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What if compassion without boundaries is the very thing burning leaders out? We sit down with organizational psychologist and executive coach Kathryn McEwen to unpack resilience at work as a living system.

Kathryn leads the Working with Resilience Consortium and helped develop the Resilience at Work Toolkit, and she brings stories that reveal why good intentions often backfire—and how to course-correct.

We start with a reframing: resilience isn’t something you have or don’t. It’s a state shaped by resources like purpose, aligned values, strong relationships, and simple, consistent self-care. 

Then we dig into the messy middle of leadership: when optimism energizes people versus when it reads as tone-deaf, how a leader’s mood sets the room, and why calibrating ambition to the team’s bandwidth preserves morale.

If you’re leading through change, short on headcount, or trying to balance inclusion with consistency, this conversation offers practical language, mindset shifts, and boundary scripts you can use today. 

Kathryn McEwen is a speaker, organisational psychologist, executive coach and mediator with more than 35 years of consulting experience across all industry sectors. She has special expertise in workplace resilience, having authored three books on the topic and led the development of the R@W Toolkit. Kathryn has a strong evidence-base to her work as she collaborates with the University of South Australia through lecturing, student placements, applied research and membership of advisory committees. 

Website: Working with Resilience

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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji

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