I build organizations that perform through change.

For more than two decades, I’ve led and advised executive teams at Twitter, Lincoln Center, GLG, Verizon Media, Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank, and McKinsey on how to align people, strategy, and systems so that transformation doesn’t just start —it sticks.

My work sits at the intersection of HR, organizational design, and leadership behavior. I help CEOs, CHROs, and functional leaders architect operating models that accelerate performance, strengthen culture, and enable scale without chaos.

Through Leadership Rewired, I’ve worked with growth-stage and enterprise organizations to translate strategy into action, rebuild leadership alignment, and embed accountability where it matters most—at the behavioral level.

Whether leading from within or advising from the outside, my focus stays the same: clarity over complexity, systems over silos, and people at the center of every decision.

Specialties: Organizational Design | HR Transformation | Talent Strategy | Leadership Alignment | Change Enablement | People Analytics | Culture & Engagement | Executive Coaching

Allison Allen, ACC

Leadership doesn’t fail because people don’t know what to do.
It fails because the hardest behaviors are rarely practiced.

Listening.
Curiosity.
Genuine interest in other people.

We treat these like instincts, but they’re skills.
And skills don’t show up under pressure unless they’ve been trained.

In this clip from Leadership Rewired, Ken Fogarty MSc, CPSL, CEO, Dale Carnegie of Nevada, names the uncomfortable truth behind most leadership breakdowns:

Common sense leadership isn’t common practice.

🚩 Especially when conversations are tense.
🚩 Especially when stakes are high.
🚩 Especially when authority would be easier than curiosity.

Leaders don’t rise to intention in hard moments.
They fall back on what they’ve practiced.

🎙️ Ask, Don’t Tell: How Great Leaders Get Better Results
Full episode below in comments.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Transforming Organizations Through People, Culture & Systems | HR & Talent Executive | Advisor to CEOs, CHROs & Growth Leaders | Founder, Leadership Rewired | Ex-Twitter, Expedia, GLG, Verizon Media, McKinsey

A regulated leader is a high-performing leader.

Calm is capacity.
Calm is clarity.
Calm is strategy.

You’ve seen it.
The leader who walks into the crisis and the room exhales,
not because they have all the answers,
but because their nervous system isn’t adding to the chaos.

They don’t need perfect information.
They just need enough regulation to think clearly
while everyone else is spinning.

High performance isn’t speed or intelligence.
It’s psychological capacity under pressure.

Consider this...
→ 71% of leaders report increased stress.
→ Stress management practices reduce burnout by nearly 2x.
→ Leaders with emotional regulation skills outperform their peers in every measure that matters...
→ execution, influence, decision-making, and team effectiveness.

Yet most leaders still treat regulation as a “nice-to-have.”
Something for wellness newsletters.
Something useful when things are calm, 
then abandoned the moment pressure hits.

Here’s what they’re missing:
→ Regulation isn’t what you do when pressure is low.
→ It’s what gives you capacity when pressure is high.

The cost of unregulated leadership:
🚩 When leaders lose capacity under pressure:
→ Panic narrows thinking — the solution becomes obvious only in hindsight
→ Decisions soothe anxiety instead of advancing strategy
→ Teams waste energy managing your emotional spikes
→ Reactivity becomes the operating system others must work around

What regulated leadership creates:
✅ When leaders stay grounded:
→ Thinking expands, you see options panic would hide
→ Strategy drives decisions instead of emotion
→ People bring you information early because they trust your steadiness
→ Teams stay focused on execution, not emotional cleanup

The pattern high-performing leaders understand:
→ Pressure doesn’t disappear.
→ Complexity doesn’t calm down.
→ Uncertainty doesn’t resolve.

What changes is your capacity to stay regulated inside all of it.

✅ The leader who can sit in a boardroom full of anxiety and not absorb it?
→ That’s who the board trusts with the hardest calls.
✅ The leader who can hear bad news without spiraling?
→ That’s who teams bring problems to before they explode.
✅ The leader who can feel the discomfort of the decision and make it anyway?
→ That’s who actually transforms organizations.

The compound effect:
Your regulation becomes your team’s capacity.

When you stay steady, they think more clearly.
When you stay grounded, they stop managing your emotions.
When you model composure, they learn how to navigate pressure themselves.

This isn’t “soft skills.”
This is organizational performance architecture.

Calm isn’t the absence of pressure.
Calm is having access to your full strategic intelligence
when pressure is highest.

👉🏾 How would your leadership change if you had full access to your strategic capacity, even under pressure?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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If you can’t do everything next week, 
choose the thing that will move anything.

Sunday night.
The week ahead is already too full.
The priorities are competing.
The urgent is screaming.
The important is shrinking into the background.

So here’s the question that cuts through all of it:
❓ What’s the one thing you could do next week that would unstick something else?

Not the biggest thing.
Not the loudest thing.
Not the thing that makes you look productive.
The thing that creates movement.

Here’s what I mean:
→ The conversation you’ve been avoiding that’s blocking three other decisions
→ The email you need to send that would clarify direction for your whole team
→ The 30 minutes of thinking that would save you an hour every day
→ The boundary you’ve been delaying that would protect your capacity

You already know what it is.
You’ve been circling it all week.

For the week ahead, try this:
Before you dive into Monday’s chaos, identify your one unlocking move —
the single action that, if you did it, would make everything else easier or unnecessary.

Not your whole to-do list.
Not your full list of priorities.
Just your unlock.

Then protect it like your most important meeting.
Because it is.

The difference between leaders who create momentum and leaders who manage overwhelm?
→ They don’t try to do everything.
→ They do the thing that moves anything.

And here’s what compounds:
When you consistently identify and execute your weekly unlock... 
 ✅ You stop drowning in tactics.
 ✅ You start seeing the levers that actually matter.
 ✅ You build the muscle of strategic action, not just strategic thinking.

Next week doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to move.

Your Sunday Practice:
What’s one thing you could do next week that would unstick something else?
→ Write it down.
→ Block time for it on Monday.
→ Do it before anything that feels more urgent.
 ✅ That’s your week.

👉🏾 What’s your unlock for this week, the one move that would create momentum for everything else?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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Sometimes I wonder if we’ve got leadership backwards.

We chase development like it’s a fix,
more training, 
better frameworks, 
sharper models. 

As if clarity only comes once everything is perfectly defined.

But real leadership doesn’t happen in the polished moments.

It happens in the messy ones. 
The uncertain ones. 
The days when you’re not sure if you’re doing it right.

Building resilient cultures during change isn’t about avoiding chaos.

It’s about staying present inside it. 
Letting disruption teach you instead of rushing to control it.

I’ll be honest, there are moments when leadership feels like translating strategy into action without a clear map. 

When you’re making calls with imperfect information
and trusting your judgment more than your certainty.

And maybe that’s the work.

Leaders who are willing... 
To ask questions. 
To stumble a little. 

To admit they don’t have all the answers, but stay engaged anyway.

So if you’re feeling a bit lost today, you’re not behind.

You’re in it.

And sometimes, that’s exactly where growth happens.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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We’re entering a world where everyone is certain, and many are wrong.

AI tells us the “truth.”
Data reinforces our beliefs.
Opinions are louder than ever.

And that’s exactly why the most important leadership skill of the future isn’t intelligence.

It’s humility.

In this clip, Ken Fogarty MSc, CPSL, CEO of Dale Carnegie of Nevada, names a principle leaders rarely practice:

If you’re wrong, admit it — quickly and emphatically.

Imagine how different teams, organizations, and cultures would feel if leaders were willing to say:

 “I was wrong.”
 “Here’s what I missed.”
 “I’m changing my mind.”

That’s not weakness.
That’s credibility.

🎙️ Ask, Don’t Tell: How Great Leaders Get Better Results
Full episode below in comments.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Exhaustion makes every leader reactive.
I watched it happen in real time once.

A client — brilliant strategist, 15 years building the company, universally respected.

She called me because “something felt off.”
〰️ Her leadership wasn’t landing. 
〰️ Her team felt distant. 
〰️ Her decisions felt heavier.

She kept talking about the transformation, the pressure, the board expectations, the market demands.

After an hour, I asked one question:
“When’s the last time you slept more than five hours?”

She went silent.
She couldn’t remember.

And in that moment, it was clear:
The issue wasn’t her capability.
It was her capacity.

She’d been operating on fumes for so long that depletion became her normal.
She forgot what it felt like to lead from a full tank.

Here’s what I’ve noticed after twenty years with leaders:
Exhaustion doesn’t show up with a dramatic collapse.

It shows up in a thousand micro-reactions:
→ The midnight email that creates problems you didn’t intend
→ The meeting where your tone lands sharper than you meant
→ The decision you rush because uncertainty feels unbearable
→ The strategic conversation you can’t think clearly through because your brain simply has nothing left to give

None of these moments feel connected.
You tell yourself it’s a bad day. 
A tough week. 
A heavy quarter.

🚩 But your team?
→ They see the pattern long before you do.
→ They start managing you instead of trusting you.
→ They adjust their behavior to your exhaustion.
→ They work around you instead of with you.
And exhaustion compounds.

👉🏾 Reactive leadership creates messes that generate more pressure.

What helped that client wasn’t more strategy.
It was one question:
“What would it take for you to lead from capacity instead of depletion?”
✅ She blocked three days.
→ No email.
→ No Slack.
→ No “quick check-ins.”
→ Just space.

When she came back, she said:
“I didn’t realize how reactive I’d become until I had enough rest to feel what regulated actually feels like.”

Her team noticed before she even told them.
Not because she changed her strategy —
but because she stopped leaking instability into the system.

If something feels off this weekend…
→ Maybe it’s not your strategy.
→ Maybe it’s not your team.
→ Maybe it’s not the transformation.
→ Maybe it’s your capacity calling for protection.

The work will still be there on Monday.
The pressure isn’t leaving.
The complexity isn’t easing.
But your ability to lead through all of it?
That depends on a nervous system that isn’t running on fumes.

Weekend Reflection:
What would change if you gave yourself permission to rest, not as a reward for finishing everything, but as the foundation that makes your leadership sustainable?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Sunday night. You’re looking at the week ahead and it’s already overflowing,
 → back-to-back meetings,
→ strategic decisions, 
→ team dynamics, 
→ fires to put out, 
→ problems waiting for your brain.

All of it matters. None of it works if you show up depleted.

👉🏾 You can’t think strategically when your nervous system is running on fumes. 👉🏾 You can’t regulate your responses when you’re already overstretched. 👉🏾 You can’t hold the room when you can barely hold yourself.

The week doesn’t need your exhaustion. It needs your capacity.

For the week ahead, try this:
→ Identify the 10 minutes that protects everything else.

Not the 10 minutes you hope you’ll find. The 10 minutes you will actually protect even when the week goes sideways.

For some leaders, it’s 10 minutes before the day begins to ground themselves. For others, it’s 10 minutes between meetings to reset their nervous system. For some, it’s 10 minutes at day’s end to process before going home.

It doesn’t matter when. It matters that you protect it like your most critical meeting. Because it is.

Why 10 minutes matters:
Not because 10 minutes fixes everything, but because 10 minutes of protected space changes everything downstream.

→ It’s the pause that lets you respond instead of react. → The reset that keeps stress from compounding into impatience or reactivity. → The quiet moment that prevents your team from absorbing pressure you haven’t processed yet.

Ten minutes sounds small. But it’s a leadership leverage point, a tiny hinge that moves the entire week.

🚩 Leaders who don’t protect capacity:
* Leak stress into every interaction
* Make reactive decisions they undo later
* Burn out teams trying to compensate for their depletion
* Lose clarity by Tuesday and momentum by Thursday

✅ Leaders who do protect capacity:
* Think more clearly
* Regulate better under pressure
* Make decisions from strategy, not stress
* Build environments where teams can do their best work

The difference isn’t working less. It’s protecting the space that makes the work sustainable.

Your Sunday practice:
What are the 10 minutes you will protect this week, the space that keeps you leading from capacity instead of depletion?

→ Write it down. → Block it on your calendar. → Protect it like a board meeting.

Because how you lead next week depends on it.

👉🏾 What’s your 10 minutes this week and when exactly will you protect it?

♻️ Repost to promote taking 10 minutes…
📌 Follow Allison for more leadership insight.

Consistency is a strategy. 
Intensity is a gamble.

The leader who works 80-hour weeks for six months and then burns out.
The team that launches three major initiatives at once, then abandons two.
The executive who’s “all in” until the pressure hits, then disappears.

This isn’t commitment.
It’s unsustainable theater.

Long-term leadership isn’t built on heroic sprints.
It’s built on small, compounding decisions most people never see.

Transformations rarely fail because the strategy was wrong.
They fail because leaders can’t sustain the consistency required.

These efforts are “punishing in their relentless need for consistency, consistency, consistency on the part of leadership.”

Yet intensity gets the applause.
Consistency gets ignored.

We glorify the late nights.
We praise the “whatever it takes” mentality.
We mistake exhaustion for dedication.

But the math doesn’t lie:
Intensity burns out.
Consistency compounds.

What intensity-driven leadership actually creates:
🚩 The intensity trap:
→ Unsustainable patterns that guarantee burnout
→ Teams that sprint, crash, and disengage
→ Results that spike briefly and then crater
→ Cultures built on crisis mode instead of capability

What consistency-driven leadership builds:
✅ The compounding effect:
→ Sustainable practices that grow over years
→ Teams that deliver reliably, not heroically
→ Trust rooted in predictable follow-through
→ Systems that outlive individual effort

The truth about long-term impact:
A leader who shows up at 80% for ten years
will outperform a leader who shows up at 120% for eighteen months
every single time.

Because leadership isn’t about how hard you push today.
It’s about whether your team can count on you to show up
tomorrow, next month, and five years from now.

The best leaders aren’t the weekend warriors trying to prove commitment.
They’re the ones... 
✅ Who build systems that don’t require heroics.
✅ Who create rhythms they can sustain.
✅ Who understand that presence beats performance theater.

Intensity is impressive.
Consistency is rare.

And in a world addicted to hustle culture,
the ability to show up steadily, not spectacularly,
becomes your competitive advantage.

Your team doesn’t need you to be extraordinary for a quarter.
They need you to be reliable for a decade.

That’s not less ambitious.
It’s just harder to Instagram.

👉🏾 Are you building leadership that compounds, or burning intensity you can’t sustain?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

You know what needs to happen.
The strategic move is obvious.
The direction is clear.
The data supports it.
Your experience confirms it.

So why isn’t it happening?

Because between knowing what to do
and actually doing it sits the hardest part of leadership:

Managing yourself.

Your strategy isn’t the problem.
The emotional discipline to execute it is.

Organizations spend millions on strategy, consultants, frameworks, offsites, planning cycles, alignment sessions.
But execution stalls for one simple reason:

Doing what the strategy requires feels emotionally uncomfortable.

Research shows emotional intelligence accounts for twice as much impact 
as IQ and technical skill in leadership effectiveness.

Yet most development dollars still go into strategic tools, 
not emotional discipline.

Most strategy failures aren’t strategy failures.
They’re self-management failures.

What happens when emotional discipline is missing:
🚩 The avoidance pattern:
→ The conversation needs to happen 
      ↳conflict feels unbearable → delay
→ The decision needs to be made 
      ↳uncertainty feels dangerous → wait for more data
→ The accountability moment arrives 
      ↳disappointing someone feels costly → soften it
→ The boundary needs protecting 
      ↳saying no triggers fear → say yes

What emotional discipline enables:
✅ Courage-based execution:
→ Having the hard conversation even when your stomach tightens
→ Making the call with 70% clarity because waiting costs more
→ Holding people accountable even when the relationship strains
→ Saying no to protect what matters, not to avoid discomfort

This has nothing to do with intelligence.
And everything to do with your willingness to tolerate discomfort long enough to lead.

The leaders who break through aren’t the ones with better strategies.
✅ They’re the ones who’ve built the emotional discipline to execute strategy
when execution feels terrible.
✅ They can recognize the spike of anxiety and not let it veto the decision.
✅ They can feel the discomfort of the hard conversation and have it anyway.
✅ They can sit inside uncertainty without manufacturing false clarity to soothe themselves.

That’s not a strategy skill.
That’s self-management.
And it’s the difference between leaders who are smart
and leaders who are effective.

Your team doesn’t need another strategic framework.
They need you to manage yourself well enough to execute the one you already have.

👉🏾 What strategic move are you avoiding right now, not because you don’t know what to do, but because doing it feels too uncomfortable?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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I used to think leadership was about control.
 Making sure decisions were tight. Execution was clean. 
People stayed in line.

What I’ve learned is that control creates compliance, not commitment.

Real leadership is influence. It’s built through trust. 
Through consistency. 
Through creating space where people don’t have to perform to belong.

That kind of leadership asks something harder of you.
 It asks you… 
→ To admit when you don’t have all the answers. → To stay present instead of defensive. → To lead without gripping everything so tightly.

And yes, that can feel terrifying. Because influence requires letting go of control.

But here’s what surprised me: ✅ The less I tried to control outcomes, 
✅ The more people stepped up. ✅ The more honest the conversations became. ✅ The more movement actually happened.
Influence isn’t softer than control.
 It’s stronger, and more sustainable.

And maybe, especially right now, that’s the kind of leadership that actually moves things forward.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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graphical user interface, text, application

Your biggest competitive advantage isn’t speed, capital, or strategy.
It’s whether you can stay steady when pressure spikes.

Imagine this:
→ A competitor launches something disruptive. 
→ The board starts asking questions. The team gets anxious. Slack lights up. → Everyone wants a fast response.
→ Most leaders reach for activity, more meetings, faster decisions, louder communication.

But the leaders who outperform don’t move faster.
They move steadier.

That steadiness? Emotional endurance.

Strategy doesn’t fail in moments of disruption.
It fails when leaders lose the capacity to think clearly through disruption.

Here’s what I see over and over:
Two organizations face the same pressure.
Same data. Same market. Same urgency.

One spirals into reactive decisions and mixed signals.
The other holds the line, adapts intelligently, and compounds trust.
The difference isn’t intelligence.
It’s endurance.

🚩 What low endurance looks like:
→ Urgency replaces strategy
→ Anxiety drives decisions
→ Teams spend energy managing leadership stress
→ “Agility” becomes chaos

✅ What high endurance enables:
→ Clear thinking under pressure
→ Consistent decisions even when uncertainty rises
→ Teams that execute instead of brace
→ Strategy that survives contact with reality

Here’s the part most leaders miss:
Emotional endurance isn’t built during crises.
It’s built before them, in small, repeatable ways.

Not retreats. Not apps. Not slogans.
But things like:
→ Protecting a small, daily reset that keeps you regulated
→ Naming pressure early so it doesn’t leak into behavior
→ Designing your operating rhythm to reduce decision fatigue

That’s not self-care.
That’s leadership architecture.

Because when pressure hits, and it will,
your team doesn’t need you faster.
They need you steadier.

👉🏾 As you head into the weekend:
What would change if you treated emotional endurance as a strategic asset, 
not a personal nice-to-have?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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I used to think culture was something you could shape with policies and programs.
 Put the right structures in place, and culture would follow.

What I’ve learned is that culture refuses to be engineered.
👉🏾 It lives in the stories people tell themselves. 👉🏾 The unspoken rules no one writes down. 👉🏾 The way leaders show up when no one’s watching.

And here’s the thing most leaders miss: culture isn’t static. It’s alive. 
Constantly shifting. 
Trying to control it is like trying to hold water.

So maybe the work isn’t about tightening the grip. Maybe it’s about creating space
→ for the stories to be told, 
→ for the unspoken to surface, 
→ for people to feel safe enough to be honest.

Culture isn’t built in policies. It’s built in everyday moments, 
→ how decisions are made, 
→ how conflict is handled, 
→ how people are treated when things get uncomfortable.

I’m still learning this myself.
 But I do know that real change doesn’t come from cleaning up the mess.

It comes from getting comfortable enough to stay present inside it.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

You can’t out-strategize emotional dysregulation.

Your transformation plan is brilliant.
The roadmap is clear.
The communications are crisp.
The milestones are defined.
Then the first obstacle hits.

Suddenly:
💥 A late-night email reverses yesterday’s decision.
💥 An emergency meeting creates more questions than answers.
💥 Priorities shift, not from strategy, but from panic.

A system can’t work when the leader running it is reactive.
When anxiety makes decisions, strategy becomes optional.

70% of change initiatives fail.
Leaders blame strategy, resources, or timing.
But here’s the truth behind the failure rate:
The plan didn’t collapse; the leader did.

73% of employees report moderate to high stress during change.
Employees experiencing change-related stress perform 5% worse.
But the real cost isn’t the team’s stress, it’s how leaders respond to their own.

When leaders can’t regulate themselves under pressure, they create:
→ Chaos their teams must absorb
→ Confusion that erodes trust
→ Whiplash pivots that look like incompetence
→ A culture where everyone manages emotions instead of executing strategy

What reactive leadership looks like during change:
🚩 When leaders lose regulation:
→ Monday’s priority becomes Friday’s “why are we even doing this?”
→ Anxiety gets translated into false urgency
→ Every problem triggers a meeting → every meeting triggers three more problems
→ Strategic pivots happen weekly because uncertainty feels unbearable

👉🏾 Teams manage the leader’s emotions instead of the organization’s change

What regulated leadership enables:
✅ When leaders stay grounded:
→ Decisions hold steady even when pressure spikes
→ Anxiety exists, but doesn’t drive strategy
→ Problems get solved without organizational chaos
→ Uncertainty is acknowledged without forcing premature answers

👉🏾 Teams stay focused on execution, not emotional cleanup

What most leaders miss:
→ Emotional regulation isn’t about staying calm.
→ It’s about staying strategic when your nervous system wants to run.
→ It’s noticing the spike of panic and refusing to turn it into policy.

✅ The leader who can feel uncertainty and still hold the line?
→ That’s who teams trust through transformation.
→ The leader who needs to “do something” to soothe their discomfort?
→ That’s how change turns into theater, not progress.

Stress management practices reduce burnout by nearly 2x.

👉🏾 Leaders who build emotional discipline create the only environment where change can actually land.

And this is the real reason 70% of change efforts fail:
Not because the plan was wrong.
But because the leader couldn’t stay regulated long enough to execute it.

👉🏾 What change are you leading right now, and how are you managing your own stress so it doesn’t become your team’s strategy?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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Unexpressed stress becomes unintentional harm.
Leaders leak what they don’t address.

You think you’re hiding it.
You think the team can’t tell.
You think if you just “get through the meeting,” no one will notice.

They notice.
They always notice.

Unexpressed stress doesn’t disappear.
It seeps, into tone, decisions, silence, timing, and presence.

Teams absorb what leaders won’t acknowledge.

What I’m noticing:
→ 71% of leaders report increased stress.
→ Only 29% of employees trust their immediate managers.
→ Employees with supportive managers are 11x more likely to trust their leaders.

Leaders are drowning in unspoken stress.
Teams are losing trust without knowing why.

Because stress you refuse to name doesn’t stay contained, 
it leaks into leadership in ways you can’t control.

What unexpressed stress actually looks like:
🚩 How unaddressed stress harms teams:
→ Anxiety: confusion (teams assume they caused it)
→ Irritability: vigilance (people manage mood, not work)
→ Withdrawal: isolation (silence feels like punishment)
→ Perfectionism: paralysis (fear trickles down and freezes initiative)

What acknowledged stress creates:
✅ When leaders name what they’re carrying:
→ Transparency builds trust: “Here’s what I’m managing — not your performance.”
→ Humanity spreads: teams feel permission to show up honestly
→ Clarity returns: they stop interpreting tension as failure
→ Culture shifts: problems get named instead of navigated around

What actually helps:
Leaders don’t need to process stress publicly.
But they do need enough transparency to remove misinterpretation.

Statements like:
✅ “I’m managing a lot right now. If I seem distracted, that’s me, not your performance.”
✅ “I’m under more pressure than usual this week. I’ll do my best not to let it spill over.”
✅ “My bandwidth is tighter than normal. Here’s why, and here’s what you can expect.”

That’s not oversharing.
That’s leadership that understands the cost of silence.

Stress is personal.
Its impact is not.

The moment you lead people, your inner state becomes an outer experience.

When you won’t name what you’re carrying, your team carries it for you, without context, without support, and without knowing it’s not about them.

✅ Leaders who create psychological safety through transparency 
build trust that survives pressure.
🛑 Leaders who hide their stress create cultures where everyone performs invulnerability until something breaks.

👉🏾 What stress are you carrying that your team is absorbing, and what would change if you simply named it?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

BOLD

At BOLD, we help time-poor founders show up consistently and confidently on LinkedIn - without spending hours on scripts or editing. 

We provide a monthly service that blends my 10+ years of interviewing experience with a simple, founder-friendly process. I pull the gold out of your stories, polish and deliver them back to you as LinkedIn-ready content, where you just click 'post'.

We follow the B.O.L.D. Framework:

- Bring Your Stories to Life: I draw out your unique wins, lessons, and perspectives in relaxed interviews.
- Optimise Your Presence: From page audits to upgrades, we turn your LinkedIn into your shop window.
- Leverage Video & Creative: Done-for-you filming, editing and graphics that build trust and connection.
- Deliver Consistency: You get a steady flow of strategic, story-driven content every month, with minimal effort on your part.

What this means for you:
You spend approx. 60–90 minutes with me each month. I do the rest. You stay visible, grow your network, and position yourself as a thought leader - all without sacrificing time for your actual business (or your life).

If you’ve got the vision but not the hours, BOLD makes sure your voice is heard.

Chief BOLD Officer

MicDrop

I offer keynote and motivational talks and workshops to help people with a hidden spark to embrace authenticity, creativity and visibility in their work and unleash their BOLD potential. 

I also work with brands to help them create and foster engaged, active communities both in-person and remote through inclusive event design and social/content strategy. 

Highlights
- Delivered 'Embracing Neurodiversity in the Workplace' talk to Aer Lingus Pilots & Crew (Dublin '24)
- Delivered a workshop to all Heads of People in the HV Capital Portfolio (Berlin '24)
- Delivered talk @LinkedIn HQ on the importance of personal brand (London '25)
- Delivered multiple keynotes/talks on visibility and overcoming the fear of being seen
- Featured in LinkedIn News UK/Europe/Middle-East multiple times, The Irish Times & Irish Examiner 
- Hosted workshops for brands like Twitter, Workday, Aer Lingus, Deliveroo, Upvest, HV Capital

Speaker

Becoming BOLD

The podcast my younger self needed. 

As an undiagnosed ADHDer, I fell through the cracks of the school system. I felt lost for a really long time, and as soon as I found my path as an entrepreneur, I began to thrive. I care a lot about representation (because we can't be what we can't see) and showing that entrepreneurs comes in many forms. 

Get ready for some BOLD conversations with entrepreneurs and change-makers - where we uncover their stories and the mindset it takes to take big BOLD action. 

Prepare to be educated, entertained and inspired.

Podcast Host

Stealth Startup

I co-founded a neurodiversity platform to help companies attract, hire and retain neurodivergent employees; but decided a few months in to step away due to a misalignment with my co-founder. 

From there I took the self-employed route which ranged from LinkedIn brand consulting to delivering neurodiversity awareness talks to businesses across in the UK, Ireland and Germany.

Co-Founder

Twitter

Sole PM in EMEA responsible for managing programs to attract diverse talent to Twitter and meet the ambitious DE&I targets. I was promoted into this newly created role within 6 months of joining.

- Sourced and onboarded partners to support our DE&I hiring targets for 2025
- Drove project on re-writing job ads globally to ensure they had inclusive language
- Led project on self-ID at the candidate applications stage to support DE&I efforts
- Helped lead a global project on end-to-end hiring process improvement.

Senior Program Manager, Talent Attraction & Employer Brand

- Recruited ML roles across EMEA and USA (sourced, interviewed, created and negotiated all offers)
- Maintained 100% offer acceptance rate and 70% diversity in hires
- Cross-functional collaboration with HR ops, Comp, Hiring Managers and Sourcing team
- Worked with TA Leadership on implementing and driving our Diversity Slate Initiative
- LinkedIn project management,  led team on proactively building diverse talent communities.

Senior Technical Recruiter, Machine Learning Engineers

Freshworks

Freshworks is a Unicorn SaaS ITSM and CRM company. In this contract, I recruited Sales (GTM), Pre-Sales and Customer Success roles for DACH and UK markets.

Senior GTM Recruiter

ThoughtWorks

ThoughtWorks is a global software consultancy and a community of passionate individuals.
As a Senior Recruiter, I was responsible for sourcing and hiring across Germany, primarily QA Engineers, Product Managers, Business Analysts, and Full-Stack Developers. I also led D&I projects and initiatives specifically for recruiting. TW has ambitious diversity hiring goals (40% UGM hires per year for example) and part of my role was to ensure these are met within the Germany TA function.

Senior Tech Recruiter

Gartner

Gartner is a world-leading research and advisory company. 
I supported 7 UK-based sales leaders on all their hiring needs, managing the entire recruiting process end to end, all direct recruiting. Alongside the VP of Sales, I lead all interviews throughout the process. 
I rolled out interview training with stakeholders and created a strategy for diverse hiring, and tweaked adverts which increased diverse applicants by 37%.

GTM Recruiter 

Carter Murray

Specialised in the placement of marketing professionals into the professional services space.

Senior Recruitment Consultant, Marketing and Business Development

Recruitment Consultant, Marketing and Business Development

EMR | Specialist in Marketing Recruitment

Sales & Marketing Recruiter

I help founders amplify their voice and visibility on LinkedIn to allow them get discovered by investors, future clients, and passive talent. 

I've leveraged my 10+ years recruiting experience from companies like Twitter, Gartner and Thoughtworks to create an ADHD-friendly interview video service for founders who don't have the confidence, headspace or know how to do it themselves. 

Through my done-for-you content service, I take the hassle out of LinkedIn content by interviewing you, creating high-quality, LinkedIn-ready video content, and delivering it straight to your feed. You also own those assets - so can repurpose them for YouTube shorts, Instagram or any other distribution channels. 

Most of the Founders I've worked with so far have seen at least 20% increase in their post engagement and secured new clients within the first 90 days. 

Contact info@amyweidner.com for more.

Amy Weidner

Today is the day 🥰 

The BOLD Community officially opens its doors to founding members to help me shape the first iteration of the platform from January. 

If you want 2026 to be the year you finally build a business and a life that feels intentional - rooted in your personal brand, this is for you.

The creator economy is booming, and I want more women to feel like they can escape the corporate world and own their own careers, lives and wealth. 

A personal brand is today's economic currency, and too many talented people are still playing small because they do not have the support or structure to show up BOLDly. 

The BOLD Community is here to change that.

Inside the membership, you will find:

🩷 Weekly calls with me/community to share wins, challenges and learnings
🩷 Workshops on messaging/personal brand (learn how I went from zero ➡️ Top Voice with 23k followers)
🩷 Video tutorials on LinkedIn, content frameworks and business building 
🩷 Access to my templates, frameworks, tools and any new materials I create
🩷 Exclusive in-person co-creation days/workshops/events (London & Bristol)
 
By the end of your first 90 days, you'll have:
⚡ A repeatable content system for LinkedIn
⚡ A clear personal brand narrative and positioning
⚡ A support system of creators/solopreneurs around you
⚡ The confidence to make the BOLD moves you've wanted to for years

I’ve wanted to so this for SUCH a long time, and as our BOLD WhatsApp group is two years old this month,  I felt like this was the perfect time!

I’m limiting spaces to ensure this first iteration is done in a concentrated way. Doors will close on 31st December until March. 

Link is in the comments to apply for your spot ⬇️

Last week was the most exhausting week since I started BOLD 🥹

I said yes to too many things and totally exhausted myself. 

Building a business is hard, and trying to be all things to all people REALLY empties the cup 😂

I feel like I'm constantly balancing between:

'I can't take on another thing this week' 

with 

'what if it's a great opportunity, imagine what I'll miss out on if I say no'.

But, I've reflected and decided that 'NO' is a very BOLD move, and a critical part of self-preservation, especially in the building phase. 

I have big plans for 2026, which in the next few months may require me to ghost some people (sorry in advance to those affected but my LinkedIn inbox is the Wild West) 👻 

The most exciting thing on the 2026 agenda is the launch of The BOLD Community, and I've been plotting some very cool things in the background to celebrate this (which has been 2 years in the making 😍)

Doors for founding members will open next week for a limited time only so we can kick off in January with a bang 💥  

If you know any women creators or solopreneurs (or those getting ready to take that leap) feel free to tag them in the comments and I'll invite them to our BOLD  whatapp chat in the meantime 🤗

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Dear Spotify, Apple and YouTube  

I have a genuine question..

Does this matter to you?

Almost half of the podcast listeners in the UK are women, yet we aren't represented whatsoever. 

As someone who runs a community of 100+ women solopreneurs, I've learned a lot about the women's experience as a creator. 

One of my biggest learnings from running BOLD is that when we don't feel represented in something (A.I., YouTube, Podcasting) - we develop a major psychological block about doing that thing, because we feel like we don't belong. 

We can't be what we can't see. 

I think I speak for many women when I say we want more, and you guys can do better in supporting us. 

Programmes, communities or special incentives for women podcasters. There is so much possibility! 

Shoutout FLIGHTSTORY for doing great work here, platforming voices like Davina McCall Dr Kristen Holmes PhD.

Let's do better for the women creators out here.

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Getting fired by Elon Musk was actually a good thing for me in hindsight. 

Soon after it happened back in 2023 (and after my first attempt at building a business where I chose the wrong co-founder), I decided I needed a crew of women to build alongside me. 

Sort of like how the guys have Golf, I wanted to create an ecosystem of women builders (who were good humans) to connect often, open our networks to eachother and build side by side. 

I hand-picked some women from my network who fit the criteria, and this time two years ago- the 'BOLD Women' WhatsApp group was born⚡️

We had weekly check-in calls.
We tested our ideas.
We shared our pain and frustrations. 
We shared our pricing and fed-back.
We recommended tools to eachother. 
We recommended people to eachother.
We referred business to eachother. 
We even shared contract templates with each other (this is SO helpful as a new biz owner). 😱

.. and most of all- we supported eachother like a cheerleaders through the highs and lows 🫂 

It started with 6 wonderful humans, and is now 100+ women Solopreneurs around the world 🌎

This group was the foundation for me to build BOLD 🩷

I knew the struggle these women were facing everyday, the feelings they were feeling and the road blocks along their path. 

I didn't realise so much at the time, but I was having direct dialogue with my target audience on a regular basis. 

This helped me continuously refine my services at BOLD and test out any new workshop materials, concepts etc. 

Not only that, it gave me the framework to start building The BOLD Community (coming soon, apply to become a founding member by clicking 'visit my website').  

This is an application & referral only community for women creators and solopreneurs, serious about building their businesses in 2026. 

Here's a few of us sharing 2025 wins and 2026 intentions yesterday Emilie, Arber, Maryna, Marcela, Bex, 💜 Kate Glover 💜, Anita Lucas ACC MCIPD

The best way to build a loyal and engaged community is to operate in the spirit of generosity 🫶

In other words, give to people without the expectation to receive. 

I honestly believe this is the secret to long term success- especially for community builders. 

Alexandra Aileru and I have spoken about this many times, and she frames it beautifully as acting 'in service' of others. 

Pay it forward as often as you can- and say to the person you help 'all I ask is that you do the same when someone else needs your help'. 

Whether it's making an intro, promoting someone's content or new business, giving someone feedback on their CV/LinkedIn/pitch deck or just giving advice- it could change the trajectory of someone's life. 

It is FREE to act in service of others, and although some might think it takes energy, I believe the opposite is true. 

It feeds the soul to be good to other people, and one seemingly tiny act of support from you is probably enormous to them. 

This kind of thing puts you into a state of abundance and without getting too woo-woo- it sends a ripple effect of positive energy out into the world that started at you. 

Imagine that? 

This energy compounds over time and brings incredibly good and loyal people in your world. 

Having done this since the start of my career and looking at the amazing community I have today, 10/10 I recommend 🩷 

(Doors open to The BOLD Community next week- DM me to join the waitlist)

The power of being visible 🤯

Yesterday whilst sharing the learnings from a peer group I was part of at Hilary Klassen and Inka Kretschmer's gorgeous breakfast event, I ended up sharing openly that I have ADHD.

We were on the topic of giving ourselves more white space to be creative, and I said as someone with ADHD, my white space looks very diffferent to what people think. 

For me it's music, cooking and exercise. 

Many of us with ADHD get told we should meditate, but often for me that feels like trying to put out a fire with petrol 😅

What I need it a mindless task to keep my body moving or my brain stimulated in some way, and only then can I move into my deep creative thoughts and zone out. 

I didn't really think much about sharing, because I'm always open about it- (I mean ffs it's in my LinkedIn tagline 😅).

I think I take for granted how much of a privilege it is to show up fully as yourself when youre self-employed, and forgot how hard it is for many employed people still to talk about this for fear of the repercussions. 

When the event wrapped up, I was approached by multiple woman with ADHD and we had the most gorgeous conversations. 

There is always an immediate understanding of one another, we get so excited about all the unique things we experience and it feels like we're finally being seen and understood! 

I wish more people could experience this. 

I've connected with these women, and one of them wants to work with me to build her brand on LinkedIn and join my BOLD community 😍

They said the most beautiful things about how validating it was to talk to me (I think I forget how much I've learned about this myself since I got diagnosed 2 years ago). 

To make other ADHD women feel seen just means the world to me. 

All because I was visible.

Being a creator is HARD work. 

There's an insane amount of pressure to keep posting, stay relevant, stay original, stay valuable, stay humble, stay visible. 

We don't always give ourselves enough white space, and double whammy if we have ADHD- because our white space looks different to everyone else's and we feel double guilt for then putting neurotypical expectations on ourselves 😅

This is a message TO MYSELF to please gurl don't put so much pressure on yourself all the time, and give yourself the time to be creative and to fill your cup ☕️

It also reminds me why being around other creators and solopreneurs has been SO important for my chi whilst building BOLD.  

It feels like we're really in it together 🥹

Doors open for The BOLD Community this Thursday- dm me if you want to join as a founding member or tag someone who needs this in the comments 🩷

Thanks Arianna Huffington for the visual ⚡️

So here it is, my final episode of Becoming BOLD where I chose the best human as my final guest, Andy Ayim MBE 🫶 

We covered all things purpose, legacy and living a life of intention. 

We spoke of the importance of mentors, and realised mid-recording that we'd had the same mentor in our early careers- the late Francis Mainoo. 

This conversation will make you consider what’s possible when you unpick limiting beliefs and push past the mental blockers that society puts on you. 

Andy Ayim MBE is a speaker, facilitator, Angel investor, and one of the kindest, most intentional humans you’ll ever meet.

From Tottenham to EY 👀 his story is VERY inspiring, so watch in the comments 👇 or search 'Becoming BOLD' wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Feeling the buzz in my body to be in London joining Hilary Klassen and Inka Kretschmer  for a peer coaching lab tomorrow morning with Secret HR Society, Leader Labs and Techspace 😍

It's specific for founders and fractional HR/TA peeps, a space to openly share challenges and collectively make big plans for next year (and I have VERY big plans for 2026)⚡️

Covering:

👉Emerging people challenges or opportunities are already showing up in your org? How are you preparing for them?

👉 Where are you feeling most stuck or uncertain in your 2026 people strategy? And what fresh perspective or experiment might help you move forward?

👉What’s one bold move your team could make in 2026 to truly shift your org?

They've kindly given me a few spots for my network if anyone's available tomorrow morning- you can register in the comments ⤵️

Here's a reminder for the women who hide behind reposting other people's content and never post their own..

You have SO much knowledge that the world desperately needs. 

You don't need 3x PhDs to post content on LinkedIn.

You don't need an English literature degree. 

It doesn't need to be perfect. 

Become a vessel, share the things you find interesting from articles, books, podcasts or customer interactions - and tell us about them in your own words. 

You've got this, be BOLD 🩷

I joined The Secret HR Society as the solo recruiter at a start-up back in 2019. 

I had moved to Berlin in August of that year, and within 2 weeks, my manager left, and I was faced with a whole new market that I had zero network or experience in. 

I remember buying a 'HR Handbook for German Labour Law' and almost crying from boredom trying to get through it 😄 

I was so fortunate to be introduced to this community (the first community I had ever joined in fact!), and since then, it has brought many incredible people into my life and brought some great opportunities my way.

I've been back to Berlin to speak at their events, and now I'm honoured to be their London chapter lead!

BOLD is joining forces with The Secret HR Society for their London launch - alongside my friends at Chapter 2, Leader Labs and Ravio on 21st January 🎉 

This is a space for HR/TA leaders and Founders to come together to discuss self-leadership and ways to make BOLD leadership moves in times of change.

We'll hear from the amazing Andy Ayim MBE, Trecilla Lobo, Charlotte Meara 
and Damian Welch 🎤 

Thank you always to Hilary Klassen and Anna Ott for being such huge supporters of me, and always inspiring me with what you've built 🩷 

Limited spaces - apply to join us in the comments 💥

Most people think about their backstory the wrong way. 

If I've learned anything from helping founders tell their stories on LinkedIn, it's that most people think that no one will care.

The thing is, people absolutely love origin stories. 

When other people know your story, they are FAR more likely to want to work with you.

It's *extremely* basic marketing: know me, like me, trust me = work with me.

Nothing helps people get to know you like hearing your origin story - BUT, you need to craft it in a way that makes people feel something. 

We ALL have an interesting story to tell, especially those of us with a squiggle path.

I've created a framework (adapted from my favourite creator Justin Welsh's 'Backstory Builder') to help you craft yours. 

I promise you, doing this will be the best gift you give yourself this year.

Thank me later 🩷

BOLD Backstory

TA Peeps in my network (I know there are lots of you) ⚡ 

My friends at Chapter 2 are hosting 'The 996 Debate' tomorrow hosted by recruitment legends Hung Lee and Brad Rose 🎤 

The 996 working week is a hot topic among Silicon Valley tech leaders, where it seems many believe working 9am-9pm 6x days a week is what it takes to be successful.... 👀  

Join here: https://lnkd.in/eJctXDtb

One of my favourite things about running BOLD is the founders I get to spend time with. Each month, I personally interview each of my clients for content, and honestly, I get SO much knowledge from digging deep into their expertise. 

One of the people who's taught me a huge amount this year has been Daniel Ludevig. In working with Daniel, I've got to go deep into his work as a psychology-focused leadership development coach - and have learned a huge amount on interpersonal communication, self-regulation and self-development as a founder, and one of the biggest topics we recently dived into was on the importance of having difficult conversations. 

I know now (as someone who naturally tries to avoid tension) that the long-term benefits of facing tension and embracing discomfort are huge.

I know a lot of leaders in my network will benefit from this, especially coming to the end of the year and potentially facing some challenging conversations with people on your team, whether it's missed promotions, no salary increase, etc. 

This conversation is designed to help you tackle all of that. 

Join Daniel this Wednesday 4pm UK time, for a FREE webinar on 'How to Have Difficult Conversations' in the comments below

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Amy Weidner

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The Battle

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