BLOG - Kacy Fleming

When the "Midlife Collision" Meets the Mental Load Collaborative

Kacy Fleming — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:03:34 +0000

Last week I walked into Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC for the first meeting of The Mental Load Collaborative, organized by David Smith and Colleen Stuart from the Gender & Work Initiative at Johns Hopkins. I had been excited about this event for months and I was not sure what to expect.

I knew the lineup was made up of some of the researchers I admire most: Allison Daminger, whose research on cognitive labor has shaped how we understand invisible work and Leah Ruppanner from the University of Melbourne, whose data connects mental load to workforce outcomes globally. I had frequently quoted both of their work prior to meeting them and couldn't wait to dig in.

But here is what I did not expect. How incredible the rest of the room would be.

Sitting alongside the academics were content creators with massive social media audiences who have been making mental load visible to millions of families every single day. There were coaches, applied practitioners and consultants like myself, AI builders exploring how technology might help redistribute cognitive labor, and every one of us was in it to solve it.

The room was deliberately, beautifully diverse in perspective, not just in identity, but in how each person encounters and teaches about mental load in different ways.

I have been to a lot of conferences and webinars. This was a collaborative. And the difference matters.

THE APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY DIFFERENCE

The Mental Load Collaborative used an Appreciative Inquiry summit model, which means we did not spend the day cataloging problems (thank goodness). We listed challenges, and imagined dream states as a unified team. Then we talked as a full room about how to achieve a better state for all people. Finally we broke into smaller working groups, self-selecting into the solutions that we felt emotionally drawn to. Here's what really stood out to me the most:

It had been a long time since I had been in a room where open discourse and disagreement not only happened, but were encouraged.

There is no way to put three generations side by side to solve a problem and not expect there to be some cognitive dissonance. Case in point, I went in blissfully unaware that I had an implicit bias towards content creation as a teaching tool, and quickly came to realize I needed to face that bias head on to avoid change resistance.

Growth like that doesn't happen in echo chambers, but neither does sustainable change.

If you are wondering what workstream I chose in the end, I am sure it is no surprise that I wanted to lead workplace redesign. I cannot share the specifics of what we built in that room, because the work is still developing and it belongs to the group and not to me. But I can tell you that the energy of building something, rather than just naming something, changes the quality of the conversation entirely.

When you move from "here is what is broken" to "here is what we are going to do about it," people show up differently. The ideas get braver. The commitments get real.

MY PRIMARY CONTRIBUTION: THE MIDLIFE COLLISION

I was one of the only participants approaching mental load from the midlife perspective, and I brought a concept I have been teaching for several years in my Burnout to Breakthrough sessions: 'The Midlife Collision™'

Here's how I like to explain the 'Midlife Collision.' Think of two container ships traveling toward each other at full speed, both stacked to the hilt. One is the work ship: peak career responsibilities, leadership demands, financial pressures, strategic complexity. The other is the home ship: aging parents, teenagers or young adults who still need you, partnership maintenance, health management, household operations.

In midlife, both home and work are often at maximum capacity. And underneath them (at least for women), hormonal fluctuations are churning the water, bouncing the containers, making everything harder to hold in place.

The tossing and turning is confusing, and most midlife women can't compartmentalize the ensuing chaos and figure out that which is caused by hormones, other factors, or a mix of both. Where peak career demands, caregiving responsibilities, and hormonal changes crash together, that is 'The Midlife Collision.' And for millions of people navigating this intersection, the mental load is not just heavy. It is compounding.

THE INVISIBLE LAYER: MENOPAUSE MASKING

There is another dimension to midlife mental load that rarely enters the conversation.When you are experiencing menopause at work, you are carrying an additional cognitive burden that has no name in most organizations: the work of hiding it. It takes effort to mask brain fog in a meeting so your leaders don't think you've lost competence. It takes energy to disguise irritability with a difficult coworker or to cover a hot flash without anyone noticing.

‘Menopause masking’ is the constant calculation of whether to disclose symptoms or stay silent, and mental load is the cost of having to navigate either option.

This complex decision-making framework is often happening on autopilot, running in the back of our minds. And it sits on top of a mental load that has likely already passed capacity. Fears of stigma and negative career repercussions mean that most midlife women are suffering in silence.

OUT OF THE ECHO CHAMBER

The mental load conversation, like the menopause at work conversation, needs to break out of the echo chamber. Before the collaborative many of us, the people who understand mental load most deeply, and teach on the subject were doing so in isolation. The researchers published largely for academic audiences, the content creators were speaking to audiences that relate directly to the shared lived experiences, and as applied workplace consultants we were primarily sharing this information with organizations bought in.

The Mental Load Collaborative is trying to change that and brought all of these big beautiful voices into one room, not to agree, but to build. As Adam Grant recently stated:

"Only following people who agree with you is a recipe for confirmation bias and groupthink. Critical thinking depends on listening to people who question your assumptions and challenge your conclusions. Learning is the product of engaging with a range of thoughtful views."

And I am so grateful that I was able to be part of these conversations and to represent the midlife perspective.

Opening up the conversation about menopause at work is something I am working on with The Fuchsia Tent LLC and Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR). Our national study, "Menopause at Work: From Echo Chamber to Mainstream Practice," is surveying people experiencing menopause alongside the decision-makers who control benefits, budgets, and culture. The goal is to move these conversations from niche advocacy to standard business practice.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EMPLOYERS

If you lead an organization and you have been watching the mental load conversation from the sidelines, here is what I want you to understand.

Mental load is likely affecting much of your workforce, and it is not a personal problem. Mental load is a business problem.

The research already shows that disproportionate cognitive labor at home drives emotional exhaustion, increases turnover intentions, and decreases career resilience. Gallup found that female manager engagement dropped seven points in a single year. Researchers are calling invisible domestic labor "the third shift." And in midlife, all of this intensifies. The people carrying the heaviest mental load are often your most experienced, most capable, most senior contributors. They are not burning out because they cannot handle the work. They are burning out because nobody sees the full picture of what they are carrying.

The Mental Load Collaborative is working on solutions. I am honored to be part of it. And I will share more as the work develops. In the meantime, if you want to understand how mental load, menopause, and midlife converge in your workforce, that is the work I do every day. Let's talk.

---

Thank you to friends, to the Mental Load Collaborative organizers, David Smith, Colleen Stuart, Leah Ruppanner, Molly Dickens, PhD, Kate Mangino, Katie Kitchens, and Haley Swenson, thank you for building the room where this work can happen.

Many of the researchers listed above already have a book or books published that you can read on the subject of mental load and Leah Ruppanner's new book Drained and David Smith and Brad Johnson's Book Fair Share are available for pre-order!

Mental Load Is Not a Buzzword. It's a Business Problem.

Kacy Fleming — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:24:04 +0000

I was recently quoted in Forbes as saying that the biggest drain on professional women that is commonly overlooked is mental load. Mental load is not a trending topic and it shouldn’t be just a catchy phrase for therapists to toss around on Instagram. Rather, mental load is the invisible cognitive work that is draining top performers, tanking employee engagement scores, and costing organizations real money. And most employers have no idea it is happening.

What Mental Load Actually Is (And Why It's So Hard to See)

The term "cognitive labor" was brought into the academic mainstream by sociologist Allison Daminger, whose research defines it as the work of anticipating needs, identifying options, making decisions, and monitoring outcomes in household and family life (Daminger, 2019, American Sociological Review). Her new book, What's on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life, draws on interviews with over 170 people and confirms what most women already know: “even in couples who believe they split things equally, the cognitive labor falls overwhelmingly on women.”

Here is what makes mental load different from mental busyness. As I stated in Forbes, mental load has three hallmarks: it is invisible, boundaryless, and enduring (Dean et al., 2022). Nobody sees the work, the thoughts travel from the desk to the kitchen to the pillow. And it never ends, because mental load is tied to caring for the people we love and the teams we lead.

Thinking alone doesn’t break us, but when added to constant processing that never stops, seeps into work, sleep, and leisure, and isn’t acknowledged or compensated, we are guaranteed a one way ticket to the “Island of Misfit Toys.”

The Research Is Catching Up to What Women Have Known for Years

The academic literature on household labor focused on physical tasks like driving to practice or doing the dishes. Physical labor can be demanding, but it isn’t even half of the story. A 2025 study published in Archives of Women's Mental Health (Aviv et al.) found that cognitive household labor is even more unequally distributed than physical chores, and is significantly associated with worse mental health outcomes for women, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. Suddenly, all the antidepressant use in “Valley of the Dolls” is making a lot more sense.

Here is the research that should make every employer sit up and pay attention. A recent study found that women who shoulder a disproportionate amount of cognitive labor at home experience higher emotional exhaustion, which in turn increases their turnover intentions and decreases their career resilience (Krstić et al., 2025). These same researchers appropriately dubbed this phenomenon “the invisible third shift.” Said simply, the mental load your employees carry at home is spilling directly into your workplace, and that plus lack of understanding and systemic support, is driving some of your best employees toward the door.

What's Happening Inside Your Organization Right Now

Let me connect the dots between the research and your poor engagement scores. Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that global employee engagement fell to 21% in 2024, matching the lowest levels since the pandemic. But the most alarming finding was the collapse of female manager engagement, which dropped seven percentage points in a single year, which is not a blip on the radar, but rather a signal flare.

McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2024 report found that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women make that jump. One in three women surveyed said they had considered downshifting or leaving the workforce entirely. The broken rung and the mental load are not separate problems. We are not talking about “women problems;” we are talking about systems issues.

And we have not even talked about what happens when you layer perimenopause and menopause on top of all of this. The midlife collision I often describe in my work is the convergence of peak career responsibility with hormonal fluctuations that affect sleep, cognition, and emotional regulation. Add an invisible cognitive load to that which was already unsustainable, and you have a recipe for attrition that no meditation app is going to fix.

Before Slapping Another Well-Being Initiative on Mental Load…

I have said it before and I will keep saying it: giving someone a meditation app while the structure that is burning them out remains unchanged is like handing someone a bucket of water and expecting it to extinguish a four-alarm fire. Sure, some well-designed individual well-being programs are table stakes in big organizations, but when they become the entire strategy, they actually make the problem worse.

What Actually Works: A Systems-Plus Approach

The path from burnout to breakthrough requires both individual support and structural change. Here is what that looks like in practice.

Make the invisible visible. Audit who is doing the cognitive and emotional labor on your teams. Who plans the offsites? Who remembers the birthdays? Who takes notes in meetings? Who checks in on struggling colleagues? If the answer is consistently the same people, and those people are consistently women, it is time to make some changes, not the least of which involves some serious recognition and some readjusting of work.
Stop siloing solutions and start integrating them. When we build or add separate programs for menopause, burnout, caregiving, and mental health, we increase stigma and add to the very load we are trying to reduce. Human beings do not experience these challenges in silos and support systems should not operate in them either. A systems-plus approach means building an infrastructure of support that recognizes how mental load, midlife health transitions, and workplace demands converge, and addresses them together rather than sending employees on a scavenger hunt for help.
Train your leaders in compassionate dialogue so they have language that stops silent suffering (both theirs and their teams). Stop the 30-minute webinars on "resilience," or the 6-month training on menopause. Train ALL leaders to recognize the signs of cognitive overload in themselves and their teams. Teach them to redistribute invisible labor by encouraging compassionate, honest conversations about what their people need to perform at their best. The 3Cs Method of Compassionate Leadership exists because I watched too many well-meaning managers default to "let me know if you need anything" when what their employees needed was someone to notice without being asked.
Redesign your performance reviews to capture and credit invisible labor. Right now, the woman who plans the offsite, mentors the new hire, and holds the team together emotionally gets the same rating as the person who showed up and participated. If your review process does not account for cognitive and emotional contributions, you are systematically undervaluing the people who keep your culture functional. McKinsey's data shows that women are still less likely to receive high "potential" ratings despite strong performance. That gap does not close until the work women disproportionately do becomes visible, measured, and rewarded. What you measure matters and what you reward gets repeated.
The Business Case Is Already Made
Gallup estimates that a fully engaged global workforce could add $9.6 trillion in productivity, while McKinsey's research has shown that advancing women's equality could add $12 trillion to global GDP. We have the data, but we keep using it to treat organizational dysfunction like the recurrent failings of individual women. Mental load is not a women's issue, but rather a business issue that disproportionately affects women. And until employers start designing systems that account for the full weight of what their people carry, top talent will keep walking out the door wondering. We need to stop asking women to be more resilient, and start building workplaces that do not require superhuman endurance to survive.
————————————————————————————————————————
On March 25, I will be at a research symposium bringing together leading researchers who study mental load to align on shared definitions, identify research gaps, and bridge the distance between what the science says and what employers actually do about it. That bridge is exactly where Kacy Fleming Consulting thrives, and I cannot wait to share my learnings with you.
If you are ready to move your organization from burnout to breakthrough, book a consultation to discuss how “Burnout to Breakthrough” can equip your leaders to recognize, redistribute, and reduce the invisible load that helps you keep top talent.

Year One Reflections: Building Workplace Menopause Support

Kacy Fleming — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 21:30:52 +0000

Just about a year ago, I pivoted The Fuchsia Tent from being a consumer focused business — providing resources, community, & coaching, into a workplace first, consumer second platform. In this post, I will share the why behind the redirect as well as what I’ve learned since then.

When I formally entered the “Menoverse” (as I like to call it), in March of 2024, it was filled with glittery parties, celebrity sightings, and an onslaught of media attention. After 22 years climbing the ladder in corporate pharmaceuticals, this new world was equal parts terrifying and intoxicating. It felt like everywhere I turned, people were talking about menopause and I felt so lucky to be a part of this conversation, with my brand new community and wide-eyed excitement. After a super intense Spring of learning and listening, I came back to Massachusetts ready to launch the online community everyone said they needed.

The Fuchsia Tent Community is Born

June 13, 2024, I gave birth to the red, angry, crying toddler that I’ve come to love, The Fuchsia Tent Community. That day, I learned a powerful lesson that will stay with me throughout my days:

Do NOT, under any circumstances launch a business on your birthday, unless you enjoy celebrating with a side of insecurity and a twinge of depression.

With that said, I eventually got more members and started getting into a content creating rhythm. There were additional lessons to be learned. The main lesson being: most women want community until they figure out what they need to feel better during menopause. Once we have a working formula, we just want to get back to living a full and healthy life. The majority of us don’t want to sit around talking about once debilitating, but mostly gone symptoms for the rest of our lives (myself and fellow menoverse dwellers being an exception).

Because, that which was true about workplace wellbeing, or mental health, is also true about menopause support…If you get healthy outside a sick system, and go back in, you will likely experience illness again.

Put more succinctly: lost productivity and poor symptom management during menopause are not individual failings, but rather the echoes of broken workplace and healthcare system design.

Suddenly, I found myself called back into the rooms where I had spent the previous 22 years duking out drug formulary access with payers and heading global wellbeing for 50,000 employees. Difficult conversations in a corporate setting, especially stigmatized topics like menopause require an understanding of organizational culture and design. I was asked by former colleagues in the wellbeing/total rewards space to advise on the business case for workplace menopause support, and soon after began sharing best practices on thriving through menopause at work, and tools for holding compassionate dialogue. Before I knew it, Fuchsia@Work was up and running.

The Workplace Menopause Support Pivot

After a few months research, building talks, and working with clients, a framework began to emerge. There were three things that surveyed working women consistently asked for that we now call: The 3H Framework™ of The Fuchsia Tent.

The 3H Framework™ of The Fuchsia Tent:
1. Healthcare: The best benefits (medical and pharmacy) a company can afford.
2. Help: Compassionate leaders who understand active listening frameworks, and are aware of and willing to provide available resources to employees in need.
3. HRT/Non-Hormonal Therapy Access: Generic HRT and access to newly approved FDA alternatives for vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats)

The 3H Framework™ is what best-in-class workplace menopause support looks like. Organizational support isn’t rocket science. Organizations don’t need complex menopause frameworks, manager menopause training, excessive programming, or menopause coaching. Individuals may elect to participate in the above offerings, but widespread in depth training is more likely to make midlife women an outgroup.

We do need basic awareness of the symptoms and challenges associated with a life transition that is marked by vast hormonal fluctuations — that happens to 51% of the workforce. We need benefits and resources that help us get the medical and emotional support we need, which includes leaders who know how to listen without judgment, get clarity on our needs, and take supportive action on our behalf. This action may look like providing the number for our employee assistance program, an additional check in, a list of company sponsored resources, etc…

Because, here’s the thing, US companies alone, are losing $1.8B in lost productivity (attrition, and sick time) and an additional $26.6B due to increased healthcare costs from failing to support midlife women (Mayo Clinic, 2023). We still have very few solid studies that show us what happens when we actually support midlife women in the workplace.

Where to Next

So here's where we are a year in: We know what works. The 3H Framework™ isn't complicated, and that's the point. We know companies are hemorrhaging billions. We know women are suffering in silence. And we know that the UK is already ahead of us on preventative care. The BBC reports that the UK National Health Services will now be adding menopause questions to their health checks for women (every 5 years between 40-74). “The aim is to identify women who may benefit from advice and support, including treatment, such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT), drugs to combat hot-flushes, and counselling.”

What we need now is momentum. More companies stepping up to offer basic support (we're at less than 15%, people). Organizations I advise, like Reproductive & Maternal Health Compass, are offering standards for what good, better, and best menopause support look like. Check out their linked page above for more information. Our goal at The Fuchsia Tent is to help each organization figure out the best resource mix and programming based on the unique makeup of their employee population.

More rigorous research to prove what we already know anecdotally — that supporting menopausal employees isn't charity, it's strategy. We need better studies designed with scientific rigor to evaluate the effects of best-in-class support on menopausal employees — not just one cherry picked intervention with subjective employee reported data. At The Fuchsia Tent we are working with partners to provide that data, though truly good data generation takes time. More to come.

And more awareness across the board, because menopause doesn't just affect menopausal women. It affects teams, productivity, culture, and the bottom line. That's why at The Fuchsia Tent, we're focused on making implementation simple, data collection rigorous, and education accessible to everyone — yes, including the men. (Check out our Man-O-Pause Mondays if you're male-identifying and want free education without the awkwardness.)

A year ago, I pivoted when I was reminded that menopause, like other health challenges requires systems change. We can’t out program outdated systems, like US work culture and healthcare, but we can be a catalyst in their redesign. And that's exactly what we're doing — one compassionate conversation, one benefits package, one workplace policy at a time.

Here's to Year Two.

—————————————————————

Ready to transform how your organization approaches menopause support?

Book a consultation with me to discuss how to build workplace systems that support both human wellbeing and business performance.

Permalink

The Hidden Crisis in High-Performing Women: Why Your Burnout Isn't Your Fault

Kacy Fleming — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 15:37:21 +0000

And why adding “self-care” to your to-do list is making everything worse.

Here's what I know for sure: if you're a high-performing woman reading this at 11 PM because it's the first quiet moment you've had all day, you're not broken. The system is. And, you are not alone.

PS-I’ve never met a woman who wasn’t high-performing.

Today, I asked a room full of women to raise their hand if they’ve been exhausted. Every hand shot up.

Then I asked them to raise their hands if they are ashamed of their exhaustion and the majority of hands stayed up.

We're exhausted, overwhelmed, and carrying voices in our heads that whisper “you should be more resilient, better at boundaries, more grateful for your success.”

That voice? It's not yours. It's the sound of a system that's designed to make you believe your burnout is a personal failing.

The Data Doesn't Lie

The headlines read “Leader engagement plummets by 3 points, largely powered by female leader disengagement.” It’s true female leaders did have the steepest decline of any demographic group. What they fail to discuss is why. We will talk about the why throughout this blog post, and we will keep talking about it until we build systems that support women.

The burnout gap between women and men has doubled since 2019. Only 36% of women feel empowered to perform their best work. When women leave the workforce, companies lose an average of $15,000 per departing employee in replacement costs alone—not counting the institutional knowledge, client relationships, and innovation that walks out the door with them. McKinsey estimates that advancing women's equality in the workplace could add $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025. But here's the part that should make us furious: we keep getting individual solutions to systemic problems.

Listen, I'm not here to bash wellness programs. Research shows they can help with specific health behaviors. But here's what the wellness industrial complex won't tell you: giving you a meditation app while the structure that's burning you out remains unchanged is like handing someone a band-aid for a bullet hole (thank you to Taylor Swift for that indelible image).

The truth? We need both. Individual support AND systemic change. A systems-plus approach to well-being that doesn't make you responsible for fixing what you didn't break.

The Shame Spiral That Keeps Women Trapped

You want to know the real genius of this broken system? It's convinced us that our exhaustion is evidence of our inadequacy.

Brené Brown's research revealed something devastating: shame for women is "a web of layered, conflicting and competing expectations and messages." Men face one primary expectation: don't appear weak. Women? We're supposed to be everything to everyone while making it look effortless. We are already assumed to be weak, so we can “never let them see us sweat.”

The shame cycle works like this: You burn out. You're told it's a personal resilience problem. You add self-care to your already overwhelming mental load. You inevitably fail at self-care too because it's just another item on a NEVER-ENDING to do list. You feel more shame. The cycle continues while the root causes remain completely untouched.

We start to lose self-efficacy.

I mean, if we are burning out, clearly we aren’t cut out for this work right?

We work harder. We take promotions into meaningless leadership roles, where we end up doing nothing that brings us joy. Roles where we sit in meeting after meeting, hour after hour. We get talked over. Our decision making power exists in name only, and each new day is a rinse and repeat.

We aren’t burnout from overwork, but rather meaningless work that deprives us of purpose and leads to cynicism. Burnout that results in turnover is more closely tied to cynicism than it is to overwork.

READ THAT LAST BIT AGAIN!

The Mental Load No One Considers

Let's talk about the thing no one wants to talk about—the invisible labor that's following us everywhere, even into our sleep.

Here's what researchers have figured out: there's this thing called "mental load"—the invisible, cognitive work that has three brutal characteristics. It's invisible (nobody sees us doing it), boundaryless (it follows us everywhere), and enduring (it never ends).

Even when household chores appear split 50/50, guess who's still responsible for remembering that the detergent is running low, that soccer uniforms need to be clean by Tuesday, that the washing machine has been making that weird noise? Research consistently shows women do more of the "anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding among options, and monitoring results." These lists run endlessly in our minds, taking up critical cognitive space, and leaving us depleted.

And, this invisible burden doesn't stay home when we go to work. Think back to the last team meeting, in your breakout group, who was the note taker? Oh, but women have nicer handwriting…PLEASE.

Or think about the last company social event. Who researched the restaurant options, checked for dietary restrictions, coordinated calendars, bought the farewell gift, and made sure everyone felt included in the conversation? I'll give you one guess. Meanwhile, the person who shows up and enjoys the event gets the same 'team building' credit on their performance review.

And here's where it gets really insidious: emotional labor depletes cognitive energy. We make more mistakes, take longer to complete tasks, then get judged for not performing at our peak while carrying an invisible load nobody acknowledges.

We're not just tired. We're cognitively overloaded by a system that pretends this labor doesn't exist.

The Midlife Collision Nobody Prepared Us For

If you're in your 40s or 50s, you're living through what I call the midlife collision. Two freight trains heading toward each other at full speed.

On one side: peak career success, highest earning potential, leadership responsibilities. All the things you've worked decades to achieve, only to find out they aren’t filling your cup.

On the other side: hormone fluctuations affecting everything from sleep to cognitive function, aging parents needing support, children who still need you, partnerships requiring attention, financial pressures from every direction.

Pretty traumatic, right?! Did you realize you were taking on so much?

Then we get the real slap in the face at work. The data shows only 81 women get promoted for every 100 men, despite equal qualifications. Don’t get me started on our outdated performance management systems (I think of them as performative management). Women earn lower "potential" ratings despite higher performance. Meanwhile, chronic workplace stress creates actual trauma responses that high performers mask to protect their careers.

We're asking superhuman performance from human beings carrying an invisible load, then wondering why they're burning out. Then we shame them for not having better boundaries—as if adding "get better at self-care" to their mental load is the solution.

Band-Aids Don’t Fix Bullet Holes (or broken systems)

Here's my hot take on wellness programs: Individual wellness programs can absolutely help with stress management and healthy behaviors. The problem isn't that they don't work—it's that they're being used as the entire solution to a systemic problem.

It's like this: if your entire house is on fire, a fire extinguisher may be useful. But if someone hands you a fire extinguisher and says "this should fix your house fire" while refusing to call the fire department, you're going to be pretty pissed when your house burns down. That’s a well-being program implemented without actual system change.

Research confirms that burnout is primarily the result of psychologically hazardous workplace factors—not personal deficits. Yet women are carrying unnecessary guilt and shame, assuming we’re somehow at fault for our own work-related stress.

The programs themselves can become another source of shame for women who feel they should be taking advantage of offerings they don't have time for, or that weren't designed with their experiences in mind. If when I was Heading Global Well-Being, I had received a dollar for every woman who told me how great are offerings were, but followed up with not having the time to take advantage of them, I’d have a small island. Companies make huge investments in these programs, and then fail to embed them into the corporate culture.

It’s a multi-billion dollar system failure.

What Actually Works: Systems-Plus Well-Being

Supporting women isn't charity. It's a competitive advantage that requires both individual support and structural change.

The individual piece: Yes, stress management skills matter. Mindfulness can help. Exercise is important. But these work best when they're not treated as the cure for systemic dysfunction.

The systems piece: We need healthcare that covers life transitions, not just emergencies. Leadership training that teaches managers to recognize and redistribute invisible labor. Infrastructure that makes mental load visible, valued, and equitably distributed.

Here's what this looks like in practice: A company added mindfulness training for stressed employees (individual solution). Great start. But they also added manager accountability—tracking and measuring how well managers support their teams' well-being, with real consequences for poor scores. Now the mindfulness training actually works because employees aren't getting stressed messages from their boss at 8PM when they should be recharging. That's systems-plus thinking—pairing individual support with manager accountability so the two don't cancel each other out.

Companies that figure out this systems-plus approach see real results: reduced healthcare costs, increased profitability, and access to untapped productivity potential. More importantly, they stop perpetuating a system that's systematically destroying women's health and well-being.

Fix the systems AND provide individual support. That's how you create sustainable change.

The Truth About Resilience (It's Not What We Think)

Full disclosure: I've fallen into this trap more times than I care to admit. I spent years believing that if I could just get better at self-care, manage my time more efficiently, or develop stronger boundaries, I could somehow make an unsustainable system work for me.

What I learned the hard way is that you can't gratitude your way out of systemic dysfunction. You can't meditate away workplace inequity. And you definitely can't self-care your way out of a system that rewards your suffering with more responsibility.

Brené Brown's research shows that shame resilience happens through "acknowledged vulnerability, critical awareness, and mutually empathic relationships"—not through individual grit and better time management. True resilience isn't about enduring more; it's about refusing to accept systems that require superhuman endurance in the first place.

Be the Change...Start Where You Are

The question isn't whether we can afford to change. It's whether we can afford not to.

If you're experiencing this crisis:

Name it: You're not broken, the system is
Find your advocates: You don't have to fix this alone
Document everything: Your experience matters for those coming behind you

If you're a leader:

Ask one woman on your team: "What support do you need right now?"
Audit your benefits: Do they cover life transitions?
Train your managers: 70% of engagement comes from direct supervisors

If you're designing systems:

Center women's experiences in your policies
Measure what matters: Track engagement by demographic
Build bridges, don't just offer band-aids

Every woman who leaves her career because the mental load is unsustainable represents not just individual loss, but collective failure. Every high performer operating in survival mode instead of innovation mode represents untapped potential that could transform industries.

We're not asking for special treatment. We're asking for systems that recognize our full humanity while honoring our professional capabilities. We're asking workplaces to stop making us responsible for fixing problems we didn't create.

And yes, take the yoga class if it helps you. Use the meditation app if it brings you peace. But don't let anyone convince you that your burnout is your fault or that individual wellness is the complete solution to a systemic crisis.

It doesn't have to be this way. Here's where we start: by refusing to accept that shame about not being resilient enough is the price women pay for participation in the workforce.

If this resonates with you, know you're not alone. And you're definitely not the problem.

The Day I Realized I Had More Power Than I Thought (And You Do Too)

Kacy Fleming — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 18:07:03 +0000

If you are feeling powerless right now, you are not alone AND…Trust me: you have way more power than you ever imagined!

At all stages of my career, from corporate senior leader to fledgling entrepreneur, I felt utterly powerless more times than I care to admit. And if you'd told me five years ago that I'd be teaching Fortune 500 companies about power dynamics, I would have laughed until my sides hurt.

This is the story of how I learned that power isn't what we think it is. And more importantly, it's about the profound shift that happens every single time I teach "Mastering Workplace Dynamics: Power & Influence" workshop. In this co-designed workshop, 90% of participants walk in believing power comes from formal titles and is synonymous with coercion and individual gain — and leave understanding all the forms of power already available to them.

The Real Talk About Feeling Powerless

Let me paint you a picture. Six years into my corporate career, I was sitting in yet another meeting where decisions were being made about my work without including me. You know, the meetings where you feel like you are having an out of body experience, watching colleagues with big titles talk over each other while the rest of us sit there like furniture. Try as I might to hold my own, I often felt invisible, voiceless, and completely at the mercy of the powers that be.

Sound familiar?

Fast forward, and after nearly three decades of work in some pretty giant corporations, I know one thing for sure: Most of us have been sold a lie about what power actually is.

We think power is:

Having a corner office
Being able to fire people
Making the big decisions
Having your name on the org chart

And sure, those things can be forms of power. But they're just the tip of the iceberg, and rarely as effective as the other types of power at our disposal.

The Workshop That Changes Everything (for me and you)

About a year ago, my fabulous colleagues Dr. Shonna Waters and Dr. Erin Eatough asked me to facilitate a session on politics and power in the workplace for a large banking client. Boy did my imposter syndrome come roaring back. Sure, I held legitimate power after years of working in pharmaceuticals, but what did I know about this subject?! I should have realized that these brilliant humans had a method to their madness and this workshop became an absolute favorite to teach.

Every time I facilitate the power and influence workshop, the same thing happens. I start with a simple question: "What comes up for you when you hear 'workplace power and politics'?"

The answers are always some variation of:

"Ugh, office politics"
"People playing games"
"Having to kiss up to get ahead"
"Something I'm bad at"
"Manipulation"

Next comes my favorite part… I watch unbelievable transformations occur the further we dive into the research.

The project manager who thought she had no power suddenly realizes she's the go-to expert on the new software system (Expert Power), people constantly come to her for advice (Referent Power), and she has connections across three departments (Connection Power).

The individual contributor who felt stuck discovers he's been sharing critical market insights with leadership (Informational Power), mentoring new hires (Reward Power), and building trust through consistent delivery (Referent Power).

This is the shift. It's not about gaining power — it's about recognizing the power you already have.

The Science of Power (It's Not What You Think)

Here's where it gets interesting. Social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven identified that power actually comes in seven distinct forms (known as power bases), and most of them have absolutely nothing to do with your job title.

Let me break this down for you:

1. Legitimate Power - Yes, this is the title thing. But it's just one slice of the pie.

2. Expert Power - What you know, your skills, your experience. If you want to influence others in your organization, one of the surest methods is to develop expertise in your discipline. That thing you're really good at? That's power.

3. Referent Power - This is about trust and relationships. When people seek you out for advice, when your opinion matters to others — that's referent power in action.

4. Reward Power - Your ability to recognize others, provide opportunities, or connect people to resources. You don't need a promotion budget to have this.

5. Informational Power - Access to and ability to share valuable information. In our data-driven world, this is huge.

6. Connection Power - Your network, your ability to make introductions, your relationships across the organization.

7. Coercive Power - The ability to enforce standards or consequences. This one gets overused and abused, but it has its place.

We walk into the workshop thinking only of legitimate power and coercion, and learn about the five other, far more influential forms of power. Think about it. We all do what the enforcer tells us to, but will run through walls for the leader who appreciates and rewards us. I know which leader I’d rather be!

The Influence Game-Changer

Power is just half the equation. The other half is knowing how to use it — and this is where most people get it wrong.

We tend to default to either "hard" influence (setting deadlines, assigning tasks, upholding standards) or "soft" influence (listening, encouraging, building consensus). But the research is clear: ambidextrous influence — using both approaches — increases your predictability of success.

You start with relationship building, then set clear expectations. You pair strong standards with continuous encouragement. You combine direct task assignment with listening to concerns.

I too have laughed at anyone who has referred to me as an “Influencer.” A word which immediately conjures images of the Kardashians. The truth: We all have influence and it is critical that we know how to use it correctly. First-line leaders often have the most influence on direct reports and a few in my career had the ability to make me believe in myself in ways I never thought possible. They weren’t easy on me. They set a high bar and let me know I was capable of exceeding their expectations. They were ambidextrous in their influence and I won’t soon forget them.

The Permission You've Been Waiting For

Here's the thing we don't talk about enough: You don't need to wait for permission to use your power.

You don't need a promotion to share your expertise. You don't need a management title to build relationships. You don't need approval to connect people or recognize good work. You don't need a corner office to influence outcomes. Start. Right. Now.

Audit your power sources. Reflect on where you are strongest and where you can grow. Think through all the people you know who excel at owning their power and ask them for help. Personal coaches are great for helping us to identify and grow our power sources. This work is some of the most impactful work I do with my clients.

What This Means for You (The Real Stuff)

Look, I'm not here to hand you a five-step formula for workplace domination. But I am here to tell you that recognizing and ethically using your power isn't just good for your career — it's good for everyone around you.

When we understand our power:

We stop waiting for others to make things happen
We start advocating for ourselves and others more effectively
We build stronger relationships based on mutual respect
We become the person others turn to when they need to get things done
We create the kind of workplace culture you actually want to be part of
We stop being passengers in our careers and start driving.

And here's the beautiful part — it's contagious. When you start operating from a place of recognized power, you give others permission to do the same.

Your Power Inventory Starts Now

I see you, showing up every day, doing good work, caring about outcomes, supporting your colleagues. That's not powerlessness — that's power in action.

The only difference between you and the "powerful" people you admire? They recognize what they're already doing and do it more intentionally (and perhaps have the title and the corner office already). You start recognizing your personal power and the sky’s the limit.

So here's my challenge: For the next week, notice your power. Notice when people come to you for advice. Notice when you have information others need. Notice when you make connections or recognize good work. Notice when you set boundaries or uphold standards.

You're more powerful than you think. It's time to start acting like it.

———————————————-

Looking for a way to boost your team’s efficacy, engagement, and performance? Connect with me 1:1 to discuss bringing this information to your organization!

The Great Disconnect: Why Mental Health Is the Missing Piece in Your Engagement Strategy

Kacy Fleming — Tue, 27 May 2025 21:59:14 +0000

The Bottom Line Up Front:

The numbers are too concerning for small talk, so we will start with straight talk. We've been treating employee engagement and mental health as separate problems when they're actually two sides of the same coin. Companies are hemorrhaging $438 billion globally in lost productivity because they're measuring engagement scores while ignoring the psychological factors that drive them (Gallup, 2025). Here's the truth—the organizations winning at both are doing three specific things that most workplaces are completely missing.

The reason your engagement initiatives keep falling flat isn't because you don't have the right tools or strategies. It's because you're trying to boost productivity while completely ignoring what's happening in your people's heads and hearts.

The Data That Should Keep Leaders Up at Night

Let's start with what the numbers are actually telling us about the connection between mental health and engagement, because this relationship isn't just correlation—it's causation.

The Mental Health-Engagement Crisis: According to NAMI's 2024 research, 33% of full-time employees noticed their productivity suffer because of their mental health, and conversely, 36% noticed their mental health suffer because of work demands (NAMI, 2024). That's not a fluffy well-being problem—it’s an engagement emergency disguised as a mental health issue.

Here's where the data gets really interesting: global employee engagement fell from 23% to 21%—a drop equal to what we saw during COVID-19 lockdowns (Gallup, 2025). But the story behind this decline is deeply psychological: manager engagement fell from 30% to 27%, with young managers (under 35) seeing engagement drop by five percentage points and female managers experiencing a seven-point decline (Gallup, 2025).

The psychological toll is measurable. Managers are experiencing decision fatigue which creates constant stress. In addition, they are facing chronic understaffing woes, and what one supervisor described as teams with "no enthusiasm" where "you can just feel it" (Gallup, 2025). We can trace the cause to an impossible list: return-to-office enforcement, navigating hiring booms and busts, restructured teams, shrinking budgets, supply chain chaos, digital transformation, AI tools, and new employee expectations without additional training and all while retaining talent and boosting productivity (Gallup, 2025).

The Well-being Collapse: It's not just engagement scores. Global employee life evaluations—how people feel about their lives overall—fell to 33% thriving in 2024 (Gallup, 2025). Managers again bore the brunt: older managers saw a five-percentage-point decline in well-being, and female managers experienced a seven-point drop in life satisfaction (Gallup, 2025).

What's driving this collapse? A perfect storm of psychological stressors: 75% of respondents reported experiencing some form of low mood, with the majority attributing it to global political turmoil and current events (PLANSPONSOR, 2025). Meanwhile, the top mental health stressor is the increasing cost of living, followed by financial instability and being overworked (Qarrot, 2024). In regions like the US and Canada, and Australia/New Zealand, wellbeing has dropped to historic lows, likely driven by housing costs and inflation that make basic living increasingly unaffordable (Gallup, 2025).

For working parents, the situation is even more dire: teen mental health challenges surged in 2023, with some ER doctors reporting kids seeking psychiatric emergency care rising from 30 per month to 40 per day (SpringHealth, 2024). When employees' children are in crisis and they're simultaneously dealing with financial pressure and work overload, life satisfaction plummets.

Attribution matters. The data tell us that half of employees who are engaged at work are thriving in life overall, compared with only a third of employees who are not engaged (Gallup, 2025).

The Quitting Conundrum:

34% of employees aged 18-29 and 28% of employees aged 30-49 reported they considered quitting because of work's impact on their mental health (NAMI, 2024).
25% of working Americans say they are considering leaving their current employer due to their need for a mental health break (TeamBuilding, 2024).
50% of American workers resigned in 2021 due to poor mental health (eLearning Industry, 2024).

Sound familiar? We keep talking about retention and engagement while people are walking out the door because work is literally making them sick.

Here's what gives me hope: 89% of employees say their leaders talk about their own mental health in 2024, compared to just 35% in 2020—creating a growing culture of transparency and safety (Headspace, 2024). But here's what should concern you: only 31% of employees say they are "very satisfied" with their workplace culture (NAMI, 2024), and only 49% believe their manager genuinely cares about their well-being (Qarrot, 2024).

We're talking about mental health more, but we're not creating the conditions where people feel genuinely supported.

What Actually Works: The Three Mental Health-Engagement Integration Strategies

After analyzing research from Mental Health America's analysis of nearly 75,000 work health surveys and Gallup's comprehensive global data, here are the three approaches that address mental health and engagement through concrete organizational changes:

1. Redesign Manager Roles to Include Well-Being Accountability

Here's what most organizations miss: data shows that 70% of team engagement is attributable to the manager, yet manager engagement fell from 30% to 27% (Gallup, 2025). You can't fix team mental health with managers who are clearly drowning—and the data proves they are.

Why This Works: Less than half of the world's managers (44%) have received management training, yet half as many trained managers are actively disengaged (Gallup, 2025). But instead of more training, make well-being outcomes part of their actual job.

What This Actually Looks Like:

Well-being metrics in performance reviews: Track team well-being indicators (stress levels, time off usage, retention) alongside productivity metrics.
Workload caps with real consequences: Managers can't assign more than (X) hours of work per person per week, with systems that automatically flag over-allocation.
Mandatory well-being check-ins: Monthly one-on-ones that must include a well-being discussion, with documentation requirements.
Walking the walk: Leaders are penalized for not taking adequate vacation time (rather than being rewarded), and not knowing company sponsored benefits and well-being resources.

2. Implement Structural Work Design Changes

Here’s the second place most organizations miss. The World Health Organization (WHO) explicitly states that preventing mental health challenges at work means managing psychosocial risks by directly targeting working conditions (WHO, 2024). This isn't about culture—it's about systems.

The Evidence Base: Workplaces prioritizing mental health see 13% higher productivity, with employees 2.3 times less likely to report feeling stressed and 2.6 times higher likelihood of reduced absenteeism (PLANSPONSOR, 2025). These results come from changing how work actually works.

What This Requires:

Maximum meeting limits: No more than 4 hours of meetings per person per day, with meeting-free blocks for deep work.
Email/message response time standards: 24-48 hour response expectations (not 2 hours), with after-hours communication policies that actually have teeth.
Project buffer requirements: All deadlines must include 20% buffer time, and rushing deadlines requires C-level approval.
Mental health days as infrastructure: Minimum 2 mental health days per quarter, separate from PTO, with no questions asked (and leader modeled).

3. Create Financial Consequences for Well-being Outcomes

What we reward gets repeated and what we punish gets avoided. Organizations only change when there are real consequences.

The Evidence Base: Mental health issues cost the global economy $1 trillion annually (SpringHealth, 2024), while lost productivity from disengaged employees costs $438 billion globally (Gallup, 2024). Organizations with strong mental health support see 74% of employees rating their mental health as good or excellent, compared to just 46% in less supportive workplaces (TeamBuilding, 2024).

What This Actually Looks Like:

Leadership compensation tied to well-being metrics: Executive bonuses include team mental health indicators (stress surveys, retention rates, mental health day usage).
Mental health impact assessments: All major organizational changes (restructures, layoffs, system changes) require mental health impact studies with mitigation plans.
Burnout prevention insurance: Organizations purchase coverage that pays out when employees experience documented work-related mental health issues.
Toxic behavior penalties: Clear financial consequences (bonus reductions, promotion freezes) for leaders whose teams show poor mental health outcomes.

Where to Start This Week

If you're ready to stop treating mental health and engagement as separate initiatives, here's where the data says to begin:

For leadership: Start measuring mental health and engagement together. Ask people how work is affecting their psychological well-being, not just how engaged they feel.

For managers: Learn to recognize that disengagement often signals mental health struggles. Have conversations that address both the work and well-being.

For HR: Audit your programs to identify which ones actually address the root causes of both mental health decline and disengagement—things like autonomy, workload, and social connection.

For everyone: Stop pretending these are separate issues. Mental health IS engagement. Engagement IS mental health. They rise and fall together.

The truth? The companies that figure out this connection first will have a massive competitive advantage. They'll retain better talent, achieve higher performance, and build more sustainable organizations that can handle whatever comes next.

The research proves it. The business case is compelling. The human case is undeniable.

Ready to transform how your organization approaches mental health and engagement? If you or your leadership team are facing these challenges, I'm here to help.

Book a consultation with Kacy Fleming Consulting to build workplace systems that support both human well-being and business performance.

Boreout: The Silent Career Killer Midlife Women Don’t Think About

Kacy Fleming — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 16:54:09 +0000

Have you ever sat at your desk, staring blankly at the screen, feeling utterly unchallenged and completely disconnected from your work?

You worked your entire life to get to this point, and find yourself wondering: Is this all there is? Is this job really worth all those years of sleepless nights and stress filled days?

If these messages are resonating with you, you could be experiencing ‘boreout.’ While burnout typically gets the spotlight, its equally destructive counterpart—boreout—lurks in the shadows of our professional lives, particularly for women in midlife. After being asked to comment on “boreout” for a recent Business Insider piece, I fell down a rabbit hole, and here’s what I learned.

According to research published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, approximately 55% of office workers report experiencing workplace boredom at least once per week. And for women navigating the complex terrain of midlife, this understimulation can become equally destructive as burnout. I can’t tell you how often I hear women telling me that during the menopausal transition they found themselves “wanting to blow up their whole lives.”

As someone who has oscillated between both ends of this workplace well-being spectrum, I've seen firsthand how the unique convergence of expectations, workplace dynamics, and life stage can create chronic disappointment and boreout for women in midlife. Turns out, I'm in great company, but chronically under-stimulated company.

What the Research Reveals

The numbers tell an alarming story. Research by Bruursema and colleagues (2014) found that bored employees were 2.8 times more likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviors. Meanwhile, a study published in Human Relations discovered that boreout reduced productivity by approximately 33% compared to engaged employees.

A five-year longitudinal study by van Hooff (2021) published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that employees experiencing chronic boreout took an average of 4.6 more sick days annually and were 2.3 times more likely to report physical health complaints. These aren't just statistics—they represent millions of professionals silently disengaging while trying to maintain careers, relationships, and our sanity. The phenomenon affects both men and women, but research suggests unique factors at play for women in midlife.

Why Midlife Women Experience the "Great Underwhelm"

1. The Expertise Trap

By midlife, many of us have developed significant expertise that makes formerly challenging tasks routine. Not to mention that as we rise in organizations, we often end up in leadership roles, where we spend more time administrating, delegating, and politicking than we do engaging in the actual work that drew us to roles in the first place. According to research by Bakker and colleagues (2022), this skill-challenge mismatch is a primary driver of boreout, especially in jobs that don't evolve with our growing capabilities.

To further our discontent, data from McKinsey (2023) shows that women are 1.4 times more likely than men to have their expertise underutilized in workplace settings. To be clear, these skills are underutilized without us talking about needing support during menopause. Add that to the mix, and some would seek to put us out to pasture entirely. Underutilization particularly painful pill to swallow during midlife, when decades of hard-earned wisdom aren't fully leveraged. All of this entrepreneurial mindset, resilience, and complex problem solving goes to waste when we walk out the door, but many midlife women tell me they haven’t had a development conversation in years.

2. The Biological Reality

Just as with burnout, hormonal fluctuations during perimenopause and menopause can amplify boreout symptoms. Research published in the Journal of Women & Aging (2020) found that cognitive changes during menopause can increase sensitivity to understimulation, making routine tasks feel exponentially more tedious. Loss of joy, a common symptom in perimenopause often extends to the workplace, making it hard to distinguish exactly what is causing our complacency.

Bonafide Health’s 2024 State of Menopause report reveals that 42% of women believe their symptoms have impacted their ambition. Temporary cognitive alterations, brought on by declining estrogen in the brain can be a huge confidence killer for midlife women. When brain fog meets boring work, the result is a particularly potent form of disengagement. I remember sitting in meetings, not just feeling hot flashes but experiencing a special kind of mental numbness that made me question whether I had anything valuable left to contribute or even wanted to be there anymore.

3. The Invisible Middle

As women reach midlife, we often become organizationally invisible. According to research by Feierabend and Merz (2022), workplace boreout correlates strongly with feelings of being undervalued. This invisibility creates a self-reinforcing cycle: women are given fewer stimulating opportunities, leading to decreased engagement, which further reduces visibility. To further complicate matters, the often debilitating symptoms of menopause left unchecked can leave us lacking the confidence to seek larger roles or opportunities for advancement.

A longitudinal study by Sonnentag and Fritz (2019) demonstrated that persistent boreout increased the risk of clinical depression diagnosis by 68% over two years. To make matters more confusing, The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) cites research showing that 26% of women between ages 45-55 report experiencing depressive symptoms severe enough to interfere with daily function.

The cruel irony? Just as midlife women gain the experience to contribute most meaningfully, they're often sidelined into roles that fail to challenge their capabilities. For women already navigating the "menopause penalty" in their careers, boreout adds another layer of financial disadvantage. Demerouti's (2021) research found that untreated boreout led to career plateauing in 73% of cases over a five-year period, while Bakker's (2022) study demonstrated it reduced career advancement by 47% compared to engaged counterparts over four years.

Three Evidence-Based Approaches That Work

New research points to specific strategies that address the unique challenges midlife women face with boreout. Here are evidence-based approaches that have been proven effective:

1. Strategic Job Crafting

Research by Tims and colleagues (2020) found that job crafting interventions reduced boreout symptoms by 41%. This isn't just about asking for more work—it's about strategically redesigning your role to align with your strengths and interests. For midlife women, this might mean identifying projects that leverage our unique expertise, negotiating for developmental assignments, or creating cross-functional initiatives that bring new challenges. Flexibility isn’t always about where we work, being able to choose our job tasks can go a long way to reducing boreout.

One of my contacts, a marketing executive who felt she'd been put "on the shelf," created a reverse mentoring program where she partnered with Gen Z employees. The result? Her engagement skyrocketed as she learned new digital skills while sharing her strategic wisdom—a win-win that her company hadn't even considered.

2. Harness Prosocial Impact Through Community

Research by Grant and Berg (2020) found that focusing on the prosocial impact of one's work reduced boreout symptoms by 44% over three months. To further support social well-being in the workplace, a study by Schaufeli and Bakker (2018) published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that employees who engaged in structured peer support activities showed a 31% increase in work engagement compared to control groups.

Meanwhile, research by Dutton and Ragins (2017) demonstrated that high-quality connections in the workplace reduced symptoms of disengagement by 28% even when job tasks remained unchanged. Research from BMC Women's Health (2021) found that peer support groups specifically for professional women in midlife reduced burnout symptoms by 48% over a 6-month period. While this study focused primarily on burnout, the researchers noted significant improvements in engagement measures as well, suggesting applicability to boreout conditions.

I've seen this transformation firsthand with clients who joined workplace groups focused on supporting women through midlife transitions. Something magical happens when women find other women to share in this life transition. The biggest comment I hear from women entering The Fuchsia Tent Community is that the feel less alone. Fostering connections with other midlife women in and out of the workplace can reinvigorate purpose and meaning.

3. Build Strategic Visibility

According to Berg's research, employees who documented skill underutilization with specific examples were 2.1 times more likely to receive role adjustments. For midlife women often facing the double invisibility of gender and age bias, strategic self-advocacy becomes essential. This isn't about bragging but about systematically ensuring your capabilities are visible. Besides, other people are so busy working to move their own lives forward, that they may completely miss your accomplishments.

In the restaurant business we called this practice “tip talk,” meaning reminding people what you are doing on their behalf as a means to create referent power (or increase your tips). Track your accomplishments, quantify your impact, and regularly share your capacity for additional challenges. When I felt underutilized at a previous company, I created a "skill inventory" document highlighting my untapped expertise and specific ways it could benefit upcoming initiatives. Within three months, I was reassigned to a project that reignited my enthusiasm and showcased my value.

The Bottom Line: Talent Activation, Not Just Retention

According to McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2023 report, organizations are losing women leaders at the highest rate in decades. What's often overlooked is that many check out mentally long before they physically exit. Boreout doesn't just precede burnout—it's its stealthy accomplice.

Deloitte's research (2022) reveals that companies with inclusive cultures are six times more likely to be innovative and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets. Addressing boreout isn't just about making midlife women happier—it's about unlocking intellectual capital that's sitting dormant in plain sight.

If you're a midlife woman struggling through meetings wondering "Is this all there is?", you're experiencing something structural, not personal. Your boredom isn't ingratitude or lack of work ethic—it's a mismatch between your capabilities and your challenges. The research doesn't just validate your experience; it demands organizational response.

For leaders and organizations, the message is clear: boreout isn't a personal failing but a systemic waste. With global productivity growth at its lowest in decades and women's workforce participation still below pre-pandemic levels, we're facing an engagement crisis we can't afford. The untapped potential of midlife women isn't just a DEI issue—it's an economic imperative.

Think of boreout not as the opposite of burnout, but as its equally destructive twin. One depletes through overload, the other through underutilization. Both ultimately rob organizations of their most valuable resource: human potential fully expressed.

The Perfect Storm: Understanding and Addressing Burnout in Midlife Women

Kacy Fleming — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 14:47:12 +0000

If you are a burnout survivor, raise your hand…

If you are reading this article, your hand likely shot up faster than a thoroughbred runs at the Kentucky Derby.

According to the World Health Organization, Burnout isn't a disease, but rather “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It's a state of chronic stress leading to physical exhaustion, cognitive weariness, and emotional depletion. And for women in midlife, the evidence shows we go from on fire to crispy critters in no time flat.

As a multi-episode burnout thriver, I've seen how the unique confluence of biology, home life, and workplace factors can create what I call the "perfect storm" for women in their 40s and 50s. Turns out, I am in great company, but chronically stressed company.

What the Research Reveals

The numbers paint a clear picture. According to Deloitte's Women @ Work Report 2023, 46% of women report feeling burned out, and 53% say their stress levels are higher than they were in 2022. The American Psychological Association's 2023 Work and Well-being Survey found that women were more likely than men to report physical fatigue (44% vs. 33%), cognitive weariness (46% vs. 35%), and emotional exhaustion (41% vs. 32%). That is a whole lot of tired women, yet thanks to perimenopause symptoms many of us cannot sleep.

These aren't just statistics—they represent millions of women struggling silently while trying to maintain careers, relationships, and our sanity. In almost every room where I discuss the menopausal transition, there are at least three women who tell me that when the symptoms started, they thought they were losing their minds.

Why Midlife Women Feel Like We Are Losing It.

1. The Caregiving Squeeze

Aging parents, children, and pets…Oh My!

Data from McKinsey shows that women are significantly more likely than men to have a partner who works full-time, creating an uneven distribution of domestic responsibilities. This imbalance becomes particularly painful during midlife, when about 47% of adults in their 40s and 50s have a parent age 65 or older while simultaneously raising or financially supporting children (Pew Research). Welcome to what is fondly referred to as the “sandwich” or “panini” generation.

Being a ‘panini’ caregiver amounts to a part-time job on top of full-time employment, with caregivers spending an average of 23.7 hours weekly providing care. With 61% of the caregivers being midlife women it makes sense that we show 50% higher rates of stress and anxiety symptoms compared to peers without dual caregiving responsibilities (Journal of Women & Aging, 2022). Leave work and/or reduce hours and you will soon be paying “The Menopause Penalty.” Or as a Metlife Study of Caregiving Costs, shows an estimated $304,000 in lifetime wages and benefits lost.

2. The Biological Reality

Over 73% of women report experiencing menopausal symptoms that have affected them at work. I was one of those women stripping down to a James Perse tank top in the boardroom, not caring who saw what! This isn't just about hot flashes. Hormonal fluctuations can affect sleep quality, cognition, emotional regulation, musculoskeletal function, energy levels and more—all crucial factors in workplace performance and resilience against burnout.

The 2024 State of Menopause data reveals that nearly half of all women say symptoms disrupt their daily lives, with 1 in 5 saying their symptoms are worse than they could ever imagine. Our mothers had no answers as improper interpretation of the Women’s Health Initiative Study took the possibility of hormone replacement therapy off the table. We (Generation X) came to the new realities of menopause completely unprepared. Unaddressed symptoms lead to career aspirations being affected, with 42% of women reporting their symptoms have impacted their ambition, while 48% believe menopausal women are seen as less productive or emotionally stable in the workplace (Bonafide Health, 2024).

3. The Workplace Double Bind

As women reach midlife, we're often hitting our career stride—bringing decades of hard-earned wisdom to the table. Yet McKinsey's research shows women leaders are leaving companies at unprecedented rates—for every woman promoted to director level, two women directors are walking out the door. This exodus isn't about capability; it's about burnout. McKinsey found that 41% of women leaders report being burned out compared to 35% of men leaders. Add increased burnout to unaddressed menopause symptoms and you have the perfect storm for both midlife women and employers

The economic impact is measurable. On average workplace healthcare costs for perimenopausal women increase by $2100 dollars annually vs. premenopausal colleagues. Conti et al., 2025 just proved that women who see their healthcare practitioners for menopause related symptoms experience a 10% reduction in earnings four years later. The cruel irony? Just as midlife women gain the experience to lead most effectively, the convergence of biological challenges, caregiving responsibilities, and workplace barriers creates a nearly impossible burden to shoulder.

Three Evidence-Based Approaches That Work

Beyond generic self-care advice (because who wants to hear that), research points to specific strategies that address the unique triple burden midlife women face. Here are evidence-based approaches that have been proven effective:

1. Implement Strategic Flexibility

The Journal of Occupational Health (2023) found that women who utilized flexible work arrangements reported 37% lower burnout scores than those without such options. This isn't just about working from home occasionally—it's about strategically designing your schedule around energy levels and caregiving responsibilities. For midlife women, this might mean scheduling meetings during peak energy hours, designating certain days for focused work, and creating buffer time between commitments to accommodate unpredictable symptoms or caregiving emergencies. Energy mapping and life auditing are two practices that set my soul on fire, so if you need support head to The Fuchsia Tent.

2. Build Targeted Support Networks

Generic networking isn't enough. BMC Women's Health (2021) found that peer support groups specifically for professional women in midlife reduced burnout symptoms by 48% over a 6-month period. These groups provide both practical strategies and emotional validation from others facing similar challenges. Consider joining an Employee Resource Group (ERG) at your company or seeking out external communities of women who can provide support during these often turbulent times. Individuals engaging in prosocial behaviors experience lower rates of burnout than those withdrawing from social experiences.

3. Create and Hold Digital Boundaries

I LOVE digital boundaries (sadly they elude me most weeks). The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (2021) reported that women who implemented structured digital boundaries, such as daily email cutoffs and designated offline periods, experienced a 28% reduction in work-related stress and improved sleep quality. For midlife women experiencing sleep disruption due to hormonal changes, these boundaries are even more critical. Try setting specific times when you'll check messages, using "do not disturb" settings during recovery periods, and communicating these boundaries clearly to colleagues. One of my favorite hacks is removing the ability for apps to notify. Try this suggestion, and change your life instantly.

Moving Forward Together

The World Economic Forum estimates that at the current rate of progress, it will take 131 years to reach full gender parity. We don't have that kind of time. By addressing burnout in midlife women directly and strategically, businesses can retain vital talent, wisdom, and leadership in their organizations, and women can use their hard won skills to seek promotions and plan next chapters!

If you're a midlife woman experiencing burnout, know that you're not alone, you're not imagining it, and there are evidence-based approaches that can help. In other words, I see you, and I am you! The research confirms what many of us have known intuitively—the challenges we face are real, significant, and more than worthy of attention and ACTION.

And if you're an organizational leader, understand that addressing these issues isn't just the right thing to do—it's a business imperative. With Gallup reporting a 10-year low in employee engagement with only 31% of employees globally engaged at work, we simply cannot afford to lose the experience, innovation, entrepreneurship and empathy that midlife women bring to the table.

Book Time with me! If you or your team are facing these challenges, I'm here to help. With evidence-based approaches tailored to the unique needs of midlife women, we can turn the tide on burnout and reclaim the energy, clarity, and joy you deserve.

Millennial Leaders: Transforming Workplace Well-being From Strategic Priority to Business Strategy

Kacy Fleming — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 14:31:49 +0000

Last month, a newly appointed tech CEO told me she had canceled their gym membership reimbursement program. Remembering the number of gym membership and fitness equipment requests I received as the former Head of Well-Being, I felt the panic creeping in. Before I could react, however, she continued with the following: "And I redirected that budget to provide every employee with therapy coverage and implement company-wide mental health days."

This isn't just another workplace well-being story. It's a glimpse into how a new generation of leaders is fundamentally reshaping what workplace well-being looks like. I am a BIG fan!

The Limitations of Traditional Well-being Programs

Traditional workplace well-being programs have long been treated as checkbox exercises, offering Band-Aid solutions without addressing deeper cultural issues. Early 2024 research from Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre revealed that individualized mental health interventions are less impactful than organization-level changes. While Deloitte's study of 1,274 US workers shows these programs are now must-haves for attracting talent, the real challenge lies in workplace culture.

Organizations often fail to address traditional system challenges, including leadership approach, work design, problematic workplace dynamics, and underlying cultural stigmas. When organizational culture doesn't put people first, we see higher turnover rates, lower job satisfaction, and poor engagement. While there's nothing inherently wrong with well-being tools, the problem emerges when workplaces rely on these perks to fix systemic issues.

From Perks to Purpose: Real Changes in Action

Three companies stand out for their innovative approaches under primarily millennial leadership. Salesforce, with leadership averaging 38-45 years old, reimagined mental health support by implementing unlimited therapy sessions and comprehensive coverage, complemented by mental health days and flexible arrangements. The results were striking: turnover dropped 6%, employee tenure increased by over a year, and job applications surged 47%. Most importantly, revenue per employee grew 22%.

Patagonia's leadership team averaging 32-45 years old recognized that true well-being extends beyond office walls. They introduced on-site childcare and pioneered paid environmental activism leave, along with sabbatical opportunities. Their turnover rate dropped from 22% to 13%, while internal promotions reached 62%, and candidate pool diversity expanded by 29%.

Zillow's leadership (35-48 years old) embraced technology, introducing AI-powered mental health support, digital wellness tracking, and personalized health recommendations, while addressing financial well-being through student loan support. Their voluntary turnover decreased significantly, while their return-to-work rate after parental leave reached 91%, and cross-functional collaboration improved by 33%.

Why These Approaches are Working

These transformative leaders aren't just talking about change—they're implementing concrete, measurable strategies across their organizations.

Here are some of the keys to their success:

Integrating and Destigmatizing Mental Health: Mental health support has evolved far beyond basic coverage, with companies now providing comprehensive benefits that include therapy, counseling, and preventative care. More importantly, they're incorporating well-being check-ins into regular performance reviews, making mental health an integral part of workplace conversations rather than a taboo topic.

Encouraging Autonomous Work Models: Rather than simply offering remote work options, these organizations are creating results-focused environments where employees have individual flexibility agreements tailored to their needs. They're establishing core collaboration hours while giving teams the autonomy to manage their schedules and work locations in ways that optimize both productivity and well-being.

Measuring and Rewarding Well-Being Performance: Perhaps most significantly, these leaders are taking a proactive approach to measuring and maintaining workplace well-being. They're conducting regular audits and pulse surveys that directly inform strategic planning. Well-being metrics now appear alongside traditional business KPIs in leadership scorecards, and wellness goals are woven into broader business strategies.

What We Measure Matters

Today's leaders can monitor meeting loads and email volumes to prevent burnout, track after-hours work patterns to protect boundaries, and measure vacation usage to ensure proper recharging. Team energy levels and feelings of connection are regularly assessed – metrics that would have seemed irrelevant to previous generations. This expanded view moves beyond simple outdated productivity metrics, like face time, to encompass the full employee experience.

Not Convinced Yet? Here’s Your Business Case

A 2024 Oxford study analyzed data from over 1,600 publicly listed US companies, finding that organizations with higher employee well-being consistently outperform their peers. Companies with the highest well-being scores showed stronger stock market returns than major benchmarks, with a $1,000 investment in high-wellbeing companies in January 2021 growing to $1,300 by early 2023—significantly outpacing the S&P 500's growth to $1,100.

The research revealed employee well-being as a leading indicator of business success, with higher-scoring companies demonstrating better firm valuations, higher returns on assets, and greater annual profits. Organizations' pre-COVID employee happiness levels even predicted their post-COVID performance, suggesting that investing in well-being builds organizational resilience.

Transformational Well-Being

These findings align perfectly with what we've seen from millennial leaders at Salesforce, Patagonia, and Zillow. When companies move beyond superficial perks to create truly supportive workplace cultures, they don't just do good—they do better. From Salesforce's 22% revenue per employee growth to Patagonia's dramatic reduction in turnover, prioritizing well-being delivers measurable returns.

The transformation isn't about age—but rather about the willingness to rethink how work and well-being intersect and an understanding that the rapid evolution of technology has changed the style of work forever. These leaders also recognize that well-being isn't a program or a perk—it's a business strategy that drives sustainable performance.

Why Team Lunches Won't Fix Your RTO Problem: Here’s What Will!

Kacy Fleming — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Remember the movie Pleasantville? That 1998 movie where everyone pretended everything was perfect in their black-and-white world?

In a blog post last year, I talked about the Plesantvillian scenario playing out in corporate America's approach to return-to-office mandates (spoiler alert: the vicious RTO cycle continues).

At the end of last year, I spoke with two organizations taking vastly different approaches to RTO. Their stories perfectly illustrate why free lunch, ping pong tables, and bowling outings won't solve our workplace challenges.

A Tale of Two Returns (from Pleasantville to Dickens in one post)

Company A, a mid-sized pharmaceutical firm, invested heavily in office perks. They brought in weekly catered lunches, installed a new wallless break area, and scheduled mandatory team-building events. Their reasoning? "People want to come to an office space that feels homey, and they want to hang out with their coworkers in an unstructured environment.”

Company B, a similar-sized competitor, took a different approach. They studied their teams' work patterns, asked about personal challenges, and designed a flexible system based on their findings.

The results after six months?

Company A:

23% increase in turnover
Declining engagement scores
Rising complaints about "forced fun"
Mounting resentment about inflexibility

Company B:

15% improvement in productivity
27% increase in employee satisfaction
Higher collaboration scores
Stronger team connections

The difference? Company B understood that authentic connection comes from trust, understanding, and shared purpose—they focused on outcomes rather than proximity.

The Real Cost of Forced Fun

Asking for a friend, Does anyone like soggy tacos eaten in front of coworkers? Better yet wearing someone else’s dirty bowling shoes while drinking stale beer? No really, what work problems do these type of activities solve?

Let's talk about what's really happening when organizations try to solve complex workplace challenges with surface-level solutions. These events are like using a Band-Aid for a broken neck—it might look like you're doing something, but you're not addressing the underlying issue.

The real costs of hosting these “team building” events (If you’ve watched Severance think finger traps and melon parties):

Decreased trust in leadership
Reduced authentic engagement
Increased cynicism
Lost productivity during mandatory events
Higher stress levels

Understanding What Employees Really Want

2023 research from Microsoft's Work Trend Index shows that “87% of employees report being productive at work, yet 85% of leaders say they're not confident about employee productivity.” Ping pong tables and communal dining don’t create trust.

Want to know how to increase trust in teams?

Increase flexibility in how they work
Create clear performance expectations
Foster meaningful collaboration opportunities
Help team members tie individual purpose to organizational purpose (This requires knowing which activities feel purposeful to each team member).

The Path Forward

Want to know the secret to Company B's success????

It wasn't magic—it was methodical. Here's their blueprint:

Listen First

Conducted thorough employee surveys
Held focus groups across departments
Analyzed productivity patterns
Gathered feedback on pain points

Design with Purpose

Created flexible work guidelines
Established clear performance metrics
Developed collaboration frameworks
Built trust through transparency

Implement with Care

Piloted programs before full rollout
Provided manager training
Created feedback channels
Adjusted based on results

Measure What Matters

Tracked productivity metrics
Monitored engagement levels
Measured collaboration effectiveness
Assessed employee satisfaction and well-being

The Cultural Shift

Six months after implementing their flexible approach, Company B's CEO shared something revealing: "We stopped trying to make the office a destination and started making our culture the attraction."

Moving Beyond the Perks Arms Race

If you're a leader grappling with RTO decisions, consider these questions:

What are we trying to achieve?
Have we asked our people what they need?
Are we measuring what matters?
Are we building trust or undermining it?

The future of work isn't about where we work—it's about how we work best. And that's something no amount of free lunch can fix.

Looking to accelerate team engagement and performance in 2025. Book a consultation today.

AI Transforms Our Ability to Lead with Compassion

Kacy Fleming — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Last week during a new year catch up conversation, a former colleague shared that many of her coworkers were freaking out about artificial intelligence (AI). "Everyone's talking about job displacement and productivity gains," she said, "but I can't shake the feeling we're missing something bigger."

She was right. While most organizations are caught up in the metrics and mechanics of AI adoption, I'm witnessing something far more interesting: how AI is creating space for more human, compassionate leadership.

It reminds me of when Google Maps first replaced physical maps (sidebar: I still cannot get my 80 year old parents to use ‘The Google’). Everyone focused on the efficiency gains, but the real transformation wasn't about getting places faster—it was about reducing travel stress and creating mental space to actually enjoy the journey. AI in leadership is following a similar path.

How AI is enabling more compassionate, inclusive leadership.

Recent research from Deloitte shows that managers spend up to 54% of their time on administrative tasks—time that could be better spent on human connection and strategic thinking.

As we move into 2025, AI is fundamentally shifting this equation.

The Administrative Liberation

McKinsey's latest workplace study reveals that AI can automate up to 65% of managerial administrative tasks, including:

Schedule management
Performance metric tracking
Basic report generation
Routine email communications
Data analysis and pattern recognition

This automation isn't about replacing human decision-making—it's about freeing leaders to focus on what matters most: their people.

From Time Management to People Development

With AI handling routine tasks, leaders can invest in:

One-on-one mentoring and coaching
Team development and culture building
Strategic planning and innovation
Employee well-being and support
Inclusive workplace design

According to Gartner's 2023 research, organizations implementing AI-powered workflow automation report managers saving 8-10 hours per week on administrative tasks—time that can be reinvested in direct employee engagement and strategic leadership

The Compassion Advantage

A quick literature review of recent reports suggest that organizations with compassionate leaders see:

26% higher employee engagement
21% higher productivity
12% lower turnover rates
31% higher employee satisfaction

By combining AI efficiency with human empathy, we're seeing the emergence of a new leadership paradigm—one that prioritizes both performance and people.

The Human-AI Partnership

The key to this transformation isn't just implementing AI—it's understanding how to use it as a force multiplier for human connection. Think of it like having a highly efficient executive assistant who handles all the paperwork so you can focus on the people work.

When leaders effectively partner with AI, we see consistent patterns of positive change across four key areas:

Strategic Thinking: Leaders report having more mental space and time for big-picture planning and innovative problem-solving, rather than getting lost in administrative details.
Team Development: With administrative tasks automated, leaders can prioritize one-on-one mentoring, career development conversations, and meaningful team interactions.
Life-Work Alignment: By streamlining routine tasks and improving workflow efficiency, leaders find more sustainable ways to manage their energy and time.
Decision-Making: Access to better data visualization and pattern recognition helps leaders make more informed, timely decisions while maintaining their human judgment and intuition.

The Leadership Evolution

But here's what's fascinating—and what most organizations miss: AI isn't just freeing up time; it's actually helping leaders become more emotionally intelligent. How? By providing real-time insights into team dynamics, flagging potential burnout before it happens, and identifying patterns in communication that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Making the Shift

For leaders looking to make this transition, here are the key steps:

Start with Impact Assessment
- Audit your current time allocation
- Identify repetitive tasks
- Map out 1:1s
Choose the Right Tools
- Focus on integration capabilities
- Prioritize user-friendly interfaces
- Look for customization options
Implement with Intention
- Begin with one or two key processes
- Communicate the purpose clearly (In 2024 a leader told us “to play around with AI.” That is not clear communication of purpose).
- Train thoroughly
Monitor and Adjust
- Gather team feedback
- Measure engagement metrics
- Assess leadership effectiveness

Case Study: A Tale of Two Leadership Styles

Meet Marcus (name changed), an individual I coached last year.

Like many leaders, he was drowning in administrative tasks, reviewing emails both nights and weekends.

His team described him as "technically brilliant but always too busy for real conversations."—We didn’t ask his family, but we are sure they would also say he was disengaged.

Working together, we worked to foster life-work alignment, implementing an AI system that automated:

Basic report generation
Meeting summaries
Email prioritization
Data analysis

The transformation was remarkable. Within three months:

His one-on-one meeting time increased dramatically.
Team engagement scores rose by 34%
Employee retention improved
Innovation surged

But the real change? Marcus's team now describes him as "present and engaged." One team member told me, "It's like he finally has the space to be the leader he always wanted to be."

The Future of Compassionate Leadership

As we move deeper into 2025, the organizations that thrive won't be the ones with the most advanced AI—they'll be the ones that use AI to enhance human leadership capabilities.

The goal isn't to automate leadership but to augment it, creating space for the irreplaceable human elements that define great leadership.

That's the real promise of AI in leadership—not replacement, but enhancement. Not less humanity, but more.

What's your experience with AI and leadership? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

To explore the integration of AI into your well-being/ways of working practices book a consultation with me HERE.

Want a Healthy Team: Try Compassionate Leadership

Kacy Fleming — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 19:37:35 +0000

Many leaders I encounter still believe that being a "strong" leader means having all the answers and never showing weakness (you know, or compassion). In meetings, they put on corporate armor, to hide any hint of vulnerability. They over prepare or force their team to over prepare, to preserve their “aura” of perfection and infallibility. For many of these leaders, it’s all about my least favorite corporate word of all time: OPTICS. Optics is corporate speak for we don’t really care about something, we only care about the perception of something.

This approach to leadership is not only ineffective—it actually harms team well-being.

If you still aren’t sold, keep reading.

The truth about leadership's impact on well-being

Recent research from Gallup paints an interesting picture when it comes to employee engagement: “70% of the variance in team engagement can be attributed to leadership style alone.” Add on, a 2023 study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that “employees working under non-compassionate leaders are 70% more likely to experience burnout and 50% more likely to report anxiety and depression symptoms.”

Only worried about the bottom line? All those mental health challenges add up to BIG medical dollars and declining productivity. KEEP READING!

Ready for another fun stat? According to research by Google's Project Oxygen, psychosocial safety—”the belief that you won't be punished for making mistakes”—is the number one predictor of high-performing teams.

Want to create psychosocial safety? We do that by building trust.

How do we build trust? Compassionate Leadership

What exactly is compassionate leadership?

Before you roll your eyes thinking this is another "soft skills" piece, let me be clear. Compassionate leadership isn't about being soft—it's about being smart (I also hate the term “soft” for things that very few leaders master, but I digress). The Harvard Business Review shares that organizations with compassionate leaders see “26% higher employee engagement, 21% higher productivity, and a 12% reduction in sick days.”

What skills make leaders compassionate:

They lead with empathy and understanding, by recognizing that their team members have unique backgrounds and lives outside of work
They foster psychosocial safety by normalizing failure (some companies even reward failure)
They actively listen and take appropriate actions to help their team members
They model healthy boundaries and encourage life-work alignment
They aren’t afraid to be vulnerable or make a mistake in front of their team members.

Great leaders admit when they don’t know something and take accountability when they make mistakes.

The cost of getting it wrong (remember a paragraph ago when I promised computational evidence?)

A 2024 report from Deloitte revealed that companies with low compassion scores “experience 48% higher turnover rates and spend an average of $4,000 more per employee on healthcare costs annually.” When leaders fail to show compassion, the ripple effects touch everything from productivity to physical health.

Some Tips to Lead With Compassion.

Replace accusatory phrases like "Why did you _________ (fill in the blank)?" with curiosity: “Tell me what is in your way, and what support from me looks like to you?”
Don’t just ask your team members about their work projects or development, ask them how they are doing, and what you can do to support them.
Acknowledge your own mistakes and share what you learned from them (I literally love throwing myself under a bus when necessary. It sets everyone at ease.)
Foster autonomy! Implement a DYJ (do your job) policy. Where you trust your team to be adults and manage their own time.
Celebrate ALL wins, not just the ones that matter to you! AND, if you are one of those who think the only reward a human requires for a job well done is a pay check. THINK AGAIN.

The biology of compassionate leadership

This isn't just feel-good corporate speak. When leaders demonstrate compassion, their teams experience measurable biological benefits. Research from the Center for Healthy Minds shows that employees working under compassionate leaders have:

Lower cortisol levels (the stress hormone)
Better immune system function
Improved sleep quality
Reduced inflammation markers
Higher levels of oxytocin, the trust hormone

The transformation of workplace culture through compassionate leadership isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a business imperative.

We ALL know the saying, People don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad leaders.

If you're ready to transform your leadership style but aren't sure where to start, remember that compassion, like any skill, can be developed. Start small. Choose one interaction today where you can lead with more understanding. Watch what happens.

The future of work demands leaders who can create environments where people don't just survive, but thrive. And that future starts with compassion.

—————————————————————-

Hi, I'm Kacy! I empower individuals & teams to live and work with more purpose & greater alignment.⁠

I am a well-being strategist, a keynote speaker, a women's health advocate, and a life coach.⁠

Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and subscribe to my 📰 letter to get the latest information!⁠

Looking for support transforming your leadership style? Book a consultation HERE

Why Election Anxiety Isn’t Always Bad and 5 Tips to Reduce Stress Now!

Kacy Fleming — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 18:48:56 +0000

If you live in the United States, you know that there is a BIG election this November, and work feels like an afterthought (at least to me).

I can barely remember the days where there was an election that didn’t feel like life or death…

AND, I miss them A LOT!

To be fair, there has always been a lot riding on elections, I was just living in a privileged bubble, where I assumed that the freedoms my ancestors fought for were givens.

So every 3 years (that’s right, I now start getting anxious a year in advance), I struggle to stay focused, calm and grounded at work or anywhere else for that matter.

The truth about election anxiety

I used to falsely think that election anxiety was an extension of my General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and while election anxiety can exacerbate an already diagnosed anxiety disorder, it is not the same thing (Weinshenk & Smith, 2024). In fact individuals who do not experience anxiety on the regular have been showing increased bouts of election anxiety and worsening physical well-being since 2016.

Election anxiety is unique because while it is tied to a specific event that is time-bound (election day), the effects of that event can cause fear, frustration, anger, pancic and a whole host of other symptoms long before and after our November election. What is even more disturbing about election anxiety disorder as some psychologists like to call this phenomenon, is that according to the American Psychological Association stress during the last several cycles has led to “lost sleep, damaged relationships…and in worst cases thoughts of suicidality.”

How can any good come from election anxiety?

To be fair, I didn’t say election anxiety is a good thing. I said it isn’t always bad. Here’s why:

EAD can lead to positive action: When we face stress during election time, it can shake us out of our bubble and if we are willing to listen and have compassionate discourse with people who don’t have the same lived experience, we learn and become more empathetic. We might even take positive actions like volunteering that may lead to the future we seek to affect.
Sharing a common goal can strengthen community and bonds: The opposite can also be true, but I prefer to focus on the positive aspects here. When we share a mission, the bonding that can occur between individuals who may not have otherwise connected creates shared understanding and enhances community.

Too much of anything (even chocolate ice cream) isn’t a good thing.

Here’s what to do when election stress takes us to the dark side:

Put guardrails around watching the news, especially around bedtime: I am not suggesting that we stay uniformed, but unless you are living in a completed isolated way, you will know enough of what is happening through friends, family members, and coworkers (who may be able to handle this stress better than we can). If you must watch the news, watch something else that eases your mind at least two hours before going to sleep. By changing the channel long before you turn out the lights, election stress will hopefully leave your subconscious allowing you a great night sleep. Poor sleep habits exacerbate stress!
Remind yourself what is in your control: Unless our job is actually working directly for one of the campaigns, and even if it is, the three main items within our control are voting, donating, and volunteering time. All three components can ease election anxiety because they are in our control. Everyone has to make their own decision how involved they want to get. For some volunteering may feel too stressful, and that is ok too. Vote first, and donate if you can. Many live paycheck to paycheck. There are many times in my life when I too was in that boat. There is no shame if voting is your main form of action. Our vote is the most powerful and precious action we can take. Much as I would love to control the outcome and every human around me, I consistently remind myself of my options: Vote and when possible donate, and volunteer.
Curate your social media feeds or stay off all together: If you are someone who doom scrolls in other times (if you were here you would see this 🙋🏻‍♀️), don’t do it during election cycles. If you are overly sensitive to certain types of content that friends or others you follow share, you can mute them temporarily without unfollowing them.
I curate my feed year round, and only have the people and things that fire me up or light me up. Careful curation of our feed are a great way to ensure what we see is in alignment with our values. Finally, limit time on social to a certain number of minutes per day. Putting limits on social media is simple through a smart phone’s Screen Time feature. Remember it isn’t only food we digest. We process everything we consume, including social media.
Take action now: This tip might feel redundant with number 2, but I mean something different here. There is nothing less empowering than sitting around waiting for a problem and then complaining about the outcome. The time to make change is NOW! As I write this article according to the 270towin.com election clock there are 72 days 10 hours 50 minutes and 51 seconds till I can cast my vote. For the candidates and campaigns 72 days is precious little time. For us, it means time to phone bank, write postcards, buy yard signs, donate, volunteer to be a poll watcher, organize your people, make your voting plan, plan to drive seniors to the polls, and so much more. Doing something positive, anything will ease anxiety. Compassionate action is the best medicine for apathy and fear.
Practice mindfulness and be in nature: I know, I know. These are not the same things so really I am offering six tips, but five is catchier! Mindfulness does not mean sitting on a meditation cushion on a retreat. It means becoming still and aware of what is happening in the present moment, and it is the perfect antidote to future related stressors. In this moment what are 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste? We call this the 5-4-3-2-1 method and it is a perfect way to get present and stop stress.
What’s easier than 5-4-3-2-1, getting out in nature. Take a walk down your street on a sunny day, snowshoe if you live in a wintery climate, swim in a stream, sit on a bench watching life pass you by. Even in NYC there are ways to be in nature. Head to Central Park, sit on a stoop and check out the trees and flowers growing on the block. Heck, even the cracks in NYC have nature. Fresh air clears the mind. If it is focus you seek, remember, it requires a breath of fresh air and is as easy as 5-4-3-2-1.

If you are feel deeply anxious, having panic attacks, and/or struggling to focus here are a couple of extra things that can assist:
▶ Speak to a therapist using a workplace employee assistance program or employer medical benefits
▶ In the United States there is a FREE 24/7 mental health hotline ☎ specifically for anxiety: 866-903-3787
▶ The National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) also has a FREE hotline that operates M-F, 10 AM to 10 PM: 800-950-6264 you can also text "helpline" to 62640

I hope this article helps you ease election stress. These practices have helped me focus in the most tumultuous election years. They are also practices that can ease general anxiety unrelated to election cycles.

If your workplace is not a news station, and the news is running at all hours of the day, ask your Human Resources Department and/or facilities manager to change the station to something not news related.

If you are an employer looking for ways to help ease stress, create unity, and enhance the well-being and engagement of your people before, during, and after this election, I am available, for keynotes and consultation.

Book with me here https://kacyfleming.as.me

Embracing Our Unique Value Propositions

Kacy Fleming — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:34:33 +0000

I spent 20 years trying to hide all the facets of myself that didn’t align to the career path du jour…Now that I have gone into business for myself, I am learning that my atypical choices give me a unique advantage.

Your difference is your competitive edge too. Trust me!

Before we get into all the unique advantage stuff, let me explain why I worked so hard to squeeze into spaces that never fit, in hopes it will help you unravel what and why you are hiding.

The evidence:

When I was a pharmaceutical sales representative and people found out that I was a retired professional actress, they would ask me “If I was acting like I liked my job?” or “How they could trust anything an actress said?”
When I worked in market access marketing and people learned about my yoga and nutrition certifications, as well as my brief stint in culinary school, I was often asked “What I was doing in a pricing role?” and “Why I was still working for my company?”
Later when I had a more outwardly congruent career choice, “Head of Global Well-Being,” people quickly forgot about my time in market access and the commercial side of biopharma, and I was rebranded an HR Professional.

Human beings are sense making creatures. Psychology Today suggests that we learn to sort things into boxes as an evolutionary capability that allows our brains to store a tremendous amount of information. In the process, we often lose the ability to see people in their full glory.

We don’t need to be just one thing to be successful.

When we are what my dear friend Shonna Water’s Ph.D. likes to refer to as serial specialists, it can be harder to communicate your value clearly to others.

Just because something is harder to articulate, doesn’t make it less valuable. Multipotentialites do need to thoroughly understand our own value propositions to be able to explain them to others, or we risk our pitch sounding a bit like Mr. Potato Head looks with all his parts askew (I am learning this lesson the hard way).

Take me for example. I was struggling to figure out how to explain my two business models to the world. Here is how I told my story to my business advisor when she asked me to explain how I got to Corporate Well-Being Strategist, Specializing in Women’s Health at Work, and Keynote Speaker with a Menopause Community:

When acting was not a lateral enough career path, I found pharmaceutical sales.
Then to deal with a lifelong eating disorder, I went to culinary school to heal my relationship with food (I dropped out).
I went on a spiritual journey to manage my social anxiety disorder and panic, which led me to yoga teacher training.
Then when I miscarried a child and found myself unable to digest food, I went to school to become an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach.
Which led me to want to better understand the supplements my Functional MD was writing, so I obtained a certification in herbalism.
Unable to keep what I was learning to myself, I became a Well-Being Champion at my company, which led me to my heading global well-being for 50,000 colleagues internationally.
Seeking to better understand how to assist with the cultural aspects of well-being in the workplace, I went to William James College to get my M.A. in Organizational Psychology.
While at the same time my perimenopause symptoms spiraled out of control leading to 500 hours researching my symptomatology and the menopause marketplace…

ALL of which, I am using to help women navigate their own menopausal transitions and working to transform workplace cultures to better support the well-being of all humans, and especially mid-career women.

Whether it is how to get drugs covered, therapeutic knowledge of herbs, functional nutrition information, coaching, or how to talk about menopause to leaders and colleagues in the workplace, I could not do any of those things, had I not walked my entire winding career path.

My choices may still seem odd, and probably wouldn’t be your choices…

AND…

They are also why I am uniquely qualified to help organizations and individuals thrive together, and help women navigate complex transitions (like menopause) to live better more fulfilled lives.

If you seek to understand your unique value proposition, ask yourself what parts you are hiding from the world and why.

No really. Write it all down.

If we are lucky, lives and careers are long.

If you want to be just one thing because you love the work, be just one thing.

But if like me, you are exhausted from trying to contort yourself to fit other peoples boxes, stop trying.

Do all of the things you love and are inspired to do, and I promise you will look back at those choices one day and they will all make sense.

Be yourself to free yourself.

—————————————————————-

Hi, I'm Kacy! I empower individuals & teams to live and work with more purpose & greater alignment.⁠

I am a well-being strategist, a keynote speaker, a women's health advocate, and a life coach.⁠

Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and subscribe to my 📰 letter to get the latest information!⁠
⁠

Looking for support through the menopause transition? Check out The Fuchsia ⛺️⁠

What to Consider Saying Instead of “Don’t Take Things Personally.”

Kacy Fleming — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:34:47 +0000

Some who knew me as a child might say I was born too “sensitive,” for this world. Those who knew me in my 20s might label me as “dramatic.” In my 30s, I would be accused of “directness” and of being at times (my least favorite, most weaponized word) “emotional.” By my 40s, I learned to emotionally regulate most of the time, unless I was forced out of my comfort zone into overly aggressive social situations. Large corporate meetings are my kryptonite—not as a speaker, I can speak in front of millions, but if you ask me to make small talk with 200 people, I’d prefer to walk on glass with bare feet.

Really, I am someone who struggles from social anxiety disorder (SAD) and as a child and young adult struggled to emotionally self-regulate when faced with harshness or conflict. My anxiety can manifest in all of the ways listed above, and my natural default IS to take EVERYTHING personally. Most introverts with SAD take things personally because we spend most of our lives in our inner worlds. Regardless, whenever I feel any emotion about what someone has said or done, the mostly well-meaning people in my life seem to relish in telling me to “Not take things personally.” Sigh…

What these individuals don’t understand when they tell a person with SAD “not to take things personally” is that for “those with anxiety or fear in situations where they may be scrutinized, evaluated, or judged by others,” not taking feedback personally is a Herculean feat. And, yet I have heard this largely unhelpful feedback throughout my life.

To make sense of the phrase “Don’t Take Anything Personally,” I traveled back to being an eager 22 year-old, and reading Don Miguel Ruiz’s heady masterpiece, The Four Agreements. When Ruiz speaks to the Second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally, he explains that each person lives in their own dream (or nightmare) and that what they think or say is a reflection of their internal narrative, and not of our behavior. Ruiz considers caring about the opinions of others to be a cosmic waste of energy, because what they think is actually about themselves and not us.

While he has a solid point, and caring what other people think is a colossal waste of time and energy, using the second agreement to counter a friend or colleague left feeling like garbage by someone else’s treatment can be a gentle form of gaslighting. The phrase, though well-meaning, is the equivalent of being told to get over something, perhaps before we are ready. In addition, the perpetrator of said remarks or judgements gets off scott-free while we are left with the homework of not taking their mistreatment personally.

Then again, maybe we are the one in the wrong, who did something that hurt someone’s feelings. I would argue that we should definitely take intentional or unintentional harming of others to heart. If more people were concerned or even aware of how their behavior affects other people, we would live in a much kinder world. Evaluating the effects of our own behavior requires Emotional Intelligence (EI) “which is the ability to manage both our own emotions and understand the emotions of those around us.”

So what should we say to friends and colleagues who are completely defeated by someone’s actions or words? I prefer one of my dear mother’s favorite expressions “consider the source,” in place of “don’t take things personally.” By telling someone to consider the source, we are saying whatever comments or criticisms came our way, should be evaluated based on the character of the individual and the nature of the comment. Considering the source requires awareness and emotional intelligence.

When we consider the source of our despair, we are not immediately writing off the feedback or comments, nor are we taking on their message wholesale. Instead, by considering the source, we can reflect on who said the thing and their potential motivations, while discerning what we want do with the feedback. Considering the source is more difficult at times than outwardly discounting bad behavior AND yet so much more empowering!

When we consider the source, we have several empowering options:

We can decide to ignore the commentary should we deem it unhelpful or the individual not credible.
We can ask questions of the individual about their motivations, and then make a choice if and how to react.
We can reflect on our own behavior and seek to understand what part we may have played in the conflict.
If we did something wrong and are made aware, whether or not it was intentional, we can own our actions and apologize.

So, the next time a friend or coworker comes to you distressed about an altercation or harsh piece of feedback, instead of suggesting not to take it personally, instead tell them to consider the source.

—————————

Looking to stop people pleasing or improve emotional self-regulation?

Hi, Im Kacy! I empower individuals & teams to live and work with more purpose & greater alignment. Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram: @kca_fleming! Subscribe to my 📰 letter👇👇to get the latest information! Looking for support through the menopause transition? Check out The Fuchsia ⛺️

What’s Working: Four Practices Helping to Heal My Entrepreneurial Burnout

Kacy Fleming — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 22:03:22 +0000

I’d love to say that this is my first journey with burnout, or to tell you that I wrote this post many moons ago.

Both statements would be lies.

Here’s the truth, just because we’ve battled burnout once doesn’t mean we are immune in the future. In fact, workplace well-being expert Jen Fisher, conducted a Burnout Survey with over 1,000 full-time US professionals. The survey found that 51% of the 77% workers experiencing burnout in their current role, had burned out more than once. And that was back in 2018. According to a recent Fortune article, in 2024 upwards of 82% of employees are at risk of burnout!

Having a career in well-being made it extremely difficult to admit falling back into my old patterns of chronic overwork. I refused to acknowledge the burning and churning in my body and mind. It couldn’t be burnout, I thought. I know better than to let that happen again. I’m supposed to be the life-work alignment person who teaches others how to make time for life and work success.

True, and yet, I was out of control, like a car speeding 110-mph on a winding mountain road, heading for a crash.

My brain stopped first. I couldn’t write. I would sit down to journal my 3 daily pages (something that typically takes me 10 minutes) and tears would trickle down my cheeks. Social media posts that used to come with ease were like trying to write my magnum opus. As a solopreneur, if I didn’t write my posts and blogs, who would?

Despite the check engine light being on, I kept pushing.

I had just launched two businesses and needed to make them successful or what would people think, let alone say about me ? We know by now that I am a recovering perfectionist, so these imposter-like thoughts should come as know surprise.

Then came the body issues. Sure, my stomach had been in knots since March, but that was typical for me as an anxious overachiever, so I paid no attention. One Friday, after putting work aside for a 5 pm dinner with my partner (the one true break, I was taking each day), I found myself unable to keep my head up at the table. On the one minute walk back to our car, my feet would barely work. It’s as if my body was terrified to go home, afraid that I would start cranking away again. I burst into tears, literally sobbing for 24 hours. I know it sounds awful, but the breakdown was needed!

It was time to face the ugly truth.

I burned out AGAIN, and this time as an entrepreneur, meaning I was solely responsible for my meltdown.

What’s Helping Me Heal Burnout 2.0?

Boundaries Around Social Media: For any entrepreneur who considers themselves a content creator and/or a community owner, social media is a necessary evil…Up to a point. I can assure you that most of my usage was gratuitous and unnecessary. If you need to be on social media for work, there are great apps like Later that can be used to schedule posts way in advance. I started using Later prior to my episode of burnout, but was on social media ALL THE TIME—commenting to my commenters, advertising, checking posts, making sure to be there for everything and everyone, except myself.
And when we are constantly on social media, we see everyone’s bright shiny successes on display, which can feel a bit deflating, at least for this brand new entrepreneur. Don’t get me wrong! I fully believe that people, especially women should shine away and share their successes, AND yet when things aren’t going great for us, comparing and despairing come far too easily.
Now, I post on Later, and limit my daily usage of social with Iphone’s Screen Time feature. Bottom line, we need to gate our own social media usage like we would a child’s.
Limiting Access to Devices: As an Apple user for both computer and phone, limiting access is simple. You go into Screen Time, select downtime, and schedule when you want your devices in “do not disturb” mode. Using downtime terrified me at first, because it meant admitting that I had a problem. Hi, my name is Kacy, and I’m a workaholic.
Once the irrationality subsided, there ironically is freedom in locking a phone. I now watch Netflix and Prime in peace. I don’t look at my phone before bed because other than setting an alarm or checking my calendar, it is basically a paper weight. Bonus: I am more present with my partner and puppies, though Mark still isn’t convinced he needs “downtime” (baby steps). Look on the brightside, if you don’t like the downtime, you can always change your settings!
Daily Meditation (it’s baaaaaack): I know, I know, being told to meditate is SO ANNOYING! I agree, AND meditation works. Don’t take my word for it, but know that Green and Kinchen (2021), found that “mindfulness meditation has the potential to decrease stress and burnout in nurses by decreasing self-judgment and overidentification with experience, and by increasing resiliency, compassion, and emotional regulation.” If it works for nurses, who actually deal in life and death, it will work for the rest of us who simply feel like each email and meeting might bring death.
Start small. Meditate 1-3 minutes a day. I am partial to the Calm app, but there are free mindfulness videos on YouTube as well. If you don’t want guided meditation, turn on soothing music and get still. If closing your eyes is claustrophobic, keep them gently open. If you don’t feel like sitting upright, lie down. It doesn’t matter how you meditate, just do it, and know that even the most seasoned meditators struggle to quiet the mind. Meditation isn’t a perfect, but rather a practice.
Scheduling Everything, Especially Downtime: When I was a child, organizing my thoughts, activities and goals had to be an on-paper activity, and creating routines helped me become successful in both school and the corporate years. To calm my anxiety and enable productivity, I was taught to create process flows around everything in my life. My lists had lists.
You may not suffer with anxiety, but routine is critical to running a successful business, and I no longer had routine. Of course, my lists had lists, but I was flipping back and forth between companies. Two email accounts, two social media profiles, and two calendars can get unruly. I was spending so much time in inboxes that real work was happening in between multitasking. I went from doing what Cal Newport calls scheduled “deep work,” to doing multiple things at a time rendering me inefficient and unproductive.
Long story, less long, I bought a beautiful rectangular planner and allocated days of the week to my two businesses. The Fuchsia Tent work happens on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the Kacy Fleming Consulting work happens Tuesdays and Fridays, and above brand work happens on Mondays. I further broke down each day, scheduling breaks, an hour a day dedicated to email, and time slots dedicated to each of my prioritized projects. Getting real with ourselves, and getting clear about our priorities makes a huge difference.
The practices above have been extremely useful in calming my overwhelm and in reprioritizing my life and work. I hope they are helpful to you as well!
If you or your team are struggling with burnout or life-work alignment, I am here to help. Check out my Capabilities page and schedule a free consultation.

5 Tips to Avoid the Black Hole of Not Enough-ness (aka. Perfectionism)

Kacy Fleming — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:26:17 +0000

If you have NEVER felt not-enoughness, I envy you!

At this moment, I am sitting in an empty Zoom room waiting to see if anyone is going to show up and ask me questions about my new business. So far, crickets…Can you feel the awkward silence as I type this post?

My first instinct (gut reaction), is to listen to the “annoying party guest in my head,” you know, the one you didn’t invite and can’t get to leave.

The voice that tells you, Of course no one came! You’re not enough and you never will be! What made you think YOU could do this. You’re not special.

Uncomfortable yet?

Fret not, I didn’t stay in the land of self-flagellation for long, and in a short bit, I am going to tell you how to reframe these feelings.

For chronic perfectionists (recovering or not) all these voices and feelings happen automatically. Perfectionism has nothing to do with actual success and in most cases perfectionists tend to be high performers. In fact, I was speaking to two brilliant psychologists, just yesterday about their own feelings of inferiority and their inability to celebrate a huge milestone in their own lives.

“Not enough-ness” (perfectionism) is not a catalyst to success, nor is it a driver to motivate us out of that stuck place, but rather a maladaptive way of managing deep seated fears that we are flawed. Perfectionists tend to hold ridiculously high standards for ourselves and see achievement as an ‘all or nothing’ game. Achievement is binary. We either win or lose.

Many times, “not enough-ness” is someone else’s narrative playing over and over again in our minds—a fear that wants to hold us frozen in a safe familiar space. Perfectionists are also prone to seeking external validation, which is particularly harmful when trying something new that has perceived risks to others.

So how to we get that annoying black hole of a voice to leave us alone?

We don’t. Not completely anyway (If anyone figures out a way, please prove me wrong).

We become aware of our perfectionistic tendencies.

We love and acknowledge that tired old voice for trying to protect us and treat it the way we would a child throwing a tantrum. We leave our inner perfectionist crying in the toy aisle of Walmart (It’s OK! We will only be one aisle over), and we move forward. We reframe our perceived failures and celebrate our milestones no matter how small they seem.

Here are five tips to shift from “not enough” to “good enough.”

Do the damn thing-Whatever it is that we are afraid to fail. You know that thing we have been putting off. Open the business, ask the person out, splurge on the European summer vacation, run for office. Or, just write the blog post or sing in the car with friends. I’m not advocating putting ourselves in harm’s way, however, you are unlikely to to meet your maker from writing from the heart or hopping on a dating app.
Taking action is the single best way to quiet not-enoughness.
But what happens when no one likes my post, or the person says no to a date. How do I quiet the voice then?
See steps 2-5. Then try again!!!!
Utilize positive affirmations or mantra-Think Stuart Smalley of Saturday Night Live fame, I am good enough. I am smart enough and doggonnit, people like me.
Kidding aside, Psychology Today recommends this practice “to decrease feelings of powerlessness in our lives, help us see past the challenge in front of us, increase our self-competence, promote a positive self-image, reconnect us to our core values, and foster positive emotions.”
My go to mantra when I am down on myself: I am limitless (cheesy, but effective).
Write these words down and place them somewhere you look every single day, like a bathroom mirror or the fridge door!
Avoid the “compare and despair” situation-Turning to other people’s successes as a means to self-abuse is disastrous.
We know that looking at social media when we are down almost always make us feel worse, and yet the second we reach the valley of despair, the scrolling starts.
In a good frame of mind, social media can be uplifting and fun, but in the case of a rainy day, we will always find something in our feeds to make us feel crappier about ourselves.
When I am down, I like to look up famous people who struggled before they became successful. Not because I want to see them fail, but to remind myself of what it takes to succeed!
List your accomplishments (to yourself)-No, seriously, write those suckers down on the page and stare at the list anytime you need a lift. Be sure to update the list regularly with new wins (size, in this case does not matter)!
Maybe you haven’t written your first post, but you bought that domain you’d been eyeing for your blog.
Small right actions lead to big changes, but if we don’t stop to recognize the small wins, the big victories will continue to elude us.
Speak to yourself like you would someone you loved-You know, that old chestnut, self-compassion (I felt an immediate need to find the origin of that phrase and have linked to the story above. You’re welcome)!
As hard as it is to love ourselves in these moments of desperation, we oddly know exactly how to shower beloved friends with words of kindness and wisdom. Turn that compassion inward. You are after all, the only person you will spend your entire life with…

Need help getting started on that project you’ve been putting off? Want to build helpful habits that do not involve doom scrolling, check out my Work With Me Page!

Five Ways to Avoid People Pleasing Tendencies in Relationships

Kacy Fleming — Sun, 26 May 2024 17:17:21 +0000

One of the first and most frequent pieces of advice received when other entrepreneurs learned that I was leaving corporate life, was not to be surprised or upset if those closest weren’t as supportive as expected.

They said, support would come instead from places and people I barely knew

They weren’t entirely wrong and trying to stay positive and open, has been one of the most emotional lessons of this entrepreneurial journey so far.

Before weaving the exceptions into some ridiculous “tale of woe,” I opted for turning the mirror on myself to see what I might be doing or NOT doing to increase these feelings of abandonment.

Not surprisingly, my patterns of people pleasing were deeply involved.

In my research, I came across this quote from Jon Mead:

“When you can give without expecting anything in return, you have mastered the art of living.”

Clearly, I have not mastered the art of living. Have you?

As card carrying people pleasers we often:

Give time and support others from a place of integrity
Work hard at our vocations because it feels like the right thing to do.
Care for people out of the goodness of our hearts.

And yet, when those feelings and efforts are not returned, it can feel kind of crappy (the technical term for how it feels).

For people pleasers, this lesson can be exceptionally hard to learn, but is so important for the avoidance of unnecessary suffering. We often over extend ourselves, bulldozing our boundaries, just to be liked.

Needing to be liked by everyone is insidious and is so detrimental to both relationships and individual well-being.

Here are five keys for avoiding people pleasing in relationships:

Hold fast to personal boundaries: No one trashes personal boundaries as quickly as a people pleaser.
Cultivate awareness of what matters most, the things that feel uncomfortable, and the behaviors of others that are unacceptable. Creating and maintaining boundaries is one of the best ways to protect ourselves against feeling put out. When someone asks us to do something that doesn’t feel good, we need to do ourselves a favor and say “no.”
And we don’t need to think up elaborate reasons for saying “no.” I see you fellow people pleasers!
Question urges to be overly supportive: I feel this tip in my bones. I am not talking about encouraging and championing your people. Hype YOUR people all day long.
However, there are THOSE people. We all have them. Who consistently ask for support both monetarily and emotionally, but always seem to go radio silent when we have something cool going on. They are always around when they need help or some extra love, but when times are good, they are not calling us.
We need to ask ourselves why we are continuing to support the unsupportive. Most likely, it has something to do with our feelings of needing being liked by them.
Let go of those who aren't present in relationship: This tip is some tough medicine. It can feel really scary to let go of relationships that aren’t in alignment with who we are, especially when we are in the process of making changes, like starting businesses. Maybe we have been holding out hope that when the time comes, these friends will show up for us. When we get that pit in our stomachs upon seeing that person’s Instagram feed or thoughts of the friendship keep us up at night, it is probably time to let go.
Letting go, doesn’t me we need to have some big dramatic fallout, or cut them dead. It simply means recognizing that what we are putting into the relationship, isn’t making it’s way back, and that is not okay.
We need to head back up to tip #1 and put a boundary in place around our relationships with these individuals.
Trust gut instincts about people and opportunities: This goes back to that nagging feeling in our bellies.
How many times have we felt something to be off, and proceeded to gaslight our own intuition?
If you could see me right now, I look like that eager girl in school, raising her hand and bouncing up and down in the chair to answer a question.
Why, oh why do we do this AND when will we ever learn to trust our instincts about people. They are almost always right. As Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Be ok with not being liked (this one is SO hard, right?): When I was a little girl (and even this year maybe) my Mom and I had this conversation.
ME: Why doesn’t so and so like me
MOM: Do you like everyone?
ALSO ME: Of course not.
MOM: OK then. Let people not like you either.
DEFEATED AND HUMBLED ME: Stews quietly, knowing Mom is right AGAIN.
I get it. We all want to be our one friend who is seemingly liked by and likes everyone, but if we were that person, we would not be reading this blog post and that is ok! Protecting time and energy in this always-on world is a critical skill, and one that I will likely be working on for a very long time.
If you need assistance creating and maintaining personal and professional boundaries, let me be your guide on the side. Book a consultation here!

No One is Coming to Save Us: Five Keys to Grow Self-Efficacy

Kacy Fleming — Sun, 12 May 2024 16:21:03 +0000

This past week at the Women’s Health Summit co-hosted by HerMD and Luminary, I had the privilege to hear many brilliant women speak.

Tonya Lewis Lee said something I will never forget, “No one is coming to save us.”

Her comment was in relation to the fact that it is up to us, as women to build the world we want for ourselves and our children.

Also that as humans and entrepreneurs, anything we seek is ours to create!

As I sit here in a puddle, trying to wrestle with my impending house sale and move, the launch of not one, but two businesses, and the need to accomplish many things I have never tried before, I would love for someone to save me.

No one is coming to save me or you for that matter.

Self-efficacy is our salvation.

There are a million reasons why I don’t feel like doing all the things that need to be done to move houses and launch businesses, but my intrinsic motivation to align my work to my values, and years of practice have taught me that by breaking the work down, I will be able to handle ALL the things.

This my friends, is self-efficacy going to work for me and it will work for you all too!

The American Psychological Association defines self-efficacy as, “an individual's belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy mediates self-belief, self-motivation, and our ability to act on desired behaviors.

The great news is that we can grow our self efficacy in some fairly simple ways!

My Top 5 Tips for Improving Self-Efficacy:

Set achievable goals: “Microsteps,” as Thrive Global dubs them are bite sized actions that are aligned to our goals and also too small to fail.
If you have ever tried to climb a mountain, or ski down one for that matter, you know that the challenge often feels quite daunting. Yet, if we break the mountain up into sections, the climb or slope suddenly feels manageable and we are much more likely to make it up or down! The same is true of any goal we hope to achieve.
So start stepping your way to success and don’t forget to celebrate each milestone along the way!
Remember Past Successes: When facing a new challenge, one of the best things we can do to spur us onward, is to reflect on past achievements.
So you want to start a business and you’ve never done that before, prepare to be a mix of terrified and excited! You could stay freaked because you’ve never started a business before, OR you can reflect on all of the past successes you have had in business and remember that once upon a time, you figured out how to successfully work for other people, which at some point was a first.
One tried and true method, for battling self doubt, is reviewing our resumes. A curriculum vitae serves as a powerful reminder of everything we have accomplished so far, and if you are just getting started and don’t have much on your resume, reflect on your achievements in school. Past success begets future success.
Phone a Friend: So you broke everything down into tiny steps, you’ve considered all of the amazing things you have achieved in your life and are still feeling down in the dumps?
It is time to call in reinforcements. You know, those amazing people who always see the best in us and know all of our strengths and even our weaknesses.
There have been many times in these last few months, where despite my best efforts to keep on keeping on, I have been a total meltdown. I am fortunate to have friends as kind as they are inspiring. When I call, they help me to remember how far I have already come and remind me of my capabilities.
I also have a coach who is my ultimate champion!
Visualization Techniques for the Win: According to BetterHelp, “Visualization is a self-improvement technique that involves creating detailed mental images of desired outcomes or goals.” By visualizing ourselves accomplishing a goal or dream we activate neurons in the brain responsible for helping us filter out noise and focus on stimuli that help us stay positive.
It may sound cheesy, but I LOVE a good vision board.
Not familiar, a vision board can be made digitally or by hand. Start by selecting words, images, mantras, or anything else that reminds you of the future you wish to create and place them on a literal or virtual board. Once you have thoroughly activated your inner child creating by playing with art supplies, place this board in a place where it is visible at all times. I take pictures with my camera phone so I can bring those visions with me on the road.
Not a fan of vision boards, carve out visualization time each night when you lie down to sleep, or in the morning before you hop out of bed. By taking a few minutes to envision our goals coming to fruition, we are setting some powerful mind magic in motion!
Reframe to Tame Your Inner Critic: I have previously written an entire blog post on this hot take.
Any negative thought can be turned into a positive one. It requires some self-work, reflection, and a reframe.
Step 1: Start with a negative belief, for example, entrepreneurship is tough and most people fail.
Step 2: Where did this belief come from? My parents and my partner. They love me and they love stability
Step 3: Reframe: Sure, entrepreneurship can be tough, but so is midlife career change. I did that and I can start a business too!

Implementing some or all of the strategies listed above can help increase our self-efficacy which can cultivate confidence, resilience, and self-belief! Not sure where to start? Book a consultation with me today

Why Corporate America is Beginning to Feel Like Pleasantville

Kacy Fleming — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000

I remember watching Pleasantville all the way back in 1998.

And I feel like I am watching the same movie on replay in Corporate America.

Brief Pleasantville Recap:

For those unfamiliar with the 1998 movie sensation starring Reese Witherspoon as the daring, gregarious teen Jennifer and Tobey Maguire as her nerdy and dutiful brother David, let me briefly summarize the plot. Jennifer and David argue over what to watch on TV. David wants to watch a 1950s Leave it to Beaver-esque sitcom known as Pleasantville. After breaking the remote, they call the repairman (Don Knotts) who brings an odd replacement, sending them into David’s favorite 1950s sitcom. As Jennifer (now Mary Sue Parker) spreads her 1990s ways, the town begins to wake up, moving from boring black and white to vivid color. The townspeople freak. Terrified of the change, they hold on to their old ways, discriminating against and persecuting those who don’t want to go backwards (sounds eerily like America circa 2024).

Spoiler Alert: Everyone ends up in color and lives different, better, more fulfilled lives. Jennifer even decides to stay in Pleasantville and gets serious about books and college.

Covid showed us a new distributed way to work, and yet we are still holding on for dear life to “Pleasantville” (RTO).

Thankfully not all of us.

Those of us who have seen firsthand and researched the benefits of flexible and distributed work models know that eventually most businesses will move in that direction (if they haven’t already). Some amount of geographic flexibility just makes sense, especially from a financial perspective. Looking at a 2020 study by of US Patent and Trade Officers (USPTO) who were able to work from anywhere (complete geographic flexibility), there was a 4.4% increase in productivity yielding an additional 132 million dollars a year in profits vs. in-office colleagues (Choudhury et al. 2020). From a real estate perspective, the USPTO saved an additional 38.2M, and the business also boasted an impressive 2.75M annualized reduction in hiring costs (Choudhury et al., 2020). When I first uncovered this data while writing my thesis, I felt warmth in my heart and color coming back into the world.

We simply cannot afford to keep working the old “Pleasantville” way long term AND most of us don’t want to! McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace report showed that “over 90% of women reported wanting to work flexibly and that percentage was even more pronounced when speaking to women of color and members of the LGBTQIIA+ populations.” We are tired of daily microaggressions, and working from home, even in the hybrid setting cuts down on the amount we face. And, it isn’t just women. According to a recent Forbes article over 98% of people report wanting to work remotely some of the time, and more men than women are currently working remotely. Humans are nuanced, work types need to match our diverse needs and encourage inclusion.

Not to mention, nearly all knowledge work takes place on the internet—meaning that for knowledge workers, work is already distributed. Office work just puts a physical building as the centralization of power, but we all know that even in an office, the majority of our days are spent typing, speaking, and/or looking at a screen. According to Atlassian, a recent study on the first 1000 days of their distributed work model, Team Anywhere saved workers an average of 10 days per year spent commuting (over 500 million minutes), and the company reduced office space needed by half. Productivity remained consistent and “over 92% of Atlassians LOVE the way they work.”

No one is saying there aren’t advantages to some in-person days, but cluster hybrid, where all individuals come together for a brief period of time, and intentional gatherings are more effective ways to culture build, then mandating people come back to the office a specified amount of time.

If you don’t want to take my word for it, check out the work of Dr. Nick Bloom, Annie Dean, Brian Elliot, Erin Grau, and Dr. Gleb Tsipursky.

For now, some companies will continue to operate in the black and white ways of pre-Covid work, and the cool thing is that we can vote by choosing where we work!

To improve team communication and effectiveness in this new era of hybrid and remote work, book a consultation here!

BLOG - Kacy Fleming

When the "Midlife Collision" Meets the Mental Load Collaborative

THE APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY DIFFERENCE

MY PRIMARY CONTRIBUTION: THE MIDLIFE COLLISION

THE INVISIBLE LAYER: MENOPAUSE MASKING

OUT OF THE ECHO CHAMBER

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EMPLOYERS

Mental Load Is Not a Buzzword. It's a Business Problem.

What Mental Load Actually Is (And Why It's So Hard to See)

The Research Is Catching Up to What Women Have Known for Years

What's Happening Inside Your Organization Right Now

Before Slapping Another Well-Being Initiative on Mental Load…

What Actually Works: A Systems-Plus Approach

The Business Case Is Already Made

Year One Reflections: Building Workplace Menopause Support

The Fuchsia Tent Community is Born

The Workplace Menopause Support Pivot

The 3H Framework™ of The Fuchsia Tent:

1. Healthcare: The best benefits (medical and pharmacy) a company can afford.

2. Help: Compassionate leaders who understand active listening frameworks, and are aware of and willing to provide available resources to employees in need.

3. HRT/Non-Hormonal Therapy Access: Generic HRT and access to newly approved FDA alternatives for vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats)

Where to Next

The Hidden Crisis in High-Performing Women: Why Your Burnout Isn't Your Fault

The Data Doesn't Lie

The Shame Spiral That Keeps Women Trapped

The Mental Load No One Considers

The Midlife Collision Nobody Prepared Us For

Band-Aids Don’t Fix Bullet Holes (or broken systems)

What Actually Works: Systems-Plus Well-Being

The Truth About Resilience (It's Not What We Think)

Be the Change...Start Where You Are

The Day I Realized I Had More Power Than I Thought (And You Do Too)

The Real Talk About Feeling Powerless

The Workshop That Changes Everything (for me and you)

The Science of Power (It's Not What You Think)

The Influence Game-Changer

The Permission You've Been Waiting For

What This Means for You (The Real Stuff)

Your Power Inventory Starts Now

The Great Disconnect: Why Mental Health Is the Missing Piece in Your Engagement Strategy

The Bottom Line Up Front:

The Data That Should Keep Leaders Up at Night

What Actually Works: The Three Mental Health-Engagement Integration Strategies

1. Redesign Manager Roles to Include Well-Being Accountability

2. Implement Structural Work Design Changes

3. Create Financial Consequences for Well-being Outcomes

Where to Start This Week

Boreout: The Silent Career Killer Midlife Women Don’t Think About

What the Research Reveals

Why Midlife Women Experience the "Great Underwhelm"

1. The Expertise Trap

2. The Biological Reality

3. The Invisible Middle

Three Evidence-Based Approaches That Work

1. Strategic Job Crafting

2. Harness Prosocial Impact Through Community

3. Build Strategic Visibility

The Bottom Line: Talent Activation, Not Just Retention

The Perfect Storm: Understanding and Addressing Burnout in Midlife Women

What the Research Reveals

Why Midlife Women Feel Like We Are Losing It.

1. The Caregiving Squeeze

2. The Biological Reality

3. The Workplace Double Bind

Three Evidence-Based Approaches That Work

1. Implement Strategic Flexibility

2. Build Targeted Support Networks

3. Create and Hold Digital Boundaries

Moving Forward Together

Millennial Leaders: Transforming Workplace Well-being From Strategic Priority to Business Strategy

Why Team Lunches Won't Fix Your RTO Problem: Here’s What Will!

A Tale of Two Returns (from Pleasantville to Dickens in one post)

The Real Cost of Forced Fun

Understanding What Employees Really Want

The Path Forward

The Cultural Shift

Moving Beyond the Perks Arms Race

AI Transforms Our Ability to Lead with Compassion

The Administrative Liberation

From Time Management to People Development