AUGUST 12, 2022

An Open Letter To Women Executives

I don’t know about you, sister, but a lot of us executive women are burned out from chasing the moving target called “work-life balance.”

We are switching between being CEOs, VPs, moms, wives, friends, sisters, daughters, community members, teammates, volunteers, and dozens of other roles.

Years ago, as a young professional, I struggled with this myself.

Yes, I overcame it, but if I’m being honest, I’d tell you I still have to work at it.

It’s an ongoing process.

We “have to” eat right, sleep enough, drink water, take care of our skin, take time for ourselves, and be there for our kids, and each other.

We “have to” put up with challenges some of our male colleagues will never know or understand.

We “have to” worry about how we’re perceived.

We have to…

We have to…

We have to…

You fill in the blank.

Being a woman in business can exhaust even the strongest of us.

I think part of the problem is the advice to “compartmentalize.”

We try to pack our lives into neat little boxes and jump from one box to the other.

We have our work box and our home box. Our manager box and our leader box. Our planner box and our respond-to-the-emergency-of-the-moment box.

And each time we jump from one box to another, we expend a lot of energy, taking lifeforce that we don’t get back!

If you have a work and personal calendar or a work and personal phone, I’m talking to you.

Because while we have good intentions with compartmentalizing, it ends up hurting us. Add up all those little losses of energy jumping between boxes and we have very little left for the things and people that matter most, ourselves.

If you’ve created a space with only you in it, I want you to know you’re not alone.

You’re not alone if you feel like everything depends on you.

You’re not alone if you’re just in survival mode.

You’re not alone if you feel like compartmentalizing is making you schizophrenic.

The reality is, there’s only one of you. Not a “work you” and a “home you.” There is no difference between the effective CEO “you” and the “you” binge-watching Hallmark.

You’re one person. A whole, complete being!

If you have an assistant that you can’t trust with your personal calendar, you’ve got the wrong assistant.

If you feel the need to be a different person in the morning than in the evening, you’re spending life-force shapeshifting.

In our C.L.E.A.R. Executive Coaching Program, we say that “Breakthrough change is a process rooted in one simple question: Who do you have to be, in order to naturally and effortlessly produce extraordinary results?”

When you are your true, authentic, un-compartmentalized self, your power becomes limitless because it comes from who you are, not what you do.

So let me ask, who do you want to be?

Give her a name.

Just one name.

Then be her.