Leading Women in Tech Podcast

It's nine at night and you're answering the email that could have waited. Nobody asked you to. That isn't a boundaries problem. By the end you'll know which of the four engines is running hottest in you, and you'll have one change to make this week that your system can't talk you out of. Somewhere early in your career, usually for very good reasons, you built yourself an operating system for achievement. Deliver more than asked. Own everything you touch. Never be the reason something drops. Prove yourself in every room, every time. That system worked, and it's why you're where you are. Notice what it doesn't contain. No off switch. No definition of enough. No mechanism at all for protecting the person running it. It was built to produce output, and it will keep producing output until the machine it runs on breaks. Which is why burnout at this level isn't a workload problem and isn't a personal failure. One client arrived convinced she'd lost her resilience. When we mapped what she was actually carrying, she was running roughly two and a half jobs on one human, using an operating system she designed in her twenties when the stakes were far lower. Her resilience was extraordinary. Six months later she wasn't working less hard, because she didn't want to. She was working on one job, deliberately chosen, with the absorption named and redistributed. Her performance went up. This episode maps the four engines driving ambition burnout in high-achieving women, gives you five changes that rebuild the system rather than layering self-care on top of it, and ends with the argument that moves high achievers when nothing else does: your team inherits your pace, and the women watching you are doing arithmetic on what your job appears to cost. WHAT'S COVERED → Why "just get better at switching off" treats the symptom as the cause → The two stories, denial and shame, that keep capable women stuck → Four engines: proving, over-functioning, the invisible load, and success escalation → Why the fourth engine is only dangerous when it sits alongside another → Five changes that rebuild the system, starting with a written definition of enough → Why your calendar is your team's curriculum, and where the pipeline actually leaks RELATED EPISODES Part one, why this is so hard to see in yourself: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/318-quiet-burnout-high-achievers What burnout-proof leadership actually requires: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/294-burnout-proof-leadership-women-tech/ Boundaries for women in leadership: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/268-boundaries-for-women-in-leadership-how-to-lead-without-burning-out The invisible load and what leadership shouldn't cost you: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/254-the-invisible-load-leadership-shouldnt-cost-your-wellbeing Bravery, grit and confidence, the leadership energy model: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/312-bravery-grit-confidence-leadership-energy-model/ Leader as coach, the skill behind delegating capability: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/314-leader-as-coach-coaching-skills-transform-leadership/ RESOURCES The Burnout to Balance Toolkit: https://tonicollis.com/burnout-to-balance Book a complimentary strategy call: https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/ #WomenInTech #SustainableLeadership #TechLeadership #Leadership #WomenInLeadership

Everyone tells you you're doing great. Nobody tells you the standard you're actually being held to. Why women in tech careers stall on feedback nobody gives. By the end of this you will know what that unspoken standard usually is, and how to ask for the feedback that names it. Sharon Lynch has been asked more than once to lower the standard for women. Her answer has been no every time, and not because she wants fewer women in senior roles. The moment the bar drops, the whole organisation reads it as proof that women could not clear it, and every woman hired after that carries the diversity hire label whether it fits her or not. She is CEO of Modus Create, and before that she ran Slalom's product engineering organisation across the Americas, a team of more than 1,400 people. What she describes in this conversation is the quieter problem underneath. Managers, often men but women too, are afraid of how developmental feedback will land, so they soften it or skip it altogether. The result is that women are held to a high standard nobody has articulated, evaluated against a bar nobody has described, and passed over for reasons that never get said out loud. When Sharon left her last role, a colleague's first question was not about the org chart. It was who is going to give us the hard feedback now. Women in tech careers rarely stall on capability. They stall in the gap between how well she performs and what anyone is willing to say about it. The rest of the conversation is about what closes that gap. Sharon's route to CEO ran through the business fundamentals: utilisation, expenses, revenue, how money is actually made. She is direct about why this matters. Functional leaders know their own function extremely well. Executives tie everything together, and you cannot do the second without understanding the first. That shift from individual contributor skills to an executive mindset is the one she watches most women stop short of. She also talks about asking her way into rooms she was not invited to, why asking your team to explain the data is not a failure of trust, what leadership legacy looks like when it is not about you, and why a title reveals the leader you had already become rather than creating one. WHAT'S COVERED → Why "you're doing great" is the most expensive feedback you can receive → What happens to every woman in the room the moment the standard is lowered for one → Why understanding utilisation, expenses and revenue changes how executives look at you → How to ask your way into the rooms where the numbers get decided, without signalling that you don't trust your team → Why being right the fastest costs more than it wins → What a title actually changes, and what it only reveals RELATED EPISODES How to give feedback as a leader — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/152-how-to-give-feedback/ The promotion gap for women in tech — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/290-women-in-tech-promotion-gap/ The shift from tactical to strategic leadership — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/292-executive-leadership-for-women-strategic-shift/ CONNECT WITH SHARON LYNCH LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondlynch/ Modus Create — https://www.moduscreate.com/ Ready to stop guessing at the standard you're being measured against? Book a strategy call — https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/ This episode was sponsored by our guest, Sharon Lynch. Thank you Sharon and Modus Create for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community. #WomenInTech #TechLeadership #WomenInLeadership #Leadership #LeadingWomenInTech

You're the one person your boss never worries about. That's exactly why nobody has spotted your quiet burnout. By the end of this you'll know the five stages of the spiral, why your own self-check keeps missing it, and the external instruments that break it. Quiet overachievers are the last people anyone worries about, and that is precisely the problem. If you feel burnout at work but you are still delivering clean work on time with no fuss, every system your organisation has for detecting trouble will read you as thriving. The reason this stays invisible to you is the question you use to check. High performers are relentless self-monitors, but the question is always "am I still delivering?", and delivery is the last thing to fail. Sleep goes first, then patience, then curiosity, then everything outside work, then your interest in the work itself. Delivery holds through all of it, because you make it hold. By the time that check finally fires, you are a long way into something that was visible in other measures months ago. What is workplace burnout when it takes this form? It is a loop rather than an event. Invisible excellence, early depletion, compensation, concealment, isolation, and then back to the start, faster each turn. The accelerant is stage three: you notice yourself slipping, you interpret it as a discipline problem rather than a fuel problem, and you respond by working harder. It works, which is the cruel part, and that guarantees you will use it again next time, harder. This episode maps the shape of corporate burnout in the people best at absorbing it, names the three beliefs that keep women inside the loop, and gives you five exits. Every one of them is external, because the whole argument of the episode is that your internal read is not currently trustworthy. WHAT'S COVERED → Why "am I still delivering?" is the worst diagnostic available to you → The difference between loud and quiet overachieving, and why the quiet version costs more → The five stages of the spiral, and which one turns a hard patch into a loop → Why performing wellness is a second job that nobody hires you for → Why your manager cannot see this, and why waiting to be caught is not a plan → Five external instruments that break the loop, starting with one sentence to one person RELATED EPISODES ⏹ What burnout-proof leadership actually requires: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/294-burnout-proof-leadership-women-tech/ ⏹ The early indicators of burnout high performers are best at overriding: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/248-recognizing-the-signs-identifying-early-indicators-of-burnout ⏹ The invisible load and what leadership should not cost you: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/254-the-invisible-load-leadership-shouldnt-cost-your-wellbeing ⏹ Bravery, grit and confidence: the leadership energy model: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/312-bravery-grit-confidence-leadership-energy-model/ FREE RESOURCE Signs You're Leading at an Unsustainable Pace: https://tonicollis.com/resources/is-this-unsustainable/ Book a complimentary strategy call: https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/

"If I wanted someone who would commute, I could have hired a man from New York." That's what a private equity partner said to Kimberly Williams while offering her first CEO role. She took the job anyway, delivered results he couldn't argue with, and changed how he saw women in leadership. Kimberly is Chairperson and CEO of Absorb Software, and before that grew CST Holdings more than five-fold in seven years, taking it from fifth in its market to first. In this episode of Leading Women in Tech Kimberly shares the career advice that took her from a strategy role at Boston Consulting Group to the CEO seat — including the single piece of guidance she gives every ambitious woman, why asking for help builds supporters rather than doubts, and how she thinks about AI transformation as a sitting CEO. What we cover: Why one small comment from anyone in your life can change a trajectory, positively or negatively Boston Consulting Group as the first true meritocracy she'd worked in The accidental route into running a business: a $4.3 million business case "If I wanted someone who would commute, I could have hired a man from New York" The importance of your support network, and why this may be the most consequential move you make in your career The career advice Kimberly gives every woman: fight for roles that carry numbers Why asking for help creates supporters — the cognitive dissonance effect Humility as a CEO strength: your job isn't to have the answers AI transformation: why AI serves your strategy rather than being your strategy Pick projects that could make your company great, not 1% more profitable Testing agentic outbound sales outside the core business Useful Links Connect with today's guest and sponsor, Kimberly Dolan Williams, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlydolanwilliams/) and find out more about Absorb Software at https://www.absorblms.com. This episode was sponsored by Absorb Software. Thank you Kimberly and Absorb for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

There's a question a surprising number of senior women in tech carry quietly for years: could I actually be a coach? Sometimes it surfaces after the promotion that didn't feel like you thought it would. Sometimes it's the realization that the mentoring conversations are the part of the week you actually love. Sometimes it's simpler: twenty years of hard-won experience, and a growing desire for work that's more yours. In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis takes that question seriously. What a coaching second act really looks like, inside your company, alongside your career, or as the next chapter entirely, what it pays, what it demands, and how to know if it's for you. What's covered: ➡️ The quiet question — why so many senior women in tech wonder about coaching, and why the instinct deserves more respect than "maybe someday" ➡️ The three shapes of a coaching practice — the internal coach-leader, the portfolio builder coaching alongside her career, and the full second act, and why you don't have to choose today ➡️ What you already have — why decades in tech are an asset most career coaches would kill for, and the credibility math nobody tells you about ➡️ What you don't have yet — the honest gap: mentoring instinct is not coaching skill, and why the leap from "good with people" to professional coaching needs structure, practice, and feedback ➡️ The "can I really do this?" objection — answered properly: no prior coaching experience needed, practice hours built in, mentoring from Master Coaches ➡️ The business reality — what building a paying practice actually involves, and the brand-new How to Build Your Coaching Business / Side-Hustle bonus announced today for the September Ignite Coach Academy cohort ➡️ The timeline — enrollment closes Friday 11 September, cohort starts Monday 14 September, certified and practicing by year end If the question has been sitting quietly in the back of your mind, this is the episode that takes it out and looks at it properly. Useful links Ignite Coach Academy — final enrollment for the September cohort closes Friday 11 September: tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

When a client goes quiet, most leaders assume everything is fine. Alisha Esmail would tell you silence is the clients exit ramp — because it's far easier to disappear quietly than to tell someone you're leaving. Alisha is the founder of Latch AI, an AI-native client retention engine, and her path to tech was anything but conventional: seven years in international development across Haiti, South Africa, Nepal, Jordan and Panama, followed by building an award-winning coffee company with direct supply chains across three countries and a micro-loan program supporting female-owned farms. In this episode, Alisha and Toni make the case that retention is not customer success's problem — it's a leadership problem that belongs to everyone. They get into what AI is genuinely doing to the retention landscape, why cutting CS teams has backfired badly for some companies, and the practical diagnostics any leader can run this week regardless of function. What we cover: Why every leader — engineering, product, sales, commercial — should care about retention How AI is reshaping the retention landscape, and "the war on clients" Bells and whistles vs boredom: when do customers actually leave a working product? No news is bad news — why silence is an exit ramp, not a sign of satisfaction The four-part retention framework: detect drift, score clients, run the safe play, capture the win Why "expansion ready" is the most missed category in most businesses Usage metrics: the data engineering leaders aren't capturing but should be and how it helps executive decision making Useful Links Connect with today's guest, Alisha Esmail, on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisha-esmail/ and find out more about Latch AI at https://www.yourlatch.com. This episode was sponsored by our guest, Alisha Esmail. Thank you Alisha and Latch AI for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

You have "coaching conversations" with your team. Career chats, problem-solving sessions, one-to-ones where you share your experience and point people in the right direction. Here's the uncomfortable truth: most of those conversations aren't coaching. They're mentoring. Powerful, well-intentioned, and the wrong tool for what you're trying to build. Because advice creates dependence, and coaching creates capability. In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis breaks down the difference, why it matters more than almost any other leadership skill gap, and how genuine coaching skill transforms your team, your calendar and your career. What's covered: ➡️ The mentoring trap — why the conversations you call coaching are almost certainly advice-giving, why that's made you the bottleneck, and the test that tells you which one you're doing ➡️ Advice creates dependence, coaching creates capability — the mechanism behind why your team brings you the same problems over and over ➡️ The Ignite Framework: Reverse, Neutral, Forward — the diagnostic at the heart of real coaching: "Reverse is 'this is happening to me'. Neutral is 'this is what's happening'. Forward is 'here's what I can do about it'. Same facts, three completely different relationships to them." ➡️ The two counterfeit states — False Neutral (calm that's really collapse) and False Forward (a plan laid over an unaddressed feeling), and why missing them is where most well-meaning leadership conversations go wrong ➡️ The 5-minute coaching conversation — you don't need an hour; you need the diagnosis and three good questions ➡️ What changes when you lead this way — the team that solves its own problems, the calendar that comes back to you, and the leadership reputation that follows ➡️ Where Ignite Coach Academy fits — the September cohort, the certification path, and the Self-Coaching + Coaching in Your 1:1s bonus module built for exactly this If you're tired of being the answer machine, this is the episode that shows you the way out. Useful links: Ignite Coach Academy — enrolling now for the September cohort (starts Monday 14 September, enrollment closes Friday 11 September): tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

Burnout is not caused by too much work. That's the argument at the heart of this episode — and Yana Carstens has earned the right to make it. After 12 years in the design and tech space, and her own burnout behind her, Yana shifted into executive coaching, where she now focuses on burnout prevention and authentic leadership for women in tech. In this conversation, Yana and Toni get into what taking radical responsibility for your own wellbeing actually means — and why most of what we call "wellness" is polishing the car while nobody looks under the hood. They dig into hyper-responsibility, the reflex that makes everything your fault; why rest is a prerequisite for success rather than a reward for it; and how leaders who model genuine wellbeing quietly reset the culture of everyone around them. If you're stepping into a new role, carrying everyone around you, or wondering why the vacation didn't fix it — this one is for you. What we cover: ◾ Why tech-native executive coaches are so rare — and why coaching skills spread naturally through teams ◾ The three reasons wellbeing is a leadership issue: modeling, leading from your center, and preventing burnout ◾ Burnout is not caused by too much work — the root causes nobody talks about ◾ The Ferrari analogy: you're built for speed, but without the pit stops you break down ◾ Why unlimited PTO and spa days are polish, not maintenance — and what "under the hood" work looks like ◾ Rest is a prerequisite for success, not a reward for it — and how that belief shapes team culture ◾ Hyper-responsibility: the high-achiever trait that makes everything your fault ◾ Observe, don't absorb — and Toni's version, hold, don't carry ◾ The client story: the boss's bad mood that had nothing to do with her ◾ Moving from hyper-responsible to "response-able": pause, clarify, build the internal boundary system ◾ The honest truth: this pattern comes back under stress — and that's okay ◾ Worst advice Yana ever received (from another coach): "you need to put on an act" ◾ Best advice: if you believe things will work out, you see opportunities — if not, you see obstacles Useful Links Connect with today's guest, Yana Carstens, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanacarstens/) and sign up for her monthly newsletter at https://realignandthrive.com/newsletter. Ready to learn to coach — for your self-coaching, your leadership toolkit, or a business of your own? Ignite Coach Academy is open for enrollment. Doors close September 11: https://tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy This episode was sponsored by our guest, Yana Carstens. Thank you Yana for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

Ever looked at an opportunity, a stretch role, a speaking slot, a bold idea, and thought "I could do that"… and then let it pass? And then been quietly furious with yourself weeks later? It probably wasn't a courage problem. It was an energy problem. In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis introduces the Leadership Energy Model: the relationship between bravery, grit, and confidence, and why understanding it changes how you take on hard things, how you recover from them, and how you lead a team through them. What's covered: ➡️ The three-stage model — bravery gets you started, grit gets you through, confidence is what you earn on the other side, and each one changes what the next hard thing costs you ➡️ Naive bravery — why not knowing how hard something will be is sometimes the greatest gift, and why the more naive you are, the more grit you'll need later ➡️ Why bravery and grit are finite — one shared pool across your entire life, which is why a house renovation, a health challenge or a hard season at home leaves you with nothing for the bold move at work (and vice versa) ➡️ The celebrity illusion — why some people seem infinitely brave, and what resources actually do to the price of courage ➡️ Confidence as the exchange rate — every hard thing you complete makes the next one cheaper, and how to build confidence deliberately through structured small wins instead of deep-end plunges ➡️ Self-coaching with the model — how to audit your own bravery and grit spend before you commit to the next hard thing ➡️ Coaching your team through it — especially in AI transformations, where you're asking everyone to be brave and gritty at once with no confidence to draw on, and what great leaders do about that energetic cost If you've been wondering why the version of you who used to leap at challenges has gone quiet, this episode will give you the answer, and the way back. Useful links Ignite Coach Academy — Toni's coach training program, enrolling now for the September cohort: tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

What outcome are you actually after? It's one of the most important questions a leader can ask — and one most organizations get wrong. Jessi Szurek, Associate Partner at Synthesis, joins Toni for a conversation about outcome-focused leadership, AI adoption done right, and the career-defining skill of speaking up when you're being overlooked. Jessi's path took her from an architecture degree at Cornell to an MBA at NYU, through 17 years at Ernst & Young working across process automation and AI with global financial institutions, to a smaller consulting firm reinventing what client value really means. This episode is full of practical wisdom for anyone leading change, adopting AI, or trying to get clear on what actually matters — plus one of the best examples of calling out being ignored that we've had on the show. What we covered: The non-linear journey: architecture, an MBA in economics, and 17 years at a global consulting firm Why Jessi left a role she was good at when her objectives and her employer's diverged Outcome-focused thinking: the difference between the actions and the actual outcome Why most companies think they know their outcomes but don't — and how to find real clarity Why sometimes the right move is to stop and reprioritize instead of just doing what you're told Transparency as a leadership tool — and why short-term discomfort creates long-term value AI adoption is change management, not magic: why AI is just the next tool in the toolbox The AI skepticism problem: what to do when people are being forced to adopt tools they resist Why user buy-in matters more than the perfect solution — the paper Rolodex principle The golf story: how Jessi challenged being overlooked and what it taught everyone in the room What's the worst that can happen? Reframing the fear of speaking up Setting boundaries and choosing your environment over putting your head down Why the most important decision you'll ever make is who you choose as your partner Finding success in discomfort — and being your own biggest cheerleader Useful Links Connect with today's guest, Jessi, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessi-petrosino/ and find out more about Synthesis at https://synthesis.inc. This episode was sponsored by our guest,Jessi Szurek. Thank you Jessi & Synthesis for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!