SUSANNE MUELLER

Find Your Leadership FIT: What a Cup of Coffee Taught Me About the Future Workforce

2026-10-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I stopped at "Café Joyeux" in New York City for a coffee. I expected a good cup. I got an excellent one, served with a smile that felt genuine rather than rehearsed. The café employs people who are too often left outside the workforce, and the experience stayed with me long after the coffee was gone.

It also reminded me of "zum bunten Hund" in my hometown Thun (pronounced like cartoon), Switzerland, which is built on the same concept. Different country, different language, same conviction: when we include people in today’s workforce, the whole community benefits.

As we celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month, I want to look at this through the lens I know best: leadership. Because inclusion is not only an HR topic. It is a leadership question. And the answer comes down to FIT.

What I mean by Leadership FIT

When I talk about FIT, I am not talking about fitness.

I mean suitability and readiness: are you ready to lead the people, the teams and the future that are coming your way?

Leadership FIT is not something you are born with. You build it, deliberately, step by step.

That is exactly what the STEPS leadership framework from my TEDx talk is designed for. Let me walk you through it with these two cafés in mind.

S – Start
Every leadership journey begins with a decision to look honestly at who is in the room and who is not. Café Joyeux and Bunter Hund did not wait for a perfect strategy. They started. If you lead a team, ask yourself: whose talent am I not seeing, and what would change if I did?

T – Team & Training
No one becomes an inclusive leader by accident. It takes training, practice and a team that grows together. Here is the principle I coach again and again: train for the leadership you want next, and become the leader you would like to have.

• Think about the best leader you ever worked for.

• What did they do?

Now ask yourself whether you are practicing those behaviors today, or waiting for a title to give you permission.

E – Evaluation
Evaluation means honest self-assessment. What assumptions do I carry about who can do what? Where do I default to what is familiar? Great leaders examine their own thinking first. Evaluation is also where mindset gets built, because you cannot change what you refuse to see.

P – Pace
Inclusion that lasts is not a campaign. It is a rhythm. In endurance sports, the athletes who finish are not the ones who start fastest. They are the ones who find a pace they can sustain. Leadership works the same way. Build change at a pace your team can carry, and keep going one step at a time, one day at a time.

S – Success
Success as a leader is not only about numbers. It is about what you leave behind: the people who grew, the doors you opened, the culture that outlasts your tenure. Walking out of Café Joyeux, I thought: this is what success looks like when it is part of the business itself.

Building mindset and resilience for the future workforce

The workforce of tomorrow will be more diverse, more global and less predictable than the one many of us were trained to lead. Resilience will not be a nice-to-have. It will be the core leadership skill. And resilience is built the same way as any other strength: through consistent, intentional practice before you need it.

That means developing a mindset that sees difference as an asset, practicing adaptability in small daily moments, and surrounding yourself with teams that reflect the world you serve. As the African proverb reminds us: if you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk together.

Your next step and invitation:

If you are celebrating this month, don’t stop at a post or a pledge. Ask yourself three questions this week:

• Who is missing from my team, and what is one step I can take to change that?

• What leadership skill am I training for the role I want next?

• What kind of leader would I like to have, and am I being that leader today?

The next time you are in New York, stop by Café Joyeux or in Thun, Switzerland stop at zum bunten Hund. Order a coffee. Notice the smile. And ask yourself: what is my leadership FIT?

Photo: invite to visit "zum buten Hund" Thun, Switzerland

#Leadership #InclusiveLeadership #FutureOfWork #Workforce #Resilience #NDEAM #LipstickLeadership #LeadershipFIT #coffee #coffeebreak

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Told You Can't? Why a Little Defiance Might Be the Best Leadership Nudge

2026-10-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

Women start their careers in similar numbers to men, yet they gradually drop off the path to leadership.

For years, most solutions have focused on fixing women: build their confidence, sharpen their ambition, teach them to negotiate harder. A recent Wharton study, published in Organization Science, suggests something simpler.

Researchers led by PhD student Sophia Pink, together with Professor Katy Milkman and colleagues, partnered with a job site for senior executive roles. In the field study, 4,245 women saw one of two messages. The one that told them women tend to compete less than men led to over 20% more applications on the day it was shown.

Pink explains it this way: "Once you know you're not 'supposed' to do it, you want to more." The message was not about confidence. It was about seeing a stereotype and choosing to go against it.

I know that feeling from the road

People told me I could never run a marathon. I have finished 26. They told me an Ironman triathlon was out of reach, and I crossed that finish line in 2015. The "no" did not make me more confident. It made me curious about what was possible, and it gave me permission to compete with others, with men, and mostly with myself. A healthy, friendly competition at work is nothing to apologize for. Training taught me that confidence follows evidence, and evidence comes from showing up, week after week, long before anyone is watching.

A spark is not a plan

Here is the honest caveat. In the study, most of the effect showed up on the day women saw the message and faded quickly after. A spark is not a plan.

This is where Leadership FIT comes in. FIT is not about fitness.

It means suitability and readiness: are you ready for what is next? The nudge gets you to the start line. My STEPS leadership framework gets you across the finish line in business.

Start: send the application, book the conversation.

Team & Training: surround yourself with people who support you no matter what, and do the 2% of the work nobody wants to do.

Evaluation: look honestly at where you stand today.

Pacing: plan realistically, because obstacles either teach us something or tell us we are going too fast. On Kilimanjaro, the guides say pole, pole.

Success: race day is the dessert on the menu. The months of training are the meal.

For leaders and allies

Milkman and Pink suggest a habit anyone can adopt. When you see a qualified woman hesitate, remind her that men tend to apply anyway, and that she does not have to let a stereotype decide. The authors are cautious but hopeful that the mechanism could work more broadly, which is why Leadership FIT is meant for every leader and every team. Readiness is something we build together, not something anyone has to prove alone.

So here is my question for you: what will you do that feels hard, but is possible for you? Small leadership circles start this fall. Test your Leadership FIT - inquire, this is your first STEP towards success for the future.

#LipstickLeadership #LeadershipFIT #FITforWhatsNext #WomenInLeadership #futurefit #workforce #personalgrowth #leadershipdevelopment #wharton #competition

Source:

https://www.kornferry.com/insights/briefings-magazine/issue-76/help-wanted-humans

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/epdf/10.1287/orsc.2024.19563

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Showing up is not the same as showing up well

2026-10-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have stood at more start lines than I can count, in rain, in wind, and after training blocks that did not go to plan. In sport, showing up matters. But after 26 marathons, a full Ironman, and five half Ironman triathlon races, I have learned something every leader needs to hear: being present and performing at your best are two different things.

The Silent Leadership Challenge

Most managers track absenteeism because it is easy to see: an empty chair, a missed meeting, a shifted workload. Presenteeism is harder to spot. People attend, answer emails, and nod in meetings, yet their energy, focus, and creativity are running low. They are in survival mode, often because they fear letting the team down or worry about job security.

When this becomes normal, the team learns an unspoken lesson: rest is weakness, and presence matters more than people. That is how burnout and disengagement quietly spread.

Lessons From the Start Line

Rain does not cancel a race. Some mornings you begin undertrained, tired, or facing conditions you did not choose. Athletes adapt. They adjust pace, fuel differently, and set a realistic goal for the day.

Leaders face the same reality with new roles, AI disruption, and tight deadlines. The skill is not pushing harder. It is naming where you are, pacing accordingly, and knowing your own limits. Your safety and wellbeing come first, and you are the one who knows your limits.

When Your Team Runs at Different Paces

In every team, some people contribute at full stride while others slow down. A manager who watches for the tendencies will see them: quieter meetings, slower replies, the same two people carrying the load. Before labeling it a performance problem, get curious.

Sport offers a useful model. On Kilimanjaro, groups walk "pole pole," slowly slowly, and guides check in with every climber each day. Nobody is left to struggle silently, and the whole group reaches higher ground. In a relay, each runner has a role and a clear handoff. In a pace group, the goal is arriving together.

Four Moves for Managers

• Notice patterns, not single moments.

• Ask open questions such as "How are you arriving today?"

• Adjust roles and workload, the way a relay team adjusts its legs.

• Value outcomes and quality over constant presence.

Add recovery as well, as every training plan does. Breaks and boundaries make performance sustainable.

Your Next Step

Healthy teams are built on trust rather than pressure. When people can say "I need to rest today" without fear, they bring their best selves when they do show up.

Are you ready to work on your leadership skills?

My STEPS Leadership program: Find your leadership FIT for What’s NEXT turns the discipline of endurance sport into practical leadership training, step by step, one day at a time.

#LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #HealthyWorkHabits #leadershipfit #whatsnext #personalgrowth

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Finding Your Leadership FIT for the Future of the Workforce

2026-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

AI is rewriting job descriptions mid-career. Teams are more distributed, more multigenerational, and less certain than ever about what “stable” even means. And a lot of leadership development still trains people for a course that no longer exists which is a known ladder, a known org chart, a five-year plan built for a world that isn’t holding still long enough to plan for.

This is the mistake I see most often with talented, capable leaders: they respond to uncertainty by trying to plan harder. More detail, more scenarios, more contingencies. It feels responsible. But you cannot out-plan unpredictable terrain. You can only build the readiness to handle whatever terrain actually shows up.

What Endurance Sport Gets Right About Uncertainty

Before my Ironman, my coach never described exactly what race day would feel like. He couldn’t. Nobody can predict the heat, the wind, the field, or how your own body will respond at hour nine of a race that’s only just getting started. So we didn’t train for a fixed outcome. We trained for adaptability with more strength across conditions, the ability to recover mid-race, the judgment to shift pace the moment the plan stops matching reality.

That’s not a fitness lesson. It’s a leadership one. The leaders who hold up under real disruption aren’t the ones with the most detailed five-year plan they’re the ones who trained their capacity to adapt the moment the plan stops matching reality, the way a good endurance athlete changes pace mid-race without losing sight of the finish line.

Leadership FIT Is a Leadership Program, Not a Fitness Program

I want to be direct about this, because the name invites a fair question: Leadership FIT has nothing to do with physical fitness. FIT here means suitability.

Are you actually ready for the terrain ahead, the way a plan is ready for a launch or a team is ready for a transition. The endurance-sport parallel isn’t about training your body. It’s about borrowing a mindset that sport teaches especially well: readiness for real conditions beats a plan for ideal ones, every time.

This is why I built Leadership FIT around my STEPS leadership framework the same five-part structure I’ve taught from the TEDx stage:

■ Start - how you begin, and whether you’re beginning from clarity or from momentum alone

■ Team & Training - who’s around you, and whether your support structure can carry the load ahead

■ Evaluation - how honestly you assess your own readiness, not just your effort

■ Pace - whether you’re sized and paced for the distance ahead, not just the mile you’re in

■ Success - how you define it, and whether that definition still holds up under new conditions

None of these ask “are you working hard.” They ask “are you ready?” a very different, and far more useful, question when the terrain itself keeps changing.

Readiness Is a Starting Line, Not a Verdict

I built a short self-assessment around these five dimensions: ten statements, a simple five-point scale, and a clear read on where you’re FIT, where you’re developing, and where you’re still building plus one growth recommendation for whichever dimension is holding you back most. It isn’t a test you pass or fail, and it isn’t about fitness. It’s a starting line. You can’t lead well on terrain you haven’t honestly assessed, and you can’t assess it without first being honest about where you’re actually standing today.

Try This This Week:

■ Name one part of your current leadership approach that was built for a course that no longer exists.

■ Walk through the five STEPS dimensions — Start, Team & Training, Evaluation, Pace, Success — and be honest about which one is your weakest link right now.

■ Take the Leadership FIT self-assessment (coming soon) and find your actual starting line, not the one you assume you’re standing on.

The future of the workforce isn’t a fixed course any of us can fully map in advance. But you can find out, right now, how FIT you actually are to lead through it.

#LipstickLeadership #LeadershipFIT #FutureFit #GETFITin2026 #personalgrowth

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Niksen, Not Burnout: What the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing Teaches Future-Fit Leaders About Pace

2026-09-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Mountain Doesn't Reward Speed

On the slopes of Kilimanjaro, our guides repeated the same two words every morning before we set off: pole pole which is Swahili for slowly, slowly. It sounded almost like a joke the first time I heard it, standing at the base of a mountain I badly wanted to conquer quickly. But the climbers who sprinted the lower slopes were, without exception, the first to turn back and undone not by lack of fitness, but by a pace their bodies couldn't sustain once the altitude thinned the air.

Uhuru Peak didn't belong to the fastest climbers. It belonged to the ones willing to move slower than their ambition told them to.

Ask Any Athlete: You Taper Before You Peak

The same law governs endurance sport at sea level. Across 26 marathons, a full Ironman, and five half Ironman races, I've built and trusted a taper before every single race that mattered. Two or three weeks out, training volume drops. Sleep becomes sacred. The instinct to squeeze in one more hard session gets overruled by the plan, because the plan understands something the ego doesn't: performance is built during training, but it is unlocked during rest.

Skip the taper, and you arrive at the start line with tired legs and a full training log technically prepared, physiologically depleted. Somewhere between the finish line of a marathon and the boardroom, we forgot that this same law still applies.

Business Broke the Pattern and We're Still Paying for It

Business runs on an unwritten rule that almost no one questions out loud: go full speed, permanently, until something breaks. Not a sprint with a finish line in sight just constant, undifferentiated intensity, quarter after quarter, year after year. There is no tapering season built into most leaders' calendars, no pole pole built into the climb toward the next target. So the body enforces its own taper eventually, usually in the form of a burnout, a health scare, or a decision made on too little sleep and too much adrenaline.

We tend to call that person unlucky, or not resilient enough. Rarely do we question whether a system demanding permanent full speed was ever a strategy to begin with, rather than the absence of one.

Enter Niksen: A Small, Rebellious Dutch Idea

Which brings me to a word I've been sitting with lately: niksen. It's Dutch, and it means, roughly, to do nothing not resting in order to be more productive tomorrow, not mindfulness in service of focus, just idleness with no purpose attached. Sitting by a window. Listening to music without multitasking. Letting the mind wander with nowhere it needs to go.

To a Western, achievement-oriented ear, it can sound almost irresponsible. But the research behind it isn't soft. Deliberate, purposeless downtime has been linked to lower stress load, better immune function, and sharper creative problem-solving because a wandering mind keeps quietly working on the problems you thought you'd shelved. The Dutch aren't advocating for laziness. They're advocating for a rhythm that Western business culture largely stopped practicing.

Pace: The Forgotten Pillar of Leadership

In my STEPS leadership framework, Pace sits right alongside Start, Team & Training, Evaluation, and Success and in my experience coaching leaders across industries and countries, it's the pillar most often ignored. We celebrate the Start. We invest in the Team. We obsess over Evaluation and chase Success. But Pace the deliberate, unglamorous decision of how fast to move and when to stop moving at all rarely gets a strategy of its own.

A little niksen, built into a leader's week the way a taper is built into race week, isn't indulgence. It's maintenance for the instrument you're asking to perform at a high level indefinitely.

Future Fit: Training for Terrain You Can't See Yet

This is precisely the thinking behind what I've been calling Future Fit inside GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond: the idea that tomorrow's leaders need to train the way an athlete trains for an Ironman whose exact course conditions won't be known until race morning. You can't predict the wind, the heat, or the terrain so you build a foundation flexible and rested enough to meet whatever shows up. A leader who never tapers, never rests, never allows a little productive nothing, arrives at that unpredictable future already running on empty.

Sustainable pace isn't the enemy of ambition. Pole pole got people to the summit. Tapering got me to twenty-six finish lines. And niksen, in its small and quietly rebellious way, might be exactly the permission today's leaders need to build a pace that lasts longer than one good quarter.

Try This This Week

Pick one small, deliberately unproductive block of time fifteen minutes with no phone, one evening with no agenda, a walk with nowhere to be and protect it the way you'd protect a client meeting. Notice what comes up when you let your mind simply wander instead of optimize. That's niksen. That's pace. That's the beginning of Future Fit.

Ready to build a sustainable pace into your own leadership before exhaustion builds it for you?

Explore the GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond program and the STEPS leadership framework or reach out directly to talk about what a Future-Fit pace could look like for you or your team.

#LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #HealthyWorkHabits #Futurefit #workforce #growth #leadership

Photo: this picture never gets old!

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

25 Years Later: It Still Feels Like Yesterday

2026-09-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today is September 11. Twenty-five years have passed since that morning, and yet where were you when that dark day started? Everybody has a different story. And everybody still remembers. To me, it is as if it was yesterday.

My routine:

I got up and called my mum in Switzerland. Usually, I'd call her on a Sunday, not that week but I was quickly on the phone with the TV on when I saw something happening at the World Trade Towers. I told her, "I have to go to work now, I'm sure it's nothing big; all will be good." During the day, she got call after call from friends wanting to make sure my sister and I were okay.

And off I went to work. I stopped at the local coffee shop, bought my coffee to go, and told the woman there that something unusual was happening downtown. Then I headed to Columbia University. As usual, we started our day at 9am and then we were "woken up" by the tragic news, one tower falling after the other. We were shaken. A new normal started, and we didn't know, we just didn't know. There was an eerie feeling in the air. From the Columbia campus, we could see downtown. All we saw was black dust filling the sky.

My sister was studying in the U.S., so I called to make sure she knew what was happening and to stay safe. I called a few other friends to check in.

It was a Tuesday, and Tuesday was always my running night. That run was cancelled for the first time ever. The new normal had begun. And since 2001, we've had to get used to many new normals. We've had to adapt, to be flexible, to change and make the best of it, again and again.

Twenty-five years on, here's what stays with me.

That day didn't just take something from this city; it revealed something about it. In the weeks that followed, I watched neighbors become family, strangers become lifelines, and a city that's often described as tough and fast-paced show up for itself with a tenderness I'll never forget. NYC didn't just survive those dark moments. It came together, and it came back stronger.

That's the part I want to carry forward, a quarter-century later: it's not the darkness that defines a moment like this; it's what we choose to build in response to it. The reaching out. The checking in. The showing up for one another when nothing about the day makes sense.

It never changes we will never forget that day. We will always remember. It was a dark time, it was a difficult time, but together, we got through it, helping each other. Twenty-five years later, that's still the lesson worth repeating: now is the time to unite, now is the time to reach out to others, now is the time to stand up and be NYC strong.

What is your story?

#nycstrong #neverforget #25YearsLater

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

What Korn Ferry’s LA28 Deal Teaches Every Leader About Building an Olympic Team

2026-09-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

Korn Ferry has just been named a Founding Partner of the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As the Official Talent & Organizational Consulting Partner, the firm’s job is deceptively simple to state and enormously hard to execute hire, onboard, and develop the nearly 5,000-person workforce needed to deliver the Games while cultivating leaders and high-performing teams that reflect the spirit of Los Angeles and the Olympics themselves.

Korn Ferry CEO Gary D. Burnison put it well: the partnership is “all about building the culture and energy that will define the Games.” Not just filling roles. Building culture, under a two-year clock, on the world’s biggest stage.

That is Olympic Team Building and it is the exact challenge at the heart of GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond and What’s Next, the leadership program I built around athletic distances, not workout plans.

GET FIT maps leadership growth to the arc of an endurance career with 5K, 10K, Marathon, Ironman, and finally, Olympic Team Building. Each tier isn’t a fitness metaphor for its own sake. It’s a structural parallel for how leadership actually scales in difficulty and stakes.

Take the 5K. There’s no warm-up mile to hide in you go out fast or you’re already behind. Korn Ferry doesn’t have eighteen months of quiet ramp-up; the firm is already deployed across the organization with the Games under two years out. Most leaders face the same reality. You inherit a team mid-project, a reorg lands without warning, a launch date doesn’t move for your onboarding plan. In my STEPS framework, this is the S - Start - and how you open sets the tone for everything that follows.

But speed alone doesn’t win the long game. LA28’s Casey Wasserman noted that this partnership actually began nearly two years ago, with the placement of the organization’s CEO quiet groundwork long before the public announcement.

That’s not a 5K. That’s an Ironman: a race where the fastest starter rarely wins, and where roughly a year of training reshapes not just fitness but mindset and daily habits. In STEPS, this is P - Pace: planning for the long arc, not just the next quarter.

Then there’s the piece every leader eventually faces and few talk about you usually don’t get to pick your team. Korn Ferry gets to build LA28’s workforce with intention from the ground up a rare luxury. Most leaders inherit a mix of the motivated, the coasting, and the quietly checked out.

The fix isn’t complicated, even if it isn’t easy: build the Olympic team you have. Turning flat energy into momentum with something as simple as friendly competition, most people love sports, even the ones who’d never call themselves athletes and give the rest a meaningful role as supporters. Every Olympic team needs athletes and people cheering, coaching, and carrying water on the sidelines.

The workforce challenge Korn Ferry has taken on for LA28 is an extreme, highly visible version of what leaders everywhere are now facing: building high-performing, values-aligned teams quickly, under pressure, often without the luxury of hand-picking every player. AI disruption, distributed teams, and project-based hiring are making this the norm rather than the exception.

The Olympic mindset is:

• Start fast.

• Pace for the long haul

• Building your team with whoever shows up isn’t a metaphor anymore.

• It’s the operating model for the future of work.

That is what GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond for What’s NEXT exists to teach:

 It’s not fitness

 It’s leadership built one step, one distance, and one team at a time.

Ready to build your own Olympic team? The STEPS leadership framework supports your organization.

#LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #OlympicMindset #STEPSframework #LeadershipDevelopment

Source: https://www.smdp.com/korn-ferry-named-founding-partner-of-la28-olympic-games/

Build Your Olympic Team for tomorrow's workforce not Robots ....

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Start Paving, Keep Leading

2026-08-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Dolly Parton has always understood something many leaders spend a lifetime trying to learn: real influence is not about being the loudest person in the room. It is about opening doors, planting dreams, and making people feel like more is possible. Through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, she turned a simple idea into a worldwide invitation for children to dream, learn, care, and become more.

What I love most about Dolly is that her sparkle has substance. Yes, there is the music, the rhinestones, the humor, and the unforgettable style. But underneath all of that is a woman who built a legacy by staying rooted in who she is and generous with what she has. She did not wait for permission to make a difference; she started paving her own road.

That is why her quote, “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one,” feels so perfect as we look toward GET FIT in 2026 and beyond. It is not just a clever line. It is a leadership lesson. Dolly reminds us that reinvention can be practical, hopeful, colorful, and deeply personal. A new road can begin with a book, a brave choice, a fresh habit, a generous act, or one small step forward.

That spirit connects beautifully with “Get Fit in 2026 and Beyond.” Dolly shows us that getting fit is not only about the body. It is also about getting fit for purpose, service, confidence, resilience, and joy. She has modeled a kind of lifelong fitness: fit to create, fit to give, fit to laugh, fit to lead, and fit to keep going.

My STEPS leadership framework and books, Lipstick Leadership and 50 Shades of Lipstick Leadership, live in that same neighborhood of possibilities. They are about showing up with courage, color, character, and authenticity. But in this post, Dolly gets the spotlight because she makes leadership feel accessible. She proves that you can be glamorous and grounded, funny and focused, kind and unstoppable.

So maybe the invitation for GET FIT in 2026 is simple:

Pave with purpose.

Pave with books.

Pave with belief.

Pave with a little lipstick if that makes you stand taller.

Dolly’s example says we do not have to choose between sparkle and service. We can lead with both.

And because every reader loves a good Dolly-style quote they can carry into the day, here are a few to pick from:

“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”

“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are an excellent leader.”

“Smile — it increases your face value.”

“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.”

My pick? “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” Then keep leading, keep laughing, keep learning, and keep creating roads that others can walk with more hope together. RIP Dolly.

What quote speaks to you today?

#DollyParton #ImaginationLibrary #StartPavingKeepLeading #GetFit2026 #LeadershipWithHeart #LipstickLeadership #50ShadesOfLipstickLeadership #STEPSLeadership #PaveYourRoad #Beyond2026

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach now? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available to find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

82% of Us: What Imposter Syndrome Really Means for Leaders

2026-08-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

This week I sat in on a webinar with Dr. Lisa Orbe-Austin, and one statistic has stuck with me ever since: 82% of people, even high-achieving professionals, experience imposter syndrome. Not occasionally. Not only early in their careers. Eighty-two percent, including the people who have already proven, again and again, that they belong exactly where they are.

What does that mean for leaders? If you have ever stood at the edge of something big and quietly wondered whether you were actually ready for it, you are not the exception in the room. You are the majority. And that changes how we should think about the doubt itself.
I know this feeling intimately, from a very different kind of finish line. Across 26 marathons, the last week before race day always looked the same: mileage down, doubt up.

Did I train enough?
Did I fuel properly?
Did I rest enough to actually perform?

By marathon 26, I had every reason to trust myself. The questions came anyway.

My Ironman triathlon race pushed that further. It was the biggest unknown I had ever trained for, and no amount of preparation could remove every variable.

Nutrition I couldn’t fully test in advance.
Weather I couldn’t control.

A full day where anything could shift. Standing at that start line, I had no guarantee of how the day would unfold, only the readiness I had built to meet whatever came.

I felt an almost identical version of that doubt backstage before my TEDx Talk.

Will I remember everything?
Can I truly engage this audience?

I had prepared for months and knew my material cold, and the doubt showed up anyway, in the final stretch, exactly when it mattered most.

This is the pattern worth naming for leaders: imposter syndrome tends to arrive right before the moments you have worked hardest for, not because you are unprepared, but because you care about the outcome. It is not proof that you don’t belong. It is often proof that you are stretching into something that matters.

What carried me through the taper week, the unknown race, and the seconds before walking onstage was never the absence of doubt. It was preparation deep enough to trust, and a refusal to let the doubt have the final word. That is resilience, and it is a skill leaders can build deliberately rather than hope to stumble into.

GET FIT in 2026 and Beyond can support you in building exactly that kind of readiness. Not by removing the doubt, but by giving you the structure to train through it, one honest step at a time, so that when your own taper week, unknown race, or backstage moment arrives, you have already done the work that matters.

The waiting list for our fall webinars and masterclasses is open now. Now is the time to sign up and prepare for the fall season, before you’re standing at the start line wondering if you did enough.

I am not a medical doctor or a therapist. It’s all about YOUR safety. YOU know your limitations.

#LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #ImposterSyndrome #Leadership #Resilience
#coaching #personalgrowth #investment

**********
www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud’s Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach for the summer? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available — find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

GET FIT in 2026 and Beyond: Leadership Training for the Future Workforce

2026-08-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

What if getting fit in 2026 and beyond is not about running shoes, gym memberships, or another resolution that fades by February? What if it is about building the mindset, stamina, clarity, and courage leaders need for the future workforce?

GET FIT in 2026 and beyond is a leadership development program designed for professionals, teams, and organizations that want to lead with strength in a world of constant change. It uses the language of sport, endurance, recovery, coaching, and Olympic preparation to help leaders train for what comes next. No athletic experience is required. The real goal is leadership fitness.

Future-ready leaders need more than technical skills.

- They need resilience under pressure

- The ability to stay focused when conditions shift

- The discipline to keep showing up

- The emotional intelligence to build teams where people feel seen, challenged, and supported.

GET FIT in 2026 and beyond brings those capabilities together through a coaching journey that is tailored to each leader’s pace and goals.

The program offers four pathways.

 The 5KM Quick Sprint supports urgent leadership moments such as performance reviews, presentations, difficult conversations, or career decisions.

 The 10KM Comfortable Pace helps leaders build steady momentum toward promotions, confidence, executive presence, and stakeholder management.

 The Marathon Journey focuses on deeper transformation, endurance, resilience, and long-term growth.

 The Ironman Challenge is built for senior leaders and organizations ready to strengthen multiple leadership disciplines and scale capability across teams, cultures, and markets.

At the heart of GET FIT is the STEPS leadership framework:

Strategy, Team and Training, Evaluation, Pacing, and Success.

These five elements remind us that leadership is not built in one workshop or one inspirational moment. It is trained through clear goals, the right support system, honest reflection, sustainable energy, and consistent action.

The future workforce will ask more of leaders, not less. AI, global growth, changing expectations, hybrid teams, wellbeing, inclusion, and speed of execution all require leaders who can think clearly, listen deeply, adapt quickly, and recover wisely. Healthy leaders build healthier teams. Inclusive leaders build stronger teams. Prepared leaders create the conditions for people to perform at their best.

GET FIT in 2026 and beyond is an invitation to stop waiting for the perfect time.

- Choose your distance.

- Build your Olympic team.

- Put your goals on the calendar.

- Train your mindset.

- Celebrate progress.

- Keep moving forward, one step at a time, one day at a time.

Now is the time to invest in yourself and your leaders. Inquire today and sign up for the GET FIT in 2026 and Beyond leadership programs built for you, your team, and the workforce of tomorrow.

The waitlist is open. Find the program that fits your next step. The time is now, if not now, then when?

Are you ready? I am to support you along the way.

#GetFitIn2026 #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveCoaching #FutureWorkforce #LeadershipCoaching #ProfessionalDevelopment #LeadershipMindset #TeamCoaching #Resilience #InclusiveLeadership #WorkforceReadiness #ThinkLikeThePro

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud's Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach for the summer? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available — find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Leadership Has No Passport: What Sport Taught Me About Leading Across Cultures

2026-08-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

Every leadership program I've ever sat through eventually gets to the slide about "cultural competence." Frameworks, dimensions, dos and don'ts by country. Useful, maybe. But it has never once matched what actually taught me how to lead across cultures and none of those lessons happened in a classroom. They happened on a field, on a track, or holding a ball in a room full of strangers.

In India, I ran a leadership workshop for young adults where I introduced one rule: everyone touches the ball once before anyone touches it twice. Watch that rule work in a room, and you understand inclusion faster than any slide could teach it. You see exactly who has learned to hold back, and exactly what it takes to invite them forward.

Self-awareness begins the moment you notice who hasn't had their turn yet.

In Brazil, a colleague pulled me out of the office to watch the World Cup game together. There was not much shared language between us. It didn't matter. When the ball hit the net, we hugged like old friends. That's the bridge I keep coming back to in my work: when you talk about sport, everybody unites. Nobody checks your title or your accent at the stadium gate. For ninety minutes, we were simply people who cared about the same thing, together and that is exactly the feeling leadership should create, far more often than it does.

No common language is needed when talking about sports.

In Thailand, on a leadership retreat full of well-designed sessions, the moment that actually built trust wasn't on the agenda at all. A few of us went for a run before the day's schedule started. No facilitator, no framework, simply pace and breath and the honesty that shows up once nobody has the energy left to perform. We came back different with each other. I've seen this pattern again and again: put people through something physically real together, and the walls come down faster than any icebreaker manages. It's also why, to this day, meeting someone who's run the same distances or chased the same finish lines I have creates instant common ground the same shorthand trust that sport builds everywhere, in every culture.

Sports units on many levels

This is the piece I think leadership development gets backwards. We treat cultural adaptation as a set of facts to memorize, when it's really a discipline to train the same way, you'd train for a 5K or an Ironman.

That's the Swissness at the core of GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond: not perfection, but precision about what matters. Cultural awareness. Self-awareness. The discipline to keep showing up for your team, on the hard days and the easy ones. Think like the pro. Be the pro.

It's why the STEPS leadership framework with Start, Team & Training, Evaluation, Pace, Success is built like a training plan, not a theory.

And it's why Lipstick Leadership comes back, again and again, to the same idea: relationship building, supporting each other, lifting each other up. In a world moving faster every quarter, these are exactly the traits that get overlooked first and exactly the ones that separate leaders who last from leaders who burn out.

Not all leader's shoes fit right from the start. Most don't.

GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond exists to help you find the pair that does; it’s one step at a time, one day at the time.

Where has sport taught you something about people that no leadership course ever did?

And where in your own leadership are you still breaking in the wrong pair of shoes?

If you're ready to train for the kind of leadership that travels across every culture, every team, and every room you walk into, join the waiting list and find your GET FIT track.

#CulturalLeadership #GlobalLeadership #InclusiveLeadership #TrustBuilding #Swissness #LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #HealthyWorkHabits

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud's Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach for the summer? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available — find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Most Leaders Think They're Self-Aware. The Research Says Otherwise.

2026-07-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

Ask any senior leader if they're self-aware, and nearly all of them will say yes. Ask the research, and a very different picture emerges.

Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich studied close to 5,000 people and found that only a small percentage are genuinely self-aware, even though the overwhelming majority believe they are.

In a separate study of more than 3,600 executives, she found that the more senior someone became, the worse their self-assessment tended to be. They overrated themselves on nearly every skill researcher measured, and the more experience they had, the less accurate they were.

It's not vanity. It's math. The higher you climb, the fewer people are willing to tell you the truth. Power doesn't just change what other people say to you, it changes what you're willing to ask yourself. Leaders end up with mountains of data about their business and almost nothing honest about themselves.

The cost of that gap is bigger than most leaders realize. A recent McKinsey survey of more than 10,000 executives found that leaders who reflect regularly are nearly twice as confident their organizations can adapt to change. They have clearer visibility into their organization's must-win battles. They're more attuned to outside threats. And, this is the part that should get every executive's attention, they move faster, not slower, on the biggest disruptions facing their companies, including AI adoption.

Reflection isn't the opposite of speed. It's what makes speed sustainable.

So why doesn't more of it happen? Nearly half of the leaders in that same survey say they're simply too buried in meetings and daily demands to make room for it. That's a real constraint, but it's not a permanent one. It's a design problem: how meetings run, how feedback travels upward, how mistakes get discussed, and design problems can be solved.

Eurich's research also points to a simple, trainable shift: the most self-aware leaders ask "what," not "why." In her analysis of hundreds of pages of reflective transcripts, "what" appeared more than a thousand times; "why" fewer than 150. "Why" tends to trap people in the past. "What" moves them toward what to do next.

This is exactly the gap GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond was built to close. It's not a fitness program, it's a leadership development program that borrows its structure from endurance sport, because building self-awareness, resilience, wellbeing, and trust works the same way training for distance does: you start honestly, you pace yourself, you evaluate what's working, and you don't do it alone. The program's five tiers, from the 5K Quick Sprint through the Ironman Challenge and Olympic Team Building, walk leaders through that exact progression, grounded in my STEPS framework: Start, Team & Training, Evaluation, Pace, Success.

The leaders who break the self-awareness pattern don't do it by accident. They build the habit deliberately, and they build it with people around them who'll tell them the truth.

The waitlist for GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond is open now, with live webinars launching this fall. If self-awareness is the edge every leader claims to have and few actually build, this is where you go build it for real. Join the waitlist, today.

What or why?

I am not a medical doctor nor a therapist; I am an executive coach with you on your journey. It's all about YOUR safety. YOU know your limitations.

#LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #SelfAwareLeadership #ExecutiveCoaching #HealthyWorkHabits #personaldevelopment #purpose #investment #goals #strategy #sei

Research:

Eurich HBR article: Tasha Eurich, "What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)," Harvard Business Review, January 4, 2018.

https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it

McKinsey survey:
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-state-of-organizations

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud's Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach for the summer? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available — find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

What a Podcast of the Year Nomination Taught Me About Leading Through AI

2026-07-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I stood in a room in Seattle as a finalist for Women in Cloud's Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, for Take it from the Ironwoman. The award mattered far less than the amazing room did. I was surrounded by senior women executives from technology, government, and digital finance across the world. These are the women building the future of AI and leadership without an ounce of fear about being replaced by it. That gathering, alongside the ICONIC Leadership workshop that followed the next day, gave language to something I've been building all year inside GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond: leadership for the future.

What struck me most in that room was how consistently the conversation returned to the same conclusion: robots will not change the world, people will. AI can process, predict, and produce at a scale none of us can match. What it cannot do is read a face across a tense negotiation, build trust one hard conversation at a time, or carry a team's sense of belonging through a difficult quarter. Empathy, curiosity, and adaptability were named again and again as the actual assets of an AI economy; not soft extras, but the load-bearing walls.

This is precisely the ground my STEPS leadership framework, born from my TEDx talk, was built to cover. Start means showing up before you feel ready, the way I did on Kilimanjaro's ridge line and the way every leader must be in the face of a technology shifting faster than any training program. Team & Training means building the ecosystem around you, because as I've said on stages for years “if you want to walk fast, walk alone, but if you want to walk far, walk together.” Endurance and Pace Yourself are the discipline of chunking an uncertain future into one manageable piece at a time, rather than sprinting at the fear or freezing in front of it. And Success, the final step, isn't the summit photo. It's the vision and the ground reality held together at once. It’s the intersection of altitude and character.

None of this is theoretical for GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond. It's the entire premise: leadership development built on endurance-athlete principles, applied now to the specific, real anxiety leaders are carrying about AI. Not resisting the technology, and not romanticizing it either but building the resilience to lead teams through it with a clear head and an open hand.

Starting in this fall, that conversation is moving beyond the page. GET FIT in 2026 will expand into live events, bringing this-leadership work into rooms the way Women in Cloud and ICONIC did for me because some of the best leadership development doesn't happen in isolation. It happens together with your eyes on the terrain ahead.

Are you ready?

#lipstickleadership #womenincloud #getfit #personaldevelopment #AI #resilience #womenleadership #womenceo #entrepreneur #takeitfromtheironwoman

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www.susannemueller.biz

Finalist for Women in Cloud's Global Prestige Awards, Podcast of the Year, 2026

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 550+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach for the summer? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available — find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Role Models: Widening the Bench

2026-07-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

This month, two of the world's most dominant athletes Jannik Sinner, fresh off his second Wimbledon title, and Erling Haaland, Norway's World Cup breakout star both said versions of the same thing: the goal isn't to be admired, it's to be good. Sinner credited his working-class parents for teaching him to be "a good person." Haaland, after a gutting quarterfinal exit, stayed behind to take photos with fans and handed credit for the run to his goalkeeper.

It's a good story. It's also, if I'm honest, the easy story because it's about men, and men are who most of us default to naming when asked for a role model.

I want to push on that default, because it matters for how we build leaders.

In 1967, a woman named Kathrine Switzer became the first to officially run the Boston Marathon with a race bib. A furious official tried to physically pull her off the course mid-stride. She finished anyway and spent the following decades fighting to get women's distance running recognized at the Olympic level at all. There was no endorsement deal waiting for her. No highlight reel. Just the work done in public, under resistance, with no guarantee it would ever be credited.

That's a different kind of role model than the ones we tend to reach for. Not "look how far they went," but "look what they endured just to be allowed to try."

The pattern repeats outside of sports. Katalin Karikó spent decades on mRNA research that was underfunded, demoted, and largely dismissed work that became the foundation of the vaccines that helped end a global pandemic. She didn't win her Nobel Prize until roughly forty years after she started. Mary Barra spent decades as a working engineer inside General Motors before becoming the first woman to lead a major global automaker. Neither of them was "role model material" by outcome in year one, or twenty. They were role models by process with the discipline of doing serious, often invisible work long before anyone was measuring it.

There's a different lesson sitting in Eileen Gu's story. This spring, Gu graduated from Stanford having spent her college years seriously exploring quantum physics before settling into international relations while also being the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history and a runway model for houses like Louis Vuitton. Nobody handed her permission to be all three. She simply refused the pressure to pick one lane, the same pressure I watch talented women in my own coaching practice apply to themselves, quietly, without anyone asking them to.

This is precisely why I built GET FIT in 2026 & Beyond as a leadership development program, not a fitness program for every gender, every industry, every career stage.

If your list of role models skews entirely toward the people who already have a microphone, that's not a personal failing. It's a structural one. Visibility and value have never been the same thing, and leadership development that only draws from the visible half of the story is incomplete by design.

Name your role models; it can be the famous ones and the ones history nearly left out. Then ask which category you draw from more often, and why.

Sinner and Haaland taught the world something about humility this month. Switzer, Karikó, and Barra taught the same lesson decades earlier, with far less applause. Widen the bench. It changes what and who you build.

Are you ready?

#LipstickLeadership #GETFITin2026 #HealthyWorkHabits #rolemodels #getfit #goals #personaldevelopment #career #leaders #investment #sinner #haaland #sport #gu #switzer #takeitfromtheironwoman

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This weeks podcast with Dr. Kruti Lehenbauer: Invisible Hand, Visible Profit: Making Economics Click with Dr. Kruti Lehenbauer, Ep. 548

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..and I will be a finalist for Empow HER Access - Global Prestige Awards 2026 "Podcast of the Year" Women in Cloud #empowerheraccess #wic

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www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 450+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Need a coach for the summer? Work with me 1:1 or Group Coaching available — find your superpower.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World: GET FIT in 2026 and Beyond as a Leadership Program

2026-07-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

What if saving the world did not begin with a grand gesture, but with a glass of water, a walking meeting, a lights-out habit, and a leader who models energy instead of exhaustion?

The United Nations’ Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World reminds us that meaningful change starts with simple daily choices, from reducing waste to using less energy and living more consciously. That same principle applies to leadership in GET FIT in 2026 and beyond: the future will belong to leaders who build sustainable performance, not just short-term output.

GET FIT in 2026 and beyond is no longer a personal side project. It is becoming a leadership discipline. In a world shaped by AI acceleration, rising stress, and constant change, workplace wellbeing is increasingly tied to resilience, readiness, and performance.

The strongest leadership programs are moving beyond inspirational posters and one-off wellness perks. They are integrating recovery, movement, mental clarity, and healthier work habits into the culture itself.

In other words, GET FIT in 2026 and beyond is not about looking the part. It is about having the stamina, focus, and emotional steadiness to lead well and help others do the same.

Why a “GET FIT in 2026 and beyond” mindset matters for leaders

Teams rarely do what leaders say for long; they do what leaders normalize. When leaders protect time for movement, take recovery seriously, walk instead of always sitting, and create space for healthier routines, they send a powerful message:

Performance and Wellbeing are not opposites. They are partners. A leader who is grounded, energized, and consistent sets the tone for a team that can sustain effort without burning out.

That is where the lazy person’s philosophy becomes surprisingly powerful. It is not about doing less that matters less. It is about making the right small actions easier to repeat.

Leaders can borrow this logic and build a practical fitness-and-wellbeing program around simple defaults: encourage walking meetings, start long sessions with a stretch break, set realistic team challenges, celebrate consistency over intensity, and make recovery part of high performance. When healthy habits become normal, motivation becomes social.

How to motivate your team without adding pressure

The best team wellness programs do not shame, compete, or overwhelm. They invite participation.

 Start with a simple shared purpose: we want more energy, better focus, and a healthier way to succeed together.

 Then keep it easy. A weekly step goal, a no-meeting lunch hour, optional stretch breaks, shared outdoor walks, hydration reminders, or a monthly wellbeing theme can all make a difference.

 Small wins build identity. Once people start to feel better, they are far more likely to stay engaged.

For GET FIT in 2026 and beyond, leadership development should include more than strategy, communication, and decision-making. It should also include energy management, physical wellbeing, and sustainable habits. Why? Because people trust leaders who are not only competent, but steady. And teams are more motivated when they see that success does not have to cost their health. The future of leadership is not hustle at all costs. It is disciplined, human, and repeatable.

So yes, maybe the lazy person can help save the world after all. One switched-off light. One reusable bag. One walking meeting. One leader who chooses vitality over depletion. If we make healthier and more sustainable choices easier, more visible, and more shared, we do more than improve ourselves. We create teams that are better equipped to thrive and contribute. And that may be the most realistic leadership program of all.

“Leadership is not about being in charge.
It is about taking care of those in your charge.” — Simon Sinek

Are you ready to uplevel your leadership skills for the future?

#leadership #personalgrowth #wellbeing #teamspirit #lazypeople #takeitfromtheironwoman

**********

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 450+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Coaching Services: 1:1 and Group Coaching available — find your superpower. DM for Lipstick Leadership Lab details.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

The CEO Is on Vacation

2026-07-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

The CEO Is on Vacation. And That Is the Point.

What a leader does with their time off says everything about the culture they build.

The out-of-office is on. The laptop is closed. The CEO is on vacation and the company did not fall apart.

This should not be news. And yet, for many organizations, a leader truly disconnecting still feels like a risk, a surprise, or quietly an act of courage. We have built work cultures where unreachable reads being as irresponsible, and where always-on is confused with high-performance. It is neither.

"The strength of a leader is not measured by how indispensable they make themselves.
It is measured by how well things run when they step away."

Vacation is a leadership decision not a personal one

When a CEO takes real time off fully, visibly, unapologetically they send a signal that ripples through every level of the organization. They say: recovery is legitimate. Boundaries are respected here. You are allowed to rest without guilt.

Conversely, when leadership is always online, always available, always reachable at 10pm on a Sunday, they set an unspoken standard that the team will feel obligated to match. Culture is not written in handbooks. It is modeled in behavior.

Signal sent
Recovery is a professional value, not a personal indulgence.

Trust built
Stepping away shows confidence in your team. Delegation is a leadership skill.

Performance gained
The brain consolidates, resets, and returns with sharper strategic thinking.

GET FIT Parallel

Every Ironman training plan has mandatory rest weeks built in not as a reward, but as a requirement. The gains from hard training are locked in during recovery, not during the effort itself. The same is true for leadership capacity. The CEO who takes a genuine vacation returns stronger, clearer, and more present. That is not a soft benefit. That is performance science.

What truly being away looks like

Being on vacation means the team leads. It means decisions get made without escalation. It means your people grow because they have to. If nothing moves without you, that is not a sign of your value. It is a structural problem worth solving before the next trip.

Before you go: communicate clearly, delegate specifically, and trust completely. Remove your work email from your phone. Not checking it every hour is not discipline — removing the option entirely is freedom.

With LA 2028 less than 1,000 days away, the world's best athletes are in intentional training cycles right now including planned recovery. Where are you in your cycle?

When did you last take a vacation where you were truly off?

What would have to be in place for you to step away with full confidence?

**********

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 450+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Coaching Services: 1:1 and Group Coaching available — find your superpower. DM for Lipstick Leadership Lab details.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Time Off Is Not a Luxury. It Is a Leadership Decision

2026-06-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have not let this go since my last post and I will not. How do people willingly give away days they are entitled to take? These are not stolen hours. They are yours. And the data says millions of workers leave them on the table every single year.

Unlimited paid time off sounds generous. In reality, it can quietly deepen the problem. When there is no set allowance, many workers feel they can never fully step away from the invisible pressure to always be available never lifts. The hammock becomes an extension of the office.

Not everyone can work from a hammock

Flexibility is real and valuable for those whose roles allow it. Health professionals, hotel staff, performance artists, grocery workers, and many others cannot carry their jobs in a laptop bag. The conversation about time off must include all workers, not just those with portable careers. Think again about who gets left out of this narrative.

"A ton of weight was lifted when I removed my work email from my phone on vacation.
Finally, I was completely free."

"Next time I take real time off, I will not check work email or texts.
The team has to learn to think on their own feet."

GET FIT Parallel

No serious athlete trains without recovery. Not one. The Ironman does not skip rest weeks rest weeks are where gains are made.

Your brain, your leadership capacity, your creativity: they consolidate during recovery, not during output.

Taking your days off is not weakness. It is the discipline that keeps you in the race for the long haul which is exactly what GET FIT is built for.

When negotiating read the small print

Some organizations offer genuinely thoughtful packages: unlimited PTO with real cultural support, on-site wellness, leadership development, and grant programs for personal passions. These exist. They are worth seeking out. But they require scrutiny what does "unlimited" look like in practice? What does leadership model?

When negotiating your next role, ask for a generous vacation package explicitly. More vacation time is more salary in real terms companies do not hand those days back. You are the driver of this. Nobody takes your health without your permission.

1. Ask how much PTO leadership actually takes. Culture is revealed in behavior, not policy documents.

2. Build vacation into your annual plan the same way you build race day into a training schedule early, visible, protected.

3. Negotiate PTO as compensation. Fewer days = lower effective salary. Name it plainly.

The habits you build this summer which are the boundaries, the recovery, the intentional rest are the habits that will carry your career through the long game. The GET FIT framework exists precisely for this: building leaders who are sustainable, not just fast.

With LA 2028 less than 1,000 days away, the world's greatest athletes are in base-building mode right now. Are you?

#GETFITin2026 #CareerTraining #SummerPlaybook #HealthyWorkHabits #LeadershipFitness #LipstickLeadership

**********

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

800+ weekly blogs · 450+ podcasts · 26 marathons · 1 Ironman · 5 Half Ironman · 3 books · Mt. Kilimanjaro · 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for $10/month — substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

Coaching Services: 1:1 and Group Coaching available — find your superpower. DM for Lipstick Leadership Lab details.

All blogs, podcasts, and videos published by Susanne Mueller have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for flow and grammatical errors.

Race Season for Your Career Starts Now

2026-06-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

Summer isn't a slowdown. It's your training window.

Hello, summer and hello, wake-up call. How are your work hours right now? Have you blocked time off? Do your days still belong to you, or have they quietly been claimed by inboxes, global calls, and meetings that spill past dinner?

A desolate reality check: the modern worker's day begins before 6am, filled with back-to-back meetings, and stretches deep into the evening. Global connectivity sounds aspirational until every time zone becomes your problem.

117 - emails received per day

153 - Teams messages per day

40% - check email by 6am

29% - still reading at 10pm

+16% - year-over-year rise in evening meetings

20% - work every weekend

Where do you land on that list? I hope very few of these apply but honesty matters more than comfort here.

GET FIT in 2026 and beyond Parallels:

Every endurance athlete knows: summer is not off-season. It's base-building season. The habits you train in July are what carry you through the October sprint.

Your career is no different. Summer is the window to build the rhythms that protect you when Q4 arrives relentlessly, loud, and unforgiving.

Your summer training plan with 5 moves

1. Set a non-negotiable boundary day. I do not open my laptop on Sundays full stop. A message sent Sunday risks being buried on Monday. Use the "send later" option and protect your reset day.

2. Work globally? Recover proportionally. If your last call was at 11pm, start late the next morning. Endurance athletes do not sprint the day after a long run. Neither should you.

3. Block deep work time like a race slot. Interrupted focus takes nearly 20 minutes to rebuild. Treat concentration like a training block scheduled, protected, non-negotiable.

4. Delete notifications during deep work. Set an out-of-office even during your own focused hours. Silence is not absence; it is performance.

5. When you are truly out of office be out, please. Delegate completely. Communicate clearly. Your team needs to think on their feet. Let them.

What healthy work habits actually work for you?

What can you share with others this summer?

Happy summer, happy shorter blogs, happy to share some insights from my side before I go on vacation. CEO is on vacation next!

#GETFITin2026 #CareerTraining #SummerPlaybook #HealthyWorkHabits #LeadershipFitness #LipstickLeadership

*****

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!

Cross-Training Your Brain: Midyear Sports Reads

2026-06-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

In the summer months, you might need an uplifting book to get you into the GET FIT in 2026 and beyond mood.

Why GET FIT in 2026 and beyond? We are less than 1,000 days away from the summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Olympic Athletes are already training, they train every single day, not just on the day of the Olympics.

Why should that be different for us, leaders, managers, teams, weekend warriors?

Leadership is one sport that nobody trains you in. You can read many books, attend many leadership trainings, but YOU have to do the work. Nobody does it for you (not even AI!)

My recommendations for books to inspire you:

The Inner Game of Tennis, W. Timothy Gallway – a classic with its 50th anniversary edition.

Foreword of Zach Kleiman, Coach: “It’s not about the tennis, it’s not about the win or the loss; if we’re here to experience, then we are free.” As Gallway told him:” Express authority. Become the author of your own shot.”

The other foreword by Bill Gates: “There’s the outer game, which is the mechanical part – how to hold the racket, keep your arm level on your backhand, and so on. But it’s more so about the inner game that takes place in the mind of the player. – Groundbreaking, the best guide to getting out of your own way.”

I love this book as this depicts the methodology of GET FIT in 2026 and beyond. The sport methodology supports business with endurance, determination, and discipline. It’s the inner game that requires work. Are you ready?

Miles of Meaning, from Doubter to JFK 50 Mile Finisher, Julie B. Hughes, she has been a guest on my podcast talking about her book. Today, she completed an even longer distance 100M! Impressive. She has many mantras while running “it comes in waves, be brave, do it.” We don’t know how long we’re here. Let’s just go for it.”

Link to podcast: https://take-it-from-the-iron-woman-trailer.simplecast.com/episodes/miles-of-meaning-from-marathon-runner-to-ultra-distance-finisher-with-julie-hughes-ep-533

Running with the Mind of Meditation, Lessons from Training Body and Mind, Sakyong Mipham, this is my go-to book which I read at least once a year.

It’s always a good reminder for me to be more focus and stay grounded:

• “Life is breath. Breath is life. According to the meditation texts, we breathe 21,6000 times a day. That ability to breathe correlates directly with our life force energy.

• Breathing has a direct effect on the state of the mind. ..

• In both meditating and running, we need to be consistent in order to build a base. Sometimes while pursuing consistency, we lose our inspiration ..

• By training our mind and body through running and meditation, we have become strong, gentle, and kind.

Take it from the Ironwoman, Global Business Coaching with Sports Parallels, Susanne Mueller, with my mantras: “Train your body, train your mind. With a happy and healthy mindset, you too, can conquer the world.”

From the TEDx Talk: “it’s one step at a time, one day at a time.”

What books will you be indulging in this year?

#books #takeitfromtheironwoman #getfit #personalgrowth #innergameoftennis #innergame #motivation #mindset #leadership

*****

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!

The Leadership Non-Negotiable Champions Have Known for Decades (And Executives Keep Ignoring)

2026-06-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

Usain Bolt was asleep 35 minutes before he shattered a world record. Roger Federer sleeps 11–12 hours a day "If I don't have that amount, I hurt myself," he says. LeBron James: 12 hours. Serena Williams, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps. Every single one of them treats sleep as sacred. Non-negotiable. The foundation everything else is built on.

And yet in nearly every leadership transition conversation I have, sleep is the first thing that's been quietly sacrificed.

Sleep Is Not Where You Rest FROM Performance. It IS the Performance.

Neuroscientist Matthew Walker calls sleep "the greatest legal performance-enhancing drug that most people aren't using enough." Science is unambiguous: sleep is where your brain consolidates learning, cortisol resets, emotional regulation is restored, and creative capacity is rebuilt.

What disappears without it? Focus. Empathy. Decision-making nuance. Executive presence. The exact capabilities that define great leadership and that the future workforce is watching for, every single day.

Sleep deprivation is not a badge of commitment. It is a leadership liability. I've Lived This From Both Sides.

I hold a master’s degree in psychology (MA) and a Professional Certified Coach credential (PCC). I've spent over 20 years working with leaders at every stage of their careers from high-potential managers stepping into their first leadership role, to senior executives navigating the most complex transitions of their professional lives.

When I skimped on sleep during Ironman training, the cost was immediate and physical. In the boardroom, it's slower and quieter until one day someone tells you your team feels disconnected, or your decisions have been missing the mark.

The leaders who build Olympic-caliber teams for the future workforce are the leaders who model sustainable, recovered, fully present performance. It starts with you.

Your Get Fit Challenge This Week

📅 Block your sleep window on your calendar tonight bedtime AND wake time and treat it like your most important board meeting. Add one 20-minute recovery block this week. Notice what changes.

Whether you're in a 5KM Quick Sprint preparing for your performance review, navigating a leadership transition on the Marathon Journey, building your team through Build YOUR Olympic Team, or reaching the next level of executive presence with the Ironman Challenge it all starts here.

Federer does it. Bolt did it. Serena does it. LeBron does it. I do it. What about you?

→ Discover your Get Fit program: susannemueller.biz

#GetFit #LeadershipTransition #FutureWorkforce #SleepFirst #ExecutivePresence #BuildYourOlympicTeam #IronmanChallenge #SusanneMueller #NonNegotiable #HabitFormation #GetFitWithSusanne

Safety Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor or a therapist. It's all about YOUR safety. YOU know your limitations.

*****

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc - as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

When the Trail Goes Wrong

2026-05-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sinner in Paris, a ski fall, and a mountain in Africa — what sport teaches us about burnout and knowing when to stop.

He was five games from victory.

Jannik Sinner world number one in tennis, was leading at Roland Garros on a sweltering Thursday. Then the 32-degree Paris heat found his limit. He cramped, could barely move, and lost the final three sets in one of the greatest upsets in French Open history.

What happened to Sinner wasn’t a failure of talent. It was a collision with something training cannot fully control: the environment. And that is exactly what leadership looks like sometimes.

Know yourself. Pace yourself.

In January, I fell while cross-country skiing in Switzerland. One wrong edge, and suddenly I was sitting on an icy patch of snow wondering how long this would set me back. Months later, my running still isn’t where I want it to be. And I’ve had to make peace with that.

Think about when I was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. You can train for months and arrive in peak condition but the mountain has its own weather. Altitude, wind, temperature shifts no program fully simulates. The climbers who succeed are not always the fittest. They are the ones who know themselves well enough to pace accordingly, read the signs, and understand that pushing harder into a storm is not courage. It is poor risk management.

Business is no different. You can build a brilliant strategy and still face a market that shifts, a competitor that changes the rules, an economy that turns hostile. The leaders who navigate these moments are the ones who know themselves and adjust without losing their footing.

Overtraining is not just an athlete’s problem.

In sports, overtraining syndrome has clear symptoms: fatigue sleep doesn’t fix, declining performance despite more effort, poor decisions, and a growing dread of the work you used to love. I see this every week not in athletes, but in leaders.

More load without recovery does not build capacity. It destroys it. And when leaders are depleted, their ability to build the people around them collapses first. You cannot develop your team from a place of depletion.

The rest IS the training. Mental strength is not the absence of limits. It is knowing where they are and recovering with the same intention you bring to peak performance.

Be there before you are totally exhausted

Almost every conversation of exhaustion I have begins the same way: “I should have seen it coming.” The Get Fit program is not a rescue plan. It is a training plan for leaders who want to perform sustainably, for the long race, without burning out in the process.

5KM Quick Sprint — Five sessions for performance review prep

10KM Comfortable Pace — Ten sessions toward your next promotion

Build YOUR Olympic Team — Talent, character, and engagement for the future workforce

Marathon Journey — Deeper coaching for lasting change

Ironman Challenge — Executive presence across three disciplines of your choice

All programs are tailored to you. All begin exactly where you are today.

Sinner will come back. The mountain will still be there. And wherever the trail took you there is a starting line waiting.

👟 susannemueller.biz · DM to find your distance.

#Leadership #Burnout #MentalStrength #GetFit #ExecutiveCoaching #Resilience #MentalTraining #LeadershipDevelopment #SustainablePerformance #ExecutivePresence #RolandGarros #Kilimanjaro

*************

Join, June 5, 2026 from 1pm ET - 2pm ET (check your time zone)
for a complimentary session of GET FIT how to build your Olympic Team and beyond.
Sign up and join: https://luma.com/join/eh-KS3CsCAmocx7xQC

*****
www.susannemueller.biz
TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller
https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc
- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!

Habits, Plans, and the Finish Line: How to Get Fit for What Matters Most

2026-05-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

..... it starts with a step

There is something almost deceptively simple about the idea of counting your steps. No special equipment. No gym membership. No performance review required. Just you, your feet, and the quiet act of paying attention.

But that simplicity is exactly the point. Habits don't start with grand declarations they start with awareness. When you begin noticing how much (or how little) you move through the day, something shifts. You take the stairs. You walk to the coffee machine instead of emailing a colleague three desks away. You choose the longer route because you know it matters.

This is the foundation of the Get Fit approach: build awareness first, build the habit second, and trust that the results will follow.

Schedule the Workout Like You Schedule the Meeting. I do schedule my workouts!

Ask any high-performing professional to show you their calendar, and you'll see something revealing. Client calls. Team reviews. Strategy sessions. Every hour accounted for except for the one that might matter most.

When did you last block time for your health?

One of the most powerful shifts a coach can help you make is this: treat your workouts as non-negotiable appointments. Not aspirational to-do list items. Not "if I have time." Actual calendar blocks with a start time, a purpose, and the expectation that you will show up.

This becomes especially critical when you are training for something big. Whether the goal is a marathon, an Ironman triathlon, a major promotion, or a high-stakes performance review, the principle is the same. You cannot sprint to the finish line. You pace toward it, day by day, with a plan designed by someone who knows the terrain.

And that plan must include rest. Recovery is not weakness it is where adaptation happens, where strength is built, where the body (and the mind) consolidate the work of the week before. The goal is always to arrive at the starting line healthy and ready not exhausted and holding on.

Learn from every Mile (especially) including the hard Ones

Nobody signs up for an Ironman and finishes it without making mistakes along the way. A training run that falls apart in the heat. A swim session that humbles you. A week when life intervenes and the plan goes sideways.

What separates athletes who reach the finish line from those who don't is not the absence of setbacks, it's the ability to learn from them with curiosity rather than self-criticism. A great coach helps you do exactly this. They turn a bad training week into a data point. They ask the right questions: What happened? What does your body need? What can we adjust?

This is how mental strength is built not through the sessions that go perfectly, but through the ones that teach you something. And those lessons transfer directly to how you lead, how you perform under pressure, and how you respond when a quarter doesn't go the way you planned.

Build Your Olympic Team

No athlete reaches an Olympic podium alone. Behind every gold medal is a support system coaches, trainers, strategists, partners each contributing something distinct and essential.

The same is true for your professional team. Great teams are not assembled by accident. They are built with intention, by leaders who understand which talent, character, and skills the mission requires. The strategic thinker who sees around corners. The executor who delivers without fanfare. The connector who holds the culture together when things get hard. The learner who is never satisfied with yesterday's best. The energizer who brings momentum when momentum fades.

Knowing who belongs on your team and developing each person with purpose is one of the most important leadership habits of all.

Get Fit: Your Next Step

Whether you are preparing for a performance review, a promotion, a marathon, or something you haven't named yet, the Get Fit program with Susanne Mueller, MA/PCC is built to meet you where you are. From the 5KM Quick Sprint to the full Ironman Challenge, every program is tailored to your needs, your pace, and your goals.

On June 5, join the free "Build Your Olympic Team" webinar to explore how the program works for you and your team. Learn how to identify the right people, build the habits that sustain performance, and create the culture that carries everyone across the finish line.

#GetFit #HabitFormation #Leadership #Marathon #Ironman #OlympicTeam #Coaching #FUN

ps Photo: you schedule your vacations, why not your workouts!

*************

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!

The Inner Critic at Mile 18: How to Dig Deeper When Self-Doubt Shows Up Mid-Race

2026-05-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

What a marathon taught me about silencing the voice that holds us back in running and in our careers.

There's a particular cruelty to the inner critic. It doesn't arrive when you're rested and confident, sitting comfortably at your desk. It arrives at mile 18 mostly. It arrives the night before the performance review. It shows up right when you need your best self the most and does its best to convince you that your best self isn't enough.

The voice that found me mid-marathon

I run without music. No playlist, no podcast, no curated distraction. Just the road, my breath, and my thoughts. For me, running is where I find peace. It's where I plan, where I think clearly, where I'm finally away from the noise and chatter of the world.

It's my hobby and that matters more than it might sound.

In one marathon race, somewhere deep in the miles, the inner critic showed up. "You're too slow." "You should have trained differently." "Why are you even doing this?"

And then I gave myself a reminder that changed everything:

"This is my hobby. Not my job. I run because I love it. That's enough."

The pressure eased. Not the physical difficulty that was still very much there. But the weight of expectation, the self-inflicted shame, the comparison to some imaginary better version of myself that lifted. And I ran the rest of the race as myself, not as someone I was trying to prove something to.

Self-doubt doesn't care about your credentials

I work with high-achieving professionals, everyday people who are talented, experienced, and respected in their fields. And almost universally, they share one thing: the inner critic hasn't gotten quieter as they've gotten more successful. If anything, the stakes feel higher, and the voice gets louder to match.

The performance review cycle triggers it. The stretch toward promotion triggers it. The moment of raising a hand in a room full of senior leaders triggers it. Self-doubt is not a sign of weakness or unreadiness, it's a sign that something matters to you deeply.

The question is whether you let it steer, or whether you keep it in the back seat.

Digging deeper: what it actually means

In every race, every career, every leadership challenge there is this invisible wall. The point where everything in you says stop, coast, retreat to safety. Digging deeper isn't about ignoring that wall or pretending it isn't there. It's about knowing why you're running in the first place.

When you know your "why" your real reason, not the one you put on a performance review the inner critic loses some of its power. It's still there. But it's no longer the loudest voice in the room.

Get Fit in 2026: I'm ready to run alongside you.

My Get Fit in 2026 coaching programs are built around exactly this kind of work.

Whether you're in a sprint before a high-stakes review, pacing steadily toward your next promotion, or doing the deeper endurance work of lasting leadership change I've designed each program to meet you where you are.

All programs can be tailored to your needs. You know your limitations. I help you find your stride and quiet the voice that says you can't.

I'm ready to be on this journey with you. Are you?

#GetFit2026 #InnerCritic #SelfDoubt #LeadershipCoaching #MarathonMindset #ExecutiveCoaching #CareerGrowth #OvercomingSelfDoubt #GrowthMindset #SusanneMuellerCoaching #CoachingJourney #RunningAndLeadership

*************

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc

- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!

Mothers’ Day: Important Leadership Lessons

2026-05-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Each May, people in countries around the world celebrate Mother’s Day. No matter what time of the year you’re reading this: Happy Mother’s Day to all the great, lovely mothers out there. Most mothers probably have some inspirational stories to tell when it comes to leadership – and they’re real, true stories. I’ve already used Santa Claus and his wife and the Easter Bunny as examples of strong leadership at work, but mothers aren’t mythical characters like they are. Mothers are tangible; they are there (they’re always there), and there’s a lot they can tell us.

Mothers are always called on to be leaders, and in fact, they might be the best people to teach us ways to improve our management skills. A mother takes on so many different roles, and she’s always required to multitask. Mothers are always there, 24/7, rain or shine, 365 days a year. It never ends. I’m aware that I’m generalizing, but here are some of the many roles that mothers are asked to play:

1. They are the CEOs (Chief Executive Officers). They have a vision; they can run the show, they can have it all. Mothers seem to know what’s happening now, and potentially in the future. They are managing all aspects of family life, including their own.

2. They are the COOs (Chief Operating Officers). Mothers handle, plan, and delegate tasks to the rest of the household. To put it simply, they’re in charge of everything. When you’re looking for your lost socks, your mother probably knows where they’re hiding. She has a 360-degree view of the whole family.

3. They are the CFOs (Chief Financial Officers). Many mothers oversee the family finances (though this isn’t the case in everyone’s home). A mother might not be the sole investor, but she’ll often be the one overseeing how much can be spent in a week, and determining with her eagle eyes what the household needs. Mothers can also implement austerity programs, and teach us a lot about living on a shoestring budget – they know how to stretch resources when money gets tight.

4. They are the CDOs (Chief Diversity Officers). Mothers know how to handle many different teams at the same time. Every person in a family (daughter, son, husband, or creature) is different; hence, the family is a group of very diverse people, or team members. Often, the mother is the one trying to glue it all together; motivating, encouraging, and inspiring everybody. She’s a diplomat and a modest leader, working to create and maintain an all-inclusive environment. Discrimination has no place in the household.

5. They are the voices and the social calendars for the family. Many mothers have the best organizational skills of anyone in the family. Handling school events, birthdays, birthday parties, sick days, laundry days, and everything else is no small chore; planning and coordinating it all for everybody is an art. Some people hire event planners if they feel overwhelmed. Mothers plan with ease and elegance, like conductors working invisibly in the background; they’re expert jugglers, magicians, and community outreach leaders, too.

Simply put, a mother is the CXO (Chief Officer for Everything). Here are some questions to ask about the requirements for that job:

 What’s the pay for a C-suite position like this? This is a daunting question. Stay-at-home mothers – or “home engineers,” to put it in more modern terms – might not get paid with money, but with affection. Most mothers, though, have full-time jobs, and are juggling parenthood “on the side.” But it’s not really a side hustle; it’s a second full-time job.

 How many hours go into an executive job like this? It’s a role that never ends; indeed, you’re never too old to learn from your mother. There is no overtime accrual, overtime pay, or sick pay, either.

 What about work-life balance? Life needs to be in balance, including for mothers. They have to constantly balance work and life. These days, with everybody at home, that balance has probably gone out the window. But it’s still important to find that equilibrium, and make time for it. When you are the one in charge of everything, that’s not always easy, but it can be done. Speak up; voice your concerns early, and with a strong voice your whole household can hear. Include others to help you create balance for everyone. If everybody is happy, all are happy.

In sum, there’s a lot we can learn from mothers. Thank you, and happy Mother’s Day to all of the great mothers, today and every day. Keep doing what you’ve been doing, and enjoy a special day when everyone celebrates you – although you definitely deserve more than just that one day a year.

What is your role?

What can you take away and share with others?

Happy Mother's Day

From my book: Lipstick Leadership, 2021 - Susanne Mueller / www.susannemueller.biz

*************

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc
- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!

Give a Gift that Leads and Gives Back

2026-04-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

This Mother's Day, skip the flowers that fade. Give something that stays stories of real women, real leadership, and a coaching experience whose ripples reach further than you would expect.

There is a certain kind of woman in your life. She holds things together without making it look hard. She leads without needing the title. She's navigated the impossible and came out the other side with more wisdom than she started with. You probably already know who she is. The question is how to honor her in a way that actually reflects what she carries.

50 Shades of Lipstick Leadership is that kind of gift. (Available in English and in German) It's a collection of 50 real conversations with remarkable women across industries and continents. These aren't polished success stories. They're honest ones. Stories were told through pandemic years, career pivots, personal losses, and quiet breakthroughs. Each woman brings her version of learning, listening, and leading and together they paint something that feels less like a book and more like a room full of women you wish you knew.

“Have you ever wanted to travel to new places but found yourself limited by time and money? Their stories will take you to distant and nearby horizons without you needing to leave your seat. Plus, they might just inspire you to explore your journey and share your story in the future.” – Elena Ferrer, Ed.D. holds a Doctoral Degree in Health and Behavior Studies from Columbia University in New York.

"Spanning through pandemic times, these accounts reflect on the transformative shifts in life and leadership and how resilience looks different on every woman who holds it."

What makes this gift special is the layer beneath the pages. Every single one of the 50 stories has a matching episode from Susanne's podcast the original conversation, in each woman's own voice. So, you're not just giving a book. You're giving a playlist. Approximately fifty hours of real talk, available anytime on a commute, on a run, in the quiet after the kids are in bed.

Listen to the full collection here:

And if you're looking to go deeper for yourself, for a colleague, for the mother in your life who's ready for her next chapter there's something else beginning in May. Coaching for Causes is exactly what it sounds like: Susanne is donating her coaching time so that every session you book sends real support to organizations doing vital work right now. Doctors Without Borders. World Central Kitchen. Two causes, feeding and healing the world's most vulnerable people, funded in part by the conversations that happen in a coaching session.

You invest in yourself. Someone else gets what they need to survive. That's the kind of exchange worth making.

This May:

Order the book "50 Shades of Lipstick Leadership"

Share the playlist

Book a session at coachingforcauses.com, choose your cause, and show up ready to grow.

And if you know a woman who needs to hear that her story matters send her this. She'll understand why.

Ready to begin?

Sign up for a Coaching for Causes session starting in May, donate to Doctors Without Borders or World Central Kitchen, and pick up the book that started it all because the best Mother's Day gifts are the ones that keep going.

50 Shades of Lipstick Leadership Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S7jaJ_I3XE&list=PLLNvNn9mLdEdCzRhmZAbUE1xVav8Egqt9

What else? Happy Shopping for Mother's Day.

*************

www.susannemueller.biz

TEDx Talk, May 12, 2022: Running and Life: 5K Formula for your Success | Susanne Mueller

https://youtu.be/oT_5Er1cLvY?si=2bDUaAmWbr6AneRm

800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 26 marathon races / 1 Ironman triathlon race / 5 half Ironman races / 3 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

Join my Substack for 10$ per month - https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc
- as a yearly subscriber you get a 1:1 coaching session for free.

“GET FIT in 2026” - Inquire and join the waitlist.

🦹‍♀️Coaching Services: 1:1 Coaching and Group-Coaching is available - find your superpower

Disclaimer: All blogs, podcasts, videos that I have published have been written/produced from scratch by Susanne Mueller with the help of Claude for grammatical errors and flow!