When Martha, an Executive Director of a seniors program, called me to talk about training for her team, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. She just knew something needed to change.

Her leadership team was tired of running like chickens with their heads cut off.

• Things were falling through the cracks.
• Deadlines were getting missed.
• Everyone felt overwhelmed and exhausted.

She wasn’t looking for a wellness session or burnout prevention. She wanted to get to the core of the problem.

The workload was too much. And Martha knew the workload wasn’t going to magically change. They weren’t going to be able to clone themselves or suddenly get funding for a new admin position.

So she asked, “How can you help?”

It’s a situation so many nonprofit leadership teams are facing.

• Too much work!!
• Too little time!!
• Too few people!!

And while we won’t stop advocating for increased overhead dollars or encouraging people to take care of themselves, neither is enough when the workload itself is overwhelming. Eventually, we risk losing good people.

After acknowledging the frustrating normalcy of Martha and her team's situation, I offered some hope.

I painted a picture of what could be different. I reminded her that each of her five leadership team members could make impactful shifts, even if the workload didn’t change. Then I walked her through what a session might look like.

She was so excited that we scheduled it that day.
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When I work with a team like this, I still start with the basics. Not because they don’t know anything about time management, but because I want to make sure we’re all working from the same foundation.

With Martha’s team, we looked at how to prioritize, both individually and collectively, using the Eisenhower Urgent/Important Matrix. We also talked about familiar strategies like time blocking and the Pomodoro technique.

Most of them had heard of these strategies. Some had tried them. And some had already decided they didn’t work. That’s where the real work started. Because if people know the techniques but aren’t using them, or they’ve tried them and they don’t stick, the question isn’t what other time-management tool they need.

The question is what’s getting in the way?
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This is where we started exploring people’s beliefs about time, responsibilities, hierarchy, people-pleasing, and perfectionism.

The problem often isn’t the technique. It’s the assumptions we make, the beliefs we hold and the values that influence our choices.

There is another layer: organizational culture. For example, if the ED asks you for something, you may automatically assume that task has become your highest priority.

But that’s not always true.

Unless we challenge that assumption, we can automatically treat every request from the ED as urgent and important. Their priority isn’t necessarily your highest priority. Their crisis isn’t always your crisis.

Having an open conversation as a leadership team helps everyone become more aware of the beliefs and assumptions shaping how they work.

Another belief that sometimes gets leaders into trouble is the idea that it’s entirely the employee’s job to manage their own workload. That’s not always the best plan of attack either.

In Character Driven Leadership for Women, I teach that part of your role as a leader is to help manage three things: Projects, priorities and pace. Let me explain.

You’ve been working on streamlining paperwork. To do that, your Coordinator needs to meet with each Manager to review the forms they use and how they use them. It's a project she's working on. Then suddenly, you’re opening a new program. The Coordinator gets pulled in that direction and has to put the paperwork project on the back burner. Makes sense, right?

Sure 

Until six months have passed and she still hasn’t returned to reviewing forms. Every time you ask her about it, she says she’ll get to it. But she doesn’t.

Your job isn’t to remind her, nag her or keep telling her to make it a priority.

Your job is to help her determine what needs to become less of a priority so there is actually room to do it.

• What can she delegate?
• What can she drop altogether?
• What needs to wait?

And then there is pace.

Maybe you help her schedule all the Manager meetings in one week while you cover some of her program responsibilities. There are multiple ways to do this. The point is that as her leader, you need to be her thinking partner and guide in prioritizing the work.

Left unexamined, our beliefs about workload, responsibility and priorities get in the way of whatever time management strategies your team members try to use.

A group session about time management, prioritization and organizational culture gives a team the chance to look honestly at what is really going on. Sometimes people simply need a reminder to do the common-sense things, like blocking off time to organize their to-do list for the week. Other times, the conversation surfaces something that’s been operating quietly beneath everyone’s awareness and shaping how the team works. That happened with Martha’s team.
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Their culture had been built around a “my door is always open” approach. It sounded like good leadership. In reality, it meant everyone was dealing with far too many interruptions.

When we talked about the need for blocks of uninterrupted deep work, they acknowledged that the only way they could really get into the zone was to work late or take work home.

Which, of course, meant working more hours

So we explored what was getting in the way of simply shutting the door.

• One leader admitted they thought that was the expectation of being a good leader (it’s not).
• One person had tried closing their door sometimes, but people just knocked and still interrupted.
• Another leader acknowledged that as a people pleaser, it was just too hard not to let them.

.
We talked about creating a leadership team agreement on no-interruption time. They could alternate their unavailable times so someone was still accessible.

We also talked about creating a simple communication system that distinguished between “It’s not a fire, but I need some help” and “I need you now!!!”
Everyone was eager to test it out.

This is the stuff I get excited about!!

When a team pauses together and looks honestly at how they’re really working, rather than simply learning another tool they’re supposed to use or continuing to do what they think represents “good” leadership, I know they can make significant shifts.

And when they get excited about finding better ways to work within the very real constraints of the nonprofit sector, I get excited too!

Because I believe we should all be able to go home at the end of the day with energy left for the rest of our lives!

You may be reading this and thinking about your own team’s version of running on the hamster wheel. I’d love to talk with you about it.

This is exactly the kind of work I love doing with leadership teams. You don’t need to know what training your team needs before you call me. Tell me what’s going on, and we’ll figure out together what would actually help. Send me a message nd tell me a bit about what’s going on with your team. 

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

~ Kathy 
Do the inner work! It’s worth it!

P.S. I’m going to guess that “my door is always open” hit close to home. Most teams have habits like this. It might be time to really talk about what that means and how to balance being accessible to your team with actually having time to get your own work done

When Sarah got the text from her boss Derek asking her to come to their office, her stomach dropped.

She had a stinking suspicion that she knew what it was about, and she was worried and, honestly, annoyed.

Her boss had a habit of creating these triangulated messes. Staff would bring him a complaint, and instead of sending them back to deal with it directly with Sarah, making sure staff knew she had the authority, he'd tell the staff he'd "talk to her," and it made things so much more complicated than they needed to be, and Sarah felt like he'd undermined her.
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As she sat there fuming, Sarah rolled through the events of the last few days in her mind. She'd talked to Diane a couple of days ago about her behaviour at the staff meeting. She was always so negative and dropping sarcastic comments again and again. At one point, when Sarah had had enough, she called her on it. Sarah followed up with Diane afterward and was firm about the need for her behaviour to stop and for her to work on being more of a team player.

She knew Diane wasn't happy. She'd heard the ramblings from other staff, and her admin support whispered to her on her way in that Diane had been in Derek's office.

Sarah pushed herself away from her desk, knowing she may as well get it over with.

After meeting with her boss, Sarah felt deflated. She was questioning if she was cut out for this. Maybe leadership wasn't her thing. Was she too hard on people? Was she the problem? Had she been getting this whole leadership thing wrong?

She wasn't doing leadership wrong. Nobody had taught her how to do it right. She'd been handed a job description, told what meetings to attend and what forms to fill out, but nobody sat her down and taught her how to handle conflict, manage relationships or lead with emotional intelligence. That part she was supposed to figure out on her own.

I know that feeling. Not Sarah's exact situation, but that gut punch when something goes sideways at work and suddenly you're questioning everything. I spent 25 years in the nonprofit sector. I've had hard conversations with my boss. I've had staff go around me. I've sat in meetings wondering if I was the problem.

That's actually why I do this work. Because I've been where you are. And I know how alone it feels. And I don't want you to have to go through it alone.

If you've read this far, I suspect something is off for you at work.

Maybe your situation looks nothing like Sarah's. But I wonder if some of this sounds familiar.

• Your boss yelled at you in front of your team. You stood there, face burning, trying to hold it together while your staff watched. You made it through the rest of the day. But you haven't been able to shake it since.
• Or your performance review blindsided you. You thought things were going okay. Not perfect, but okay. And then you sat across from your supervisor and heard things about yourself you weren't expecting. Now you're replaying every conversation, every decision you've made in the last six months.
• Or a board member called with a staff complaint, and you're still replaying that conversation three days later. You've been trying to raise the bar. Hold people accountable. Do the right thing. And this is what you get for it.
• Or there's no single moment you can point to. Just a slow build. The tension that won't go away. The Sunday night dread. The mornings when you're already exhausted before you even walk through the door.

You don't have to be in a full-blown crisis for this to be hard. Sometimes it's just the weight of it all. The exhaustion, self-doubt or dread. And it sucks to feel that the real you, the one who is caring and capable and actually really good at this work, has gotten buried somewhere under all of it.

And you can't talk to anyone about it. Your staff can't know. Your board can't know. Your colleagues are caught up in their own stuff. So you just keep carrying it.
You're not falling apart. But you're closer to the edge than you'd like to admit.

I get it. I really do. And I'm not just saying that. I've been there!

So what do you do when you're in the middle of it?

Ask yourself this first: Are you actually stopping long enough to deal with it? Or are you just pushing through and hoping it gets better?

Pushing through doesn't work. Trust me, I tried that for years. What does work is having a process to follow because your brain can't think straight in the middle of a crisis. That's why I use The Infinite Leadership Loop with my clients. It gives you a framework to hold onto when everything feels out of control. And it starts with a pause.

I was talking to Sandra earlier this week. Sandra is a manager of a busy, short-staffed program. And, she has a meeting with her boss coming up, and she’s been dreading it for a week.

“Every time I think about it, the knot in my stomach gets tighter,” she told me.

She knows what’s coming. Her boss will point out everything she’s doing wrong, highlight her weaknesses, and Sandra will walk out feeling beaten down instead of supported.

Sandra’s mind has been working overtime, imagining the worst: being fired on the spot, raked over the coals, belittled.

Here’s what I told her: Most of what you fear will probably happen. Your boss will pick you apart. She will be mean about it.

But here’s what you get to control 

You don’t have to believe all of it. You don’t have to take it as the absolute truth. You get to choose which parts are helpful and which are just noise.

To help her make choices that would help her feel more in control, confident, and aligned, I walked Sandra through how to prepare for the meeting using The Infinite Leadership Loop.

First, PAUSE

Before you react to what she says, take a breath. Even if she’s waiting for you to respond.

Then, PONDER

Get clear on what’s actually true vs. what’s just mean delivery.

Her boss will say: “You have too much overtime. You’re not good at managing your time. You’re always late with reports.”

Here’s where Sandra gets to choose how she hears it.

Victim mindset:

I don’t know how to do this work without overtime
I’ve never been good at managing my time
I’m not leadership material

Response-able mindset:

I’ve been working hard and putting in extra effort
I’m committed, and I care about my job
Yes, the overtime is killing me. I want to reduce it - not because my boss is telling me to, but because I want to figure leadership out AND have a life.

PIVOT your thoughts

Shift from “I’m not leadership material” to “I’m learning, and I care about getting better at this.”

Then PROCEED

Get ready to have the conversation, holding onto that truth instead of the mean delivery.

This is the inner work. But it doesn’t stop there.

The PEOPLE part 

This is when Sandra actually walks into that meeting with her boss. She’s done the inner work, so now she can engage with her boss differently. She can listen to the feedback, take what’s useful, and let the rest go. She’s not reacting from a place of feeling small. She’s responding from a place of strength.

By the end of our call, Sandra was still nervous. But instead of feeling like a victim of the conversation, she felt in control of how she’d hear it and what she’d do with it.

The tightness in her stomach had started to ease.

If you’re tired of that knot in your stomach before tough meetings, you might be interested in the 6-week Mastering Confidence Book Club starting March 6, where we work through The Infinite Leadership Loop together.

- You’ll learn how to become response-able.

- How to take back your power.

- How to handle tough conversations without feeling beaten down.

Dates: Fridays 12-1:30 PM Mountain Time on Zoom. March 6 - April 17

Details and registration here: Mastering Confidence Book Club

Join the Book Club

I know what it’s like to dread those meetings. To feel like you’re walking into a conversation where you’ll be torn apart. But you don’t have to keep feeling powerless. You can learn to take back control of how you hear feedback and how you show up. That’s what being response-able means, and you can do it too!

Remember, you don’t have to do leadership alone.  I’m here to help.

~ Kathy 

Do the Inner Work. It’s Worth it!

P.S. If you’re thinking, “I need this book club, but I’m not sure if now is the right time”, trust me, there’s never a perfect time. But there is a right time. And if you’re still taking that knot in your stomach to every tough meeting, that time is now.

P.P.S. Sandra messaged me after her meeting. “It worked,” she said. “I still felt nervous, but I was in control of my emotions and my responses. I didn’t feel small.” That’s what this work does

​It’s a lot right now, isn’t it?

The news. The uncertainty. The weather. The constant pressure to show up for your team, your community, your mission, let alone what’s going on in your personal life! Sometimes, I don’t know about you, but I feel like the world feels like it’s spinning faster than I can keep up with.
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So, just know, if you’ve been feeling that weight, you’re not alone.

And...Those of us who lead in the nonprofit world are really good at taking care of everyone else. We pour ourselves into our work because we care deeply about the people and causes we serve.

But we’re terrible at extending that same compassion to ourselves.

So if you’re feeling heavy right now, this email is permission to take what you need. Not everything here will be right for you, and that’s okay. Just grab what speaks to where you are.

A lot of us were never taught how to practice self-compassion. We learned to push through, to be strong, to keep going. But self-compassion isn’t weakness. It’s what allows us to keep showing up without burning out.

If you’re being harder on yourself than you’d ever be with someone you care about, I want you to check out Dr. Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion. She’s a researcher who’s spent years studying this, and her approach is practical, not woo-woo. I go back to it again and again when I feel off, scared, anxious, overwhelmed or sad.

You can find her work at self-compassion.org. There are free exercises, guided meditations, and resources that can help you shift how you talk to yourself when things feel hard.
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My biggest takeaway from learning about self-compassion was learning to hug myself. I do it often now. I know, it sounds a little weird, but honestly, sometimes there is no one else around to do it, or who wouldn't give you the hug in the way you need it.

Sometimes the most important leadership work we do is learning to treat ourselves with the same kindness we extend to everyone else.

​Speaking of being hard on ourselves, let’s talk about those conversations you’ve been avoiding.

You know the ones.

• The talk with the employee who is underperforming.
• The board member who keeps overstepping.
• The colleague you need to address, something uncomfy with, but keep putting off because what if it goes sideways?

I just put out a new YouTube video called “Scared to Talk to Your Employee? Try This First.” It walks you through my TIP formula, a simple three-step process to prepare for difficult conversations so you can walk in feeling grounded instead of anxious.
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And you know me, the video is practical with strategies you can use immediately. And it might help you finally have that conversation you’ve been dreading.

If confidence has been shaky lately, if you’re lying awake at 2 AM questioning every decision, if you’re exhausted from the constant loop of “Am I doing this right?” then this might be for you.

The Mastering Confidence Book Club is a 6-week live program where we work through my book together. But this isn’t just reading and discussing. You’ll get coached on your actual leadership challenges, practice the framework in real-time, and leave with a personal system for rebuilding confidence whenever it wavers.

We start March 6 and meet Fridays from 12:00-1:30 PM Mountain Time for six weeks (with a break for Good Friday, so we run through April 17). I keep the groups intentionally small, so you get real coaching and connection with other women leaders who understand what you’re dealing with.

You can learn more about the Mastering Confidence Book Club and join here

​Here’s something I’m excited about: I’m speaking at the Lead with Heart Summit on April 16, 2026.

This is a virtual gathering for nonprofit leaders who are exhausted from being told to just push through. The whole event is designed around this question: What if leading well didn’t mean sacrificing yourself?

I’ll be talking about “The Myth of After-Hours Wellness: How Real Leaders Restore Themselves AT Work.” Because the truth is, most of us can’t squeeze self-care into the margins of our already packed lives. We need to learn how to weave restoration into how we actually show up during the workday.

You can learn more here - Early bird tickets are on sale now until Feb. 3.

If you’ve been running on empty and trying to figure out how to lead without losing yourself, this might be exactly what you need.

​Sometimes what we need isn’t another workshop or training. Sometimes we need someone to walk alongside us, help us see what we can’t see on our own, and coach us through the specific challenges we’re facing.

If that’s where you are, I have a few coaching opportunities available right now:

This is for you if you’re exhausted from trying to be good at everything.
The CliftonStrengths assessment shows you your natural talents, the things you’re already wired to do well. Then we build goals based on your actual strengths, not what some job description says you should be good at.
We stop trying to fix your weaknesses and start leading from what makes you brilliant.

• $2500 for the assessment + 6 months of coaching (bi-weekly)
• $1300 for the assessment + 3 months of coaching (bi-weekly)

​This is a 360 assessment that shows you how you’re actually showing up as a leader, not how you think you’re showing up. You get feedback from your direct reports, peers, board members, and anyone you work with regularly.

For nonprofit women leaders who are so busy taking care of everyone else, this matters because you often have no idea how your leadership is actually landing.
You get the assessment, a two-hour debrief where we go through your results together, and coaching to set goals and work on them.

• $2000 for the 360 assessment + 3 months of coaching (bi-weekly)
• $3200 for the 360 assessment + 6 months of coaching (bi-weekly)

If you want to explore coaching, you can book a call with me here or hit reply with any questions.

So there it is. Take what you need. Leave what doesn’t fit.
If you’re carrying a lot right now, I hope at least one of these resources helps lighten the load.

You don’t have to do leadership alone.

~ Kathy
Do the Inner Work. It's Worth it!
P.S. You can't lead with integrity when you're running on fumes. You can't show up with composure when you're overwhelmed. I know taking care of yourself feels selfish or impossible sometimes, but it's actually what makes you better at everything else. A better leader. A better partner. A better mom. A better human.