Weekly Badass Mail

If you're in middle management, you already know it's the toughest seat in the workplace. Executives push strategy down, teams push needs up, and you’re stuck translating, smoothing over, and holding it all together. No surprise that research shows half of middle managers report signs of burnout, and yet they’re the group most responsible for employee engagement. That’s a brutal paradox. But, there are practical ways to make the role more sustainable for yourself and for your organization. 3...

If you've been paying attention to the shifts in work lately, you've likely heard the term portfolio career thrown around. Some people roll their eyes, dismissing it as a buzzword for job-hopping. Others assume it's just freelancing. Both takes miss the point. A portfolio career is a deliberate, strategic way of building your work life. The focus is on intentionally diversifying your roles so you're not over-reliant on a single employer, paycheck, or identity. Think of it like an investment...

These are the skills that carry you through the hardest moments. Leadership isn't just about what you know. It's about how you connect, how you interpret, and how you recover when things break down (and they will... trust). This final set of burnout-resistant leadership skills is about the long game... building trust, navigating complexity, and staying agile when the ground shifts beneath you. Here are skills 16-20. Skill #16: Relational Intelligence The best leaders know that leadership is...

You know this isn't your typical leadership playbook. We're not talking about how to run a better meeting or set tighter goals. We're talking about the skills that actually keep you in the game long-term. This week, we're adding skills 11-15 to the burnout-resistant leadership list. And if you need to catch up, here's part 1 and part 2. Skill #11: Pattern Interruption Burnout isn't always caused by big crises. Often it's the repetition... same conflicts, same bottlenecks, same frustrations....

The leadership load is changing. The skills that kept you afloat five years ago aren't enough anymore. Leadership isn't just about managing work. It's about managing pace, pressure, and people in a way that doesn't take you down with it. That's where burnout-resistant skills come in. Last week's skills were about handling the moment you're in. This week, we're tackling the ones that help you manage change, capacity, and communication like a pro. Let's get into it. Skill #6: Cognitive...

You know that feeling when you look in the mirror and barely recognize yourself? You've probably spent years being praised for what you do, not who you are. For being productive. Responsible. Reliable. So, somewhere along the way, it made complete sense to invest everything into being that version of yourself. But now, that version of you has taken over. You're experiencing identity erosion. You probably don't spontaneously wake up one day and realize you're nothing without your job. But the...

These are the skills that keep good leaders from going under. You probably learned how to run a meeting. How to write a goal (hello, SMART goals). How to manage a team. But no one taught you how to lead through exhaustion. How to handle emotional overload. How to make decisions when your brain is mashed potatoes. How to stay present when you're stretched too thin to think straight. That's the real leadership work. And most of us are just out here winging it. That's why I created the list of...

We’ve normalized overwhelm so much that when a role quietly becomes unsustainable… we blame ourselves for struggling. That's one of the hardest parts about burnout. It makes you question your competence instead of the conditions. But there's a difference between a hard job and a broken role. One challenges you with adequate support. The other drains you. In this week's episode of The Balanced Badass Podcast®, I break down what it means to be set up to fail and how to tell if that's what's...

Not every workplace is safe. But silence won't save you, either. Earlier this week, someone posted on TikTok asking, "Should I tell my manager I'm burned out?" The comments flooded in. Don't say a word.HR is not your friend.Just find a new job. And listen, I get it. A lot of workplaces aren't psychologically safe. People have been pushed out or punished just for being honest and asking for help. But here's what I also know... When you're burned out and stay silent, you end up even more...