Cinderella syndrome is the ultimate corporate fairy tale.

The belief that if you do your work perfectly, take on more responsibilities without complaint...

...one day, Prince Charming (aka a powerful leader in your company) will discover your talent and rescue you.

With the glass slipper of a promotion in hand.

Women have been fed a version of this corporate fairy tale since childhood. If you want to get ahead, you're told you should:

✳️ deliver exactly what's asked of you

✳️ keep your head down (and smile)

✳️ be lucky enough that someone notices and chooses you

This mindset has created an epidemic of strong, capable, ambitious female leaders…

...who are chronically overworked, burned out, and strung along with perpetually out-of-reach promises of promotion.

This week, I sit down with Dr. Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj, associate professor in entrepreneurial leadership and diversity at HEC Paris in Doha to discuss these dynamics and more. One of the first to write about Cinderella Syndrome, she shares her expertise in gender dynamics, leadership, and how to escape the fate of a modern Cinderella at work.

What You'll Learn:

• How the Cinderella story keeps us waiting on "Prince Charming" in the workplace

• The double bind for female leaders, and how we're encouraged to play "nice"

• How leaders can break out of Cinderella syndrome and claim their power

I can't wait for you to hear this powerful episode.

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

If you've ever walked into a performance review expecting a gold star, and walked out feeling rattled, or even a little angry, you're not alone.

In fact, you'd be in good company. Many highly competent women have had a review in their career that left them questioning their abilities, their reputation, or their future at the company.

Sometimes, it's a specific piece of feedback that stings. But often, it's something that cuts deeper. A sense that you're unrecognized, unseen, or unjustly targeted.

And, it can leave you panicking as you wonder: how can I defend myself, without making it worse?

You want to stand up for yourself, but not seem defensive.
You want to correct the record, without escalating the conflict.
You want to protect your career, but it's hard to trust your boss.

That tension is exactly why I recorded this week's episode.

I walk you through the immediate steps to take when you're hit with a negative review. And, more importantly, how to respond in a way that keeps your reputation intact and your leadership presence strong.

This is the guide I wish every woman had before walking into a review that goes sideways.

Because the most common advice on performance reviews is extremist:

Either you're encouraged to swallow your concerns and smile meekly as you promise to do better next time…

…Or people will tell you must draft a point-by-point rebuttal, so that "their side" doesn't stain your permanent record.

Neither approach works, when your goal is to protect your career and reputation.

In this episode of The Mental Offload Podcast, I walk you through a more strategic response to a bad annual review. One that lets you advocate for yourself, without getting labelled combative or insubordinate. One that helps you call out bias, without looking like "the enemy". One that helps you rebuild your footing quickly, even if the review wasn't fair.

In this episode, you'll learn how to move through the initial panic of a bad review, and how to respond in a way that positions you as an even stronger leader.

What You'll Learn:

• The first thing you must do after hearing a negative review, especially if it caught you off guard

• Why you need to pay attention to facts and perceptions

• Impactful scripts for correcting the record, without sounding argumentative

• What to do when the critique feels biased, vague, or rooted in the motherhood penalty

If you've ever been knocked off balance by a performance review, this episode will help you get back up stronger.

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

Tell me if you've seen this play out before: You get handed a seemingly impossible goal, and you want to prove you're up to the task. But as soon as you start making the tough calls…you realize you're on your own.

No support.
No boss backing you up.
No signal from anyone above that your decisions are good.

It's a situation that can leave you feeling exposed. And alone.

Soon, you're choosing your words more carefully. You're managing reactions instead of driving outcomes.

And you're questioning whether you misread the room, misread the politics, or overstepped your own authority.

Sometimes, the problem isn't confidence, competence, or clarity.

It's air cover.

Air cover is the support you get from the people above you in your chain of command.

The public and private reinforcement that allows you to lead, take risks, and make decisions. Without bracing for fallout you'll have to handle alone.

When you have air cover, you move differently.
When you don't, you know it (often, too late in the game).

In this week's episode of the podcast, I break down what air cover actually is, how to recognize whether you have it, and why it's so critical to your ability to lead.

If you've ever wondered, "Is it too risky for me to make this decision?", this episode will give you the language and the lens to answer that.

What You'll Learn:

• What air cover looks like in the real world (and what its absence looks like, too)

• How to diagnose whether you've got air cover or not

• The strategic moves to make when you don't have the air cover you need

• Practical steps to provide air cover for your team

I hope this episode gives you clarity about how to get the air cover you need. And how to stop carrying more risk than you should.

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

It used to be the case that, if you were unhappy in your job, friends would tell you, "maybe it's time to look for a new job."

But these days, people will tell you "hang onto whatever you've got." Because a lot of people are getting burned in the current job market.

The job market in 2025 looks dramatically different from what it did 2 years (or even 12 months) ago.

So, if you're feeling stuck in your job – or going through a layoff – it might feel like you should be grateful for any job you can get.

Even if you love your job, you might be anxious about looming layoffs, hiring freezes, or rumors of a punishing return-to-office mandate.

This week on the podcast, I'm taking some of the uncertainty out of the current job market. I break down why so many talented women are spinning their wheels in this market. And I share the exact moves my clients are using to land better, more flexible roles right now.

This episode is for you if you're ready to stop waiting for the market to "get better," and start landing your next, best role.

What You'll Learn:

• 5 key trends shaping the 2025 job market

• The traditional job search strategy that is bombing in the age of AI

• The networking mistake that you think is getting you referrals, but is leading nowhere

• A key technique for finding the companies that line up with your values and work-life balance needs

• …and a whole lot more

You'll walk away with clarity, focus, and a fresh sense of what's actually possible for you—no matter what the headlines say.

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

If you manage enough people in your career, I guarantee that at some point, you'll have an underperformer on your team.

Sometimes underperformance is glaring. But most of the time, it's smaller stuff: a missed deadline here and there, work full of typos, or a subtle bad attitude.

Working with someone like this can be positively maddening.

You start out patient. You give feedback. You remind, nudge, maybe even redo the work yourself, just to protect your own reputation.

But when you don't see improvement, you're the one staying late to fix other people's mistakes, carrying twice the load, and wondering how you ended up here.

This is one of the most frustrating realities of leadership — especially if you strive for excellence in your work. Managing an underperformer can quietly eat away at your time and your energy for everything else — including your family.

So you slowly drown in work…and resentment.

And yet, many leaders feel like there's no way out.

You don't want to be "the heavy." You don't want to seem mean or micromanaging. The underperformance doesn't rise to the level of a fireable offense. And because your own leaders only see the great end product, they may not take the problem seriously.

The reality is, almost no one gets taught how to manage an underperformer when they take on a leadership role. And yet, this is one of the most important skills to develop as a leader.

So, in this week's episode of The Mental Offload Podcast, we're diving into exactly how to handle underperformance in a way that's direct, compassionate, and effective — without guilt or sacrificing yourself in the process.

What You'll Learn:

• The two leadership traps women often fall into when faced with an underperformer (and how to avoid them)

• The best framework for diagnosing the root cause of underperformance, so you can address it

• A simple step-by-step process for addressing performance issues with clarity and confidence

• How kind leaders handle difficult conversations (with some scripts you can steal)

If you've been quietly fixing someone else's mistakes or carrying more than your share, this episode will show you how to lead underperformers effectively, without sacrificing your time and energy in the process.

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

You can run a high-stakes meeting without breaking a sweat. You manage a team like a boss. At work, you seem to know how to keep cool, even when fires are burning around you.

But when you walk through your own front door?

Why does it feel like chaos is reigning?

Small requests turn into battles. Small kids expertly push your buttons. Half the time you're not sure who's going to meltdown first: them or you.

You might veer between being "too harsh" and throwing up your hands in defeat—and neither approach feels right.

Worse, you wonder what's wrong that you can command a room of challenging adults…but can't seem to get a 4 year old to pick their legos off the floor.

On this week's episode of The Mental Offload Podcast, I sat down with parenting expert Lisa Smith, creator of The Peaceful Parent. Lisa has lived this exact struggle—leading thousands in her corporate career while feeling out of control with her own child. That frustration sent her on an 18-year journey into parenting science, brain development, and how to bring true leadership into the home.

Her insights will change how you think about parenting.

She'll leave you fundamentally rethinking what it means to be a successful parent in this era. So you can shift from checking off a list of "perfect parent" to-dos, to reclaiming your authority and connection with your kids.

Join us as we explore the intersection of parenting and work – and how to bring your leadership to both domains.

What You'll Learn:

• Why your kids aren't actually defiant (and how to get them responding, without losing it on them)

• 3 parenting styles, and the one that truly makes you a leader at home

• A simple shift that instantly makes kids more cooperative (without power struggles)

• How to show up as a calm, regulated leader at home - even after the toughest workdays

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

Any way you slice it, Back-to-School is a sprint.

The extra load?! It's real. And working mothers typically feel it extra hard.

And yet, there can be an unhelpful temptation the moment that back-to-school week is over…to immediately jump back into "real life", without a moment to recover.

This will leave you spent. And contributes to burnout.

You might think "recovery" means preparing well for back-to-school. Reducing the load of back-to-school week itself. Promising yourself a vacation next spring as a reward.

And while none of these things are bad, they're not exactly what's required to recover.

You might think that taking any time at all to recover is precious time you don't have.

But failing to plan a proper recovery can leave you operating in "survival mode" for months. Who has time for that?!

Let's cut that whole process down to a week or two, shall we?

Whether your kids went back to school last week or last month, you'll learn what you can do now to get your mojo back.

What You'll Learn:

• Why recovery time is vital to preventing burnout

• What Paralympic runners can teach us about the recovery period

• The best short- and medium-term tactics for getting back in gear after the back-to-school "sprint"

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.

You've been angling for a promotion. And it should be yours.

You've got strong results.

Good performance reviews.

You get along with your colleagues.

And yet…that promotion still hasn't come.

What's going on here?

Is it bias?
A boss who's not advocating for you?

Some hidden secret handshake you haven't mastered?

Let me be clear: You're probably not imagining it.

Vague, coded feedback like "be more strategic" or "your communication could be sharper" is all too common.

And yes — bias exists.

So do clueless (or overwhelmed) managers who don't champion you.

But, here's the other part of the equation: there is a playbook for getting promoted.

What's often missing — and what this week's episode breaks down — is the strategy behind what actually gets women promoted into leadership.

After coaching nearly 100 women into Director, VP, and SVP roles, I've identified 3 things you must have to get from ready on paper to "yes, promote her already!"

In this episode, I'll walk you through the real stories of three incredible women who thought they were doing all the right things — and still hitting a ceiling.

And how understanding the promotion playbook took them from vague feedback and stalled momentum… to clarity, recognition, and the next level.

If you've been stuck in the waiting game — or feel like you're constantly proving yourself with no clear payoff — this episode is your roadmap forward.

What You'll Learn:

• Why just "doing great work" often isn't enough — and can actually trap you where you are

• Move over, mentors…women need sponsors

• The 3 forms of capital your promotion is riding on

• Leaving behind the "good student" mentality, so you can get ahead

For more information, visit The Mental Offload.