Steve was a sponsor before anyone in the corporate world had really started using that word.

The Spreadsheet I Almost Didn’t Show Anyone

I was an assistant merchandise planner at Neiman Marcus, early in my career and still figuring out what I was capable of. The job was demanding, the learning curve was steep, and I was doing what I always do when I sense there’s a better way: I started building.

On my own time, I had constructed an Excel template. I’d spent hours googling formulas, testing combinations, refining until I had something that genuinely improved how the work got done. I knew it was useful because it took the work from manual on paper to excel with recaps, and the ability to copy and paste the data into the system. What used to take 10 hours, had been reduced to two. But I was also new, and there’s always that quiet hesitation before you show someone in a position of authority something you’ve built from scratch. There is the voice that wonders if it’s actually as good as you think, or if you’re overstepping.

I showed it to Steve, my planning manager, and I was nervous.

What Happened When He Saw It

Steve didn’t just glance at it and nod. He leaned in. He asked questions about the formulas, about how I’d built it, about the logic behind the structure. He was genuinely curious, the kind of curious that tells you someone is really listening and not just being polite.

And then he got enthusiastic. Not in a performative way. In the way that people do when they recognize something that actually works, when they can immediately see the value and want to understand it more deeply.

That response mattered more than I realized at the time. When you’re early in your career and still calibrating your own judgment, having someone you respect reflect genuine excitement back at you is clarifying. It told me: this is real. You built something real.

He Didn’t Ask. He Just Acted.

What Steve did next is what separates a good leader from a true sponsor.

He didn’t suggest I present it to leadership someday. He didn’t say “you should think about sharing this more broadly.” He went to Todd, the VP of Planning, on his own and then came back to me.

Would I be open to giving a demo?

That sequence is everything. He used his own credibility and his own access to open a door, and then he handed me the opportunity to walk through it myself. He didn’t take credit for what I’d built. He amplified it.

I said yes. I gave the demo. And that room changed the trajectory of my career at Neiman Marcus. It led to a skip in the traditional career path, a promotion, and a move into a couture buying office that put me in Paris at 24, attending shows and market appointments for Celine, Valentino, YSL, and about 30 other brands.

All of it traces back to Steve walking down the hall and talking to a VP about something an assistant planner had built.

That might sound simple. But in an industry that can be brutal, where ambition sometimes comes packaged with ego, where people protect their territory and guard their access, Steve was the opposite. He shared what he knew. He celebrated what his people were building. He made me feel like my contributions mattered, because to him, they genuinely did.

What Sponsorship Actually Looks Like

We talk a lot now about the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors guide you. Sponsors advocate for you often when you’re not in the room, sometimes before you even know you need it.

Steve was doing that long before the corporate world built a framework around it. He didn’t need a program or a prompt. He just saw something worth championing and he championed it.

That’s the thing about real sponsors: they act from instinct, not obligation. They see potential and they do something about it. Not because it’s their job description, but because it’s who they are.

I think about Steve when I’m in rooms where someone else’s name should be mentioned. When I notice work that deserves more visibility than it’s getting. When a junior team member builds something impressive and the instinct is to say, “great job” and move on.

Steve taught me that “great job” isn’t enough. The move is to take it somewhere.

If you have someone like Steve in your life, someone who took your work seriously enough to carry it into rooms you hadn’t been invited to yet, I hope you’ve told them what it meant. And if you’re the one with the access, the relationships, the credibility? Use it. Don’t wait to be asked. Just go down the hall.

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If you’re nodding right now, there’s a good chance you worked for a “Peter.”

The Peter Principle, Explained

In 1969, Dr. Laurence J. Peter introduced a concept so painfully accurate it’s been haunting organizations ever since: in a hierarchy, people tend to rise to their level of incompetence.

Here’s how it works. Someone is excellent at their job, so they get promoted. They excel again, so they get promoted again. This continues until they land in a role where they’re no longer effective, and there they stay because organizations rarely demote people.

The problem isn’t that the person is lazy or malicious. The problem is that the skills that earned them the promotion are often not the skills the new role demands. Nobody (not them, not the organization) did the work to prepare them for that gap.

The result? A “Peter.”

I Worked for One and Decided to Leave My Dream Job

Early in my career, I got my dream buying job and I had worked hard to get there.

The person that hired me for that job left the company, and they promoted a great buyer as the backfilled. Instead of leading the team, setting vision, and thinking long-term, the new manager kept reverting to what they knew: being a buyer. This person wanted to be in every decision. Every vendor call. Every detail that had been mine to own.

There’s another leadership concept that says: The person was stuck on the dance floor when they should have been on the balcony.

The impact was real as decisions slowed to a crawl. No inspiration. No long-term thinking. Just micromanagement dressed up as “staying involved.”

I felt angry. Not burned out, but angry. The kind of anger that comes from being a high performer who can’t perform. When my previous boss approached me about a job on his team, I decided to leave.

I left because of a Peter.

The Mess a Peter Makes

If you’ve been there, you know. But let’s name it clearly, because it’s important to understand what’s actually happening inside a team led by someone who has risen to their level of incompetence.

• Decision-making grinds to a halt. A Peter doesn’t trust the team because, subconsciously, they’re still trying to do the team’s job. Everything funnels through them. Approvals pile up. Momentum dies.

• Bias for action disappears. High performers are wired to move, to spot an opportunity, make a call, execute. Under a Peter, that instinct gets punished or ignored. Over time, people stop trying.

• Morale takes a quiet, devastating hit. It rarely happens overnight. It’s death by a thousand cuts. The talented people on the team, the ones you most want to retain, start to disengage first. They’re the ones with options, and eventually, they use them.

• The team shrinks to fit the leader. When vision is absent and micromanagement fills the void, teams stop thinking big. They start optimizing for approval rather than outcomes. The culture contracts.

• And the Peter often doesn’t know. That’s the most heartbreaking part. Many Peters are not bad people. They’re people who were never equipped for the role they were given. They revert to what they know because what they know worked before.

If You’re Working for a Peter

You cannot fix them, but you can protect yourself and continue to grow while you navigate the situation.

• Name what’s happening (at least to yourself). Clarity is power. When you understand that what you’re experiencing has a name and a pattern, it stops feeling personal and starts feeling solvable.

• Document your wins aggressively. In a micromanaged environment, your contributions can get buried or co-opted. Keep a running record of your ideas, decisions, and outcomes. Your career depends on your ability to articulate your impact.

• Build relationships outside your direct chain. Cross-functional relationships are always valuable, but they’re essential when your direct manager is a bottleneck. Visibility with other leaders can help keeps your career moving.

• Find your lane and own it fully. Even in constrained environments, there are usually pockets of autonomy. Find them. Double down. Show what you can do when given an inch.

• Know when it’s time to go. Not every situation is survivable. If the culture is one where Peters are rewarded and high performers are quietly suffocated, that tells you something important about the organization’s values. Your growth is not negotiable.

If You’re a Leader Who Wants to Break the Cycle

Every one of us, if we’re not intentional, risks becoming a Peter. The antidote starts before the promotion.

• Promote people for the role they’re going into, not the role they’re in. Before elevating someone, ask: does this person have the capabilities this new role requires, or just the ones the current role rewards? These are often very different questions.

• Develop your people explicitly for leadership. Being a great merchant doesn’t automatically make someone a great merchant leader. The skills are different. Train for them intentionally with stretch assignments, mentorship, exposure, coaching.

• Teach the difference between the dance floor and the balcony. Great leaders zoom out. They set direction, create conditions for their team to thrive, and resist the pull to do what they used to do. This is a learned skill, not a natural one. Build it deliberately.

• Create feedback loops that catch the drift early. If a leader is reverting to their old role, the team knows before anyone else does. Build a culture where that feedback can surface through skip-levels, anonymous channels, or a leadership team that actually talks to each other.

• Normalize lateral moves. Not every high performer needs to go up. Sometimes the most powerful move is a lateral one that builds new capabilities and sets someone up for more sustainable leadership later.

The Bottom Line

If you’ve worked for a Peter, your anger is valid. So is your ambition. Don’t let someone else’s ceiling become yours.

And if you are a leader, be honest with yourself. The dance floor is calling, but your team needs you on the balcony.

What’s your Peter story? I’d love to hear it in the comments because I know I’m not the only one.

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So a few years ago, I wrote down my leadership tenets. Not a corporate mission statement that looks good in a presentation. Real, specific commitments about the kind of leader I want to be even on the hard days.

I saved them to my desktop. Every month, I check in with myself: Am I actually living up to my own expectations? Some months, the answer is yes. Some months, it’s “not quite, but I’m working on it.” That’s the point. These aren’t aspirational, they’re standards I hold myself accountable to.

My Vision

My vision as a leader is to create a collaborative and innovative team where every member feels valued, empowered, and inspired to achieve their full potential.

That’s not corporate speak. That’s what I actually want. Because I’ve worked for leaders who treated people as disposable, who saw potential as threatening rather than exciting. I promised myself I’d never be that kind of leader. These tenets are how I keep that promise.

1. Communication — Clarity and Frequency Matter

I communicate information, thoughts, and vision clearly, and frequently. I create a culture of active listening and continuously reflect on feedback.

I over-communicate. Intentionally. What feels like “enough” to me usually isn’t enough for my team.

But the part that matters most: I try to listen more than I talk. I hold regular 1-on-1s not to run through a task list, but to actually hear what people are working on, what’s blocking them, what they need from me. When they give me uncomfortable feedback, I don’t get defensive. I reflect on it. I adjust.

Monthly check-in: Did I communicate the “why” behind decisions this month, or just the “what”? Did I make time to really listen?

2. Talent — Your Success Is My Success

By helping team members grow in a personalized way, we raise the bar and build future leaders.

I don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to development. What motivates one person might overwhelm another. So, I ask. I learn what each person’s goals are, not just professionally, but personally. Then I create opportunities that align with those goals: stretch assignments that challenge them and set them up to succeed.

When someone on my team grows, when they get promoted, nail a presentation, solve a problem I didn’t see coming, I’m genuinely thrilled. Their success doesn’t diminish mine. It amplifies it. I’m not building a team that needs me. I’m building future leaders who will go on to do incredible things.

Monthly check-in: Did I invest in someone’s growth this month? Did I create opportunities that stretched them in the right ways?

3. Culture — Boundaries and Inclusivity Aren’t Optional

I foster an environment where everyone feels safe to contribute. I believe in trade-offs and boundaries, and I model them so my team can too.

I don’t just talk about boundaries. I model them. I leave at reasonable hours. I don’t send emails late at night. I take my vacation days. I put my kids’ events on my calendar and don’t apologize for them. Because if I’m not modeling this, my team won’t feel they have permission to do the same.

I also actively create psychological safety by asking quieter voices for their input in meetings, making it clear that disagreement is valued, admitting when I’m wrong, and shutting down any behavior that makes someone feel excluded. Inclusivity isn’t a buzzword. It’s daily practice.

Monthly check-in: Did I protect my team’s ability to have boundaries this month? Did everyone feel safe to contribute?

4. Strategy & Decisions — I’m Right a Lot Because I’m Never Right Alone

I seek diverse perspectives and empower my team to make decisions that are right for their business.

I don’t make decisions in a vacuum. I actively seek out perspectives different from mine, especially from people who will challenge my assumptions. I ask: “What am I missing?” “What’s the risk I’m not seeing?” Then I actually listen to the answers.

I also push decision-making down. If someone on my team is closest to the problem, they’re often best positioned to solve it. My job is to give them context, resources, and authority and then get out of the way.

Monthly check-in: Did I seek out dissenting opinions? Did I empower my team to make decisions?

5. Execution — My Team Are Owners

I unblock their obstacles and advocate for their ideas.

My team doesn’t work for me. They work with me. They own their work, their outcomes, their ideas. My job isn’t to tell them how to do their jobs, it’s to remove what’s in their way. That might mean fighting for budget, running interference with other departments, or advocating for their ideas in rooms they’re not in yet.

And when they have an idea, I want to hear it. If it’s good, I’m going to champion it, and make sure they get the credit.

Monthly check-in: Did I clear a path for my team this month? Did I advocate for their ideas and give them credit?

You Don’t Need Permission to Lead Differently

I wrote these tenets because I refused to become the kind of leader I didn’t want to work for. I’ve seen people climb the ladder and lose their humanity along the way. These are my guardrails and reminders of who I want to be when the pressure is on, when it would be easier to just command and control.

Leadership isn’t something you are. It’s something you practice every single day. Lead the way you wish someone had led you.

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He asked me to put thought into what I consider to be a fire (needs my attention) and what doesn’t, so I can protect my time, and it really opened my eyes.

The Fire Framework

For me, the framework works best in conjunction with my calendar blocks. If you haven’t seen the post about how I block, you might want to take a look. Used together, it helps me truly protect the time that is set aside for deep thinking, projects, and focused catch-up. That protection is what keeps family time from bleeding into work. It’s pretty simple:

Every situation that comes your way falls into one of four categories:

MY FIRE – Handle it Now

• Needs your specific authority or expertise. Only you can make this call.

• Carries real consequences if it sits. Delay creates damage.

• Directly impacts your team or business at a level that requires your visibility.

NOT YOUR FIRE — Delegate and Trust

• Someone else has the context and capability. They don’t need you; they need permission.

• A decision needs to be made, but not by you. Your team is there.

• The FYI. Acknowledge it, file it, and move on.

NEEDS YOU — But Not Urgent → Flag and Return During Focus Time

• A thoughtful question that deserves a real answer, not a drive-by response between meetings

• A peer or stakeholder has shared something that needs your genuine reaction, not a reflexive one

• A situation where someone needs to feel heard, rushing a reply would undercut the whole point

• A message that requires you to have context in front of you before you can respond well

• Something where your first instinct is an answer, but your second instinct says wait and think on this

The throughline: nothing will stall without you, but the quality of your response matters, so it earns a flag, not a fire drill.

DOESN’T NEED YOU — Let it Go

• This doesn’t need to happen. Full stop.

• The urgency belongs to someone else’s anxiety, not the actual situation.

• It’s noise. And noise should be filtered, not engaged.

The discipline is in sorting. Not every ping is a fire. Not every fire is yours. And not everything that feels urgent actually is.

What This Looks Like at Work

Let me get specific, because frameworks without examples are just theory.

Meetings

I used to operate from a default of “yes” on meeting invites. Now I ask: what is my role here? Am I the decision-maker, or am I there because someone assumed I should be?

Meetings that get my immediate yes:

• A critical strategy call where my POV will shape the outcome

• A situation where my team needs air cover or my voice in the room

• Anything where the decision has significant business or people implications

Meetings where I send someone in my place:

• A status update or review where my team can represent the work

• A recurring sync that’s become informational rather than action-oriented

• A cross-functional meeting where someone on my team has more direct context than I do

Meetings I decline:

• Anything that can be resolved in an email, a doc, or a 5-minute conversation

• Recurring meetings that have outlived their purpose

Email and Slack

This is where the fire framework has been most transformative for me day-to-day. Every message is not created equal, and my response should reflect that. Tip: Use my commute idea from a previous post to flag emails for review later that are easy to read, reply, or file on the move.

What gets my immediate, full attention:

• An escalation where someone is stuck and only I can unblock them

• A time-sensitive decision that affects my team’s ability to move forward

• A direct ask from a senior leader that requires my specific input

What gets a “thanks for the heads up, you’ve got this” response:

• A question someone on my team can answer. I’ll route it back to them

• An update that’s good to know but doesn’t need my action

• A thread where I’m CC’d for visibility, not because anyone needs my reply

What I read and file:

• Informational updates that I should be aware of but that don’t require a response

• Recaps of conversations I wasn’t part of but should have context on

I have an amazing team of brilliant women who can make the call for our group. I trust them to do so and keep me informed as needed.

The Trust That Has to Come With It

Here’s the thing about delegating: it only works if it’s real.

Real delegation means I’m not the checkpoint. Real delegation means when I send someone to that meeting in my place, I back whatever they decide. Real delegation means I don’t need a debrief after every conversation unless something material has changed.

And Then There’s Home

Jesse’s framework isn’t just for the office. It applies to my family time as a reminder of what is NOT a fire at home:

• A Slack message that arrived after 6 PM that someone could send me instead on Monday morning

• An email that my team can respond to in the morning

This connects directly to my trade-off framework for the five questions I ask before making decisions about where my time goes. One of those questions is: “Is this something only I can do right now?” Most of the time, the honest answer is no. And that answer should free us, not make us feel guilty.

My boys don’t need me to answer every email. They need me to sit on the floor and play. They need me to put my phone face down at dinner. They need to know that when I’m with them, I chose to be with them fully.

That’s not achievable if I treat every notification as a fire.

What I’ve Learned

The leaders I most admire are not the ones who are everywhere. They’re the ones who are exactly where they need to be, when they need to be there, and nowhere else.

Being unavailable for the small things is what makes you available for the important ones. Trusting your team enough to let them make decisions is not a sign that you’ve abdicated leadership. It’s the whole point of leadership.

And protecting your evenings, your weekends, your dinner table from non-fires isn’t selfish. It’s what makes you sustainable. It’s what makes you a present parent instead of a physically present but mentally absent one.

Not every fire needs you. The ones that truly need you will be handled so much better when you’ve protected your energy for them.

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I’ve been working with my coach, Jesse, for a few years now. And I’ll be direct: it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Not just professionally. Personally too.

Here’s what makes our work together different from any other form of professional development I’ve experienced: Jesse focuses on the whole person. We don’t just work on my career goals. We work on my family goals, my personal goals, and how all of them connect. We check in on them regularly. We update them when life changes. We hold them seriously.

That integration of work and life treated as one complete picture is what makes coaching so transformative.

It’s More Than Accountability (Though That Part Is Real Too)

When I thought about executive coaching, I thought about accountability. And yes, that’s part of it. But what I’ve found is that the real magic is in the clarity that comes before the accountability.

Early in our work together, I told Jesse I wanted to do something that supports moms in this country. It was an instinct more than a plan.

His response? “Go tell five people.” That was the assignment.

I hung up the phone at 4 PM and went straight into a work call. I told the person on that call about my assignment. And she said, “My childhood best friend is the CEO and Co-founder of Chamber of Mothers, and she’s looking for board members. Can I connect you?”

It was that simple. Clarity + action + a single conversation = a board seat I’m proud to hold today.

Sometimes you just need someone to give you the push to get out there and say the thing out loud.

Knowing Yourself Is a Leadership Skill

One of our first projects together was going through an Enneagram assessment. I’ll be honest that I wasn’t expecting much. But the results surprised me. I came out with two nearly tied types:

• Type 3, The Achiever — score 25

• Type 1, The Reformer — score 24

The Achiever and the Reformer. Driven to succeed AND wired to do things the right way. That tension? It explains so much about how I operate. About where I thrive and where I create friction for myself.

Understanding my Enneagram profile gave me a language for patterns I had always felt but never fully named. That self-knowledge has made me a better leader, a better communicator, and frankly, a better partner and mom. It also helped me recognize types in other people and understand their motivation. It’s a powerful tool to tailor to what works for them.

The Practical Stuff: Books, Role Play, and Frameworks That Actually Work

Here’s what people don’t tell you about coaching: it’s incredibly practical. Jesse doesn’t just listen and nod. He assigns things. He recommends specific books and videos tailored to whatever I’m working through. He creates real structure around real challenges. He wrote me a how-to for AI when I said I needed to lean in and start learning this.

We role play. I’ll bring a difficult conversation I need to have with a peer or direct report, and we’ll work through it together. He helps me craft the message. We test different approaches. By the time I walk into that actual conversation, I’ve already had it once.

And then there are the moments when I’ve tried everything I know and still can’t crack it. I had a situation where I was struggling to get someone to really hear me. I tried several approaches that had worked in the past. Nothing was landing. I brought it to Jesse.

He walked me through a few frameworks to think about the situation differently. One of them was the magic solution. Not because it was complicated, but because sometimes you need an outside perspective to see what you’re too close to see yourself.

The Framework That Changed How I Protect My Time

One of the most impactful things Jesse has helped me build is a framework for deciding what deserves my attention at work and what doesn’t.

Essentially, it’s a way to triage the constant stream of issues, questions, and situations that come my way directly, in slack, or email so I can protect my working time:

• Is this a fire? Does it genuinely require me to step in?

• Or is this a “thank you for informing me” situation? One I can acknowledge and trust my team to handle.

• Or something not urgent and can I come back later or never?

That distinction sounds simple. But when you’re wired to achieve and reform (hello, Enneagram 3 and 1) the temptation to insert yourself is real. The framework gives me permission to stay out of things that don’t need me, and to protect the deep-thinking time my role actually requires.

It’s also helped me get better at calendar blocking and holding those blocks. If you read my recent post, you know how seriously I take my calendar.

So, Is It Worth It?

I can honestly say that working with Jesse has made my life better. Not just my work performance, but my life.

I have more clarity on what I want and why. I have frameworks for the hard moments. I have a space where someone is both rooting for me and honest with me. I have goals across my whole life that get revisited and updated instead of forgotten.

That kind of support is rare. And for leaders, especially, people who spend their days supporting and developing everyone else, it’s easy to forget that you need it too.

Executive coaching isn’t a luxury for people at the top. It’s a tool for anyone who wants to lead with more intention, show up with more clarity, and stop going through the hard parts alone.

If you’ve been on the fence about investing in a coach, consider this your nudge. You don’t have to have it all figured out before you start. You just have to be willing to do the work, and to let someone help you do it better.

My coach:

https://jessetorrence.com/

You didn’t own trash. You “co-owned” trash. And that distinction matters more than most of us realize.

Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play changed how I think about task ownership at home. And recently, a situation at work made me realize the same principle applies in professional settings in ways I’d never fully thought about before.

What Fair Play Actually Says

Fair Play is a system for redistributing the invisible labor of running a household. The foundational rule: if you own a task, you own it end to end. Conception, planning, and execution. All of it.

Not half of it. Not the visible, satisfying part. All of it.

Here’s what “owning trash” actually looks like:

• Pulling the full bag

• Taking it outside

• Putting in a new liner so the can is actually functional again

If you stop at step two, you didn’t own trash. Your partner finished the task. Which means you shared the task, and probably neither of you consciously agreed to that arrangement.

Same with laundry:

• Putting it in the wash

• Moving it to the dryer

• Folding it

• Putting it away

If you hand off the pile of clean-but-unfolded clothes, you didn’t finish the task. The cycle isn’t complete. Someone else is going to dig through that pile at 7 AM looking for their kid’s uniform, and it won’t be you.

The frustration that builds around this isn’t pettiness. It’s the cumulative weight of tasks that are never truly handed off, just partially transferred.

The Conversation Worth Having at Home

Fair Play works because it forces a direct, honest conversation: what does it actually mean to own this thing?

Not assumed. Not inferred. Stated.

When my husband said he owned taking out the trash, he wasn’t wrong in his mind. He was doing the part he pictured when he heard “the trash.” The problem was that his mental image of the task didn’t match mine, and we’d never compared notes.

That’s a definition problem, not a character problem. And the fix isn’t resentment. It’s clarity.

Have you experienced this? The quiet frustration of doing the part of the task that someone else didn’t realize was part of the task? It’s worth the conversation, even if it feels awkward. Especially because it feels awkward.

When Fair Play Showed Up at Work

A team sent an email congratulating themselves on completing a project. It was enthusiastic. It was well-deserved, in the sense that they’d done significant work.

There was just one problem: their “completion” didn’t include a solution for the partner teams who needed to maintain the work going forward. The handoff was incomplete. And the people who were left holding the unmade bed, or the unlined trash can, were frustrated, and rightfully so.

The back-channel conversations started immediately. The celebration didn’t land the way it was intended. And the team that sent the email likely had no idea why.

I immediately thought: this is Fair Play. A lesson I learned at home, showing up at work in real time.

They thought they owned the task. From their vantage point, they did. But the task had downstream components they hadn’t accounted for, and someone was going to complete them, whether or not it was in the plan.

The Work Version of End-to-End Ownership

In a professional context, owning a task end to end means asking three questions before you call something done:

• What does the handoff actually require? Not what you delivered, but what does the next person or team need to continue without gaps?

• Who is the receiving end of this work? Have you talked to them about what a complete hand-off looks like from their side?

• Is there ongoing maintenance this task creates? If so, who owns it, and have they agreed to that?

The team that sent the congratulatory email wasn’t careless. They just hadn’t defined the edges of ownership clearly enough, with themselves or with their partners.

That’s fixable. And I’m working on a framework to make it more explicit going forward, so the conversation happens before the work is done, not after the frustration has already built.

What I’m Taking From This

The most useful frameworks aren’t the ones that stay in one lane. The best lessons travel. They show up in your marriage and then your team meetings. In your kitchen and then your cross-functional projects.

Fair Play taught me that incomplete ownership isn’t usually about intention, it’s about definition. Most people aren’t trying to dump work on others. They just have a different mental image of where the task ends.

The fix, in both contexts, is the same: get explicit. Name the task. Define the edges. Confirm that both sides have the same picture of what “done” means.

It’s a small conversation that prevents a significant amount of frustration. At home and at work.

Have you run into this? The half-finished task someone thought was complete? I’d love to hear which version you’ve experienced more — the home version or the work version.

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I have thought about one concept from that course almost every single day for the past five years.

The Work Question That Changed Everything

Early in the course, they pose something along the lines of: How many times have you maintained your cool at work while thinking, “Why are you always making a mess? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just follow the instructions?”

Have you ever actually said it?

No. You haven’t. And why not? Because you know there are consequences. Real ones. Like maybe being fired.

The point the course was making: you can control what you say and how you say it. You do it at work every single day. Which means the capability is there, and you just haven’t been applying it at home.

Reader, that reframe hit me like a truck.

Work Showing Up at Home (For Once, in a Good Way)

I talk a lot about how being intentional at work makes me a better parent. But this was the flip that a professional instinct I didn’t even know I’d built, showing up as a parenting tool.

Now, when my kids are really testing me, and they do, because they are children and that is their whole job, I ask myself: how would I handle this if it were happening at work?

It creates just enough of a pause. Just enough distance from the frustration. And most of the time, I can find some patience I didn’t know I had left.

I’m not saying I never raise my voice. I’m human, and some days the patience tank hits empty earlier than others. But it’s rare. And when I do lose my cool, I know what brought me back. A question. A reframe. A half-second of distance before I respond.

The Tools That Help Me

When I’m in the thick of it with my kids, here’s what I actually reach for:

• Give options. “Do you want to put on shoes first or your jacket?” Toddlers (and, honestly, adults) respond better when they feel some control.

• Tell them what they CAN do, not just what they can’t. “You can’t throw that, but you can throw this.” Redirection over shutdown.

• Distract. Change the energy entirely. Sometimes a quick pivot is more effective than winning the argument (this one works REALLY well with my 4yo).

• Bribe strategically. I said what I said. They don’t recommend this, but it works (lol).

• Walk away for two minutes. Take some deep breaths. Come back regulated. This is not giving up. This is self-regulation, which is the thing I’m literally trying to model for them.

And here’s the beautiful irony: every one of those tools works at the office too.

The Real Lesson From My Friday Ritual

The Friday Learning Ritual exists because I believe growth doesn’t stop in one area of life. What I learn as a parent informs how I lead. What I practice as a leader shows up in how I parent. It’s one continuous loop.

Big Little Feelings gave me a reframe that I’ve used almost every day for five years. Not a framework for a board meeting. Not a leadership book. A parenting course.

Learning doesn’t have to be siloed to be useful. Sometimes the most powerful insights come from the places you weren’t expecting to find them.

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Early in my career, I had my first full buying job. And I had assistants who were absolutely fantastic.

They were knowledgeable, hardworking, curious, and eager to learn. They were great communicators with me, with our vendors, and with the teams in the stores. They were always up for supporting me in thinking of new ways to do things and innovate.

They deserved to make more than they did. They deserved to do more than just survive.

When the Raises Came

My team had just squeaked out our numbers during an economic downturn. In a year when so many were missing targets, we’d delivered. I was proud of them and ready to fight for them when it came to compensation.

Then the raises came through. They were determined by HR. And they were terrible.

My assistants were getting about $600. After a year of exceptional work, in one of the hardest economic climates we’d faced…$600.

I was upset. I pushed back. I tried to get HR to budge on improving it.

They wouldn’t.

The Decision I Made

So, I asked if I could give them my raise, about $3,000, to split between my assistants.

I had made it to a place where I could live comfortably and afford an occasional splurge. I could live without the extra money.

But for them? That extra could mean the difference between struggling and breathing a little easier. Between just surviving and actually living.

HR allowed it. My assistants got a better raise. And I never told them where it came from.

Why I Never Shared This Story

I’ve never told this story publicly. My assistants don’t know.

Because I never wanted praise for taking care of my people.

Taking care of your team isn’t about recognition or credit. It’s about doing what’s right when you have the power to make a difference.

But here’s why I’m sharing it now: because of the lesson it taught me.

The Real Lesson

Giving away my raise made me feel good in the moment. It helped my team. But it didn’t change the system.

The next year, the same thing would happen. The raises would be determined by the same broken formula.

That experience taught me something critical: To truly advocate for your people, you need to become an expert in the systems and processes that drive compensation.

I needed to understand:

• How raises were calculated

• What metrics mattered

• Who had decision-making power

• When those decisions were made

• How to build a case that HR couldn’t ignore

Caring about my team wasn’t enough. I needed to learn how to work the system on their behalf.

What I Did Differently

After that year, I made it my business to understand compensation inside and out.

I learned the budget cycles. I understood the performance calibration process. I figured out how to position my team’s contributions in language that resonated with the people making decisions.

I learned to advocate earlier, not after the raises were already determined, but during the planning process when there was still room to influence.

I learned to document wins throughout the year, not just at review time.

I learned to make the business case: “Here’s what this person delivered. Here’s the impact. Here’s what we risk losing if we don’t compensate them appropriately.”

And I learned to be strategic about promotions, special projects, and development opportunities that could supplement compensation when raises weren’t possible.

The Bigger Principle

Here’s what I want you to understand: Good intentions aren’t enough.

You can care deeply about your team. You can want the best for them. You can even sacrifice your own compensation to help them.

But if you don’t understand how the systems work like how decisions get made, who has influence, what levers you can pull, your advocacy will always be limited.

Real advocacy requires:

• Knowledge of the processes that affect your team

• Relationships with the people who make decisions

• Strategic thinking about timing and positioning

• Persistence when the first answer is no

It’s not just about being a good person. It’s about being an effective leader.

Taking care of your people isn’t just about being kind. It’s about being strategic, informed, and relentless in your advocacy for them.

That’s what real leadership looks like.

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Then I went about my day.

Well. The store manager called. And he was furious.

The email made it seem like he wasn’t in control of what was happening in his store. His team saw it. He was embarrassed. And now we had a real problem.

My response, with all the confidence of someone who had absolutely no idea what they were doing?

“Well… these are the facts.”

Lol. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well. My boss had to get involved.

What Lewis Said That Changed Everything

My boss, Lewis, sat me down. Instead of just telling me I was wrong, he gave me a framework. One I have thought about at least once a week for the past 15 years.

He said:

“You can know the facts, but most people cannot handle straight facts. You need to wrap it in something.”

And then he gave me his framework for writing a difficult email:

“I love you, I love you, I love you, you f***ing idiot, I love you.”

In other words: say something nice, tell them what they need to know, end with something nice.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing, but his way of saying it is memorable.

Why This Works

Here’s what I didn’t understand as that early-career buyer, armed with my spreadsheet and my “well, actually” energy:

Facts without context can feel like accusations.

When you lead with data that points to a problem, the person on the receiving end isn’t thinking, “thank you for the information.” They’re thinking: Is this my fault? Am I being blamed? What does everyone else think of me right now?

People have to feel safe before they can receive information. And a little warmth at the top of an email with genuine acknowledgment, recognition of effort, something that signals “I’m not coming at you,” creates that safety.

Then you can give them what they need to know.

And then you close by reinforcing the relationship, not the problem.

I Still Use This. Weekly.

I share this framework with people on my team or those that I mentor. Recently, someone told me she’d sent a message to her team and got zero replies. She was worried. Was something wrong?

I read the message, and it was straight facts. She just needs to adjust the framing. It’s one of the most common communication mistakes I see from otherwise excellent people, but this is an easy fix by adding warmth and context.

We think clarity = efficiency = facts. But humans don’t work that way. We need to feel seen before we can engage. We need to know the message is coming from someone who’s with us, not against us.

It Works at Home Too

And listen, this isn’t just for work emails.

Try is with your partner vs. just coming with the details. Also try it with friends. Let’s say her partner is… not it. You’ve watched the dynamic for a while, and you’ve decided it’s time to say something.

Simply leading with “Girl, your man is trash and he doesn’t respect you when he does XYZ” is not going to go well.

But what if you said something like:

“You are one of the most important people in my life, and it brings me joy when I see you happy. I’ve noticed some things like XYZ that have me worried because I can see that you are sad. I’d feel like a bad friend if I didn’t say something. I just want you to know that I see you, and I’m in your corner.”

Same information. Completely different landing.

She might not be ready to hear it. She might push back. But you’ve given her something she can actually receive, because she knows it came from love, not judgment.

When you need to have a hard conversation with a partner, a friend, a family member, just remember, “that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Not to sugarcoat the truth or avoid the issue. But to signal: I’m coming to you from a place of care.

The facts still get said. The hard thing still gets communicated. But it lands differently when it’s wrapped in something warm.

The Practical Version

If you’re writing a difficult email that involves bad news, a problem, a correction, a gap, try this structure:

Open with something genuine. Acknowledge the work, the partnership, the relationship. Not fake, not performative, but something real.

Say the thing. Clearly, directly, factually. Don’t bury it or dance around it. Just wrap it in the right message.

Close by reinforcing the relationship or the path forward. End with confidence in the person, the team, or what comes next.

That’s it. I love you. The hard truth. I love you.

And a huge thank you to Lewis for sitting me down, not letting me off the hook, and giving me a framework that I’ve carried with me for 15 years. This is exactly the kind of mentorship that changes how you show up. Not just in one meeting, but for the rest of your life at home and your career.

The best leaders don’t just tell you what you did wrong. They hand you a tool and trust you to use it.

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I am not.

I’m a Chief Merchandising Officer. I sometimes have early meetings and late events. There are a lot of mornings I don’t make drop-off and I’m still gone when they get home from school. I used to measure that gap between who she was and who I didn’t think I could be.

Then I thought about the lunchbox notes.

The Memory I’ve Carried for Decades

My mom put notes in our lunchboxes. Little notecards with ducks and words that were sometimes funny, sometimes sweet, sometimes just her saying she was thinking of us. I’ve carried that memory for decades. It felt like something she did my whole childhood like a defining ritual, a symbol of everything she was as a mother.

One day, I brought it up with her. I told her how much those notes had meant to me. How clearly I could still picture them.

She laughed. And then she said: “Stephanie, I did that for about a week.”

A week.

My brain had taken one week of intentional moments and built an entire feeling of childhood out of it. That’s the thing about memory. It doesn’t file by quantity. It files by feeling.

What I carried with me wasn’t a tally of her hours logged. It was the evidence that I was thought of. That I mattered. That even in the middle of her day, she made a small, intentional gesture that said: you’re on my mind.

A two-inch slip of paper did that. Not time. Intention.

The Belief I Had to Let Go Of

Before I became a mom, I was worried I couldn’t give my boys what she gave me. I couldn’t replicate her presence. Her availability. Her full-time devotion to home. For years, that belief had actually kept me from wanting kids at all. I couldn’t see how to be the mother I wanted to be and the professional I was building myself into. So I told myself: choose one.

I’ve written before about how beliefs are not facts. They’re stories we tell ourselves. And the story I told myself, that I couldn’t be a great working mom, was built on a memory that wasn’t even what I thought it was.

But here’s what I finally realized: What she actually gave me wasn’t the hours, and certainly not as many hours of any one thing as I thought. It was the intentional moments inside those hours. The ritual of the note. The snack that said I was expected. The feeling of being held in someone’s mind even when they weren’t in the room.

That I could do. That I could do deliberately, specifically, with the time I have.

What the Lunchbox Note Looks Like Now

My version doesn’t look exactly like hers. But it’s mine, and it’s intentional.

It’s the dance party in the bathroom before I leave for the office. It’s sitting on the floor and racing cars, while letting them tell me everything. It’s the art projects and then hanging them up like priceless treasures. It’s the specific, true thing I say at bedtime: “I missed you today and I was so happy when I got to see you.”

It’s not perfect. It’s not constant. But it’s intentional. And intentional compounds.

The moments my boys will carry with them won’t be a precise accounting of my hours. They’ll be the feeling of being held in my mind. Of mattering. Of knowing that even in a full, demanding life, I chose them, repeatedly, on purpose.

You Are Not Behind

If you are a working parent measuring your love in hours and coming up short, stop. The hours were never the point. The presence inside the hours is the point.

You don’t need more time. You need to be all the way in the time you already have.

Put a note in the lunchbox. Or the equivalent. Not because it fixes anything. But because small, intentional gestures are how love becomes something a child can hold onto, long after the moment has passed. Even if you only do it for a week.

Quality over quantity. Intention over perfection. That’s the Lunchbox Theory. And it fits on a slip of paper.

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A lot of that is true for me. I genuinely love spending time with my team in person. Meeting new colleagues. Brainstorming in a room. Reading the energy in a conversation that doesn’t come through a screen. That relationship building of in-person work is real and valuable.

But none of that erases the cognitive load of reconfiguring 8 to 10 hours of your day. And I think a lot of us, especially working parents or caregivers, need permission to say that out loud.

Returning to the office is hard. The transition is real. And it deserves grace.

And here’s the part that really worries me: for many people, especially women, people of color, and people with disabilities, RTO isn’t just hard. It’s forcing them out of paid work entirely.

I Never Had a “Normal” Working Parent Baseline

Here’s what makes my RTO experience a little different: I never had a baseline to return to.

I came back from my first maternity leave, and two and a half days later, the country shut down due to COVID. So, I never experienced what it meant to be a working mom commuting to an office with a baby at home. Remote work was simply how working parenthood worked for me from day one.

As devastating as that period was for so many people, I will be honest: being home during those early months meant I didn’t miss milestones. First smile. First roll. First word. I was there for all of it, not because I wasn’t working hard, but because I was working from home while my son grew up a few feet away.

We were fortunate to have childcare support in home (nanny share with neighbors), and I was still exceeding targets and expanding my scope. During that period, I became Chief Merchandising Officer and have continued to build my team and scope (private label, workflow automation) through WFH and now a transition back to the office.

My second son was born in 2021. He was a NICU baby who came home and needed early intervention support for several months. Working from home meant I could pop down from my home office and sit in on sessions with the specialist during a critical window of his development. That wasn’t a luxury. It was a lifeline.

So, when the return-to-office conversation began, I wasn’t going back to something I remembered. I was building an entirely new way of operating from scratch, while still doing everything else I was already doing.

What “Hard” Actually Looks Like

When people say RTO is “an adjustment,” I think they underestimate what that adjustment actually involves. It isn’t just waking up earlier. It’s a full reconstruction of your daily operating system.

Consider what actually changes:

• The commute. I live less than 10 miles from my office in New York City. It takes up to an hour each way. That’s two-plus hours a day that simply didn’t exist before, and time that must come from somewhere.

• Morning logistics. School drop-off, lunches, getting yourself ready to be seen in public take on new complexity when you can’t multitask from home.

• The household tasks you were quietly absorbing. The laundry between meetings. The dishwasher during a break. The quick grocery runs. All of it has to get redistributed.

• The mental shift of being “on.” Being physically present means putting on your professional face for 8+ hours. That is a different kind of tiring than working from your home office.

• The cost. Now I need a new wardrobe because I had only been focused on the waist up, there are costs to commute, am I adding another to-do to pack myself lunch or buying a $16 salad every day, and on and on.

• Missed Connections at home. I grew accustomed to sitting in the kitchen with my husband for a quick lunch each day. Friday from 12-1 became our time together to leave the house for lunch and reconnect. Now, that needs to shift to another time that involves hiring a babysitter (more cost).

Plus, the research shows that remote workers average more deep-focus work hours per week than their in-office counterparts, and that gap doesn’t disappear just because a mandate says so. When you give up that structure, something has to give.

The People RTO Is Failing

The numbers are real that blanket mandates are pushing people out of paid work. Not just making things harder. Actually forcing people out. And that breaks my heart.

We are doing this in a country that remains one of the only developed nations without universal paid family leave and where affordable, accessible childcare is a crisis. The math simply doesn’t work for many families, and when the math doesn’t work, it’s almost always women who leave the workforce. For my family, extending care hours for traditional commuting times would increase our costs by $7200 on top of the already astronomical cost.

Data from the pandemic years showed us something we should have been paying attention to: women and people of color disproportionately benefited from remote work. Not because they were less committed to their careers, but because remote work removed barriers that the in-person workplace was never designed to address:

• For women, particularly mothers, WFH eliminated some of the “penalty” of caregiving. It allowed school pickups to coexist with conference calls. It reduced the cost and complexity of childcare logistics. It meant not having to choose between a sick child and a meeting.

• For Black, Indigenous, and other employees of color, remote work provided relief from the daily exhaustion of code-switching, navigating microaggressions, and managing their presentation in environments not designed with them in mind. Studies showed measurable improvements in wellbeing and productivity. Working from home meant being seen for the work, not scrutinized for how they showed up.

• For people living with disabilities, remote work wasn’t just convenient. It was often transformative. The ability to control your environment, eliminate certain barriers, and participate fully in work that the office structure often made harder to access in ways people without disabilities don’t always appreciate.

These are not small quality-of-life upgrades. For many people, these were the conditions that made sustained career participation possible at all. And now RTO policies are taking them away.

Something Personal

I’m sharing something personal, because it matters to my life and returning to the office.

I am completely deaf in my right ear. I lost my hearing as a toddler due to meningitis. I’ve built my entire life and career navigating a world designed for people with full bilateral hearing, and most of the time, I’ve managed it well enough that people don’t know. But it means I spend all day strategically placing myself in rooms, at tables, to the right side of people when walking, reading lips, etc.

Large conference rooms are REALLY hard for me. Background noise, people talking over each other, side conversations, the way voices bounce off walls and ceilings, and I miss things. Not because I’m not paying attention. Because the acoustic environment of a typical office is not built for people who hear on one side.

Virtual meetings changed that for me in ways I didn’t fully recognize until I had them. Background noise is eliminated. Voices come through clearly. I can read lips as people pop onto my screen. I can follow a conversation with a level of comprehension that large group settings never gave me.

With the return to office, I’ve made a deliberate choice: when there’s a larger group meeting, I will often dial in from my private office rather than join the conference room. Not because I don’t want to be with my colleagues, I do. But because I don’t want to go back to missing significant portions of important conversations now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to actually follow them.

I share this because I suspect I am not the only one making these kinds of quiet accommodations. And I want people to understand that when employees make seemingly odd choices about how they participate, there is often a reason that’s not visible to you. Inclusion isn’t just about being in the room. It’s about being able to fully participate in what happens there.

What I Actually Did to Help Make It Work For Me

I hacked my commute. An hour on the bus in the morning isn’t time I can get back, but I can choose how I use it. I use that time intentionally: reading, podcasts, industry content, or just giving my brain space to decompress before I arrive. I leave the office by 4:30, and I’ve shared my tips on how to work during that commute so I’m not logging on in the evening. The commute went from feeling like lost time to feeling like mine.

I’m even more protective of my calendar blocks. It is really easy to get distracted in the office. I force myself to stick to my blocks and scheduled focus time. Otherwise, I would be doing work outside of work hours, and that time is sacred with my family.

I made intentional choices about how I participate. As I shared above, for larger meetings I often dial in from my office rather than join the conference room. This isn’t disengagement, it’s how I stay fully engaged.

I gave myself a runway. Experts suggest that building a new routine takes real time, and that people often underestimate their own capacity to adapt. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It means you have to give yourself the space to find your rhythm.

What I Want Leaders to Hear

RTO is a business decision. Companies make it for real reasons such as collaboration, culture, visibility, real estate. I understand that. And I’m not here to tell you it’s wrong.

I just want to acknowledge what many people are feeling and what the statistics are showing. Blanket mandates, implemented without acknowledgment of what remote work made possible for so many people, may be quietly undoing years of progress on workforce and pay equity. If the policy is disproportionately driving women out of your company, that is not a neutral outcome. If your mandate is making it impossible for parents of young children, people with disabilities, or employees of color to stay, that has long-term consequences for your culture, your talent pipeline, and your ability to build teams that actually reflect your customers.

Here’s what I believe: sometimes you have to play within rules you didn’t write and can’t unilaterally change. RTO may be one of those rules for you right now. And that’s okay. You don’t have to have the power to change a policy to start building toward a better one.

What you can do, at whatever level you’re at right now, is use your voice. Name what you’re observing. Share the real challenges with the people above you. Model flexibility loudly within your own team. Make it known that flexibility is the norm in your org, not the exception. Every time you protect your team’s calendar, leave at a reasonable hour, or publicly acknowledge that the transition is genuinely hard, you are building a permission structure for the people around you. That matters. Culture doesn’t just come from policy documents. It comes from what leaders visibly do.

And as you gain influence—use it. This is the part I feel most strongly about. Think about who gets to the top of organizations. It’s people who saw something that wasn’t working and built something better. People who didn’t just execute the playbook but questioned it, rewrote it, and created strategies that hadn’t existed before. The innovation, the creative problem-solving, the willingness to challenge the status quo—that’s exactly what got many of them into the room.

We are counting on the people who reach positions of real influence to bring that same innovative energy to the policies that govern how people work, parent, contribute, and sustain their careers. To ask: Who does this policy work for? Who does it leave behind? What would it look like if we built this differently? The same creative courage that built your career is exactly what’s needed to build better workplaces.

And here’s the part that should be sounding alarm bells in every boardroom right now: it’s not just parents and caregivers who are opting out. We are seeing an entire generation of young professionals actively deciding they don’t want to climb the ladder at all. Not because they lack ambition. Because they’re watching the people at the top and concluding that the trade-offs required to get there are not worth it. They are looking at rigid schedules, inflexible policies, and a culture that still treats presence as the primary signal of commitment, and they are quietly, deliberately, choosing something different.

That is a talent pipeline problem. If the people with the most to contribute to the future of your organization are self-selecting out of leadership before they even try, you don’t just lose their output today. You lose their ideas, their leadership, and their influence for decades. The cost of not addressing this isn’t visible on a quarterly earnings call. But it is real, and it compounds.

This is the same story as working parents being pushed out by impossible childcare math. Different circumstances, same root cause: structures that were never designed to accommodate the full range of human lives. The leaders who are willing to reckon with that or champion flexibility not as a perk but as a structural advantage, who will build new norms rather than inherit old ones, who will ask who does this work for and who does it leave behind, those are the leaders who will retain the talent that matters most. And honestly? They are the leaders every generation in the workforce right now is desperately waiting for.

We are all just doing our best. That deserves grace, and space to adjust.

Not perfectly. But intentionally. And that’s enough.

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You hire good people, you treat them well, and somehow a positive culture emerges organically.

Then I led larger teams. Teams across multiple locations. Teams with different work styles, communication preferences, and expectations.

And I realized: Culture doesn’t just happen. You have to be intentional about creating it.

Not vague values that look good on a poster. Specific, actionable agreements about how we work together, communicate, and show up for each other.

What Team Norms Actually Are

Team norms aren’t rules imposed from the top. They’re shared agreements about how we want to work together.

They answer questions like:

• When can people expect responses to messages?

• How do we handle vacation and time off?

• What makes a good meeting versus one that should have been an email?

• How do we give feedback?

• What does “balance” actually look like here?

Without norms, everyone makes their own assumptions. And those assumptions often conflict.

Some people think responding to emails at 11 PM shows dedication. Others think it’s boundary breaking.

Some people think meetings should be working sessions. Others think they should have clear agendas and outcomes.

Some people think being “available” means always being online. Others think it means being responsive during defined hours.

Team norms create clarity. They remove the guesswork.

The Norms We Actually Live By

My team has a document we call our “Ways of Working and Team Norms.” It’s a living document and we welcome recommendations for additions or changes.

Here’s what we’ve committed to:

Our Culture: HOTFIRE

No matter where we are, we embody these principles:

• Helpful – We create a transparent environment where any question can be asked

• Ownership – We act as business owners, making decisions for the benefit of our customers

• Trusted – We listen and disagree respectfully and professionally

• Fun – We acknowledge wins and celebrate success

• Innovative – We set aside time to Think Big

• Results – We act fast on reversible decisions and think critically about irreversible ones

• Empathetic – We actively discuss mental health and well-being

Work/Life Balance Norms:

• We manage our workload based on personal preference, but use judgment on deliverables

• We communicate when we’re busy and ask for help prioritizing when needed

• Vacation is vacation. We log off fully. Before taking PTO, we align key to-dos and identify coverage

• If there’s a business emergency during someone’s PTO, reach out to their manager first to confirm it’s truly an emergency

• Slack messages should be delivered during traditional work hours. We don’t start new requests after 5:30 PM so everyone can wrap up by 6:00 PM

• Sending emails in the evening or at the weekend is okay, but there’s no expectation of responding outside working hours. We explicitly state: “Please don’t feel obligated to respond until tomorrow/Monday”

Meeting Norms:

• Meetings only happen during business hours, between 10 AM–4 PM

• No Friday meetings—use this time to catch up on work and emails

• We will consider whether a meeting is necessary or if an email will get the same results

• Meetings have clear agendas and goals, not just working sessions

• We’re mindful of who we invite and leverage “optional attendee” designations

• Multi-tasking is avoided. Be present, engaged, and respectful

Email Norms:

• Emails are concise with a clear one-line takeaway

• Subject lines include action language: [Urgent], [Feedback Needed by 8/1], [Response Requested], etc.

• Emails with requests have clear due dates and expectations

• We send to the intended audience only—avoid inundating people with irrelevant content

Relationship Building:

• Quarterly happy hours

• Monthly coffee mixers (voluntary sign-ups to connect with peers)

• Buddy System for discussing best practices

• Managers hold quarterly career development conversations

Why This Actually Works

Here’s what happened when we formalized these norms:

1. People stopped apologizing for having boundaries.

Before, some team members felt guilty leaving at 5:30 PM or not responding to weekend emails. Now? It’s explicitly supported. No one questions it.

2. Meetings became more productive.

When you know meetings need clear agendas, happen between 10–4, and shouldn’t occur on Fridays, you’re more thoughtful about calling them. We have fewer meetings—and the ones we have actually matter.

3. Communication improved.

When everyone knows the expectation is concise emails with clear action items and due dates, there’s less back-and-forth confusion. Things move faster.

4. People actually take vacation.

“Vacation is vacation” isn’t just a nice phrase. It’s a commitment. And when your manager and team are aligned on coverage before you leave, you can actually disconnect.

5. Psychological safety increased.

When norms explicitly state that any question can be asked, we discuss mental health openly, and that we disagree respectfully—people actually do those things.

How to Create Your Own Team Norms

If you’re leading a team and want to establish norms, here’s how to start:

1. Involve your team in creating them.

Don’t dictate norms from the top. Ask your team:

• What’s working well about how we work together?

• What’s frustrating or unclear?

• What would make our collaboration more effective?

Co-creation builds buy-in.

2. Be specific.

“Respect work/life balance” is too vague. “No new Slack requests after 5:30 PM” is specific and actionable.

3. Make it a living document.

Review annually. What’s working? What needs to change? What’s missing?

4. Model the norms yourself.

If you say “vacation is vacation” but then Slack people on their PTO, the norm is meaningless. Leadership must live it, but I’ll admit I’m still working on this myself.

5. Hold each other accountable—gently.

When someone violates a norm, address it. “Hey, I noticed you scheduled a meeting for Friday. Our norm is no Friday meetings; can we move this?”

The Real Value

Team norms aren’t about being rigid or bureaucratic. They’re about creating clarity so people can do their best work without constantly second-guessing expectations.

They free you from the exhausting mental work of figuring out:

• Is it okay to leave now?

• Should I respond to this email tonight?

• Can I decline this meeting?

• Is it safe to ask this question?

When the answers are clear, people can focus their energy on what actually matters: delivering results, collaborating effectively, and building something meaningful together.

Great culture doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design.

What norms does your team need?

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The irony is that both people are probably right. And both people are probably wrong.

Here’s what I’ve learned after years of working in, leading, and building teams inside large organizations: there is no universal standard for what “corporate” means because it’s actually driven by the culture of that organization. I think the frustration most people feel is the gap between the culture they expected and the one they actually walked into.

The Myth of the Universal Corporate Standard

Nobody takes a class called “How to Be Corporate.” There’s no certification, no handbook handed out at orientation that explains the actual unwritten rules of how this particular organization, on this particular team, under this particular leader, operates.

What we have instead is a collective fiction that’s assembled from movies, word-of-mouth, and the handful of workplaces we’ve experienced ourselves. We carry that picture with us into every new role and measure reality against it. And when reality doesn’t match? We call it unprofessional, or too rigid, or dysfunctional, or maybe even unconventional and cool (we hope!).

But what it actually is, most of the time, is just…different.

Every team has its own norms. Every leader leads differently. Every company has a culture that was shaped by its founders, its history, its industry (hello Devil Wears Prada), and the dozens of unspoken agreements that formed over time. The way your last manager ran a meeting is not the right way. It’s just the way they ran meetings.

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Every Person Comes From Somewhere

Here’s what helps me extend grace when things feel off: I remind myself that every single person in that room is coming from somewhere.

Their communication style was shaped by the manager who mentored them. Their comfort with conflict (or avoidance of it) was learned through their lifetime. Their expectations of what “responsive” means were formed in a different environment, under different pressures, with a completely different set of norms.

When someone seems like they’re being “uncorporate” or, on the other end, frustratingly rigid, it’s worth asking: what did they learn? Where did they come from? What does professional look like through their lens? What’s happening in their life?

That question alone can shift a judgment into a curiosity. And curiosity is almost always more useful than judgment when you’re trying to actually get things done together.

The Best Move? Ask.

When in doubt, ask. Not “why is everyone here so weird?” (though this always makes me laugh) But genuine, curious questions:

• “What does a successful meeting look like on this team?”

• “How does feedback typically get shared here?”

• “What does it look like when someone is thriving on this team?”

• “When and how do you escalate something here?”

• “What is each team’s function and what are their KPIs?”

These questions do two things: they give you actual information instead of assumptions, and they signal that you’re someone who cares about understanding, not just being understood.

What might make you uncomfortable might just be the norm for how that office operates. What might feel overly rigid might actually be a system that was hard-won and that the team values deeply. You don’t know until you ask. And you can’t adjust until you know.

When You Don’t Like What You Find

Sometimes you ask the questions, you understand the culture, and you still don’t like what you find. That’s real, and it’s valid.

In those moments, I believe you have three options (I’ve done all three!), and staying stuck in frustration without choosing one of them is the fourth (and worst) option:

• Accept it. Some things aren’t yours to change, and deciding to stop fighting the current is its own kind of freedom.

• Work to change it. You have more influence over culture than you think, but it requires consistency, relationships, and patience. You’re not going to overhaul a team’s norms in a quarter. But you can model something different. You can name what you want to see. You can recruit others who feel the same way.

• Leave. Not every environment is the right fit. That’s not failure, that’s wisdom. Some cultures are genuinely incompatible with who you are and how you work best and recognizing that early is a gift.

What’s not an option, at least not a productive one, is staying in a culture that doesn’t fit and spending your energy being frustrated that it isn’t what you imagined corporate should be.

Why I Invest So Deeply in Defining Culture on My Team

All of this is exactly why I am invested in building and defining the culture within my own team.

I’ve lived the confusion of joining a team and not knowing the unwritten rules. I’ve watched talented people spend energy trying to decode a culture instead of doing the work they were hired to do. I’ve seen assumptions about “how things are done here” cause friction that could have been avoided entirely.

So, my team has a document—our “Ways of Working and Team Norms”—that makes it explicit. When can people expect a response? What does a good meeting look like? What does it mean to take real time off? How do we give feedback? What does “availability” mean here?

Not because I want to be rigid. Because I want people to spend zero energy decoding and 100% of their energy contributing.

Culture isn’t something that just happens. It’s something you build intentionally, specifically, and together. And when it’s clear? Everything gets easier. The confusion goes away. The frustration goes away. People can actually show up.

Be Flexible. Be Curious. Be Honest About the Fit.

There is no such thing as “corporate.” There is no universal standard you’re being measured against. There is only this team, this leader, this culture with its own history, its own norms, its own unwritten rules.

Your job is to get curious. Ask questions. Understand what you’re actually working inside before you decide what to do about it.

And if you’re the one building the team? Make it clear. Write it down. Don’t make people guess what you mean by professionalism, responsiveness, or balance. Tell them.

Because the goal isn’t for everyone to be corporate. The goal is for everyone to know what showing up looks like here. And that’s only possible when someone is willing to define it.

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I anticipated my boss’s needs before she knew she had them. I was one step ahead on every project, every deadline, every ask. I was her right hand, and I wore that like a badge of honor.

I was going to market in Europe, helping write orders, sizing them, preparing for and sitting in business meetings, and working with store teams and personal shoppers to drive the business. I even won a company-level annual award “Risk Manager” for a strategy that drove significant margin improvement.

By every measure, I was ready for the next step, but I wasn’t considered for a role that came open. I was devastated. And then I was angry. For months.

And then I figured out what I had done wrong.

The Trap No One Warns You About

Here’s what I hadn’t understood: when you do your job so well that no one else can replicate it, you don’t make yourself promotable. You make yourself immovable.

From your boss’s perspective, promoting you creates a problem. Who fills your role? How do they maintain the same level of support? The easier path, especially when there’s another qualified candidate who doesn’t create that problem, is to keep you exactly where you are and hire someone else for the open role.

You’ve essentially made yourself a single point of failure. And the organization might choose to protect itself from that risk, even at the cost of your career growth.

I had spent all my energy proving I was great in my current role. I hadn’t spent any of it making my current role survivable without me.

What I Did Differently

Once I understood the problem, I shifted my focus.

I started building what I now think of as a “leavability” plan. Not an exit strategy, but a transition strategy. I documented everything:

• What needed to be done and when

• The step-by-step process for each task and why it mattered

• What you need to know about the working relationships involved

• How my boss preferred to work and what she valued most

I shared all of it. And I made clear that I’d be available during a transition period to support whoever stepped into the role.

That changed the conversation and I was able to move forward with a promotion.

This Isn’t an Argument Against Excellence

I want to be clear about something: being a top performer absolutely matters. It led to better ratings, better pay, more visibility, and ultimately, promotions. I’m not telling you to dial back your performance.

What I’m saying is that there’s a balance. The same energy you put into being great at your current role also needs to go into making your current role work without you. Those two things are not in conflict, but most people only focus on one of them.

The people who advance are the ones who are excellent AND replaceable. Who deliver results AND document their processes. Who build their boss’s trust AND give that boss a clear path to saying yes.

Be Clear About Where You’re Going

Hand in hand with all of this: your boss can’t advocate for something they don’t know you want.

Tell your manager directly and specifically what your goals are. Not in a vague “I’d love to grow” kind of way. In a clear, grounded “I’m ready for X role, here’s why, and I’d love your support in getting there” kind of way.

Here’s something most people don’t think about: leaders are evaluated on how well they develop and promote their people. Getting you promoted isn’t just good for you, it’s good for them. When you frame the conversation that way, you’re not asking for a favor. You’re giving your manager an opportunity to do part of their job well.

Understand that dynamic. Use it because it’s strategic. You’re aligning your goals with theirs.

The Checklist I Wish I’d Had Earlier

If you want to be promotable, not just excellent, here’s where to focus:

• Document your processes. Don’t keep knowledge in your head. Write it down, organize it, make it transferable.

• Develop the people around you. Actively share what you know. A team that can cover your responsibilities isn’t a threat to your advancement, it’s a prerequisite for it.

• State your goals clearly and early. Don’t wait for performance review season. Have the conversation now.

• Make the transition easy to imagine. When your boss can picture the path forward without you in your current role, the decision to promote you becomes much simpler.

• Understand what your manager needs. They’re not just thinking about your career, they’re thinking about their own performance, their team’s continuity, and how promoting you affects both. Solve their problem, not just yours.

The Shift That Changes Everything

Being irreplaceable in your current role is a ceiling disguised as a compliment.

The goal isn’t to be impossible to replace. The goal is to be too valuable to keep in place.

That’s a different orientation entirely. It means doing excellent work AND building something that outlasts you. It means being the kind of leader who raises the bar for the whole team, not just for themselves.

I learned this the hard way through months of frustration and a hard look in the mirror. I’m sharing it now, so you don’t have to.

Be great. Be documented. Be clear about where you’re going. And give the people who have the power to promote you every reason to say yes.

While dating before I met my husband, I had to learn something that didn’t come naturally to me: just because I can do something, doesn’t mean I should. If he wants to be the one to move the heavy furniture and hang the pictures, let him, even if you could do it yourself. Jumping into his area of ownership doesn’t make you helpful. It can make him feel undermined. There’s a difference between capability and contribution, and sometimes the best thing you can do is get out of the way and let your partner show up for you.

I had to figure this out at home before I understood it at work. And once I did, it changed how I operate in both places.

The Corporate Equivalent of Moving the Couch

In professional life, the instinct to solve problems is one of your greatest assets. It’s also one of your greatest liabilities, depending on whose problem you’re solving.

Here’s what I’ve seen play out more times than I can count: someone spots a problem outside their lane, dives in with a solution, and instead of getting a thank you, they get an icy response. The owner of that work feels bypassed. Threatened. And now you’ve created a relationship problem on top of the original business problem.

The impulse came from a good place. But good intentions don’t neutralize the impact of overstepping.

Just because you can see the problem doesn’t mean it’s yours to fix.

Why This Is Harder Than It Sounds

High-performing people are wired to solve. It’s what got them in the room. It’s what earned them the title. So, when they see something broken, a process, a gap, an obvious miss, the instinct is immediate: fix it.

But in an organization, ownership matters. People build identity around their domains. Their team’s work, their team’s results, their team’s credibility. When someone swoops in with a solution, even a good one, what the owner hears is: you weren’t handling it. I had to.

That’s not a message anyone receives graciously. And it doesn’t matter how right you are.

Before You Step In: Run the Trade-Off Framework

If you’ve been following this series, you know I come back to the same five questions again and again - what I call my trade-off framework. I first introduced it when writing about balance and intentional decision-making, and I’ve applied it to everything from work trips to calendar blocking. It works just as well here, when the decision isn’t about your time but about your involvement.

Before you step into a problem that isn’t yours, pause and ask:

• What season am I in? Is this a moment where cross-functional trust is fragile, or well-established? The right move looks different depending on where the relationship is.

• Are there any real consequences? Not the imagined ones, not your ego wanting to be the one who spotted it, but actual business impact if this problem goes unsolved. That determines how urgently you need to act, and through which approach.

• Is this something only I can do? Sometimes your expertise or vantage point is genuinely irreplaceable. Often, it’s not, and the person who owns the work is more than capable of solving it if you give them the information and space to do so.

• How will I feel about this decision later? Will future-you be proud of how you handled it, or will you cringe at a moment where you steamrolled someone unnecessarily?

• Am I being intentional or reactive? The urge to solve is often reactive. Pause long enough to ask whether you’re choosing your approach deliberately or just defaulting to your first instinct.

The framework isn’t designed to talk you out of acting. It’s designed to make sure you’re acting intentionally. More often than not, when I run through these questions, the answer isn’t “don’t engage,” it’s “engage differently.” And that distinction is everything.

Three Approaches for Three Different Situations

Not every cross-functional problem calls for the same move. Here’s how I think about it:

Lead Them to the Answer

If the relationship is there and the stakes are high, the most effective thing you can do is ask the right questions. Not “here’s what you should do,” but “have you thought about what happens if…?” or “I’m curious how you’re thinking about X.” You’re not solving their problem. You’re helping them see it differently so they can solve it themselves. The solution lands as theirs. Because it is. And the relationship stays intact.

Present the Problem and Step Back

There are moments where the business impact is clear and the other person needs to understand it, but the how is not yours to determine. You bring the data. You name the consequence. “Here’s what I’m seeing and here’s what it’s costing us.” Then you stop talking. You let them own the path forward. This isn’t passive, it’s a sign of respect. It says: I trust you to solve this. I’m just making sure you have what you need to do it.

Build the Bridge Together

The best outcomes often come from neither side solving it alone. Bringing both teams into the room, not to assign blame, but to collectively design the solution, produces something neither team would have arrived at independently. And it builds the kind of cross-functional trust that makes future collaboration easier. Don’t underestimate what you might learn about how another team thinks, what constraints they’re operating under, what creative options exist that you never would have seen from your vantage point.

Diplomacy Isn’t Weakness

There’s a version of this that feels like softening your standards. It’s not.

Diplomacy is a skill. A strategic one. It’s the ability to move an agenda forward without creating unnecessary resistance, and in organizations, unnecessary resistance is expensive. It slows things down, creates political debt, and costs you relationships you need for the long game.

Being direct and being diplomatic aren’t opposites. The best leaders I’ve worked with know how to do both. They know when to name something clearly and when to create the conditions for someone else to name it. They know that sometimes the fastest path to the right answer is the one that makes the other person feel like they arrived there on their own.

That’s not manipulation. That’s maturity.

What You Might Discover When You Step Back

Here’s the unexpected gift in all of this: when you resist the urge to solve and instead create space, you often encounter solutions you didn’t see coming.

The team that owns the problem has context you don’t. They’ve been living inside it. They know the constraints, the history, the stakeholders who need to be managed. When you step in with a fully formed answer, you bypass all of that, and sometimes you bypass the better answer along with it.

Holding back opens the door to collaboration that genuinely produces something more creative, more durable, and more broadly supported than anything you would have come up with alone.

The Lesson I Keep Having to Learn

I’ll be honest: this is not my natural mode. My instinct is to see the problem and solve the problem. That instinct has served me well in a lot of ways.

But it has also cost me in relationships, in trust, in moments where I was technically right and tactically wrong.

The work is learning to pause before I pick up the couch. To ask: Is this mine to solve? If not, what’s the most effective way for me to help without taking over?

Sometimes the answer is to ask a question. Sometimes it’s to present the data and get out of the way. Sometimes it’s to build a bridge.

And sometimes, the hardest call, is to let someone else move the couch.