In this episode of the Contagious Culture Podcast, Kyle King sits down with Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh, educator, professor, researcher, consultant, and creator of the EQUAL Methodology.
Michelle shares her journey from high-performing educator and lifelong achiever to a leader learning how to separate her identity from productivity, accomplishment, and constant busyness. She opens up about burnout, motherhood, immigration, perfectionism, therapy, and the pressure to prove herself through degrees, credentials, and professional success.
Kyle and Michelle also discuss disengagement as a form of self-protection, the importance of emotional safety and belonging, and how leaders can create healthier learning and workplace environments through clarity, courage, care, collaboration, and evidence.
Suggested Timestamps
00:15 — Meet Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh
00:30 — Rooted and Ready
01:00 — Creating space for accomplished women to pause
01:45 — Who were you before you were busy?
02:15 — Carrying the weight of being first-generation
03:00 — Remembering the person beneath the productivity
03:30 — Childhood in Jamaica, freedom, and creativity
04:30 — Presence, playfulness, and listening to yourself
05:30 — Kyle’s experience choosing rest over work
06:15 — Why slowing down makes us feel lighter
07:00 — The act of being busy
07:30 — Why leaders ignore their bodies
08:15 — Burnout, unused leave, and working on autopilot
09:00 — Disconnection, disengagement, and emotional numbness
09:30 — The unhealthy attachment to work
10:00 — Were the unused days worth the payout?
11:00 — Why rest would have improved Michelle’s leadership
11:30 — Recognizing burnout after leaving the system
12:00 — Empty nesting, entrepreneurship, and rediscovering identity
12:30 — The retreat that changed Michelle’s perspective
13:00 — Designing days around rest, learning, and community
14:00 — Why community, therapy, and coaching matter
15:00 — Accomplishments without identity
15:30 — Who are you without your title?
16:00 — Learning to introduce yourself as a human being
17:00 — Patterns of producing, performing, and perfecting
17:30 — Detaching your worth from the outcome
18:30 — Creating spaces for safe and honest conversation
19:15 — The childhood weight Michelle carried
20:00 — Being the first in the family
20:30 — Pregnancy, shame, and the pressure to prove everyone wrong
22:00 — Turning shame into testimony
23:00 — Senior year of college and fear of disappointing her family
24:00 — Hiding pain behind strength and achievement
25:00 — Collecting degrees to prove she was not a failure
26:00 — Moving from performance to healing
26:30 — How therapy changed Michelle’s perspective
27:30 — Therapy as part of a healthy routine
28:00 — Redefining strength and asking for help
29:00 — Why inner work improves professional performance
30:00 — Choosing rest without guilt
30:30 — Me Time Mondays
31:00 — Freedom Fridays
32:30 — Filling your own cup before serving others
33:15 — Michelle’s current work
33:30 — Disengagement as a system signal
34:00 — Clarity, courage, and care
35:00 — Introducing the EQUAL Methodology
36:30 — E: Evaluate context
37:00 — Looking beneath disengaged behavior
37:15 — Q: Qualify the learning environment
37:45 — Rigor, relevance, and responsiveness
38:00 — U: Uplift belonging
38:15 — Disengagement is self-protection
39:00 — A: Activate collaboration
39:30 — Creating a success team of stakeholders
40:00 — L: Leverage evidence
40:30 — Using feedback, reflection, and data
41:15 — Applying the framework beyond education
42:00 — Where to connect with Michelle
43:00 — Encouragement for leaders facing disengagement
44:00 — Redesigning environments around people
46:00 — Rooted and Ready
47:00 — Productivity as connection, presence, and wholeness
48:00 — Humanity before performance
Dr. Singh's Bio
Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh is an educator, professor, researcher, consultant, and creator of the EQUAL Methodology, a human-centered framework designed to help educators and organizational leaders understand and disrupt disengagement.
With more than 20 years of experience in education, Michelle has worked across classrooms, school systems, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and corporate environments. Her work focuses on belonging, emotional safety, relevance, collaboration, leadership, and designing environments where people can learn, work, and thrive.
She is also the creator of Rooted and Ready, a quarterly gathering designed to give accomplished women space to pause, reconnect, reflect, and remember who they are beyond productivity and performance.
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