What a Leadership Coach for Women Learned from Men

I need to make a confession.

But first — a quick story about balance.

The Three-Chapter Story I've Been Living

A few years ago, I wrote an email declaring that balance is bullshit. Loudly. Repeatedly. Without apology.

Then I wrote a follow-up where I walked it back…sort of. The conventional idea of balance is garbage, yes. But complementary forces that strengthen each other are actually essential. 

This morning, standing on one leg in yoga class (trying desperately to keep my balance), I realized there's a third chapter.

My entire framework – The Art of Compassionate Command – is built on exactly that principle. Complementary forces. The compassion doesn't work without the command. The command doesn't work without the compassion. They need each other. They make each other stronger.

I've been teaching this for years.

Almost exclusively to women. I still believe that women have more to contend with than men do in the leadership space (and in every space, really.) But now I know it’s more nuanced than that.

The Leadership Problem Nobody's Talking About

What I’ve realized after years of doing this work is that women get penalized for bringing the command. Men get penalized for bringing the compassion.

So ultimately, almost nobody is leading from their whole self.

Women are told to lean into masculine traits to be taken seriously. But not too much, or they're labeled aggressive. Men are told that vulnerability is weakness, that asking for help is a liability, that the measure of a leader is output and earning power and the projection of certainty they may or may not actually feel.

Both are performing a version of leadership that someone else designed. This isn’t a problem that depends on your sex. 

Here's My Confession

I’ve truly felt that what I was talking about and teaching was geared toward women - but I’ve been working with men for years.When a man reaches out and it feels like a good match, I have always loved working with them.   

But something shifted in the past year.

I presented a portion of my keynote at a workshop. It was material I wrote specifically for women. Afterward, it was the men in the room who came up to me. Generals. CEOs. Professional athletes. Men who move through the world projecting command.

They didn't say "good talk."

They said something far more important: I feel seen.

Here's a Marine General – someone whose entire professional identity is built on strength and authority – telling me that work directed at high-achieving women made him feel seen.

After that, it kept happening. A CEO approached me at a school fundraiser after seeing something I'd posted on Instagram. A VP at an entertainment company emailed after reading one of my newsletters. To say the same exact thing: I feel seen. 

I finally started listening.

Why Staying Quiet Was Doing a Disservice to Everyone

So here’s where I’ve landed: By saying I only work with women, I've been doing a disservice to women and a disservice to men.

Because women can’t do it alone. We can’t shift how leadership shows up in the world without the allyship of men. I firmly believe that. A new model of leadership – one that integrates compassion and command, that doesn't run on fear and performance – doesn't get built by half the population.

And men who want a different way of leading – who are exhausted by the performance of it and  who are quietly asking the same questions I hear from women – this work is for them as well.  

The work looks the same regardless of who is doing it: What do you actually want? Who do you want to be as a leader? Not what you've been told a leader looks like, but who do you want to be? And what is it costing you to keep leading the way you've been leading?

These are the questions that determine whether you build something that lasts or burn out chasing someone else's version of success.

So Here's What I'm Saying Out Loud as a Leadership Coach

I work with women. That's not changing. The specific experience of high-achieving women navigating systems that weren't built for them is real, it's documented, and it's central to everything I do.

But I also work with men.

Because nobody should have to lead in a way that costs them themselves. And the only way leadership actually changes – for women, for men, for the people coming up behind all of us  – is if we stop treating this like a problem only half of us have.

If you're ready to stop leading at a cost to yourself – I'd love to talk. And if you know someone who needs to hear this — a colleague, a partner, a friend, a boss — send it to them.