Leadership After 5

Most leaders don't avoid problem employees because they don't care. They avoid them because they don't know if they'll be supported when they do something about it.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the hardest parts of leadership: dealing with the employee who is quietly destroying your team's culture while the organization looks the other way. She shares her worst leadership story, including what it felt like to return from maternity leave and walk directly into a campaign designed to dismantle her reputation, and the mentor's advice that got her through it.

Kim also names her biggest leadership regret from that season. And gives you the four things that actually move the needle when you are dealing with a problem employee the right way.

This episode is for the leader who knows what needs to be done. And is trying to find the courage to do it anyway.

Consider the source. And keep going.

The Sunday scary is real. And leaders get it too.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about her own Sunday scary. What it looks like, what it's actually pointing at, and why it has almost nothing to do with not liking the work. She breaks down the real math of the weekend, why Saturday is not actually a day off, and what it means when the dread shows up right on schedule at six o'clock Sunday evening.

But this episode isn't just personal. It's a leadership accountability conversation. Because your team is having Sunday scaries too. And what you model on Monday morning is either the problem or the solution.

If you love the work but keep arriving at Monday morning feeling like you already lost, this one is for you.

We spend a lot of time talking about what leadership gets wrong.

Today we are celebrating what it gets right.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim flips the script and names the green flags. The real, observable signs that tell you without any doubt that you are in the presence of a leader who gets it. Not the theory. Not the framework. The actual things you can see and feel when great leadership is happening.

From the leader who steps back and lets their person shine to the team that speaks in one voice no matter who is in the room, Kim breaks down what great leadership produces and what it looks like from the inside.

If you have ever worked for a leader who changed you, this episode will help you name exactly what they did.

And if you are that leader, this one is worth hearing too.

Have you ever watched someone completely transform the moment power walked into the room?

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim opens with a scene from a church hallway that never left her, and unpacks what it revealed about one of the most quietly destructive dynamics in organizational life. Proximity to power.

From DC events to Miranda Priestly, Kim traces how the instinct to perform for power shows up everywhere, and what happens to an organization when that performance becomes the culture. The creativity that dies. The innovation that stops. The honest feedback that never makes it into the room.

Kim also gets honest about the leaders who enable it, sometimes without even realizing it, and what it actually takes to build a culture where people show up for the work instead of the worship.

Someone on your team used your own words against you. Not because you did something wrong. Because you did something human.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the most painful and least discussed realities of leadership: character assassination from within. What it actually feels like. Why it happens. And why loneliness is almost always the door that gets left open.

Kim introduces the Airbnb framework for thinking about access, what your team should and shouldn't have, how trust and time determine what gets opened, and why the host never forgets they're the host.

If you have ever shown someone who you really are underneath the title and had it used against you, this episode is for you.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about what it actually feels like to shift culture in an organization that isn't ready for it. The resistance. The moments you question whether the change was even necessary. The unexpected things behind the wall that cost more and take longer than anyone planned for.

Kim breaks down why most culture change efforts stall before they finish, the focus group trap that derails more strategies than people realize, and the three things that actually move culture forward, none of which involve a values poster or an all staff email.

If you are leading a culture shift, living through one, or wondering why the one you started never quite finished, this episode is for you.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the least discussed realities of stepping into a leadership role, inheriting a team you didn't choose. The resistance. The uncertainty. The employees who had already made up their minds about you before you walked through the door.

Kim breaks down why inherited team dynamics are harder than anyone prepares you for, what to do in those critical first weeks, and the honest truth about what happens when you do everything right and some people still don't come around.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets direct about people pleasing in leadership and why it doesn't stop with new managers. At the executive level it gets quieter, more sophisticated, and more dangerous. Kim explores the fine line between good leadership and approval seeking, the parenting analogy that reframes it all, and why the leaders who are remembered aren't always the ones who were liked, but the ones who were trusted.

It’s a question most leaders never stop long enough to answer. And the longer you go without answering it the more the role starts to answer it for you.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, I’m getting honest about something I experienced firsthand: what happens when your identity and your leadership role become the same thing. The blind spots it creates. The connections it costs you.

The quiet question underneath it all: am I enough outside of this role?

This one is for the leader who has ever felt naked outside of work. Who has struggled to relate to people when the corporate conversation stops. Who has built so much of themselves around the title that they’ve forgotten who they are without it.

You are more than the role. Let’s talk about it.

You've been told you can have it all. And maybe you believed it. Until you were sitting in a leadership role, missing a recital, and wondering how everyone else seems to be holding it together.

They're not. They're just quiet about it.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, I'm having the conversation nobody prepares you for; what it actually feels like to lead while mothering. The trade-offs that don't get easier. The guilt that doesn't go away. And the truth about what that seat at the table actually costs.

This one is for the mother who fought to get there and is now wondering how to stay.