am. So why not teach others?
A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a former employee. She thanked me, quietly and sincerely, for doing something hard: for being a human leader when she needed it most.
That moment sealed it.
I’m passionate about helping leaders redefine and rewire leadership for the AI age, not by becoming superhuman, but by becoming more human.
Let’s stop burning out the very people we need most. Let’s take back our humanity and lead from it.
