Capacity Conversations

What does it cost to bring only part of yourself to work? Kristine Sickels spent 20 years climbing the corporate ladder, rising to SVP of marketing for a $2 billion portfolio of brands you know: Crock-Pot, Mr. Coffee, Oster. Then a 360 review stopped her cold. The feedback praised her results and named a harder truth, that the way she was leading did not match who she was at home, as a friend, as a daughter. In this conversation she calls that the voice-values gap, the distance between what you believe inside and what you say out loud. We talk about the three values she chose to lead from, candor, optimism, and curiosity, why she keeps them on a card where she can see them, and the moment she realized women across her company were watching how she led. Kristine left corporate as one of the highest-ranked women in an organization of 20,000 to give the next season of her career to championing women's voices, through her company MicDrop and her book, The Clearest Voice in the Room. This one is about using your voice in the small daily moments, not just the big ones.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• The 360 feedback that revealed Kristine was only bringing part of herself to work, and what it broke open for her

• The voice-values gap: the distance between what you believe and what you actually say out loud

• Why Kristine leads from three values, candor, optimism, and curiosity, and how she keeps them in front of her every single day

• The moment she realized women across her company were watching how she led, and what it moved her to do

• Why she walked away from one of the highest-ranked women's roles in a 20,000-person company

• The silencers that keep capable women quiet, and where energy fits in her VOICE framework

• One small practice to use your voice in everyday moments instead of waiting for the big meeting

Connect with Kristine:

Website: drkristinespeaks.com

Book, The Clearest Voice in the Room: on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. Signed copies plus her voice-values-gap resources and playlist at drkristinespeaks.com/book

Substack: https://kristinesickels.substack.com/

Connect with Lizette:

Preorder waitlist for⁠ ⁠Lizette's Next Book⁠⁠

⁠⁠Book Lizette to Speak⁠⁠

Get email updates here:⁠ ⁠https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop⁠⁠

Join me on⁠ ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠

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Description

Honesty builds trust. It is the most repeated, least examined claim in modern leadership, and it is backwards. Welcome to Debunked, the segment where I take a piece of the productivity gospel, run it through the capacity science, and tell you what actually holds up. This week I follow up on my conversation with Edie Kay Stulken about honesty and leadership, and I go after the belief underneath it. I walk through four things we believe about honesty, from the ones you already suspect are off to the one almost nobody questions: honesty is always the best policy, brutal honesty is just my personality, radical candor means say the hard thing, and the big one, honesty builds trust. The neuroscience tells a different story. Your nervous system runs a safety scan before you consciously register a single word, and honesty delivered into a system that reads threat does not build anything. It breaks something. The sequence we have been taught is backwards. Trust is what makes honesty possible, not the other way around.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why honesty is a tool, not a default, and why the people we trust most are the most attuned, not the most honest
• What the research on prosocial deception says about the small, generous softenings that make hard truths land
• Why "I'm just being honest" is usually a nervous system pattern, not a personality trait
• How radical candor got flattened into permission to skip the care that makes candor survivable
• What the neuroscience of the safety scan reveals about why the same honest words build trust in one moment and destroy it in another
• Why the real sequence is backwards: trust builds honesty, not honesty builds trust
• Your capacity move: the one question to ask before you deliver the hard truth

Connect with Lizette:

Take the Capacity Code assessment (free, about two minutes): https://capacity.lizettewarner.com

Get on the preorder waitlist for The Capacity Advantage: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/5sAkQLrQuzEalmfBFBvP

Book Lizette to Speak: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/tqUtpLo45tHDTqhi6alT

Get email updates: https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop

Join me on Substack: https://drlizettewarner.substack.com

Become a member: https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations

Dr. Lizette Warner sits down with keynote speaker and leadership coach Edie Kay Stulken to unpack why so many high performers — especially women moving into leadership — manage perception instead of speaking the truth, and what it costs them in trust, energy, and decision-making capacity.

In this episode:

• Why "managing perception" is exhausting work that quietly drains leadership capacity

• The moment Edie realized she couldn't keep performing — and what changed when she stopped

• Why executive women specifically struggle to speak up in meetings, and what it costs them

• The body's physical response to dishonesty, and why the pause matters

• Edie's framework for helping leaders build psychological safety for truth-telling on their teams

Connect with Edie Kay Stulken: Website: ediekay.com 

Connect with Dr. Lizette Warner:

Preorder waitlist for ⁠The Capacity Advantage⁠

⁠Book Lizette to Speak⁠

Get email updates here: ⁠https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop⁠

Join me on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠

Become a ⁠member⁠: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations⁠:

Description

Journaling will change your life. Or will it? I have a PhD, I've written a book, and I cannot journal. It turns out that's fine, and for some of you this practice you've been told is unambiguously good might quietly be making things worse. Welcome to Debunked, the segment where I take a piece of the productivity gospel, run it through the capacity science, and tell you what actually holds up. This week I follow up on my conversation with Meg Rentschler about the practices that build resilient leaders, and I go after the biggest wellness prescription of them all. I walk through what the research actually says: why journaling helps people processing a clear story but can deepen the loop for people who ruminate, why there is no right journal no matter what the $47 one with the special pen promises, why gratitude journaling works better occasionally than daily, and the piece almost no one names. Journaling is not a mindset practice at all. It is bottom-up regulation. Get that one thing right and everything about how you use it changes.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why journaling gets sold as one universal cure when it is really three different practices with three different mechanisms
• What 40 years of research keeps saying that the wellness industry keeps ignoring
• Why journaling helps people with a coherent story to process, and can deepen depression and anxiety for people stuck in a rumination loop
• Why there is no right journal, and what actually determines whether it works
• Why gratitude journaling fades and can backfire the moment it becomes a daily checkbox
• The reframe that changes everything: journaling is bottom-up regulation, not a mindset practice
• Your capacity move this week: three breaths before the pen, and why you can journal without writing a single word

Connect with Lizette:

Take the Capacity Code assessment (free, about two minutes): https://capacity.lizettewarner.com

Get on the preorder waitlist for The Capacity Advantage: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/5sAkQLrQuzEalmfBFBvP

Book Lizette to Speak: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/tqUtpLo45tHDTqhi6alT

Get email updates: https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop

Join me on Substack: https://drlizettewarner.substack.com

Become a member: https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations

What happens when you realize the work that once fulfilled you no longer has room to grow? In this episode of Capacity Conversations, I sit down with Meg Rentschler professional-certified coach, host of the STaR Coach Show, founder of Focus on Results Coaching, and UT Dallas faculty member — to talk about the moment she knew her 20-year therapy career had reached its ceiling. Meg walks us through what it actually took to transition from therapist to executive coach: the certifications, the slow rebuild of a practice, and the hard call to walk away from insurance panels she'd spent years fighting to join. We also get into the season she's in now, navigating her husband's retirement and deciding what deserves her energy for the next chapter of her career. This is a conversation about capacity as a signal, not a failure, and what it looks like to actually listen to it.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why Meg's passion for therapy quietly eroded after 20 years — and the specific pattern she noticed in her clients that tipped her off

• The difference between "flipping a switch" and the multi-year, deliberate process Meg used to transition from therapy to coaching

• What it really took logistically: getting certified, relocating her practice, and phasing down her caseload while building the new one

• The turning point that pushed her to give up her therapy license entirely, and why that boundary mattered more than she expected

• How losing the license actually gave her more authority to say no, 

• Meg's approach to her current transition and why she's giving herself a full 6 months before deciding anything

• Her advice for anyone in the middle of a professional pivot: how to honor what came before while giving yourself permission to explore what's next

Connect with Meg: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megrentschler/

Meg’s Website: https://afocusonresults.coachesconsole.com/welcome-clients-.html

Star Coach Show:

Connect with Lizette:

Get on the preorder waitlist for ⁠The Capacity Advantage⁠

⁠Book Lizette to Speak⁠

Get email updates here: ⁠https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop⁠

Join me on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠

Become a ⁠member⁠: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations⁠:

Capacity Conversations 52: Is AI Really Going to Take Your Job? DEBUNKED with Dr. Lizette Warner

Description

AI is coming for your job. That is the headline everyone keeps repeating, and today I take it apart. Welcome to Debunked, the segment where I take a piece of the productivity gospel, run it through the science and the history, and tell you what actually holds up. This one is the follow-up to my conversation with Makeda Boehm about AI as a wealth-building tool. I go straight at the fear underneath it: the claim that AI is going to take all of our jobs. I walk through why that fear is so seductive, what the physical limits of AI actually are, and the four hidden subclaims buried inside the big one. Then I land on the question that matters more than any of them. Not whether AI takes your job, but how we hold on to our humanity while it changes what work is.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why fear sells, and the reason we are far better at finding risk than at overcoming it

• The gasoline prophecy I was handed in high school, and what it teaches us about every technology panic since

• Expansion and integration: why the loud phase we are in right now is not the shape of the future

• Why AI cannot replace all human labor once you follow the actual resources it runs on

• The human capacities AI cannot touch, and why they become more valuable, not less

• What ATMs and the internet reveal about the jobs that supposedly vanish forever

• Why the universal basic income rescue story collapses under its own math

• Your one practice this week: do something AI cannot do

Connect with Lizette:

Take the Capacity Code assessment (free, about two minutes): https://capacity.lizettewarner.com

Get on the preorder waitlist for The Capacity Advantage: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/5sAkQLrQuzEalmfBFBvP

Book Lizette to Speak: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/tqUtpLo45tHDTqhi6alT

Get email updates: https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop

Join me on Substack: https://drlizettewarner.substack.com

Become a member: https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations

In this episode of Capacity Conversations, host interviews Makeda Boehm, founder of Seed and Society, about using AI as a capacity and wealth-building tool through her frameworks “Context Training” and the Connector Method. Makeda shares her background growing up amid poverty and instability in Philadelphia, earning a GED at 16, teaching, and later pivoting into tech sales after switching from a data science master’s to an MBA. She describes applying to roughly 1,000 jobs, landing an account executive role, exceeding quota within five months, and becoming a top salesperson with over $7 million sold and seven-figure income. Makeda explains that most people fail with AI due to missing context, and she details how she runs a podcast using her voice and video clones, orchestrates a team of AI “employees,” and recommends starting by asking tools like Claude or ChatGPT how to use them with clear personal and business context.

In this episode you’ll learn

• 00:00 AI as Wealth Tool

• 00:43 Meet Makeda Boehm

• 02:41 From Philly to GED

• 06:59 Remote Job Hunt Grind

• 09:43 Rejection and Resilience

• 13:45 Choose You Mindset

• 15:21 How Makeda Found AI

• 20:04 Context Training Basics

• 24:13 Building AI Employees

• 28:48 AI Clone Podcast System

• 31:15 Human Review and Strategy

• 36:23 Where to Start with AI

• 39:37 You Are Not Too Late

• 42:05 Resources and Wrap Up

Connect with Makeda: 

Website: seedandsociety.com

Free A.I. Employee Report: audit.seedandsociety.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/makedaboehm

Connect with Lizette:

Get on the preorder waitlist for ⁠The Capacity Advantage⁠

⁠Book Lizette to Speak⁠

Get email updates here: ⁠https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop⁠

Join me on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠

Become a ⁠member⁠: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations⁠

Most executives don't have a time problem. They have an attention problem. Most leaders don't have a performance problem. They have a capacity problem. And most of the advice you have been given for fixing it is quietly making it worse.

I'm Dr. Lizette Warner, PhD in biomedical engineering and a Master Certified Coach. For the last decade I've worked with executives, founders, and high-performing teams on one question: how do you sustain performance in a world that asks too much of your nervous system? Capacity Conversations is the show where we get honest about what it takes to lead well, think clearly, and stay human at the top.

This season, real conversations and real science, with no hustle-culture cosplay:

• Makeda Boehm on AI, leadership, and what it is quietly doing to how we think
• Meg Rentschler on the practices that actually build resilient leaders, and the ones that don't
• Edie Kay Stulken on honesty, trust, and why so many leaders get the sequence wrong
• Kim Hollingdale, who works with Olympians and executives, on why the formula that gets you to the top is often what breaks you
• Dr. Christine Sickles on the voice-values gap and what it costs to bring only part of yourself to work

New this season: Debunked. Every other week I take a piece of productivity gospel, the 4 a.m. club, the gratitude journal, the power pose, and run it through the science, because a lot of what we have been sold as universally good has quietly hurt the people who took it seriously. Part science, part sarcasm, fully committed to what actually holds up.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Debunked episodes land on the alternate Tuesdays. It all starts August 25th.

Take the free Capacity Code assessment: https://capacity.lizettewarner.com

Connect with Lizette:

• Preorder waitlist for The Capacity Advantage: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/5sAkQLrQuzEalmfBFBvP
• Book Lizette to speak: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/tqUtpLo45tHDTqhi6alT
• Email updates: https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop
• Substack: https://drlizettewarner.substack.com
• Membership: https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizettewarner · Instagram: @lizette__warner

How we survived for 2 months in less than 160 sq ft of living space and what I learned.

Book links shared on the show:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Inheritance Games

The Cousins

The Last Bookshop in London

Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor

Homeland Insecurity

Ways to support the show:

1. Read my book, now as my special gift to you and you’ll be first on the list to read

my next book when it’s ready to be published.

2. Find the clarity you need, whether you're looking for clarity for your transition or skills to grow your business, there is a program for you (one on one coaching, group coaching and business coaching in The Coach Business Building Academy.) Apply here.

3. Learn how to integrate your faith with the rest of your life with resources from Faith Filled Founders..

We meet weekly and you can join a group for our Lead with Prayer group or our Scripture Study group (starts in 2025)

4. Support Female Founders by making a tax deductible donation to Faith Filled Founders to help us empower female founders with spiritual resources as well as practical skills to succeed.

for the Blog post check this out.

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